Spatial issues in user interface design from a graphic design perspective

The user interface of a computer system is a visual display that provides information about the status of operations on data within the computer and control options to the user that enable adjustments to these operations. From the very beginning of computer technology the user interface was a spatial display, although its spatial features were not necessarily complex or explicitly recognized by the users. All text and nonverbal signs appeared in a virtual space generally thought of as a single flat plane of symbols. Current technology of high performance workstations permits any element of the display to appear as dynamic, multicolor, 3-D signs in a virtual 3-D space. The complexity of appearance and the user's interaction with the display provide significant challenges to the graphic designer of current and future user interfaces. In particular, spatial depiction provides many opportunities for effective communication of objects, structures, processes, navigation, selection, and manipulation. Issues are presented that are relevant to the graphic designer seeking to optimize the user interface's spatial attributes for effective visual communication

Differential localization of glutamate receptor subunits at the drosophila neuromuscular junction

The subunit composition of postsynaptic neurotransmitter receptors is a key determinant of synaptic physiology. Two glutamate receptor subunits, Drosophila glutamate receptor IIA (DGluRIIA) and DGluRIIB, are expressed at the Drosophila neuromuscular junction and are redundant for viability, yet differ in their physiological properties. We now identify a third glutamate receptor subunit at the Drosophila neuromuscular junction, DGluRIII, which is essential for viability. DGluRIII is required for the synaptic localization of DGluRIIA and DGluRIIB and for synaptic transmission. Either DGluRIIA or DGluRIIB, but not both, is required for the synaptic localization of DGluRIII. DGluRIIA and DGluRIIB compete with each other for access to DGluRIII and subsequent localization to the synapse. These results are consistent with a model of a multimeric receptor in which DGluRIII is an essential component. At single postsynaptic cells that receive innervation from multiple motoneurons, DGluRIII is abundant at all synapses. However, DGluRIIA and DGluRIIB are differentially localized at the postsynaptic density opposite distinct motoneurons. Hence, innervating motoneurons may regulate the subunit composition of their receptor fields within a shared postsynaptic cell. The capacity of presynaptic inputs to shape the subunit composition of postsynaptic receptors could be an important mechanism for synapse-specific regulation of synaptic function and plasticity

Movie Description

Audio Description (AD) provides linguistic descriptions of movies and allows visually impaired people to follow a movie along with their peers. Such descriptions are by design mainly visual and thus naturally form an interesting data source for computer vision and computational linguistics. In this work we propose a novel dataset which contains transcribed ADs, which are temporally aligned to full length movies. In addition we also collected and aligned movie scripts used in prior work and compare the two sources of descriptions. In total the Large Scale Movie Description Challenge (LSMDC) contains a parallel corpus of 118,114 sentences and video clips from 202 movies. First we characterize the dataset by benchmarking different approaches for generating video descriptions. Comparing ADs to scripts, we find that ADs are indeed more visual and describe precisely what is shown rather than what should happen according to the scripts created prior to movie production. Furthermore, we present and compare the results of several teams who participated in a challenge organized in the context of the workshop "Describing and Understanding Video & The Large Scale Movie Description Challenge (LSMDC)", at ICCV 2015

Building Information Modelling and Standardised Construction Contracts: a Content Analysis of the GC21 Contract

Building Information Modelling (BIM) is seen as a panacea to many of the ills confronting the Architectural, Engineering and Construction (AEC) sector. In spite of its well documented benefits the widespread integration of BIM into the project lifecycle is yet to occur. One commonly identified barrier to BIM adoption is the perceived legal risks associated with its integration, coupled with the need for implementation in a collaborative environment. Many existing standardised contracts used in the Australian AEC industry were drafted before the emergence of BIM. As BIM continues to become ingrained in the delivery process the shortcomings of these existing contracts have become apparent. This paper reports on a study that reviewed and consolidated the contractual and legal concerns associated with BIM implementation. The findings of the review were used to conduct a qualitative content analysis of the GC21 2nd edition, an Australian standardised construction contract, to identify possible changes to facilitate the implementation of BIM in a collaborative environment. The findings identified a number of changes including the need to adopt a collaborative contract structure with equitable risk and reward mechanisms, recognition of the model as a contract document and the need for standardisation of communication/information exchange.

Coherent X-ray diffraction imaging of photo-induced structural changes in BiFeO₃ nanocrystals

Multiferroic materials that exhibit coupling between ferroelectric and magnetic properties are of considerable utility for technological applications and are also interesting from a fundamental standpoint. When reduced to the nanoscale, multiferroic materials often display additional functionality that is dominated by interfacial and confinement effects. Bismuth ferrite (BiFeO3) is one such material with room temperature anti-ferromagnetic and ferroelectric ordering. Optical excitation of BiFeO3 crystals results in an elastic structural deformation of the lattice with a fast response on the pico-second time scale. Here we report on dynamic measurements to investigate the structural properties of BiFeO3 nanoscale crystals using laser excitation and three-dimensional Bragg coherent x-ray diffraction imaging. Tensile strain beyond 8 × 10-2 was observed predominantly at the surface of the nanoscale crystal as evidenced in the reconstructed phase information and was correlated to photo-induced lattice deformation

