Touch Typing Tutor for visually impaired children and young people

Touch Typing Tutor is a software programme which was designed to assist teaching touch typing skills to visually impaired children. It was first designed and written in the 1990s by Graeme Douglas and Alan Gamble and then updated in 2000 and is now available as freeware. The programme was specially designed to meet the needs of visually impaired people (in particular children and young people). For example, it provides the means to set up different colours, dimensions and fonts for the exercise text displayed, and has speech capability. These features make it possible for Touch Typing Tutor to be operated independently by the learner. This program is easy to use, with a full set of touch typing exercises supplied. Additional exercises can easily be created using any text editor which is capable of writing plain ASCII files (e.g. the Windows 'Notepad'), and organised into lessons. This means that you are able to use Touch Typing Tutor to teach according to the scheme of your choice - no particular approach is built into the program itself - even replacing the entire suite of lessons with your own if you wish. The software has been used extensively in the UK as well as other parts of the world (particularly Africa)

Releasing wind farm equity via post-construction yield analysis

During pre-construction yield analysis, an extrapolated site wind regime is applied to a site model in order to produce estimated yield figures. However, once the site has been operational, many of the uncertainties involved in this modelling, such as electrical losses, wake losses, turbulence and power performance, may be resolved into measured operational parameters. This means that off-site anemometry may be directly related to power production on the site. In a post-construction yield analysis, the pre-construction figures are refined using actual operational data. This allows: a) The initial yield report figures to be reassessed in the light of wind farm performance, and b) The uncertainties associated with annual yield figures to be reduced and understood more fully. This increasing reduction in uncertainty allows improvements in financial modelling to take place over the operational life of the wind farm, releasing equity from the wind farm investmen

X-ray Diffraction Analysis of Organometallic Compounds with Catalytic Properties

The study, by use of X-ray diffraction analysis, of the structures of organometallic complexes with catalytic properties has proved to be of great importance in understanding the chemistry of catalytic processes. It is this technique that has been vital in determining the structures of the complexes reported in this thesis. The thesis is divided into three sections. Section 1 discusses the structural features of new dppm-stabilised triplatinurn complexes derived from the parent cluster [Pt3(CO) (dppm)3]2+ (dpprn = Ph2PcH2PPh2). The structural work was carried out to determine how closely Pt3 clusters could model the behaviour of similar Pt3 species which occur on platinum surfaces. The new complexes are derived by chemical modification of the M3(dppm)3 nucleus which is unusually stable to fragmentation into species containing one or two metal atoms. The structure analyses reported here have been of critical importance in the development of this new field of cluster chemistry. Brief reviews on binuclear dppm complexes and on platinum cluster chemistry have been carried out and earlier work on M3 (dppm) 3 species is also reported. A brief analysis on the conformations of the dppm ligand has also been carried out. The work reported in Section 2 relates to the addition of an alkyne to the complex [CpM(SR) (hfb)2], where M = Mo or W, Cp = eta5-C5H5, R = an alkyl or aryl group and hfb = F3CC5CCF3. The products of this reaction can adopt at least twelve different structural forms. The form isolated depends on several factors including the natures of the thiolato substituent R, of the metal atom and of the incoming ligand. This work is directed to enhancing our in understanding of transition metal catalysed oligomerisation and polymerisation reactions of alkynes. The structures of other related products are also reported including those of the thermolysis reaction of a [CpM(SR) (hfb)2] complex and those of the addition of ligands other than alkynes to the starting complex. Reported in Section 3 are three unrelated structure analyses. The sulphimide complex of palladium is of interest because of its similarity to cis-[PtC12(NH3)2], a chemotherapeutic but toxic compound. [Ru(SC(NH2)2)6] [CF3SO3]2 is the first characterised thiourea complex of ruthenium(II). Its structure was determined because the mode of attachement of thiourea to the ruthenium was unclear. A pilot study of electron deformation density analysis is also reported. Two data sets were collected for C4Cl4O2s, one at 295K the other at 150K using profile analysis of the Bragg reflections. Although the data did not lead to a satisfactory deformation density the analysis gave a clearer picture of the experimental and computational requirements for such work

Image indexing and retrieval: some problems and proposed solutions.

Image processing technologies are offering considerable potential for library and information units to extend their databases by the inclusion of images such as photographs, paintings, monograph title-pages and maps. Discusses problems and potential solutions in a structured fashion based on categories of thesauri (text and visual), hybrids, description language and automatic content analysis, with state-of-the-art examples

Investigating and preventing scientific misconduct using Benford’s Law

Integrity and trust in that integrity are fundamental to academic research. However, procedures for monitoring the trustworthiness of research, and for investigating cases where concern about possible data fraud have been raised are not well established. Here we suggest a practical approach for the investigation of work suspected of fraudulent data manipulation using Benford’s Law. This should be of value to both individual peer-reviewers and academic institutions and journals. In this, we draw inspiration from well-established practices of financial auditing. We provide synthesis of the literature on tests of adherence to Benford’s Law, culminating in advice of a single initial test for digits in each position of numerical strings within a dataset. We also recommend further tests which may prove useful in the event that specific hypotheses regarding the nature of data manipulation can be justified. Importantly, our advice differs from the most common current implementations of tests of Benford’s Law. Furthermore, we apply the approach to previously-published data, highlighting the efficacy of these tests in detecting known irregularities. Finally, we discuss the results of these tests, with reference to their strengths and limitations.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Artificial light at night may decrease predation risk for terrestrial insects

This work was supported by the University of St Andrews.Artificial light at night (ALAN) is thought to be detrimental for terrestrial insect populations. While there exists evidence for lower abundance under ALAN, underlying mechanisms remain unclear. One mechanism by which ALAN may contribute to insect declines may be through facilitating increased predation. We investigated this by experimentally manipulating insect-substitute abundance under differential levels of light. We used insect-containing birdfeed placed at varying distances from streetlights as a proxy for terrestrial insects, inspecting the rate of predation before and after dusk (when streetlights are, respectively, off and on). We found that there was a significantly greater effect of increasing distance on predation after dusk, suggesting that predation was actually reduced by greater levels of artificial light. This may occur because ALAN also increases the vulnerability of insectivores to their own predators. Implications for foraging behaviour and alternative explanations are discussed.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe