Tangible user interfaces : past, present and future directions

In the last two decades, Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs) have emerged as a new interface type that interlinks the digital and physical worlds. Drawing upon users' knowledge and skills of interaction with the real non-digital world, TUIs show a potential to enhance the way in which people interact with and leverage digital information. However, TUI research is still in its infancy and extensive research is required in or- der to fully understand the implications of tangible user interfaces, to develop technologies that further bridge the digital and the physical, and to guide TUI design with empirical knowledge. This paper examines the existing body of work on Tangible User In- terfaces. We start by sketching the history of tangible user interfaces, examining the intellectual origins of this field. We then present TUIs in a broader context, survey application domains, and review frame- works and taxonomies. We also discuss conceptual foundations of TUIs including perspectives from cognitive sciences, phycology, and philoso- phy. Methods and technologies for designing, building, and evaluating TUIs are also addressed. Finally, we discuss the strengths and limita- tions of TUIs and chart directions for future research

Syntactic position and the readings of 'manner' adverbs

In this study, I investigate the positions and interpretations available to 'manner' adverbs in English. My central claim, contra Wyner (1994, 1998), is that an association does exist between 'manner' adverb positions and interpretations, which is best characterized in terms of Peterson's (1997) distinction between 'restrictive' and 'non-restrictive' modification. I also claim, however, that the association in question is not as general as commonly claimed; and, in particular, does not apply directly to 'manner' adverbs in 'fronted' and 'parenthetical' positions, which require special syntactic description

Toward the tenseless analysis of a tenseless language

In this paper, I argue, based on data from West Greenlandic, that languages can be truly tenseless, in the sense that their inflectional systems contain no node dedicated to the encoding of relations between speech time and reference time. My idea is that the burden of encoding temporal information actually falls mostly on the VP rather than on tense; so that true tenselessness entails neither a radical indeterminacy in the temporal interpretation of tenseless sentences nor a radically different description of the linguistic properties of tensed and tenseless languages, as some have claimed

Exploring the Molecular Properties of Collagen Type IV with Atomic Force Microscopy

Collagen type IV is a network-forming collagen that provides support and anchorage to cells. Its basic structural unit is a 410 nm long and 1.5 nm in diameter triple helix, with natural discontinuities in the triple-helical defining Gly-X-Y sequence. The C-terminal globular domain (NC1) in a collagen IV molecule plays an important role in forming networks, and has recently been reported to be structurally triggered by chloride ions to form hexamers outside the cell. How this hexamer assembles in vitro remains unknown. Here, I aim to use atomic force microscopy (AFM) to investigate the molecular basis of collagen type IV network assembly by studying the effects of different solvent conditions on the stability of the NC1 domain. Studying the dissociation of this hexametric domain can shed light onto how it assembles in solution and under what ionic conditions. The flexibility of the collagen type IV molecule is also investigated by performing statistical analysis of AFM-imaged chains and estimating persistence length, a mechanical property that quantifies the flexibility of a polymer. Here, I investigate the effects of triple helix interruptions on the flexibility of the molecule, by comparing collagen type IV to other fibrillar collagens that are continuously triple-helical. In addition, I determine a position-dependent flexibility profile of the molecule showcasing the effects of over-lapping interruptions, from a α1(IV)]2–α2(IV) mouse collagen type IV, on the persistence length

Reversed-Phase HPLC Determination of Citral in Locally Grown Lemon Grass Harvested at Different Season.

A simple HPLC procedure for the quantitative determination of citral, the major fragrant component in the lemon grass, has been developed. The procedure involves a C-8 stationary phase using a 90:10 methanol: water pH 5 mobile phase containing 0.25% 1-octanesulfonic acid and an UV detector (set at 233 nm). The lemon grass leaves were harvested fresh at different times of the year and were soaked in methanol for 48 hours without any mechanical assistance to extract the citral and other methanol soluble components. The method showed good reproducibility with relative standard deviation of 2.8% and 10.8% for two different sets of samples. The method showed linearity in the range of 0.89 - 35.52 μg/mL. The average recovery was 104.8%. The amount of citral found as a percentage of the dried leaves are, 0.093, 0.27, 0.10, 0.13, 0.16, and 0.066 for fall, winter, three summer, and 1 commercial store samples, respectively