From sentience to science: Limits of anthropocentric cognition

Donald Broom’s Sentience and Animal Welfare (2014) is an intellectually and morally engaging book written with radical new concepts in mind. It deals with many issues that are central to the animal welfare debate such as brain complexity, cognitive ability, when in life sentience begins, and how it all affects the way we endorse welfare. It addresses how our insatiable quest to define the uniqueness of our own species has led us to ignore logic and scientific evidence. It also brings greater clarity to these precarious positions and outlines pragmatic approaches to tackling this complex topic of sentience and welfare

The effect of augmented reality and virtual reality interfaces on epistemic actions and the creative process

The aim of the study is to investigate how VR and AR interfaces affect the creative design process in design education. Theories from cognitive psychology, information sciences, and design cognition are provide an explanatory mechanism to indicate that epistemic action reduces cognitive load, thereby reducing fixation in the design process and enhancing the creative design process. Thirty undergraduate design students were randomly divided into two groups that used AR or VR to complete a simple project that required students to design the interior of an office. Mixed qualitative and quantitative methods were used. A linkography protocol was used to understand the effect of different interfaces on the creative design process and a questionnaire was administered to examine the effect of user characteristics on the creative design process. Results of the study indicated that AR interfaces tend to encourage more epistemic actions during the design process than the VR interfaces. Epistemic actions were found to reduce the cognitive load thereby reducing fixation in the creative design process. From calculating entropy of the design process, AR appeared to provide a more conducive environment for creativity than VR. The second part of the study focuses on how individual characteristics of the students moderate the effect of technology traits in enhancing the creative design process. Learner preferences were analyzed through learning styles and technology acceptance was measured to understand how different learning styles affect technology acceptance of the two media types of AR and VR. The theoretical background suggests that perceived ease of use correlates with creativity. Hence, learner preferences were hypothesized to affect the use of different types of media in the creative design process. The results did not indicate that learner preferences affected the creative design process but did support the conclusion that certain user preferences lead to higher acceptance levels for technology

Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality and their effect on learning style in the creative design process

Research has shown that user characteristics such as preference for using an interface can result in effective use of the interface. Research has also suggested that there is a relationship between learner preference and creativity. This study uses the VARK learning styles inventory to assess students learning style then explores how this learning preference affect the use of Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) in the creative design process

Virtual Reality images as a tool in hotel promotions: is it effective and worth investment?

This report examines how traditional photos compare to two different types of virtual reality (VR) images (static and 360°) when used as promotional tools for hotels. An experimental study by Slevitch et al.(2022), which utilized multiple types of measures, served as the foundation for the recommendations. The results showed that static VR images performed the same way as traditional photos, however the 360° VR images had a more positive impact on participants’ emotional responses and were more engaging than other images. This suggests that 360° VR images are better for hotel promotions, especially when initial impressions, such as interest and excitement are the main concern. The results also showed that using physiological measurements (i.e. fNIR, skin conductivity, and eye tracking devices) can give a more accurate picture of how people feel about something than just asking them in a survey

You are what you eat, or are you? The challenges of translating high-fat-fed rodents to human obesity and diabetes

Obesity and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) are rapidly growing worldwide epidemics with major health consequences. Various human-based studies have confirmed that both genetic and environmental factors (particularly high-caloric diets and sedentary lifestyle) greatly contribute to human T2DM. Interactions between obesity, insulin resistance and β-cell dysfunction result in human T2DM, but the mechanisms regulating the interplay among these impairments remain unclear. Rodent models of high-fat diet (HFD)-induced obesity have been used widely to study human obesity and T2DM. With \u3e9000 publications on PubMed over the past decade alone, many aspects of rodent T2DM have been elucidated; however, correlation to human obesity/diabetes remains poor. This review investigates the reasons for this translational discrepancy by critically evaluating rodent HFD models. Dietary modification in rodents appears to have limited translatable benefit for understanding and treating human obesity and diabetes due—at least in part—to divergent dietary compositions, species/strain and gender variability, inconsistent disease penetrance, severity and duration and lack of resemblance to human obesogenic pathophysiology. Therefore future research efforts dedicated to acquiring translationally relevant data—specifically human data, rather than findings based on rodent studies—would accelerate our understanding of disease mechanisms and development of therapeutics for human obesity/T2DM

Using Augmented Reality Prototypes in Design Education

Prototyping or model making in the Architectural and Interior Design process is an established method of design problem solving. By using prototypes, design students can better visualize structures and can give students a more concrete result when working on a design project. According to a study by Grosslight, Unger, Jay and Smith (1991), students are likely to think of prototypes as physical copies of reality that envelop various spatiotemporal views, instead of representations that envelop various theoretical perspectives. Past literature and research has suggests that student’s rate building prototypes highly when compared with other types of representations, which implies that they are better able to learn the design process when using prototypes (Lemons, Carberry, Swan & Rogers, 2010). This study documents alternate modeling strategies utilising technologies such as Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) in Architectural and Interior Design education through the Technology Acceptance Model to better understand how students perceive design solutions in early design studios. The results of the study suggest that design students found physical models to be comparable to AR models and that the AR technology was easy to use

