Affective feedback: an investigation into the role of emotions in the information seeking process

User feedback is considered to be a critical element in the information seeking process, especially in relation to relevance assessment. Current feedback techniques determine content relevance with respect to the cognitive and situational levels of interaction that occurs between the user and the retrieval system. However, apart from real-life problems and information objects, users interact with intentions, motivations and feelings, which can be seen as critical aspects of cognition and decision-making. The study presented in this paper serves as a starting point to the exploration of the role of emotions in the information seeking process. Results show that the latter not only interweave with different physiological, psychological and cognitive processes, but also form distinctive patterns, according to specific task, and according to specific user

Solving multi-target haptic problems in menu interaction

While haptic feedback has been shown to enhance user performance and satisfaction in single target interactions in desktop user interfaces, it is not clear whether this will hold for more realistic, multi-target interactions. Here we present an experimental study of haptically enhanced menus. We evaluate a visual condition, a haptic condition and an adjusted haptic condition designed to support menu interactions. We conclude that thoughtful design can create multi-target haptic augmentations that provide performance benefits

Communicating with feeling

Communication between users in shared editors takes place in a deprived environment - distributed users find it difficult to communicate. While many solutions to the problems this causes have been suggested this paper presents a novel one. It describes one possible use of haptics as a channel for communication between users. User's telepointers are considered as haptic avatars and interactions such as haptically pushing and pulling each other are afforded. The use of homing forces to locate other users is also discussed, as is a proximity sensation based on viscosity. Evaluation of this system is currently underway

Gauge Five Brane Dynamics And Small Instanton Transitions In Heterotic Models

We present the first examples of cosmological solutions to four-dimensional heterotic models which include an evolving bundle modulus. The particular bundle modulus we consider corresponds to the width of a gauge five brane. As such our solutions can be used to describe the evolution in one of these models after a small instanton transition. We find that certain properties are generic to these solutions, regardless of initial conditions. This enables us to make some definite statements about the dynamics subsequent to a small instanton transition despite the fact that we cannot microscopically describe the process itself. We also show that an effective description of the small instanton transition by a continuous matching of fields and their first derivatives is precluded by the form of the respective low-energy theories before and after the transition.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figure

The effects of stress on the enzymes of peripheral leukocytes

Previous work showed an early response of rabbit and human leukocyte enzymes to the stress of bacterial infection. Since these represented a mixed population of leukocytes and since polymorphonuclear leukocytes (PMN) increased in these preparations, it was necessary to establish whether the observed increase in lactate dehydrenase (LDH) and protein was the result of an increase in any one particular cell type or in all cells. The need for the development of a simple reproducible method for the differential separation of peripheral leukocytes for the furtherance of our own studies was apparent. It was also becoming increasingly apparent that morphologically similar cells, such as small lymphocytes (L) and macrophages, were capable of different biological functions. A dextran gradient centrifugation method was developed which has provided an easily reproducible technique for separating L from PMN. During the course of this work, in which over 250 rabbits were examined, the pattern of daily leukocyte protein and enzyme variation became increasingly more apparent. This information could have some impact on future work with leukocyte enzymes, by our group and by other workers. The differences in normal protein and enzyme levels maintained by some individuals, and some inbred strains, were evaluated and reported separately. It has been shown that one type of leukocyte may react more to a given stress than other leukocytes

Putting the feel in ’look and feel‘

Haptic devices are now commercially available and thus touch has become a potentially realistic solution to a variety of interaction design challenges. We report on an investigation of the use of touch as a way of reducing visual overload in the conventional desktop. In a two-phase study, we investigated the use of the PHANToM haptic device as a means of interacting with a conventional graphical user interface. The first experiment compared the effects of four different haptic augmentations on usability in a simple targeting task. The second experiment involved a more ecologically-oriented searching and scrolling task. Results indicated that the haptic effects did not improve users performance in terms of task completion time. However, the number of errors made was significantly reduced. Subjective workload measures showed that participants perceived many aspects of workload as significantly less with haptics. The results are described and the implications for the use of haptics in user interface design are discussed

The roles of resident, central and effector memory CD4 T cells in protective immunity following infection or vaccination

Immunological memory provides rapid protection to pathogens previously encountered through infection or vaccination. CD4 T cells play a central role in all adaptive immune responses. Vaccines must, therefore, activate CD4 T cells if they are to generate protective immunity. For many diseases, we do not have effective vaccines. These include HIV, tuberculosis and malaria, which are responsible for many millions of deaths each year across the globe. CD4 T cells play many different roles during the immune response coordinating the actions of many other cells. In order to harness the diverse protective effects of memory CD4 T cells we need to understand how memory CD4 T cells are generated and how they protect the host. Here we review recent findings on the location of different subsets of memory CD4 T cells that are found in peripheral tissues (tissue resident memory T cells) and in the circulation (central and effector memory T cells). We discuss the generation of these cells and the evidence that demonstrates how they provide immune protection in animal and human challenge models

Inversion of polarimetric data from eclipsing binaries

We describe a method for determining the limb polarization and limb darkening of stars in eclipsing binary systems, by inverting photometric and polarimetric light curves. Because of the ill-conditioning of the problem, we use the Backus-Gilbert method to control the resolution and stability of the recovered solution, and to make quantitative estimates of the maximum accuracy possible. Using this method we confirm that the limb polarization can indeed be recovered, and demonstrate this with simulated data, thus determining the level of observational accuracy required to achieve a given accuracy of reconstruction. This allows us to set out an optimal observational strategy, and to critcally assess the claimed detection of limb polarization in the Algol system. The use of polarization in stars has been proposed as a diagnostic tool in microlensing surveys by Simmons et al. (1995), and we discuss the extension of this work to the case of microlensing of extended sources.Comment: 10pp, 5 figures. To appear in A&

NRQCD results on the MILC extra coarse ensemble

We present preliminary results using NRQCD to describe heavy quarks on the MILC 2+1 flavour dynamical extra coarse ensemble. We calculate the spectra of low lying states in bottomonium to complement earlier results on the finer MILC ensembles. We then exploit the coarseness of the lattices to calculate charm propagators using NRQCD. These are used to examine the charmonium spectrum and to calclate the mass of the $B_c$ using NRQCD. Finally we look breifly at the $B_d$ and $B_s$ systems using the imporoved staggered formalism to describe the light valence quarks.Comment: 6 pages, Talk presented at Lattice 2005 (Heavy Quarks), Dublin, 25-30 July 200