What Are Students’ Perceptions of Design Research and Approaches?

Approaches and methods used in the design research process have been discussed over the years. Yet, most of the discussions did not take into account the perceptions of the students. While a fundamental understanding of design research may assist students in the real world, those students may fail to apply the foundations to a complex design problem or only use those methods they feel comfortable with and deem useful. To offer insight on this particular area, a paper questionnaire was distributed to more than one hundred design students in order to understand students' perceptions on design research and their habits. Findings showed that design students felt that research was important to their design process and they spent more than 40% of time on researching in their design process. In general, students believe that more research is necessary at the beginning of the design process, such as the stages of planning, defining problem and parameters. In addition, undergraduate and graduate students viewed various research methods in different regards. The understanding of the perceptions of current undergraduate and graduate students regarding design research will provide teachers with a better understanding of the influence of the students' background on the design process and how to cope with those influences. The results can be used to improve the design education

Student perceptions on future components of electronic textbook design

Electronic textbooks have been a subject of research for decades, yet student perceptions of interface components tend to be investigated in hindsight, and findings are not commonly taken into consideration for textbook design. This paper shifts the focus of electronic textbook design back toward students by identifying components that should be included in future electronic textbooks based on student perceptions in relation to the task of academic reading, as well as identifying associations with gender, experience level, academic level, and academic discipline. Findings from a university-wide online questionnaire that received more than 700 responses indicated that text, highlighting tools, bookmarks, multimedia, translation tools, dictionaries, and encyclopedias should all be incorporated in future electronic textbooks, as well as provided evidence to suggest that electronic textbooks should be tailored based on academic discipline. Understanding what students require for academic reading can facilitate the development of more suitable educational tools, and through the identification of suitable components, can enable the design of more standardized electronic textbooks

Student Views on Academic Reading and its Future in the Design and Engineering Disciplines

Electronic textbooks are becoming a common educational tool, but there is little research on the student desires, which will affect the effectiveness of this tool. This paper aims to add to the current research by outlining students’ reading habits in physical and electronic textbooks and identifying what students feel they need to study using future electronic textbooks. This paper describes a series of focus groups with a total of thirty design and engineering students. Findings illustrated the different ways in which these disciplines approach their academic readings and that future electronic textbooks require some discipline specific components. There were some similarities in views and ideas, such as being able to insert their own images into the textbooks and the desire for less text and more interactive components to facilitate their learning. Identifying design criteria based on discipline needs and including student input based on their task needs will assist in designing future electronic textbooks that will meet academic reading requirements

Reading Task Investigation of the Kindle app in Three Mediums

E-textbooks are often considered the future of textbooks but the current capabilities and implications of app-based textbooks and their corresponding technology are not well outlined. The goal in this study was to understand the effects of the change in medium on the academic reading task, student perception of the devices and components, and identify issues surrounding two in-app components. Students completed four reading tasks in three different size mobile devices and a paper control. The experiment also consisted of a between-subject study where students were asked to use the highlighting or annotation component while reading. Results showed that the devices and components actually changed the way the students interact with their reading. Also, students were generally unhappy with the in-app components and smallest sized device. This information is useful to identify the effects of e-textbook apps on reading behavior, which can be applied to improve the design of future e-textbooks

Eksperimental Variasi Kecepatan Putar Screw Feeding dengan Kecepatan Putar PIsau Pengupas terhadap Kualitas Hasil Pengupasan pada Mesin Pengupas Kulit Pinang

The processing of areca nut at the present time is still done manually and requires a long working time. To facilitate the skinner process and optimize the results that required a technology of machine which paring the areca nut skin. The Skinner machine of areca nut at this point still has deficiency. For resolving the problems that exist on the areca nut skinner machine which has type of screw then troubleshoot by varying the rotational speed of the screw feeding toward skinner tool of areca nut. After tested with variations of the rotational speed of the screw feeding to ward skinner tool of areca nut, then obtained the optimal results as much as 6 pieces and other 4 pieces of areca nut already broken on screw feeding speed at 37 rpm and 800 rpm on a skinner tool. The time that required to perform the paring process on this rotational speed is 21.7 seconds. The optimal skinner Results of areca nut increases to 9 pieces after made the casing modification which the efficiency of time is 73.5

