Color Psychology and Graphic Design Applications

Color filters humanity’s perception of the world and alters people’s relationship with their surroundings. It influences human perception, preference, and psychology throughout the lifespan. Color preferences appear in infants as young as three months old, and typically change with age. Some responses to color may be innate, and some may be learned from nature or culture. Cool hues are relaxants, and are generally preferred over their more arousing warm counterparts. Color is a subtle but pervasively influential element in graphic design. It permeates graphic representations in packaging, advertising, and branding. Slight variations in color can advance or devastate design effectiveness and have massive economic implications for companies and products. Whether audiences are conscious or unconscious of color’s impact, its hypnotic potential makes it a worthy asset for any visual communicator. The researcher conducted a study to determine the point, if any, at which the joint effects of brightness and saturation cause a viewer to prefer a yellow color to a blue color

Occurrence of the Old World bug Megacopta cribraria (Fabricius) (Heteroptera: Plataspidae) in Georgia: a serious home invader and potential legume pest

Specimens of Megacopta cribraria (Fabricius) were collected in northern Georgia in late October 2009, where they were invading homes in large numbers. This is the first known occurrence of this species and the family Plataspidae in the New World. Megacopta cribraria was previously known from Asia and Australia. A key is provided to separate Plataspidae from other families of Pentatomoidea in America North of Mexico. A diagnosis and figures are provided to facilitate recognition of M. cribraria. Reported host plants and other aspects of the biology of this species are reviewed. Megacopta cribraria is considered a pest of numerous legumes in Asia, has the potential to provide biological control of kudzu, Pueraria montana var. lobata (Willd.) Ohwi, (Fabaceae) and likely will continue to be a household pest in the vicinity of kudzu fields as well as become a pest of North American legume crops

A Mathematical Theory of Stochastic Microlensing II. Random Images, Shear, and the Kac-Rice Formula

Continuing our development of a mathematical theory of stochastic microlensing, we study the random shear and expected number of random lensed images of different types. In particular, we characterize the first three leading terms in the asymptotic expression of the joint probability density function (p.d.f.) of the random shear tensor at a general point in the lens plane due to point masses in the limit of an infinite number of stars. Up to this order, the p.d.f. depends on the magnitude of the shear tensor, the optical depth, and the mean number of stars through a combination of radial position and the stars' masses. As a consequence, the p.d.f.s of the shear components are seen to converge, in the limit of an infinite number of stars, to shifted Cauchy distributions, which shows that the shear components have heavy tails in that limit. The asymptotic p.d.f. of the shear magnitude in the limit of an infinite number of stars is also presented. Extending to general random distributions of the lenses, we employ the Kac-Rice formula and Morse theory to deduce general formulas for the expected total number of images and the expected number of saddle images. We further generalize these results by considering random sources defined on a countable compact covering of the light source plane. This is done to introduce the notion of {\it global} expected number of positive parity images due to a general lensing map. Applying the result to microlensing, we calculate the asymptotic global expected number of minimum images in the limit of an infinite number of stars, where the stars are uniformly distributed. This global expectation is bounded, while the global expected number of images and the global expected number of saddle images diverge as the order of the number of stars.Comment: To appear in JM

The Roll Away Saloon

With his animated tales of Zane Grey, Butch Cassidy, and the Robbers Roost gang, Rider creates an engaging and believable picture of the joys and hardships of cowboy life

Pedagogy & Praxis:: Emerging Issues from Doctoral Programs in Design Research

As professional practices adapt and specialize to address the thorny complexities of real-world problems, it becomes increasingly important that practical applications of design research should be more quickly digestible, assimilated, and incorporated. This has motivated some practitioners to direct”or produce”the research studies they need. It is not always clear, however, that practice-based research ‘measures up' to academic standards. The situation opens up discussions of alternative "practicum” research training”both for advanced (doctoral-level) research studies but also for applied research methods taught in professional design programs (Masters level). In particular, this study presents preliminary findings on a range of programmatic comparisons between Doctor of Design [DDes] and Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Design degree programs, exploring both their alignments and autonomy, in order to discuss the goals and methods of teaching practice-based design research. The study uses research training structures in Education as a model for comparison with Design. A typology is proposed to distinguish: (1) professional (entry-level) doctoral degree, (2) academic doctoral degree with a research focus, and (3) professional (advanced) doctoral degree with a research focus. Using ordinary text analysis tools, key passages describing goals and purpose; mission/learning outcome; structure; and delivery mechanisms from selected doctoral programs are analyzed. Then, keywords from professional doctoral programs (such as DDes, DArch, and DSc), are discussed. Emerging strategies, structures, and delivery mechanisms suggest that professional doctoral degrees may be able to engage more easily with professional practice and to offer clinical approaches for rigorous research as well as innovative design practices. This offers welcome opportunities to bridge academia and design industries. However, because not every concept-making practice constitutes "research,” a significant need remains for the development of workable definitions of research standards and systems. Student- practitioners in advanced doctoral-level design research programs thus require a command of professional ethics and research integrity, as well as setting clear boundaries between professional services and research investigations

