Sonically-enhanced widgets: comments on Brewster and Clarke, ICAD 1997

This paper presents a review of the research surrounding the paper “The Design and Evaluation of a Sonically Enhanced Tool Palette” by Brewster and Clarke from ICAD 1997. A historical perspective is given followed by a discussion of how this work has fed into current developments in the area

Facilitating Humanitarian Access to Pharmaceutical and Agricultural Innovation

Calls for intellectual property licensing strategies in the pharmaceutical and agricultural sectors that promote humanitarian access to product innovations for the benefit of the disadvantaged. Includes profiles of successful and promising strategies

Vernacular narratives of well-being and the practice of photo-a-day

The impact of social media on psychological well-being is usually investigated through survey-based studies of the mass effects of its use. This paper offers an alternative perspective, by exploring individuals’ narratives of their own well-being, arising from interviews about one seemingly simple, mundane digital practice: photo-a-day. These stories showed how people saw that they could shape their own well-being gradually through the way that sharing a photo each day reconfigured routines, brought them to notice new things and connected to others in new ways. The effect was complex and largely unintended. This reflected their sophisticated understanding of well-being as an elusive, complex practical accomplishment. The paper reflects on how well-being can be understood as accomplished within social practices by the spreading of meaning

A toolkit of mechanism and context independent widgets

Most human-computer interfaces are designed to run on a static platform (e.g. a workstation with a monitor) in a static environment (e.g. an office). However, with mobile devices becoming ubiquitous and capable of running applications similar to those found on static devices, it is no longer valid to design static interfaces. This paper describes a user-interface architecture which allows interactors to be flexible about the way they are presented. This flexibility is defined by the different input and output mechanisms used. An interactor may use different mechanisms depending upon their suitability in the current context, user preference and the resources available for presentation using that mechanism

Cardiovascular disease and air pollution in Scotland: no association or insufficient data and study design?

<p><b>Background:</b> Coronary heart disease and stroke are leading causes of mortality and ill health in Scotland, and clear associations have been found in previous studies between air pollution and cardiovascular disease. This study aimed to use routinely available data to examine whether there is any evidence of an association between short-term exposure to particulate matter (measured as PM10, particles less than 10 micrograms per cubic metre) and hospital admissions due to cardiovascular disease, in the two largest cities in Scotland during the years 2000 to 2006.</p> <p><b>Methods:</b> The study utilised an ecological time series design, and the analysis was based on overdispersed Poisson log-linear models.</p> <p><b>Results:</b> No consistent associations were found between PM10 concentrations and cardiovascular hospital admissions in either of the cities studied, as all of the estimated relative risks were close to one, and all but one of the associated 95% confidence intervals contained the null risk of one.</p> <p><b>Conclusions:</b> This study suggests that in small cities, where air quality is relatively good, then either PM10 concentrations have no effect on cardiovascular ill health, or that the routinely available data and the corresponding study design are not sufficient to detect an association.</p&gt

High salt meals in staff canteens of salt policy makers: observational study

Objective To assess the salt content of hot meals served at the institutions of salt policy makers in the Netherlands

Transitioning from Academia to the Workplace: Information Literacy Experiences of Business Students

Workplace preparedness is an integral application of information literacy skills for our students as they move forward and leave the university. It is also important to prepare students for the information needs they will face as they complete co-ops and internships during their time in academia. To best educate students in the information literacy skills they will need on-the-job, it is important for librarians to understand what types of information employers are requiring students to use in these co-op and internship experiences and in what ways. While work has been done on this regarding engineering students (Jeffryes and Lafferty, 2012), this topic is relatively unexplored with business students. In an effort to better understand the workplace information literacy needs of business students during co-ops and internships, two librarians (one business librarian and one engineering librarian) and an undergraduate researcher (a senior in the business school) collaborated to survey business students and alumni who have completed an internship or a co-op regarding their information use in these experiences. Students were asked about their experiences finding and using articles (e.g., scholarly, trade, news), books/ebooks, company information (e.g., competitor information, financials), court cases or law reviews, industry standards (e.g., International Organization of Standardization (ISO)), laws and regulations, market and industry research reports, patents, and technical reports/white papers. The information from this survey will be used to determine both successes and gaps in current information literacy instruction. This presentation will provide an overview of this project and share the initial findings and planned applications of this research

Risk of cancer following primary total hip replacement or primary resurfacing arthroplasty of the hip : A retrospective cohort study in Scotland

Acknowledgements: We are grateful to Lee Barnsdale, Doug Clark, and Richard Dobbie for advice and assistance with data preparation before analysis, and to the three anonymous referees for their helpful comments and suggestions.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Services for student well-being in academic libraries : three challenges

There has been a wave of interest in UK academic libraries in developing services to support student well-being. This paper identifies three fundamental and interrelated issues that need to be addressed to make such initiatives effective and sustainable. Firstly, well-being has to be defined and the impacts of interventions must be measured in appropriate ways. Secondly, there is a need to identify the true nature of the underlying social problem around well-being. Thirdly, relevant approaches to the issue need to be located within the professional knowledge base of librarianship

Difficulties in Laboratory Studies and Astronomical Observations of Organic Molecules: Hydroxyacetone and Lactic Acid

For the past 35 years, radio astronomy has revealed a rich organic chemistry in the interstellar gas, which is exceptionally complex towards active star-forming regions. New solar systems condense out of this gas and may influence the evolution of life on newly formed planets. Much of the biologically important functionality is present among the some 130 gas-phase molecules found to date, including alcohols, aldehydes, ketones, acids, amines, amides and even the simplest sugar - glycolaldehyde. Still, many unidentified interstellar radio signals remain, and their identification relies on further laboratory study. The molecules hydroxyacetone and lactic acid are relatively small organic molecules, but possess rather complex rotational spectra owing to their high asymmetry. Hydroxyacetone is particularly problematic because it possess a very low barrier to internal rotation, and exhibits strong coupling of the free-rotor states with the overall rotation of the molecule. As in the case of acetamide, a full decomposition method was employed to order the resultant eigenstates onto normal asymmetric top eigenvectors