Investigating Practices When Using an Overview Device in Collaborative Multi-Surface Trip-Planning

The availability of mobile device ecologies enables new types of ad-hoc co-located decision-making and sensemak-ing practices in which people find, collect, discuss, and share information. However, little is known about what kind of device configurations are suitable for these types of tasks. This paper contributes new insights into how people use configurations of devices for one representative example task: collaborative co-located trip-planning. We present an empirical study that explores and compares three strategies to use multiple devices: no-overview, overview on own device, and a separate overview device. The results show that the overview facilitated decision- and sensemaking during a collaborative trip-planning task by aiding groups to iterate their itinerary, organize locations and timings efficiently, and discover new insights. Groups shared and discussed more opinions, resulting in more democratic decision-making. Groups provided with a separate overview device engaged more frequently and spent more time in closely-coupled collaboration

CurationSpace: Cross-Device Content Curation Using Instrumental Interaction

For digital content curation of historical artefacts, curators collaboratively collect, analyze and edit documents, images, and other digital resources in order to display and share new representations of that information to an audience. Despite their increasing reliance on digital documents and tools, current technologies provide little support for these specific collaborative content curation activities. We introduce CurationSpace – a novel cross-device system – to provide more expressive tools for curating and composing digital historical artefacts. Based on the concept of Instrumental Interaction, CurationSpace allows users to interact with digital curation artefacts on shared interactive surfaces using personal smartwatches as selectors for instruments or modifiers (applied to either the whole curation space, individual documents, or fragments). We introduce a range of novel interaction techniques that allow individuals or groups of curators to more easily create, navigate and share resources during content curation. We report insights from our user study about people’s use of instruments and modifiers for curation activities

Structure and Function of the Mycobacterial Type VII Secretion Systems

Bacteria have evolved intricate secretion machineries for the successful delivery of large molecules across their cell envelopes. Such specialized secretion systems allow a variety of bacteria to thrive in specific host environments. In mycobacteria, type VII secretion systems (T7SSs) are dedicated protein transport machineries that fulfill diverse and crucial roles, ranging from metabolite uptake to immune evasion and subversion to conjugation. Since the discovery of mycobacterial T7SSs about 15 y ago, genetic, structural, and functional studies have provided insight into the roles and functioning of these secretion machineries. Here, we focus on recent advances in the elucidation of the structure and mechanism of mycobacterial T7SSs in protein secretion. As many of these systems are essential for mycobacterial growth or virulence, they provide opportunities for the development of novel therapies to combat a number of relevant mycobacterial diseases

Closed-Loop Multitarget Optimization for Discovery of New Emulsion Polymerization Recipes

Self-optimization of chemical reactions enables faster optimization of reaction conditions or discovery of molecules with required target properties. The technology of self-optimization has been expanded to discovery of new process recipes for manufacture of complex functional products. A new machine-learning algorithm, specifically designed for multiobjective target optimization with an explicit aim to minimize the number of “expensive” experiments, guides the discovery process. This “black-box” approach assumes no a priori knowledge of chemical system and hence particularly suited to rapid development of processes to manufacture specialist low-volume, high-value products. The approach was demonstrated in discovery of process recipes for a semibatch emulsion copolymerization, targeting a specific particle size and full conversion.The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (EC FP7) Grant Agreement no. [NMP2-SL-2012-280827] and EPSRC project “Closed Loop Optimization for Sustainable Chemical Manufacture” [EP/L003309/1]

Food assistance to tuberculosis patients: lessons from Afghanistan.

Poverty, food insecurity and poor nutrition in the population are important contributors to the burden of tuberculosis (TB). For poor and food-insecure individuals, accessing and successfully completing anti-tuberculosis treatment over an extended period of time is challenging. Food and nutritional support as an incentive and enabler is employed by national TB control programmes (NTPs) worldwide as a means to encourage treatment initiation and adherence and to improve the nutritional status of patients with TB. It also offers a safety net for food-insecure households affected by TB to mitigate the financial consequences of the disease. This paper reports on the primary lessons from the review of the World Food Programme's (WFP's) Food Assistance Programme for TB patients in Afghanistan. It aims to inform the design, implementation and scale-up of TB programmes in settings where food insecurity and malnutrition are prevalent. It also documents qualitative findings that suggest that patients, their families and providers viewed food support as an important asset and an essential element of the national TB control strategy. While the impact on treatment success or case detection could not be quantified, it is likely that the WFP intervention had a positive impact on the patients and their households, therefore contributing to the success of the DOTS-based NTP

Learning to dislike alcohol: conditioning negative implicit attitudes toward alcohol and its effect on drinking behavior

