Investigation of potential industrial uses for tools assessing saliency and clutter of design features

Thesis (S.B.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2010.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 20).As human interaction with digital displays becomes an indispensable part of everyday life, user Interface (UI) design is becoming an increasingly important field. There is a great demand in industry for tools to aid designers in UI design, and in response to this need, a perceptual tool, DesignEye, has been developed. DesignEye creates maps of saliency and clutter within an image, which can be used by designers to find problem areas in a design. The experiment described here tested how subjects differ in their analysis of existing UT designs when they have also been given access to maps from DesignEye. Subjects were asked to evaluate existing designs in Ford vehicles for three conditions: (i) while being given no assistance, (ii) while being asked to use a design technique like squinting, and (iii) while being asked to use DesignEye output. It was found that subjects did not substantially differ in their analysis when given a perceptual tool. However, due to the backgrounds of the subjects tested and the experimental setup and environment, further testing is necessary to determine how DesignEye might change the way designers analyze designs, build consensus within teams, and objectively rate potential design options.by Tanya S. Goldhaber.S.B

Sonochemical Modification of the Superconducting Properties of MgB2

Ultrasonic irradiation of magnesium diboride slurries in decalin produces material with significant inter-grain fusion. Sonication in the presence of Fe(CO)5 produces magnetic Fe2O3 nanoparticles embedded in the MgB2 bulk. The resulting superconductor-ferromagnet composite exhibits considerable enhancement of the magnetic hysteresis, which implies an increase of vortex pinning strength due to embedded magnetic nanoparticles

Traceability, Moral Hazard, and Food Safety

Errors in traceability can significantly impact the moral hazard associated with producing safe food. The effect of moral hazard depends on the proportion of unsafe food costs that can be allocated to the responsible producer, which depends on the efficiency of the traceability system. In this paper, we develop a model that identifies the minimum level of traceability needed to mitigate moral hazard and motivate suppliers to produce safe food. Regulators and consumer can use the results of this research to design regulations and contracts that mitigate moral hazard and motivate producers to deliver safe food.Food safety, traceability, moral hazard, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Effects of High Intensity Ultrasound on BSCCO-2212 Superconductor

Slurries of powdered Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+x superconductor in low volatility alkanes were treated with intense ultrasound. Significant enhancements of magnetic irreversibility as well as transport critical current are reported. The effects are dependent on the concentration of the slurry and are optimal for 1.5% wt. slurry loading. Electron microscopy shows that ultrasonic treatment leads to a change in grain morphology and intergrain welding. The observed enhancement of superconducting properties is consistent with the limitations in critical currents in BSCCO superconductor being due to intergrain coupling rather than intragrain pinning strength.Comment: 3 page

Sean L. Field, Robert E. Lerner, and Sylvain Piron, eds., Marguerite Porete et le Miroir des simples âmes: Perspectives historiques, philosophiques et littéraires. Paris: Vrin, 2013. 368 pp. Notes, bibliography, and index. $43.00 U.S. (pb). ISBN 978-2-7116-2524-6

A review of Marguerite Porete et le Miroir des simples âmes: Perspectives historiques, philosophiques et littéraires.edited by Sean L. Field, Robert E. Lerner, and Sylvain Piron

Music as a birthright: Chicago's Old Town School of Folk Music and participatory music making in the twenty-first century

The Old Town School of Folk Music (OTSFM), founded in 1957 on Chicago???s North Side, has over the course of its history developed pedagogies and social practices to transform its urban, cosmopolitan students from music consumers to music participants. By the 2000s, it had become the largest not-for-profit folk arts organization in the United States, offering affordable classes in a wide variety of multiethnic music and dance traditions to about 6,000 adults and children each week, as well as a concert series, a music festival, and other events and services. Despite its scale, engendering tensions between the discourses of late-capitalist, corporate management styles and those of egalitarian, anti-commercialist folk revival values, it continued to foster and sustain intimate, music-based communities within its walls. Fundamentally, my dissertation is a biography of an institution. It illustrates the way that institutional structure and strategy can facilitate and even shape face-to-face, amateur, participatory music making, in a society where music is most commonly understood to be a professional pursuit. The Old Town School has consistently committed to the core principle, rooted in the leftist values of the Popular Front of the 1930s and 1940s, that music is a social, participatory experience accessible to all, not the preserve of a professionalized elite, but everyone???s birthright. This dissertation explores the processes and means???cultural, pedagogical, historical and material???by which OTSFM has pursued this principle. It has three purposes: the first is historical, tracing the Old Town School???s story from its roots in the 1930s through the end of the twentieth century; the second is ethnographic, examining social music-making and learning at the School in the early twenty-first century; and the third is biographical, to show throughout how learning to become social participants in music changes individual human lives. ?? I contextualize OTSFM???s history within several larger narratives of U.S. and Chicago music and social history, highlighting Chicago???s distinctive contribution to the folk revival and how the School has been implicated in neighborhood gentrification processes. Drawing connections from the political and popular strains of mid-century folk revivals to the rise of rock music, world music, and other trends of the late twentieth century, I argue, through the example of the Old Town School???s story, that the most enduring legacy of these folk revivals is in the musical and social processes it introduced into middle-class, cosmopolitan America, a legacy that extends far beyond the original political or aesthetic orientations of the revivalists. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork I conducted in 2004-2005, I show how the Old Town School???s participatory ethos, which values music making as inclusive, social, egalitarian, and rooted in tradition, and has promoted an educational approach that prioritizes orally-based group learning, as exemplified by OTSFM???s distinctive tradition of the Second Half, a nightly, multi- level sing-along and jam session, as well as classes and other social and educational environments. This is a study of fun and friendship in music, exploring how the skills for building musical friendships can be developed in place of competitive models of music learning, and how this contributes to the overall well-being of individuals, relationships, and communities. ?

