Gestalt Theory in Visual Screen Design — A New Look at an old subject

Although often presented as a single basis for educational visual screen design, Gestalt theory is not a single small set of visual principles uniformly applied by all designers. In fact, it appears that instructional visual design literature often deals with only a small set of Gestalt laws. In this project Gestalt literature was consulted to distil the most relevant Gestalt laws for educational visual screen design. Eleven laws were identified. They deal with balance/symmetry, continuation, closure, figure-ground, focal point, isomorphic correspondence, prŠgnanz, proximity, similarity, simplicity, and unity/harmony. To test the usefulness of these laws in visual screen design they were applied to the redesign of an instructional multimedia application, 'WoundCare', designed to teach nursing students wound management. The basic text-based screens in the original WoundCare application were replaced with graphical user interface screens, that were designed according to these principles. The new screen designs were then evaluated by asking students and others to compare the designs. The viewers were also asked to rate directly the value of using the eleven Gestalt design principles in the redesign, both for improving the product's appearance and improving its value for learning. The evaluation results were overwhelmingly positive. Both the new design and the value of applying the eleven Gestalt laws to improve learning were strongly supported by the students' opinions. However, some differences in the value of applying particular Gestalt laws to the interface design were identified and this forms a useful direction for future research

Treatment of sanitary sewer overflow with fixed media bioreactors

Fixed media bioreactors (biofilters) are a promising and proven technology used for wastewater treatment in unsewered rural areas. As an on-site treatment system, it cart potentially provide high treatment efficiency with a relatively low cost and maintenance. This research expanded the application of fixed media bioreactors and tested their feasibility in the treatment of sanitary sewer overflows (SSO) at high hydraulic loading of 0.2 m/h. Sand, peat, and textile (felt) were used as media to treat simulated 6-h peak flows for a 25-year SSO event in the city of Columbus, Ohio. The influent SSO was a mixture of primary sludge from a wastewater treatment plant diluted with tap water. The efficiency of treatment was measured as changes in the concentrations of biochemical oxygen demand (BOD5), chemical oxygen demand (COD), and total suspended solids (TSS). Sand as a filter medium had the best removal of organic matter with average 84% reduction of BOD5 and 90% of COD. The TSS removal was more than 90% in all media. Peat and felt were,somewhat more efficient than the sand in the TSS removal. The media type and influent BOD5 concentration were two major factors that impacted the treatment of BOD5 (p<0.007). For the treatment of COD, significant factors were media type, influent concentration, and time course of loading in each SSO event (ps <= 0.001)

Regional Eradication of Mycoplasma hyopneumoniae From Pig Herds and Documentation of Freedom of the Disease

The objectives of this study were to 1) screen all sow herds in a region for M. hyopneumoniae, 2) to effectuate an eradication programme in all those herds which were shown to be infected with M. hyopneumoniae, and 3) to follow the success of the screening and the eradication programmes. The ultimate goal was to eradicate M. hyopneumoniae from all member herds of a cooperative slaughterhouse (153 farrowing herds + 85 farrowing-to-finishing herds + 150 specialised finishing herds) before year 2000. During 1998 and 1999, a total of 5067 colostral whey and 755 serum samples (mean, 25 samples/herd) were collected from sow herds and analysed for antibodies to M. hyopneumoniae by ELISA. Antibodies were detected in 208 (3.6%) samples. Two farrowing herds (1.3%) and 20 farrowing-to-finishing herds (23.5%) were shown to be infected with M. hyopneumoniae. A programme to eradicate the infection from these herds was undertaken. During March 2000, a survey was made to prove the success of the screening and the eradication programmes. In total, 509 serum samples were collected randomly from slaughtered finishing pigs. Antibodies to M. hyopneumoniae were not detected in 506 of the samples, whereas 3 samples were considered suspicious or positive. Accordingly, 3 herds were shown to be infected. One of the herds was previously falsely classified as non-infected. Two of the herds were finishing herds practising continuous flow system (CF). Unlike finishing herds which practice all-in/all-out management routines on herd level, CF herds do not get rid of transmissible diseases spontaneously between batches, for which reason a screening was made in the rest of the CF herds (total n = 7). Consequently, 2 more infected herds were detected. In addition to the results of the survey, a decreasing prevalence of lung lesions at slaughter (from 5.2% to 0.1%) and lack of clinical breakdowns indicated that all member herds were finally free from M. hyopneumoniae in the end of year 2000

Very Wideband automated On-Wafer noise figure and Gain measurements At 50-110

On-wafer noise figure and insertion gain measurement set-ups have been developed over 50-110 GHz frequency range. Wafer scale noise figure and insertion gain measurements can be done in an automatic manner using PC controlled automated probe station and in-house written software. In narrow band measurements, large systematic errors may remain undiscovered. These errors are usually caused by reflections in the set-up, which are difficult to calibrate out. Wideband measurements are often the only method, which can efficiently reveal these errors. This aspect is increasingly important as frequency increases

