298 research outputs found
Design Education - A Change in Name only?
Packaging in its various forms has a major role to play in the sales promotion of a consumer product. Whilst the contents of the package often remain unchanged a change of package style and image, or the ";slickingup"; of a product's title can influence the sale prospects, often dramatically. But superficial changes of this nature may not yield lasting results, the sales boost being only temporary. As sales decline so the process of reviving interest begins again with a further adjustment to image and style. The consumer at some stage, however, could for a variety of reasons chang! allegiance to the product brand: reliability, economy, degree of compatability with other trends and influences, even doing without in certain cases may go contrary to the marketeer's predictions and projections. In attempting some degree of forecast, market research methodology includes a programmed strategy in the need to form an understanding of the idiosyncratic behaviour of the consumer. This recognises the importance of taking into account some of the less obvious factors that may jeopardise success, and also tne ongoing process of monitoring modes of behaviour and patterns of acceptance towards change
Do remittances and social assistance have different impacts on expenditure patterns of recipient households? : The Moldovan case
Do remittances and social assistance have different impacts on household expenditure patterns? While two separate strands of literature have looked at how social assistance or remittances have been spent, few studies have compared them directly. Using data from a nationally representative household survey conducted in Moldova in 2011, this paper assesses the impact both types of transfers have on household expenditure patterns. Contrary to the common assumption that money is fungible, we find that social assistance and remittances have different impacts on expenditure patterns (having controlled for potential endogeneity). This research highlights that income source matters and that different incomes may have different poverty impacts. In our sample, the two types of transfers are received by different, but to some extent overlapping population groups. The fact that the two transfers are spent in different ways means that, to some extent, social assistance and remittances are complements rather than substitutes
Momentum dependence of the excitons in pentacene
We have carried out electron energy-loss investigations of the lowest singlet
excitons in pentacene at 20 K. Our studies allow to determine the full exciton
band structure in the a*,b* reciprocal lattice plane. The lowest singlet
exciton can move coherently within this plane, and the resulting exciton
dispersion is highly anisotropic. The analysis of the energetically following
(satellite) features indicates a strong admixture of charge transfer
excitations to the exciton wave function.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figure
Autism in England: assessing underdiagnosis in a population- based cohort study of prospectively collected primary care data
Background: Autism has long been viewed as a paediatric condition, meaning that many autistic adults missed out on a diagnosis as children when autism was little known. We estimated numbers of diagnosed and undiagnosed autistic people in England, and examined how diagnostic rates differed by socio-demographic factors. Methods: This population-based cohort study of prospectively collected primary care data from IQVIA Medical Research Data (IMRD) compared the prevalence of diagnosed autism to community prevalence to estimate underdiagnosis. 602,433 individuals registered at an English primary care practice in 2018 and 5,586,100 individuals registered between 2000 and 2018 were included. Findings: Rates of diagnosed autism in children/young people were much higher than in adults/older adults. As of 2018, 2.94% of 10- to 14-year-olds had a diagnosis (1 in 34), vs. 0.02% aged 70+ (1 in 6000). Exploratory projections based on these data suggest that, as of 2018, 463,500 people (0.82% of the English population) may have been diagnosed autistic, and between 435,700 and 1,197,300 may be autistic and undiagnosed (59–72% of autistic people, 0.77%–2.12% of the English population). Age-related inequalities were also evident in new diagnoses (incidence): c.1 in 250 5- to 9-year-olds had a newly-recorded autism diagnosis in 2018, vs. c.1 in 4000 20- to 49-year-olds, and c.1 in 18,000 people aged 50+. Interpretation: Substantial age-related differences in the proportions of people diagnosed suggest an urgent need to improve access to adult autism diagnostic services. Funding: Dunhill Medical Trust, Economic and Social Research Council, Medical Research Council, National Institute for Health Research, the Wellcome Trust, and the Royal College of Psychiatrists.</p
Tsunami-Related Data: A Review of Available Repositories Used in Scientific Literature
Various organizations and institutions store large volumes of tsunami-related data, whose
availability and quality should benefit society, as it improves decision making before the tsunami
occurrence, during the tsunami impact, and when coping with the aftermath. However, the existing
digital ecosystem surrounding tsunami research prevents us from extracting the maximum benefit
from our research investments. The main objective of this study is to explore the field of data
repositories providing secondary data associated with tsunami research and analyze the current
situation. We analyze the mutual interconnections of references in scientific studies published in the
Web of Science database, governmental bodies, commercial organizations, and research agencies. A
set of criteria was used to evaluate content and searchability. We identified 60 data repositories with
records used in tsunami research. The heterogeneity of data formats, deactivated or nonfunctional
web pages, the generality of data repositories, or poor dataset arrangement represent the most
significant weak points. We outline the potential contribution of ontology engineering as an example
of computer science methods that enable improvements in tsunami-related data management
Modelling Drosophila motion vision pathways for decoding the direction of translating objects against cluttered moving backgrounds
Decoding the direction of translating objects in front of cluttered moving backgrounds, accurately and efficiently, is still a challenging problem. In nature, lightweight and low-powered flying insects apply motion vision to detect a moving target in highly variable environments during flight, which are excellent paradigms to learn motion perception strategies. This paper investigates the fruit fly Drosophila motion vision pathways and presents computational modelling based on cuttingedge physiological researches. The proposed visual system model features bio-plausible ON and OFF pathways, wide-field horizontal-sensitive (HS) and vertical-sensitive (VS) systems. The main contributions of this research are on two aspects: (1) the proposed model articulates the forming of both direction-selective and direction-opponent responses, revealed as principalfeaturesofmotionperceptionneuralcircuits,inafeed-forwardmanner;(2)italsoshowsrobustdirectionselectivity to translating objects in front of cluttered moving backgrounds, via the modelling of spatiotemporal dynamics including combination of motion pre-filtering mechanisms and ensembles of local correlators inside both the ON and OFF pathways, which works effectively to suppress irrelevant background motion or distractors, and to improve the dynamic response. Accordingly, the direction of translating objects is decoded as global responses of both the HS and VS systems with positive ornegativeoutputindicatingpreferred-direction or null-direction translation.The experiments have verified the effectiveness of the proposed neural system model, and demonstrated its responsive preference to faster-moving, higher-contrast and larger-size targets embedded in cluttered moving backgrounds
Bio-inspired motion detection in an FPGA-based smart camera module
Köhler T, Roechter F, Lindemann JP, Möller R. Bio-inspired motion detection in an FPGA-based smart camera module. Bioinspiration & Biomimetics. 2009;4(1):015008.Flying insects, despite their relatively coarse vision and tiny nervous system, are capable of carrying out elegant and fast aerial manoeuvres. Studies of the fly visual system have shown that this is accomplished by the integration of signals from a large number of elementary motion detectors (EMDs) in just a few global flow detector cells. We developed an FPGA-based smart camera module with more than 10000 single EMDs, which is closely modelled after insect motion-detection circuits with respect to overall architecture, resolution and inter-receptor spacing. Input to the EMD array is provided by a CMOS camera with a high frame rate. Designed as an adaptable solution for different engineering applications and as a testbed for biological models, the EMD detector type and parameters such as the EMD time constants, the motion-detection directions and the angle between correlated receptors are reconfigurable online. This allows a flexible and simultaneous detection of complex motion fields such as translation, rotation and looming, such that various tasks, e. g., obstacle avoidance, height/distance control or speed regulation can be performed by the same compact device
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