Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationThe study of haptic interfaces focuses on the use of the sense of touch in human-machine interaction. This document presents a detailed investigation of lateral skin stretch at the fingertip as a means of direction communication. Such tactile communication has applications in a variety of situations where traditional audio and visual channels are inconvenient, unsafe, or already saturated. Examples include handheld consumer electronics, where tactile communication would allow a user to control a device without having to look at it, or in-car navigation systems, where the audio and visual directions provided by existing GPS devices can distract the driver's attention away from the road. Lateral skin stretch, the displacement of the skin of the fingerpad in a plane tangent to the fingerpad, is a highly effective means of communicating directional information. Users are able to correctly identify the direction of skin stretch stimuli with skin displacements as small as 0.1 mm at rates as slow as 2 mm/s. Such stimuli can be rendered by a small, portable device suitable for integration into handheld devices. The design of the device-finger interface affects the ability of the user to perceive the stimuli accurately. A properly designed conical aperture effectively constrains the motion of the finger and provides an interface that is practical for use in handheld devices. When a handheld device renders directional tactile cues on the fingerpad, the user must often mentally rotate those cues from the reference frame of the finger to the world-centered reference frame where those cues are to be applied. Such mental rotation incurs a cognitive cost, requiring additional time to mentally process the stimuli. The magnitude of these cognitive costs is a function of the angle of rotation, and of the specific orientations of the arm, wrist and finger. Even with the difficulties imposed by required mental rotations, lateral skin stretch is a promising means of communicating information using the sense of touch with potential to substantially improve certain types of human-machine interaction

Catholic Confederates: Faith and Duty in the Civil War South

Grajan Kraszewski developed the theory of Confederatization to understand how lay Catholics and clergy—bishops, priests, nuns—became invested in the Confederacy, even becoming Confederate heroes

John Dooley\u27s Civil War: An Irish American\u27s Journey in the First Virginia Infantry Regiment.

Re-examining Irish America through John Dooley Georgetown Emeritus Professor, R. Emmet Curran, has performed a masterful editing job in pulling together the various writings of Confederate Virginian John Dooley into a lucid narrative. Dooley, the son of an Irish immigrant milliner in R...

Jefferson Davis\u27s Final Campaign: Confederate Nationalism And The Fight To Arm Slaves

Re-Evaluating Confederate Emancipation Phillip Dillard attempts to provide a deeper examination of the Confederate debate to arm slaves than historians have done before. First seriously mooted by Irish immigrant General Pat Cleburne, after the debacle of the Confederate loss at Chattanooga in late...

Activity of water in aqueous systems; A frequently neglected property

In this critical review, the significance of the term ‘activity’ is examined in the context of the properties of aqueous solutions. The dependence of the activity of water(ℓ) at ambient pressure and 298.15 K on solute molality is examined for aqueous solutions containing neutral solutes, mixtures of neutral solutes and salts. Addition of a solute to water(ℓ) always lowers its thermodynamic activity. For some solutes the stabilisation of water(ℓ) is less than and for others more than in the case where the thermodynamic properties of the aqueous solution are ideal. In one approach this pattern is accounted for in terms of hydrate formation. Alternatively the pattern is analysed in terms of the dependence of practical osmotic coefficients on the composition of the aqueous solution and then in terms of solute–solute interactions. For salt solutions the dependence of the activity of water on salt molalities is compared with that predicted by the Debye–Hückel limiting law. The analysis is extended to consideration of the activities of water in binary aqueous mixtures. The dependence on mole fraction composition of the activity of water in binary aqueous mixtures is examined. Different experimental methods for determining the activity of water in aqueous solutions are critically reviewed. The role of water activity is noted in a biochemical context, with reference to the quality, stability and safety of food and finally with regard to health science.

European Retrofit Network: Retrofitting Evaluation Methodology Report

The research programme, funded by the EU Progress Fund, looks at the potential impacts of construction training in the area of „retrofitting‟ social housing to make it more sustainable, in particular to improve energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This report investigates methodologies for measuring and demonstrating carbon emissions reductions resulting from retrofitting measures in the partner countries (UK, Spain, Poland and Montenegro). The output of this part of the study is a methodology appropriate to measuring the likely carbon reduction impacts through common retrofit measures in the social housing sector, taking into account the likely cost effectiveness of measures, the impact on occupants, the project management challenges and thus the measures that are most likely to be employed in policy and practice. An appropriate methodology is one that can be applied across the range of different conditions found in the partner countries (representative to some degree of the range of conditions found across Europe as whole). Low carbon retrofit has been defined as „incremental improvements to the building fabric and systems with primary intention of improving energy efficiency and reducing carbon emissions.

Assessing suicide ideation among older adults: a systematic review of screening and measurement tools

Objectives: Rates of suicide in older adults may be higher than reported due to poor understandings of presentation of suicide ideation in this group. The objectives of this paper were to (i) review current measurement tools designed for older adults to detect suicide ideation and (ii) assess their psychometric properties. Design: We used a systematic review approach to identify measurement tools developed specifically for older adults without cognitive decline or impairment. Results: Ten articles that reported on a total of seven different measurement tools were identified. These included tools that focused on resiliency to suicide and those that measured risk of suicide behavior. There was wide variation across the articles: some were adaptations of existing scales to suit older populations, others were developed by authors; they varied in length from four to 69 items; a range of settings was used, and there was a mix of self-report and clinician-administered measures. Most displayed good psychometric properties, with both approaches showing similar quality. Limitations in terms of samples, settings, and measurement design are discussed. Conclusion: The case for specific measures for older adults is clear from this review. There appear to be unique factors that should be considered in understanding suicide ideation and behavior among older adults that may not be directly assessed in non-specific measurements. However, there is a need to expand the diversity of individuals included in measurement development to ensure they are appropriate across gender, culture and minority status, and for the views of professionals to be considered