Philosophy with children : helping designers cooperate with children

Engaging children in design through in-depth interviews is coming to prominence in the IDC community, which increasingly engages with issues about understanding the children's world. To date, research in this area has primarily focused on engaging children using techniques somehow similar to adult-techniques (moodboards, brainstorming, laddering,...). However, questioning or interviewing children is fraught with difficulties. The proposed workshop seeks to explore where and how a philosophy with children methodology can be adapted for design, exploring themes such as Socratic Attitudes, wondering, and question types. This workshop aims to build an interdisciplinary community of researchers, designers, and practitioners to share and discuss their work and experiences

Antibacterial marine bacterium deter luminous vibriosis in shrimp larvae

Inhibitory activity of a marine pigmented bacterium - Alteromonas sp. - isolated from Penaeus monodon Fabricius larva against pathogenic and environmental isolates of Vibrio harveyi was studied. All the isolates were inhibited to varying degrees by Alteromonas sp. in vitro. The antibacterial substance produced by the Alteromonas sp. was soluble in organic solvent and closely bound to the external surface of bacterial cells. The antibacterial Alteromonas sp., when allowed to colonize on shrimp larvae, suppressed the activity of V. harveyi M3 and reduced mortality of P. monodon larvae in vivo

Discrete-time variance tracking with application to speech processing

Two new discrete-time algorithms are presented for tracking variance and reciprocal variance. The closed loop nature of the solutions to these problems makes this approach highly accurate and can be used recursively in real time. Since the Least-Mean Squares (LMS) method of parameter estimation requires an estimate of variance to compute the step size, this technique is well suited to applications such as speech processing and adaptive filtering

Analysis of a non-minimum phase acoustic beamformer

The two input Griffiths-Jim acoustic beamformer is analysed in the frequency domain using a Wiener type formulation. Unlike previous solutions the approach here is to look at the problem of non-minimum phase acoustic transfer functions which are encountered in many real filtering problems. The polynomial transfer function approach gives an elegant way of obtaining the frequency response of the beamformer and gives new insight to the problem in general

Early causes of child obesity and implications for prevention

Child obesity is becoming a serious public health concern, and major research effort is being devoted both to understand its aetiology and to improve the effectiveness of prevention strategies. Early growth patterns, both prenatally and postnatally, are emerging as important markers of later obesity risk, with rapid neonatal weight gain a clear risk factor for later obesity and metabolic syndrome. Thus, in two distinct senses child obesity is a growing problem. The paper summarises current evidence on growth pattern and obesity, relating it to infant feeding practice and appetite regulation, and highlights the areas in which public health interventions are feasible. Of the conclusions drawn, one involves a futuristic solution to child obesity where neonates are given an infusion of the hormone leptin to reset their appetite regulation

The application development process: What role does it play in the success of an application for the user developer?

End user development of applications forms a significant part of organisational systems development. This study investigates the role that developing an application plays in the eventual success of the application for the user developer. The results of this study suggest that the process of developing an application not only predisposes an end user developer to be more satisfied with the application than they would be if it were developed by another end user, but also leads them to perform better with it. Thus the results of the study highlight the contribution of the process of application development to application success

A List of the Tenebrionidae of Michigan (Coleoptera)

The family Tenebrionidae, the darkling beetles, containing more than 14,000 species, is found primarily in the tropics and arid regions. As would therefore be expected, Michigan\u27s cool, moist environment is not attractive to very many tenebrionids. This list contains 50 identified species and six previously recorded species that were not confirmed by me

Automatic variance control and variance estimation loops

A closed loop servo approach is applied to the problem of controlling and estimating variance in nonstationary signals. The new circuit closely resembles but is not the same as, automatic gain control (AGC) which is common in radio and other circuits. The closed loop nature of the solution to this problem makes this approach highly accurate and can be used recursively in real time

On feed-through terms in the lms algorithm

The well known least mean squares (LMS) algorithm is studied as a control system. When applied in a noise canceller a block diagram approach is used to show that the step size has two upper limits. One is the conventional limit beyond which instability results. The second limit shows that if the step size is chosen to be too large then feed-through terms consisting of signal times noise will result in an additive term at the noise canceller output. This second limit is smaller than the first and will cause distortion at the noise canceller output