Adaptation to a Motion-Based and Non-Motion-Based Simulator

This study (N=129, including 59 males and 61 females) examined the issue of realism and motion sickness between motion-based and non-motionbased simulators. Specifically, this research address whether enhancing a driving simulator with motion capabilities increases the realism of the simulator and, if so, does this increase in subjective realism increase participants’ vulnerability to motion sickness. Approximately half of the participants drove a motion-based simulator while the other half drove a non-motion-based simulator on four independent drives within an experimental session. Results showed that the motion-based simulator was rated more realistic than the non-motion-based simulator. However, it was also found that participants in the motion-based simulator had higher negative physical health ratings than participants in the nonmotion-based simulator. Our results suggest that training programs need to consider the trade-off between realism and motion sickness

Mental Representations Formed From Educational Website Formats

The increasing popularity of web-based distance education places high demand on distance educators to format web pages to facilitate learning. However, limited guidelines exist regarding appropriate writing styles for web-based distance education. This study investigated the effect of four different writing styles on reader’s mental representation of hypertext. Participants studied hypertext written in one of four web-writing styles (e.g., concise, scannable, objective, and combined) and were then administered a cued association task intended to measure their mental representations of the hypertext. It is hypothesized that the scannable and combined styles will bias readers to scan rather than elaborately read, which may result in less dense mental representations (as identified through Pathfinder analysis) relative to the objective and concise writing styles. Further, the use of more descriptors in the objective writing style will lead to better integration of ideas and more dense mental representations than the concise writing style

Effects of Extreme Sleep Deprivation on Human Performance

Sleep is a fundamental recuperative process for the nervous system. Disruption of this homeostatic drive can lead to severe impairments of the operator’s ability to perceive, recognize, and respond to emergencies and/or unanticipated events, putting the operator at risk. Therefore, establishing a comprehensive understanding of how sleep deprivation influences human performance is essential in order to counter fatigue or to develop mitigation strategies. The goal of the present study was to examine the psychological effects of prolonged sleep deprivation (approx. 75 hrs) over a four-day span on a general aviation pilot flying a fixed-based flight simulator. During the study, a series of tasks were employed every four hours in order to examine the pilot’s perceptual and higher level cognitive abilities. Overall, results suggest that the majority of cognitive and perceptual degradation occurs between 30-40 hours into the flight. Limitations and future research directions are also discussed

WorldForestID: Addressing the need for standardized wood reference collections to support authentication analysis technologies; a way forward for checking the origin and identity of traded timber.

Societal Impact Statement Forest products are the most used inedible renewable resource, but supplies are finite. It is difficult to know which tree species are in wood products or where they come from. Scientific evidence is needed to support or refute origin and species claims in traded products. We describe the building of a geo‐referenced wood reference collection (xylarium) supported by herbarium voucher specimens. The WorldForest ID program, hereinafter referred to as WFID (www.worldforestid.org), is embarking on large‐scale field collections of wood samples suitable for science‐based authentication technologies. By coordinating with regulatory and enforcement authorities in both producer and consumer countries the WFID xylarium is legally robust and commercially relevant. Summary We describe a program called WorldForestID which is being developed to monitor and support authentication and compliance in international trade of timber products. The program is being run by a consortium of government and non‐government organizations: US Forest Service International Programs (USFS IP), Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), Agroisolab, and World Resources Institute (WRI). Initial funding has come from the US Department of State, USFS IP, US Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Forest Stewardship Council, and the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). The aim is to build a comprehensive collection of internationally traded timber species. The collection is used as reference material to validate forest products. Although there are a large number of xylaria (wood collections, Index Xylariorum IV) around the world, many of the specimens do not provide geo‐locations suitable as reference material for pinpointing provenance, many lack‐associated herbarium vouchers and some are misidentified. The samples being collected in this program address these issues and include bark, sapwood, and heartwood, ensuring that the material collected is suitable for current and future scientific analysis. We describe the process of collection and validation from field to laboratory and the advantages and disadvantages of the main techniques used to ascertain/verify identity and provenance. Ultimately, we envisage the day that scientific methods will be used routinely and successfully by timber traders, manufacturers, retailers, and law enforcement to accept or reject identity and provenance claims on internationally traded timber and forest products and, where necessary, to support prosecutions when laws such as EU Timber Regulations, Lacey Act and CITES are infringed

Metrics for measuring broadening participation in NSF programs

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has long encouraged its grantees to consider individual and institutional diversity in their activities, specifically through the Broader Impacts merit review criterion. A group representative of the NSF grantee community participated in a workshop to develop metrics by which grantee institutions and individual principal investigators could document their efforts to broaden participation in science and engineering by persons drawn from populations underrepresented in these fields, as well as from institutions that underparticipate in NSF grantee programs. The group proposed that the NSF require its grantee institutions to submit annually and for public display (1) their most recent affirmative action plans, including equal employment opportunity information and utilization reports; and (2) indication of specific collaborations with nonresearch institutions in NSF programs. Deliberations and recommendations of the working group are presented in this article. Copyright © 2009 by Begell House, Inc