Species classifier choice is a key consideration when analysing low-complexity food microbiome data

peer-reviewedBackground The use of shotgun metagenomics to analyse low-complexity microbial communities in foods has the potential to be of considerable fundamental and applied value. However, there is currently no consensus with respect to choice of species classification tool, platform, or sequencing depth. Here, we benchmarked the performances of three high-throughput short-read sequencing platforms, the Illumina MiSeq, NextSeq 500, and Ion Proton, for shotgun metagenomics of food microbiota. Briefly, we sequenced six kefir DNA samples and a mock community DNA sample, the latter constructed by evenly mixing genomic DNA from 13 food-related bacterial species. A variety of bioinformatic tools were used to analyse the data generated, and the effects of sequencing depth on these analyses were tested by randomly subsampling reads. Results Compositional analysis results were consistent between the platforms at divergent sequencing depths. However, we observed pronounced differences in the predictions from species classification tools. Indeed, PERMANOVA indicated that there was no significant differences between the compositional results generated by the different sequencers (p = 0.693, R2 = 0.011), but there was a significant difference between the results predicted by the species classifiers (p = 0.01, R2 = 0.127). The relative abundances predicted by the classifiers, apart from MetaPhlAn2, were apparently biased by reference genome sizes. Additionally, we observed varying false-positive rates among the classifiers. MetaPhlAn2 had the lowest false-positive rate, whereas SLIMM had the greatest false-positive rate. Strain-level analysis results were also similar across platforms. Each platform correctly identified the strains present in the mock community, but accuracy was improved slightly with greater sequencing depth. Notably, PanPhlAn detected the dominant strains in each kefir sample above 500,000 reads per sample. Again, the outputs from functional profiling analysis using SUPER-FOCUS were generally accordant between the platforms at different sequencing depths. Finally, and expectedly, metagenome assembly completeness was significantly lower on the MiSeq than either on the NextSeq (p = 0.03) or the Proton (p = 0.011), and it improved with increased sequencing depth. Conclusions Our results demonstrate a remarkable similarity in the results generated by the three sequencing platforms at different sequencing depths, and, in fact, the choice of bioinformatics methodology had a more evident impact on results than the choice of sequencer did.This research was funded by Science Foundation Ireland in the form of a centre grant (APC Microbiome Institute grant number SFI/12/RC/2273). Research in the Cotter laboratory is also funded by Science Foundation Ireland through the PI award “Obesibiotics” (11/PI/1137). Orla O’Sullivan is funded by Science Foundation Ireland through a Starting Investigator Research Grant award (13/SIRG/2160)

The Sensitivity and Psychometric Properties of a Brief Computer-Based Cognitive Screening Battery in a Depression Clinic

At present, there is poor accuracy in assessing cognitive and vegetative symptoms in depression using clinician or self-rated measures, suggesting the need for development of standardized tasks to assess these functions. The current study assessed the psychometric properties and diagnostic specificity of a brief neuropsychological screening battery designed to assess core signs of depression; psychomotor retardation, attention and executive functioning difficulties, and impaired emotion perception within an outpatient psychiatry setting. Three hundred eighty-four patients with mood disorders and 77 healthy volunteers participated. A large percentage of patients met diagnostic criteria for Major Depressive Disorder alone (49%) or with another comorbid psychiatric disorder (24%). A brief, 25-min battery of computer-based tests was administered to control participants and patients measuring the constructs of inhibitory control, attention, visual perception, and both executive and visual processing speed. The patient groups performed significantly worse than the control group regardless of diagnosis on visual perception and attention accuracy and processing speed factors. Surprisingly, the anxiety disorder group performed better than several other psychiatric disorder groups in inhibitory control accuracy. Developing valid and reliable measures of cognitive signs in mood disorders creates excellent opportunities for tracking cognitive status prior to initiation of treatment, and allows for reliable retest following treatment

Delivering a “Dose of Hope”: A Faith-Based Program to Increase Older African Americans’ Participation in Clinical Trials

Background: Underrepresentation of older-age racial and ethnic minorities in clinical research is a significant barrier to health in the United States, as it impedes medical research advancement of effective preventive and therapeutic strategies. Objective: The objective of the study was to develop and test the feasibility of a community-developed faith-based intervention and evaluate its potential to increase the number of older African Americans in clinical research. Methods: Using a cluster-randomized design, we worked with six matched churches to enroll at least 210 persons. We provided those in the intervention group churches with three educational sessions on the role of clinical trials in addressing health disparity topics, and those in the comparison group completed surveys at the same timepoints. All persons enrolled in the study received ongoing information via newsletters and direct outreach on an array of clinical studies seeking participants. We evaluated the short-, mid-, and longer-term effects of the interventional program on clinical trial-related outcomes (ie, screening and enrollment)

A Prototype Computerized Page-design System

The graphic designer has need for an interactive computerized design system to enable him to match the capabilities of available computerized type-editing and typesetting systems. This article describes a prototype system devised to investigate both the problems and capabilities of using computers for page design. The two aspects of the investigation are the appropriate representation of graphic material on a low resolution television-like display and the development of interactive features. The ability to add, delete, and move blocks of symbolized type and illustration on the display has the advantage that the computerized form of the final design is immediately compatible with computerized typesetting systems