Pedagogy & Praxis:: Emerging Issues from Doctoral Programs in Design Research

As professional practices adapt and specialize to address the thorny complexities of real-world problems, it becomes increasingly important that practical applications of design research should be more quickly digestible, assimilated, and incorporated. This has motivated some practitioners to direct”or produce”the research studies they need. It is not always clear, however, that practice-based research ‘measures up' to academic standards. The situation opens up discussions of alternative "practicum” research training”both for advanced (doctoral-level) research studies but also for applied research methods taught in professional design programs (Masters level). In particular, this study presents preliminary findings on a range of programmatic comparisons between Doctor of Design [DDes] and Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Design degree programs, exploring both their alignments and autonomy, in order to discuss the goals and methods of teaching practice-based design research. The study uses research training structures in Education as a model for comparison with Design. A typology is proposed to distinguish: (1) professional (entry-level) doctoral degree, (2) academic doctoral degree with a research focus, and (3) professional (advanced) doctoral degree with a research focus. Using ordinary text analysis tools, key passages describing goals and purpose; mission/learning outcome; structure; and delivery mechanisms from selected doctoral programs are analyzed. Then, keywords from professional doctoral programs (such as DDes, DArch, and DSc), are discussed. Emerging strategies, structures, and delivery mechanisms suggest that professional doctoral degrees may be able to engage more easily with professional practice and to offer clinical approaches for rigorous research as well as innovative design practices. This offers welcome opportunities to bridge academia and design industries. However, because not every concept-making practice constitutes "research,” a significant need remains for the development of workable definitions of research standards and systems. Student- practitioners in advanced doctoral-level design research programs thus require a command of professional ethics and research integrity, as well as setting clear boundaries between professional services and research investigations

The BetaCage, an ultra-sensitive screener for surface contamination

Material screening for identifying low-energy electron emitters and alpha-decaying isotopes is now a prerequisite for rare-event searches (e.g., dark-matter direct detection and neutrinoless double-beta decay) for which surface radiocontamination has become an increasingly important background. The BetaCage, a gaseous neon time-projection chamber, is a proposed ultra-sensitive (and nondestructive) screener for alpha- and beta-emitting surface contaminants to which existing screening facilities are insufficiently sensitive. Sensitivity goals are 0.1 betas per keV-m$^2$-day and 0.1 alphas per m$^2$-day, with the former limited by Compton scattering of photons in the screening samples and (thanks to tracking) the latter expected to be signal-limited; radioassays and simulations indicate backgrounds from detector materials and radon daughters should be subdominant. We report on details of the background simulations and detector design that provide the discrimination, shielding, and radiopurity necessary to reach our sensitivity goals for a chamber with a 95$\times$95 cm$^2$ sample area positioned below a 40 cm drift region and monitored by crisscrossed anode and cathode planes consisting of 151 wires each.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, Proceedings of Low Radioactivity Techniques (LRT) 2013, Gran Sasso, Italy, April 10-12, 201

Measurement and Compensation of Horizontal Crabbing at the Cornell Electron Storage Ring Test Accelerator

In storage rings, horizontal dispersion in the rf cavities introduces horizontal-longitudinal (xz) coupling, contributing to beam tilt in the xz plane. This coupling can be characterized by a "crabbing" dispersion term {\zeta}a that appears in the normal mode decomposition of the 1-turn transfer matrix. {\zeta}a is proportional to the rf cavity voltage and the horizontal dispersion in the cavity. We report experiments at the Cornell Electron Storage Ring Test Accelerator (CesrTA) where xz coupling was explored using three lattices with distinct crabbing properties. We characterize the xz coupling for each case by measuring the horizontal projection of the beam with a beam size monitor. The three lattice configurations correspond to a) 16 mrad xz tilt at the beam size monitor source point, b) compensation of the {\zeta}a introduced by one of two pairs of RF cavities with the second, and c) zero dispersion in RF cavities, eliminating {\zeta}a entirely. Additionally, intrabeam scattering (IBS) is evident in our measurements of beam size vs. rf voltage.Comment: 5 figures, 10 page