Usability Study and Redesign of the Food Tray

Food trays can be found around the world in schools, canteens, and restaurants. While useful for carrying food to a table, the design has caused frustration in countless users. The aim of the research outlined in this paper was to identify design criteria for food trays and produce a redesign to improve the user experience with an emphasis on ergonomics. The investigation focused on four areas: loading, carrying, eating from, and cleaning and storing the food tray. Areas of concern and design criteria were found through materials research, observations, questionnaires, interviews, and prototype testing. Details of the findings and the ergonomically designed prototype are presented in this paper. By investigating food trays from the user and staff perspective, design criteria and a unique design were developed which users felt was more comfortable and fit cleaning and storage requirements

Interaction of Temperature and Light in the Development of Freezing Tolerance in Plants

Abstract Freezing tolerance is the result of a wide range of physical and biochemical processes, such as the induction of antifreeze proteins, changes in membrane composition, the accumulation of osmoprotectants, and changes in the redox status, which allow plants to function at low temperatures. Even in frost-tolerant species, a certain period of growth at low but nonfreezing temperatures, known as frost or cold hardening, is required for the development of a high level of frost hardiness. It has long been known that frost hardening at low temperature under low light intensity is much less effective than under normal light conditions; it has also been shown that elevated light intensity at normal temperatures may partly replace the cold-hardening period. Earlier results indicated that cold acclimation reflects a response to a chloroplastic redox signal while the effects of excitation pressure extend beyond photosynthetic acclimation, influencing plant morphology and the expression of certain nuclear genes involved in cold acclimation. Recent results have shown that not only are parameters closely linked to the photosynthetic electron transport processes affected by light during hardening at low temperature, but light may also have an influence on the expression level of several other cold-related genes; several cold-acclimation processes can function efficiently only in the presence of light. The present review provides an overview of mechanisms that may explain how light improves the freezing tolerance of plants during the cold-hardening period

The Transcription Factor NFAT5 Is Required for Cyclin Expression and Cell Cycle Progression in Cells Exposed to Hypertonic Stress

Background: Hypertonicity can perturb cellular functions, induce DNA damage-like responses and inhibit proliferation. The transcription factor NFAT5 induces osmoprotective gene products that allow cells to adapt to sustained hypertonic conditions. Although it is known that NFAT5-deficient lymphocytes and renal medullary cells have reduced proliferative capacity and viability under hypertonic stress, less is understood about the contribution of this factor to DNA damage responses and cell cycle regulation. Methodology/Principal Findings: We have generated conditional knockout mice to obtain NFAT5−/− T lymphocytes, which we used as a model of proliferating cells to study NFAT5-dependent responses. We show that hypertonicity triggered an early, NFAT5-independent, genotoxic stress-like response with induction of p53, p21 and GADD45, downregulation of cyclins, and cell cycle arrest. This was followed by an NFAT5-dependent adaptive phase in wild-type cells, which induced an osmoprotective gene expression program, downregulated stress markers, resumed cyclin expression and proliferation, and displayed enhanced NFAT5 transcriptional activity in S and G2/M. In contrast, NFAT5−/− cells failed to induce osmoprotective genes and exhibited poorer viability. Although surviving NFAT5−/− cells downregulated genotoxic stress markers, they underwent cell cycle arrest in G1/S and G2/M, which was associated with reduced expression of cyclins E1, A2 and B1. We also show that pathologic hypertonicity levels, as occurring in plasma of patients and animal models of osmoregulatory disorders, inhibited the induction of cyclins and aurora B kinase in response to T cell receptor stimulation in fresh NFAT5−/− lymphocytes. Conclusions/Significance: We conclude that NFAT5 facilitates cell proliferation under hypertonic conditions by inducing an osmoadaptive response that enables cells to express fundamental regulators needed for cell cycle progression.Molecular and Cellular Biolog

Expression of the 5T4 oncofoetal antigen in renal cell carcinoma: a potential target for T-cell-based immunotherapy

The 5T4 oncofoetal antigen is a heavily glycosylated cell surface protein found on human placental trophoblast and on diverse types of human cancer but is not expressed at significant levels on adult human tissues in health. It therefore satisfies the criteria for a tumour-associated antigen and is an ideal target for the immunotherapy of cancer. We report here that 5T4 is strongly expressed on the majority of renal cell carcinomas and therefore this population of patients is suitable for trials of 5T4-targeted therapies. In particular, we have shown that T cells from renal cell carcinoma patients can be genetically modified to kill 5T4 expressing renal cancer cell lines by introduction of a chimeric-signalling protein. This protein consists of a single chain antibody fragment capable of binding antigen directly at the cell surface and then activating the T cell by virtue of a CD3ζ-signalling domain. This is a powerful tool that bypasses a number of mechanisms that allow tumours to escape T-cell killing and can be readily scaled up for clinical use