Look Into My Eyes

Freddie Yauner, a lecturer in Design for Industry, believes that design can engage, inform and make complex concepts accessible. Through thought provoking projects and installations which have exhibited in New York, Paris and London, Freddie uses critical design to challenge convention and encourage debate. Utilising this approach, Freddie, teamed up with typographer and graphic designer Paul Robson, also from our school and Cathy John, a freelance writer to create their unique publication - Look into my Eyes. Through combined expertise Look into my Eyes was created, a book that explores the labyrinth of decisions facing MS patients from day one of their diagnosis and examines the impact each of these decisions could have on their day to day lives. Look into my Eyes was created as part of a wider programme of initiatives that use real life experiences and interaction design to place audiences firmly in the shoes of an MSer, with the aim of increasing understanding and acceptance of MS for patients, carers and health professionals alike

Personality, Motivation, Anxiety, Strategies, and Language Proficiency of Japanese Students

This study is the lirst io simultaneously examinc the relationships anong live language learning variables (personality, motivation, anxiety, leaning strategies, and language proficiency) as they cooccur in a group of students with a single language background. The 320 students in this study were all Japanese nationals enrolled in the Intensive English Language Program at Temple Univenity Japan in Tokyo. The six insruments were: the Yatabe-Guilford Personalily Inventory, the Attitude/MIotivation Test Battery, the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale, the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning, a cloze test, and the structure subtest of the Michigan Placement Test. Descriptive statistics indicated the characteristics of Japaness students. Cronbach alpha analysis indicated that the personality, motivation, anxiety, and learning strategies measures were all reasonably reliable in this situation. Factor analysis (with varimax rotation), used to study the validity of the instruments, indicated a reasonably high degree of convergence of subscales within the measures and divergence between measures. Discriminant function analysis showed that five of the subscales reliably classified students into high, middle, and low proficiency groups, two on the first function (between low proficiency students and the other two groups) and three on the second function (between high proficiency students and the other two groups). The classifications were shown to be 55.19% accurate overall (with 66.3% accuracy in classirying low proliciency students, 48.1% for middle proficiency students, and 51.5% for high proficiency students). Patterns in the intercorrelations ofthe subscales are also interpreted and discussed.This study is the lirst io simultaneously examinc the relationships anong live language learning variables (personality, motivation, anxiety, leaning strategies, and language proficiency) as they cooccur in a group of students with a single language background. The 320 students in this study were all Japanese nationals enrolled in the Intensive English Language Program at Temple Univenity Japan in Tokyo. The six insruments were: the Yatabe-Guilford Personalily Inventory, the Attitude/MIotivation Test Battery, the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale, the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning, a cloze test, and the structure subtest of the Michigan Placement Test. Descriptive statistics indicated the characteristics of Japaness students. Cronbach alpha analysis indicated that the personality, motivation, anxiety, and learning strategies measures were all reasonably reliable in this situation. Factor analysis (with varimax rotation), used to study the validity of the instruments, indicated a reasonably high degree of convergence of subscales within the measures and divergence between measures. Discriminant function analysis showed that five of the subscales reliably classified students into high, middle, and low proficiency groups, two on the first function (between low proficiency students and the other two groups) and three on the second function (between high proficiency students and the other two groups). The classifications were shown to be 55.19% accurate overall (with 66.3% accuracy in classirying low proliciency students, 48.1% for middle proficiency students, and 51.5% for high proficiency students). Patterns in the intercorrelations ofthe subscales are also interpreted and discussed.This study is the lirst io simultaneously examinc the relationships anong live language learning variables (personality, motivation, anxiety, leaning strategies, and language proficiency) as they cooccur in a group of students with a single language background. The 320 students in this study were all Japanese nationals enrolled in the Intensive English Language Program at Temple Univenity Japan in Tokyo. The six insruments were: the Yatabe-Guilford Personalily Inventory, the Attitude/MIotivation Test Battery, the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale, the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning, a cloze test, and the structure subtest of the Michigan Placement Test. Descriptive statistics indicated the characteristics of Japaness students. Cronbach alpha analysis indicated that the personality, motivation, anxiety, and learning strategies measures were all reasonably reliable in this situation. Factor analysis (with varimax rotation), used to study the validity of the instruments, indicated a reasonably high degree of convergence of subscales within the measures and divergence between measures. Discriminant function analysis showed that five of the subscales reliably classified students into high, middle, and low proficiency groups, two on the first function (between low proficiency students and the other two groups) and three on the second function (between high proficiency students and the other two groups). The classifications were shown to be 55.19% accurate overall (with 66.3% accuracy in classirying low proliciency students, 48.1% for middle proficiency students, and 51.5% for high proficiency students). Patterns in the intercorrelations ofthe subscales are also interpreted and discussed