The Impact of Mindfulness on Emotion Dysregulation and Psychophysiological Reactivity under Emotional Provocation

The present study employed physiological measures and a working memory task in addition to self-report measures to seek a better understanding of the relationship between brief mindfulness training and the experience and regulation of emotion. Seventy undergraduate students at a small southern state university completed baseline measures of trait mindfulness and emotion regulation before experiencing a 15-minute recording (mindfulness or control), and then completing a state mindfulness measure. Participants then experienced an emotion induction (positive or negative), before completing state emotion dysregulation and affect measures, and then completing a working memory task, finishing with the state mindfulness measure again. Physiological measures were recorded throughout the experimental session. Results indicated that the mindfulness induction was sufficient to increase mindfulness, demonstrated by greater self-report of state mindfulness, greater L \u3e R frontal brain asymmetry, and greater heart rate variability at the completion of the intervention as compared to the Control group. Further, participants receiving the mindfulness induction experienced greater emotional awareness, indicated by reporting greater positive affect regardless of induction and greater negative affect when experiencing a negative induction. Experiencing a negative emotion induction after mindfulness training also resulted in feeling more overwhelmed and unable to improve their emotional state, suggesting the mindfulness induction was successful in reducing emotional avoidance, but failed to improve emotion regulation capacity sufficiently to withstand the demands of an aversive emotional experience. These results have significant clinical implications since it appears that individuals may feel more dysregulated while initially experiencing increased mindfulness

The Impact of Mental Health Diagnoses in Combination with Learning Disorders

The purpose of this research is to build on previous research that showed a significant relationship between students with socially devalued identities, poor mental health, and lower academic achievement and suggested tailored and targeted treatments as a possible protective factor. To develop programs to assist students in achieving higher scores, one must first determine the impact of comorbid mental health diagnosis and specific learning disorder on academic achievement. A quantitative causal-comparative study was used to determine if there is an impact of mental health diagnoses in combination with specific learning disorders for students with an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) or 504 plans on standardized test scores. The study participants were drawn from a convenience sample of 3rd, 8th, and 10th-grade students located in a rural area of northeast Florida during the 2018-2019 school year diagnosed with a specific learning disorder. Academic achievement was measured by student score on the Florida Standard Assessment (FSA). The sample size was 195 to 198 students from each grade level, divided into two groups depending on the presence or absence of a comorbid mental health diagnosis. The data was analyzed using three independent sample t tests. The results of the study indicated no significant difference between the two subgroups on academic achievement as measured by the FSA scores. The findings of this study showed a need for future studies to include replication of the study in additional populations and areas using a different scale of measurement and to compare students with a mental health disorder to mainstream students with no mental health disorder or specific learning disorder

A Study on Knowledge and Screening for Cervical Cancer among Women in Mangalore City

Background: Most of the cervical cancer cases are diagnosed late leading to poor outcomes. Very few studies have explored the role of doctor and source of information for awareness of women about cervical cancer in India. Aim: Hence, this study was conducted with the objective of knowing the knowledge of women about cervical cancer, its screening, role of doctor, source of information, and reasons for not undergoing screening if the women had not undergone testing for cervical cancer. Subjects and Methods: This was a questionnaire based cross-sectional study conducted among the women attending the outpatient departments of teaching hospitals attached to Kasturba Medical College. A sample size of 83 was calculated. A semi-structured questionnaire was developed. After obtaining permission from Institutional Ethics Committee, the  questionnaire was administered to the women in the language of theirpreference. Women were educated after the data collection and a hand.out was provided. Data was analyzed using SPSS Version 10. Studentfs independent etf test was used to compare mean knowledge scores across sociodemographic groups.Results: Majority of the women have poor knowledge about cervical cancer (81.9% [68/83]) and itfs screening (85.5% [71/83]). Only 6 out of 83 women had undergone screening. Though women had come into contact with doctors earlier, they were neither educated about cervical cancer nor were they told about the screening. Whatever little knowledge the women had was obtained from mass media. Conclusions: Majority of women had poor knowledge. Mass media could be used to educate the women. There is a need to conduct community based study to know the practices of doctors and assess if they are educating and offering suggestions for screening.Keywords: Cervical cancer, Knowledge, Screenin