Voice of the users: an extended study of software feedback engagement

Requirements Engineering - Many software users give feedback online about the applications they use. This feedback often contains valuable requirements information that can be used to guide the...     

High concentration of cobalt in wheat grasses

The concentration of cobalt in range wheat grasses (Agropyron spp.) in north-eastern Nevada was considerably in excess of that reported in other species grown on untreated soils. Concentrations of of 0–8 to 23 ppm (dry basis) were confirmed by three independent methods of analysis.     

“The Canary in the Coal Mine…” A cautionary tale from the decline of SourceForge

Forges are online collaborative platforms to support the development of distributed open source software. While once mighty keepers of open source vitality, software forges are rapidly becoming less and less relevant. For example, of the top 10 forges in 2011, only one survives today—SourceForge —the biggest of them all, but its numbers are dropping and its community is tenuous at best. Through mixed-methods research, this article chronicles and analyze the software practice and experiences of the project's history—in particular its architectural and community/organizational decisions. We discovered a number of suboptimal social and architectural decisions and circumstances that, may have led to SourceForge 's demise. In addition, we found evidence suggesting that the impact of such decisions could have been monitored, reduced, and possibly avoided altogether. The use of sociotechnical insights needs to become a basic set of design and software/organization monitoring principles that tell a cautionary tale on what to measure and what not to do in the context of large-scale software forge and community design and management.     

Creating a model of the dynamics of socio-technical groups

Individuals participating in technologically mediated forms of organization often have difficulty recognizing when groups emerge, and how the groups they take part in evolve. This paper contributes an analytical framework that improves awareness of these virtual group dynamics through analysis of electronic trace data from tasks and interactions carried out by individuals in systems not explicitly designed for context adaptivity, user modeling or user personalization. We discuss two distinct cases to which we have applied our analytical framework. These two cases provide a useful contrast of two prevalent ways for analyzing social relations starting from electronic trace data: either artifact-mediated or direct person-to-person interactions. Our case study integrates electronic trace data analysis with analysis of other, triangulating data specific to each application. We show how our techniques fit in a general model of group informatics, which can serve to construct group context, and be leveraged by future tool development aimed at augmenting context adaptivity with group context and a social dimension. We describe our methods, data management strategies and technical architecture to support the analysis of individual user task context, increased awareness of group membership, and an integrated view of social, information and coordination contexts.     

Speeding drivers' attitudes and perceptions of speed cameras in rural England

There is evidence that excessive speed leads to an increased frequency and severity of road traffic accidents, but it is not clear how speeds may be reduced. To increase understanding of why drivers exceed the speed limits, the views of a sample of road users who had been prosecuted for exceeding the speed limit in the rural county of Norfolk England were sought. Respondents were categorised into a four group driver typology comprising conformers (those who report they never exceed limits) deterred drivers (those put off speeding by the presence of cameras), manipulators (those who slow only at camera locations) and defiers (those who exceed limits regardless of cameras), and the consistency of opinions was compared between the groups. Speeding was perceived as widespread and normal, and many drivers resented camera enforcement. Indeed, some respondents considered that cameras in themselves caused dangerous driving. For many drivers, the prosecution experience resulted in distress, anger and anti-camera sentiments, predominantly because they expressed the belief that they were more skilled than other drivers. It was also apparent that many respondents displayed a lack of awareness of the link between speed and collisions. Conformers were the least likely to state that the prosecution had deterred them from further speeding behaviour, possibly because they perceived themselves as already law-abiding. The deterred drivers were most likely to express intentions to avoid further speeding and their speeding incident was found to be most likely to be accidental. Manipulators and defiers tended to report that they had deliberately chosen to infringe the speed limits. Manipulators often acknowledged that their style of driving was dangerous; however, they failed to link this to their own behaviour. It was evident that many defiers and manipulators did not perceive speeding as a serious traffic law violation. Possible implications for road safety initiatives are discussed and recommendations are given for specifically targeting different driver types.     

Prejudice reduction in white students: Comparing three conceptual approaches.

Schools and businesses increasingly use prejudice-reduction interventions, which typically emphasize 1 of 3 concepts: cooperation, political tolerance, or respect. This study serves as an initial laboratory investigation of the relative effectiveness of these 3 concepts, as compared with a control concept (intelligence), for reducing prejudice. Participants read a paragraph designed to prime 1 of the 3 prejudice reduction concepts or the control. Two self-report inventories (Social Dominance Orientation Scale and the Modern Racism Scale) and 2 implicit measures (a budget survey and the Race Implicit Association Test) were used to assess levels of racism and in-group preference. Participants in the cooperation condition scored significantly lower on the Race Implicit Association Test than those in the control condition, suggesting that control participants had a relatively stronger automatic preference for Whites. A significant effect of prime was also found on the Modern Racism Scale; participants in the respect condition had the lowest scores, indicative of relatively lower levels of prejudice toward African Americans. Males emerged as more biased than females on 3 of the 4 dependent measures. Implications for designing multicultural education programs are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Chemical properties of manganese in lucerne

Manganese in lucerne (Medicago sativa L.) exists as a cationic complex of low molecular weight. It migrates as a single band on paper electrophoresis, cation exchange chromatography and gel exclusion chromatography. It exhibits no strong association with protein. The complex tends to be unstable in alkaline solution.     

Chromium in the gastrointestinal tract of the rat

Chromium from feed intrinsically labelled with ⁵¹Cr was either fed to laboratory rats or mixed in vitro with gastrointestinal tract contents. The solubility, protein association and molecular size were measured. Chromium from intrinsically labelled feed did not appear as inorganic chromium in the gastrointestinal tract of the rat. One-fourth to one-half of the chromium in the small intestine remained in solution after centrifugation for 10 min at 12000 × g. The chromium in solution had the same exclusion volume on gel filtration chromatography throughout the gastrointestinal tract. Any protein association was quite labile. With high-fibre feed, more chromium was not soluble and probably was not available for absorption. Chromate administered with feed formed complexes with the feed and behaved similarly to intrinsically labelled feed. Chromate fed to fasted rats associated with large, possibly protein-containing, sedimentable particles in the gastrointestinal tract of the rat.     

Investigations of the chemical form of chromium in lucerne

Chromium in lucerne (Medicago sativa L.) exists as one or more anionic complexes of approximate molecular weight 2900. They migrate as a single band on paper electrophoresis and during anion exchange chromatography. The properties of the chromium complex(es) from lucerne are different from those reported for the “glucose tolerance factor” and for other trace elements in plants.