E-Curator: A 3D Web-based Archive for Conservators and Curators

Mona Hess, Graeme Were, Ian Brown, Sally MacDonald, Stuart Robson and Francesca Simon Millar describe a project which combines 3D colour laser scanning and e-Science technologies for capturing and sharing very large 3D scans and datasets about museum artefacts in a secure computing environment

Subchondral bone plate changes more rapidly than trabecular bone in osteoarthritis

Osteoarthritis (OA) is the most common joint disorder, characterised by focal loss of cartilage and increased subchondral bone remodelling at early OA stages of the disease. We have investigated the temporal and the spatial relationship between bone remodelling in subchondral bone plate (Sbp) and trabecular bone (Tb) in Dunkin Hartley (DH, develop OA early) and the Bristol Strain 2 (BS2, control which develop OA late) guinea pigs. Right tibias were dissected from six male animals of each strain, at 10, 16, 24 and 30 weeks of age. Micro-computed tomography was used to quantify the growth plate thickness (GpTh), subchondral bone plate thickness (SbpTh) and trabecular bone thickness (TbTh), and bone mineral density (BMD) in both Sbp and Tb. The rate of change was calculated for 10–16 weeks, 16–24 weeks and 24–30 weeks. The rate of changes in Sbp and Tb thickness at the earliest time interval (10–16 weeks) were significantly greater in DH guinea pigs than in the growth-matched control strain (BS2). The magnitude of these differences was greater in the medial side than the lateral side (DH: 22.7 and 14.75 µm/week, BS2: 5.63 and 6.67 µm/week, respectively). Similarly, changes in the BMD at the earliest time interval was greater in the DH strain than the BS2, again more pronounced in the disease prone medial compartment (DH: 0.0698 and 0.0372 g/cm3/week, BS2: 0.00457 and 0.00772 g/cm3/week, respectively). These changes observed preceded microscopic and cellular signs of disease as previously reported. The rapid early changes in SbpTh, TbTh, Sbp BMD and Tb BMD in the disease prone DH guinea pigs compared with the BS2 control strain suggest a link to early OA pathology. This is corroborated by the greater relative changes in subchondral bone in the medial compared with the lateral compartment

Using k-NN to analyse images of diverse germination phenotypes and detect single seed germination in Miscanthus sinensis

Background: Miscanthus is a leading second generation bio-energy crop, which is currently planted using rhizomes; however, increasingly the use of seed is being explored to improve efficiency of propagation. Miscanthus seed are small, germination is often poor and without sterilisation so germination detection must be sufficiently adaptable for example to the presence or absence of mould. Results: Machine learning using k-NN improved the scoring of different seed phenotypes encountered in scoring germination for Miscanthus. The k-NN-based algorithm was effective in scoring the germination of seed images when compared with human scores of the same images. The trueness of the k-NN result was 0.69 to 0.7, as measured using the area under a ROC curve. When the k-NN classifier was tested on an optimised image subset of seed an area under the ROC curve of 0.89 was achieved. Conclusions: With non-ideal seed images that included mould and broken seed the k-NN classifier was less consistent with human assessments. The most accurate assessment of germination with which to train classifiers is difficult to determine but the k-NN classifier provided an impartial consistent measurement of this important trait. It was more reproducible than the existing human scoring methods and was demonstrated to give a high degree of trueness to the human score.publishersversionPeer reviewe