People with Learning Disabilities and Smartphones: Testing the Usability of a Touch-Screen Interface

Mobile phone technology is becoming ubiquitous. However, a number of unique usability challenges are still unresolved, including small screen size, device orientation changes, and an array of interaction methods (tap, flick, pinch, etc.) These challenges may be particularly acute for people with learning disabilities. This study examined the usability of touchscreen interactions, the difficulties, and possible solutions. An app was developed in which (12) participants accessed Google Maps and manipulated it to find various London Underground station locations. Text input (a password), tap, swipe, and pinch were required, and their usage was analysed. Many participants were successful in finding the required information. However, many difficulties arose, including misunderstandings of the labelling (a live ‘Welcome’ button was not tapped, whereas a short list of instructions was erroneously seen as a menu and so erroneously tapped to access each step in the process) and an over-sensitive zoom feature. Three categories of error were formulated from the findings: affordance, user, and functionality. Recommendations are offered, such as using more appropriate ‘signage’ for link buttons (affordance); manipulating the zoom feature using + and - buttons rather than a ‘pinch’, which requires two fingered dexterity (functionality); and more formal training and familiarity (user)

Evaluation and Management of Patients with Noncardiac Chest Pain

Up to a third of patients undergoing coronary angiography for angina-like chest pain are found to have normal coronary arteries and a substantial proportion of these individuals continue to consult and even attend emergency departments. Initially, these patients are usually seen by cardiologists but with accumulating evidence that the pain might have a gastrointestinal origin, it may be more appropriate for them to be cared for by the gastroenterologist once a cardiological cause has been excluded. This review covers the assessment and management of this challenging condition, which includes a combination of education, reassurance, and pharmacotherapy. For the more refractory cases, behavioral treatments, such as cognitive behavioral therapy or hypnotherapy, may have to be considered

Studies on Particle Suspension in Air-agitated Pachuca tanks

The paper presents the findings of an investigation involving extensive experiments on three laboratory scale Pachuca tanks to examine the effect of design and oper-ating parameters, as well as scale up on particle suspension. Some important results, crucial to the design and scale up have emerged. Full center column (FCC) Pachucas with a draft tube to tank diameter ratio (Dd/Dt) on the order of 0.1 are found to be energetically more efficient in suspending particles than Free-Air.Lift (FAL) and Stub Column (SC) Pachuca tanks. It has been established that the energy required for generating suspension from settled particles is more than that is required for maintaining the particles already in suspension. The magn-itude of hysterisis in FCC Pachuca tanks is of the order of 20%. Effect of novel split air injection technique on critical velocity for particle suspension has been rigorously investigated. Split air injection, with 30% air injected into the annulus from top and 70% air injected from the bottom into the draft tube lowers the critical air velocity for particle suspension by about 37% with respect to bottom blown Pachuca tanks. Mechanisms for particle suspension in bottom blow Pachucas as well as those with split air injection are proposed

Measuring Quality of Service in Retail Outlets Using Fuzzy Numbers

The measurement of quality of service in any service providing organisation has been a very complex process to deal with. Most of the attributes here are intangible; largely depend upon customers’ expectations and perceptions. The quality of service may be poor, average, good, and so on depending upon the performance of the service provider. The linguistic terms like poor, average and good could be vague (fuzzy) unless various attributes of a particular service are understood precisely. In order to avoid the ambiguity of the concept associated with customers’ expectations and perceptions of service quality fuzzy numbers are widely used in many complex management issues. In this paper we focus on quantifying the quality of service in retail outlets based on some specific characteristics using fuzzy numbers. Key words: Quality of service; Retail outlets; linguistic terms; fuzzy number

Cross-correlation between PlanckPlanck CMB lensing potential and galaxy catalogues from HELP

We present the study of cross-correlation between Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) gravitational lensing potential map released by the \textit{Planck} collaboration and photometric redshift galaxy catalogues from the \textit{Herschel} Extragalactic Legacy Project (HELP), divided into four sky patches: NGP, \textit{Herschel} Stripe-82, and two halves of SGP field, covering in total $\sim 660$ deg$^{2}$ of the sky. We estimate the galaxy linear bias parameter, $b_{0}$, from joint analysis of cross-power spectrum and galaxy auto-power spectrum using Maximum Likelihood Estimation technique to obtain values ranging from $0.70 \pm 0.01$ for SGP Part-2 to $1.02 \pm 0.02$ for SGP Part-1 field. We also estimate the amplitude of cross-correlation and find the values spanning from $0.67 \pm 0.18$ for SGP Part-2 to $0.80 \pm 0.23$ for SGP Part-1 field, respectively. For NGP and SGP Part-1 fields the amplitude is consistent with the expected value for the standard cosmological model within $\sim 1\,\sigma$, while for \textit{Herschel} Stripe-82 and SGP Part-2 we find the amplitude to be smaller than expected with $\sim 1.5\,\sigma$ and $\sim 2\,\sigma$ deviation, respectively. We perform several tests on various systematic errors to study the reason for the deviation, however, value of the amplitude turns out to be robust with respect to these errors. The only significant change in the amplitude is observed when we replace the minimum-variance CMB lensing map, used in the baseline analysis, by the lensing map derived from the CMB temperature map with deprojected thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich signal.Comment: 15 pages, 13 figures, Published in MNRA

Alterations in carotid baroreflex control of arterial blood pressure during the menstrual cycle in young women [abstract]

Limited studies have suggested that menstrual cycle variations in sex hormones may influence arterial baroreflex control of heart rate (HR) and sympathetic nerve activity, however, results are equivocal. In addition, the baroreflex control of blood pressure (BP) has not been directly examined as pharmacological perturbations were mainly used to assess baroreflex function

A Novel Tractor Operated Grass Seed Harvester Developed in India

The demand of green and dry fodder in India is estimated to increase to 1170 and 650 m tonne whereas availability is expected to be at 411.3 and 488 m tonne in 2025, respectively, depicting deficit of about 64.9% green fodder and 24.9% dry fodder (Vision 2030, ICAR - IGFRI, Jhansi, 2011). In forages, availability of quality seed is only 25-30% in cultivated fodder and less than 10 % in range grasses and legumes (Vision 2050, IGFRI). Prices paid for grass seeds of native species vary from Rs.5,000 to 6,500 per kg for clean, un-haired seeds due to excessive use of manual labour in seed collection and removing hairy portion. In order to increase the capacity of collection of grass seeds from standing crop, A tractor operated grass seed harvester was developed under a collaborative research project of Indian Council of Agricultural Research two Institutes viz. Indian Grassland and Fodder Research Institute and Central Institute of Agricultural Engineering, keeping in view the requirements of common grasses used as feed material in Indian context. This grass seed harvester was made using nylon brushes arranged in specific fashion on a rotating cylinder and a winding reel in front of rotating cylinder to collect grass seed from the grasses standing in the fields, where tractor can operate. The specific features of this machine were variable speed of rotating cylinder brush, helical arrangement of brushes on the cylinder to carry the detached seed in to the seed box, variable height of operation and front mounting of the machine on tractor. This machine was tested for seed collection in Pennisetum pedicellatum (Dinanath grass), Cenchrus cilliaris (Anjan grass ) and Megathyrsus maximum (Guinea grass). Seed collection capacity of the machine was 4.24 to 7.12 kg/h in Dinanath grass during 2nd operation, 2.10 to 3.56 kg/h in Anjan grass and 1.61 to 3.56 kg/h in Guinea grass at the full maturity of the grass seeds in two passes of the machine in to and fro direction. The field capacity of seed collection operation ranged from 0.21 to 0.47 ha/h for the grasses in which it was operated