Novel Data Acquisition System for Silicon Tracking Detectors

We have developed a novel data acquisition system for measuring tracking parameters of a silicon detector in a particle beam. The system is based on a commercial Analog-to-Digital VME module and a PC Linux based Data Acquisition System. This DAQ is realized with C++ code using object-oriented techniques. Track parameters for the beam particles were reconstructed using off-line analysis code and automatic detector position alignment algorithm. The new DAQ was used to test novel Czochralski type silicon detectors. The important silicon detector parameters, including signal size distributions and signal to noise distributions, were successfully extracted from the detector under study. The efficiency of the detector was measured to be 95 %, the resolution about 10 micrometers, and the signal to noise ratio about 10.Comment: Talk from the 2003 Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics (CHEP03), La Jolla, Ca, USA, March 2003, 6 pages, LaTeX, 5 eps figures. PSN TUGP00

Identifying main uncertainties in estimating past and present radiative forcing of peatlands

ABSTRACT Reconstructions of past climate impact, i.e., radiative forcing (RF), of peatland carbon (C) dynamics show that immediately after peatland initiation the climate warming effect of CH4 emissions exceeds the cooling effect of CO2 uptake, but thereafter the net effect of most peatlands will move towards cooling, when RF switches from positive to negative. Reconstructing peatland C dynamics necessarily involves uncertainties related to basic assumptions on past CO2 flux, CH4 emission, and peatland expansion. We investigated the effect of these uncertainties on the RF of three peatlands, using either apparent C accumulation (aCAR), net C balance (NCB), or NCB plus C loss during fires as basis for CO2 uptake estimate; applying a plausible range for CH4 emission; and assuming linearly interpolated expansion between basal dates, or comparatively early or late expansion. When we factored that some C would only be stored temporarily (NCB and NCB+fire), the estimated past cooling effect of CO2 uptake increased but the present-day RF was affected little. Altering the assumptions behind the reconstructed CO2 flux or expansion patterns, caused the RF to peak earlier and advanced the switch from positive to negative RF by several thousand years. Compared to NCB, including fires had only small additional effect on RF lasting less than 1000 yr. The largest uncertainty in reconstructing peatland RF was associated with CH4 emissions. As shown by the consistently positive RF modelled for one site, and in some cases for the other two, peatlands with high CH4 emissions and low C accumulation rates may have remained climate warming agents since their initiation. Although uncertainties in present-day RF were mainly due to the assumed CH4 emission rates, the uncertainty in lateral expansion still had a significant effect on the present-day RF, highlighting the importance to consider uncertainties in the past peatland C balance in RF reconstructions.Reconstructions of past climate impact, that is, radiative forcing (RF), of peatland carbon (C) dynamics show that immediately after peatland initiation the climate warming effect of CH4 emissions exceeds the cooling effect of CO2 uptake, but thereafter the net effect of most peatlands will move toward cooling, when RF switches from positive to negative. Reconstructing peatland C dynamics necessarily involves uncertainties related to basic assumptions on past CO2 flux, CH4 emission and peatland expansion. We investigated the effect of these uncertainties on the RF of three peatlands, using either apparent C accumulation rates, net C balance (NCB) or NCB plus C loss during fires as basis for CO2 uptake estimate; applying a plausible range for CH4 emission; and assuming linearly interpolated expansion between basal dates or comparatively early or late expansion. When we factored that some C would only be stored temporarily (NCB and NCB+fire), the estimated past cooling effect of CO2 uptake increased, but the present-day RF was affected little. Altering the assumptions behind the reconstructed CO2 flux or expansion patterns caused the RF to peak earlier and advanced the switch from positive to negative RF by several thousand years. Compared with NCB, including fires had only small additional effect on RF lasting less than 1000 year. The largest uncertainty in reconstructing peatland RF was associated with CH4 emissions. As shown by the consistently positive RF modelled for one site, and in some cases for the other two, peatlands with high CH4 emissions and low C accumulation rates may have remained climate warming agents since their initiation. Although uncertainties in present-day RF were mainly due to the assumed CH4 emission rates, the uncertainty in lateral expansion still had a significant effect on the present-day RF, highlighting the importance to consider uncertainties in the past peatland C balance in RF reconstructions.Peer reviewe

Processing and Interconnections of Finely Segmented Semiconductor Pixel Detectors for Applications in Particle Physics and Photon Detection

Radiation hardness is in the focus of the development of particle tracking and photon imaging detector installations. Semiconductor detectors, widely used in particle physics experiments, have turned into capacitive-coupled (AC-coupled) detectors from the originally developed conductively coupled (DC-coupled) detectors. This is due to the superior isolation of radiation-induced leakage current in AC-coupled detectors. However, some modern detector systems, such as the tracking detectors in the CERN LHC CMS or ATLAS experiments, are still DC-coupled. This originates from the difficulty of implementing AC coupling on very small pixel detector areas. In this report, we describe our advances in the detector processing technology. The first topic is the applications of the atomic layer deposition processing technology, which enables the very high densities of capacitance and resistance that are needed when the dimensions of the physical segmentation of pixel detectors need to be scaled down. The second topic is the flip-chip/bump-bonding interconnection technology, which is necessary in order to manufacture pixel detector modules on a large scale with a more than 99% yield of noise-free and faultless pixels and detector channels.Peer reviewe

Digital Technologies for Transport and Mobility: Challenges, Trends and Perspectives

This white paper aims at presenting the ideas emerging from the different fields pertaining to transport and mobility, to describe the capacities of current state-of-the-art digital technologies and the perspectives that are expected to shape the future of transport and mobility