The role of trees in the bioremediation of drinking water - a research experiment in Nawakkaduwa, Kalpitiya

The Kalpitiya Peninsula is a low-lying sand peninsula located on the North West coast of Sri Lanka. Of special significance is the underlying Gyben-Herzberg lens of fresh water that is extensively pumped for irrigation and potable water supply. Ground water quality throughout the peninsula had been good until massive amounts of inorganic fertilizer and chemical pesticides began to be used in agriculture which increased ground water concentrations of nitrate, nitrite, chloride and potassium beyond WHO drinking water standards. There is seen a correlation between ground water quality and land use. The National Water Supply and Drainage Board (NWSDB) were thus compelled to abandon many wells constructed in the Kalpitiya peninsula since the water was contaminated with nitrates and nitrites. In 2004, they contracted with the Neo Synthesis Research Centre (NSRC) to conduct research on the bioremediation of the contaminants. Thus far the results are very encouraging

Evolution of surface gravity waves over a submarine canyon

The effects of a submarine canyon on the propagation of ocean surface waves are examined with a three-dimensional coupled-mode model for wave propagation over steep topography. Whereas the classical geometrical optics approximation predicts an abrupt transition from complete transmission at small incidence angles to no transmission at large angles, the full model predicts a more gradual transition with partial reflection/transmission that is sensitive to the canyon geometry and controlled by evanescent modes for small incidence angles and relatively short waves. Model results for large incidence angles are compared with data from directional wave buoys deployed around the rim and over Scripps Canyon, near San Diego, California, during the Nearshore Canyon Experiment (NCEX). Wave heights are observed to decay across the canyon by about a factor 5 over a distance shorter than a wavelength. Yet, a spectral refraction model predicts an even larger reduction by about a factor 10, because low frequency components cannot cross the canyon in the geometrical optics approximation. The coupled-mode model yields accurate results over and behind the canyon. These results show that although most of the wave energy is refractively trapped on the offshore rim of the canyon, a small fraction of the wave energy 'tunnels' across the canyon. Simplifications of the model that reduce it to the standard and modified mild slope equations also yield good results, indicating that evanescent modes and high order bottom slope effects are of minor importance for the energy transformation of waves propagating across depth contours at large oblique angles

Measurement of bubble sizes in fluidised beds using electrical capacitance tomography

Electrical capacitance tomography (ECT) provides a means for non-invasively imaging multiphase flows, such as those in fluidised beds. Traditionally ECT images are reconstructed using the assumption that the distribution of permittivity varies smoothly throughout the sensor region. However, for many applications there are step changes in the permittivity, for example, between the bubble and particulate phases in a fluidised bed, and the assumption of smoothness is flawed. In this article a Total Variation Iterative Soft Thresholding (TV-IST) algorithm is used to reconstruct ECT images that allows for sharp transitions in the permittivity distribution. This new algorithm has been compared with established algorithms for ECT image reconstruction. It was found that the TV-IST algorithm reduced the sensitivity to the threshold level chosen when extracting measurements of bubble size from ECT data sets. Measurements of the bubble size distribution in the fluidised bed using the TV-IST algorithm agreed closely with established empirical correlations for the size of bubbles. The results demonstrate that ECT can provide accurate and high spatial resolution measurements of features such as bubbles in gas-solid fluidised beds.The authors would like to thank the EPSRC (Grants no. EP/K008218/1 and EP/F041772/1) and the Isaac Newton Trust for financial support.This paper was originally published in Chemical Engineering Science (Chandrasekera TC, Li Y, Moody D, Schnellmann MA, Dennis JS, Holland DJ, Chemical Engineering Science 2015, 126, 679–687, doi:10.1016/j.ces.2015.01.011)

Sustainable Development in Pachchilaipalli Divisional Secretariat in the Killinochchi District of Sri Lanka- A Case Study for Post-Conflict Development

Reconstruction and development in post-disaster or post conflict situations pose multiple challenges. These scenarios necessitate high investment for rapid reconstruction, socio-economic development to minimize future conflicts or disasters, and opportunities to introduce; landuse planning, environmental, engineering and other best practices for increased sustainability and resilience. The post-conflict situation in the Killinochchi District presents a scenario with agencies having outdated data, missing critical information, an intensive development drive which exerts pressures on nature, culture and large number of scattered development plans. The study involves three stages, namely, establishment of baseline data, analysis of digital data anddevelopment of a zoning map as a proposed landuse. This facilitates the decision making in developmentactivities within the area with environmnetal conservation, and coordinates stakeholder agencies for sustainable development. The entire Killinochchi District was divided in to 92 equal grids for micro level planning and 5 Km2 area in Pachchilaipalli DS Division was selected to initiate the case study. The topographical survey maps developed in 1956, 1983 and 2010 were used for spatial analysis, and to compare the landuse changes occurred during the last 57 years in the area of study. Arc GIS 10.1 software was used to develop spatial maps of different sectors. The zoning map which was prepared as the proposed landuse plan illustrates the spatial distribution of areas for development with minimum environmental impacts as the key output of the study.KEYWORDS: Post disaster, sustainable development, spatial planning, post-conflic