Rationale: Since implicit attitudes toward alcohol play an important role in drinking behavior, a possible way to obtain a behavioral change is changing these implicit attitudes. Objectives: This study examined whether a change in implicit attitudes and in drinking behavior can be achieved via evaluative conditioning. Methods: Participants were randomly assigned to an experimental condition and a control condition. In the experimental condition, participants were subjected to an evaluative conditioning procedure that consistently pairs alcohol-related cues with negative stimuli. In the control condition, alcohol-related cues were consistently paired with neutral stimuli during the evaluative conditioning phase. Implicit attitudes, explicit attitudes, and drinking behavior were measured before and after the evaluative conditioning phase. Results: Following the evaluative conditioning procedure, participants in the experimental condition showed stronger negative implicit attitudes toward alcohol and consumed less alcohol compared to participants in the control condition. However, this effect was only found when the evaluative conditioning task paired alcohol-related cues with general negative pictures, but not when using pictures of frowning faces. Conclusions: These results demonstrate that evaluative conditioning can effectively change implicit attitudes toward alcohol and also suggest that this procedure can be used to change drinking behavior. Hence, evaluative conditioning may be a useful new intervention tool to combat alcohol misuse

The influence of weathering and soil organic matter on Zn isotopes in soils

Zinc is an essential micronutrient that is ultimately released during mineral weathering. In soils, organic matter plays a key role in influencing Zn partitioning and therefore on Zn biogeochemical cycling. Soil organic matter is partitioned between carbon that is more readily available for decomposition by microorganisms, and more stable carbon transiently preserved from decomposition. The role of the stable pool of soil organic matter on Zn biogeochemical cycling remains poorly understood. The pool of stable carbon is controlled by combination with mineral constituents or is material that is intrinsically resistant to decomposition. The Zn stable isotopes are fractionated by interactions between Zn and soil mineral and organic constituents. This study reports the Zn isotope composition of five Icelandic soil profiles derived from the same parent basalt and characterized by contrasting degrees of weathering and organic matter content (δ66Zn = + 0.10 ± 0.05 to + 0.35 ± 0.02‰), the distribution of reactive mineral constituents available to form associations with soil organic matter, and the amount of stable organic carbon. Throughout these soils, the δ66Zn isotope variations are little influenced by mineral constituents, but rather by soil organic matter content. These data suggest that a combination of organic matter accumulation and Zn loss by leaching is required to explain the observed decrease in Zn concentration in soils and lighter soil δ66Zn with increasing organic carbon content. These results suggest that the presence of stable organic carbon in soils provides a pool of light Zn, attributed to the Zn isotope signature of organic matter partially preserved from decomposition. Crucially, this stable organic carbon pool may also contribute to the formation of the light Zn isotope sink reported in organic-rich marine sediments, a key output required to explain the oceanic mass balance of Zn isotopes

Training Working Memory of Older Drivers: The Effect on Working Memory and Simulated Driving Performance

This study aimed to investigate in older drivers whether a working memory (WM) training would enhance WM, and whether improvement of WM transfers to enhanced driving ability. 54 older drivers participated in the study, but due to drop-out, 38 participants (mean age 70.34) remained in the sample. Participants were randomly assigned to a control (N=19) or an experimental condition (N=19). Each participant conducted a WM training during 25 days. During the pre-test and post-test, WM and driving ability were assessed. Results indicate that the training lead to an improvement of WM. In addition, there was an improvement of several driving measures, that was however independent of the level of WM improvement. These findings will be discussed

Physikit: Data Engagement Through Physical Ambient Visualizations in the Home

Internet of things (IoT) devices and sensor kits have the potential to democratize the access, use, and appropriation of data. Despite the increased availability of low cost sensors, most of the produced data is "black box" in nature: users often do not know how to access or interpret data. We propose a "human-data design" approach in which end-users are given tools to create, share, and use data through tangible and physical visualizations. This paper introduces Physikit, a system designed to allow users to explore and engage with environmental data through physical ambient visualizations. We report on the design and implementation of Physikit, and present a two-week field study which showed that participants got an increased sense of the meaning of data, embellished and appropriated the basic visualizations to make them blend into their homes, and used the visualizations as a probe for community engagement and social behavior

Line Defects in Molybdenum Disulfide Layers

Layered molecular materials and especially MoS2 are already accepted as promising candidates for nanoelectronics. In contrast to the bulk material, the observed electron mobility in single-layer MoS2 is unexpectedly low. Here we reveal the occurrence of intrinsic defects in MoS2 layers, known as inversion domains, where the layer changes its direction through a line defect. The line defects are observed experimentally by atomic resolution TEM. The structures were modeled and the stability and electronic properties of the defects were calculated using quantum-mechanical calculations based on the Density-Functional Tight-Binding method. The results of these calculations indicate the occurrence of new states within the band gap of the semiconducting MoS2. The most stable non-stoichiometric defect structures are observed experimentally, one of which contains metallic Mo-Mo bonds and another one bridging S atoms