Gender Differences in Mouse and Cursor Movements

Computer cursor and mouse activities such as moving, pointing, selecting, and dragging are essential parts of everyday interactions. Yet it is unknown how men and women differ in the way they move computer cursors. This study examines gender differences in movements of computer cursors. In one experiment, the authors measured trajectories of computer cursors every 20 ms in a simple choice-reaching task and tested the extent to which movement features related to controlling and targeting diverge between male and female participants. Results showed significant gender differences in cursor motions. Female participants deviated from the straight path toward the target location to a larger degree than did male participants, and female participants showed more backward motions (deviating backward from the target location) than did male participants. Implications for sources of these gender differences, user interface and input device design, and musculoskeletal disorders in women are also discussed.     

An Example-based Procedural System for Element Arrangement

We present a method for synthesizing two dimensional (2D) element arrangements from an example. The main idea is to combine texture synthesis techniques based‐on a local neighborhood comparison and procedural modeling systems based‐on local growth. Given a user‐specified reference pattern, our system analyzes neigh‐borhood information of each element by constructing connectivity. Our synthesis process starts with a single seed and progressively places elements one by one by searching a reference element which has local features that are the most similar to the target place of the synthesized pattern. To support creative design activities, we introduce three types of interaction for controlling global features of the resulting pattern, namely a spray tool, a flow field tool, and a boundary tool. We also introduce a global optimization process that helps to avoid local error concentrations. We illustrate the feasibility of our method by creating several types of 2D patterns.     

Teaching materials to enhance the visual expression of Web pages for students not in art or design majors

The explosive growth of the Internet has made the knowledge and skills for creating Web pages into general subjects that all students should learn. It is now common to teach the technical side of the production of Web pages and many teaching materials have been developed. However teaching the aesthetic side of Web page design has been neglected, and students not in art or design majors are normally confronted with difficulties when they do expressive design of Web pages.     

Adaptive control design for a class of nonsmooth nonlinear systems with matched and linearly parameterized uncertainty

This paper presents an adaptive control design for a class of nonsmooth nonlinear systems with matched uncertainty, which is linearly parameterized with a known discontinuous function. The design framework is based on the concept of the Filippov solution as the classical Lyapunov theory for smooth systems cannot be applied to establish the stability of the adaptive control system due to the presence of the discontinuity. It is proved that as an adaptive control system, the global Lyapunov stability with the convergence of the state of the controlled system to the origin can be achieved by evaluating the monotonicity of the Lyapunov function in the state space, particularly on the discontinuous surface, while the uniqueness of the solution of the closed‐loop system is not necessarily guaranteed. Some interesting numerical examples are demonstrated with simulation results. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

FENECIA: failure endurable nested-transaction based execution of composite Web services with incorporated state analysis

Interest in the Web services (WS) composition (WSC) paradigm is increasing tremendously. A real shift in distributed computing history is expected to occur when the dream of implementing Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is realized. However, there is a long way to go to achieve such an ambitious goal. In this paper, we support the idea that, when challenging the WSC issue, the earlier that the inevitability of failures is recognized and proper failure-handling mechanisms are defined, from the very early stage of the composite WS (CWS) specification, the greater are the chances of achieving a significant gain in dependability. To formalize this vision, we present the FENECIA (Failure Endurable Nested-transaction based Execution of Composite Web services with Incorporated state Analysis) framework. Our framework approaches the WSC issue from different points of view to guarantee a high level of dependability. In particular, it aims at being simultaneously a failure-handling-devoted CWS specification, execution, and quality of service (QoS) assessment approach. In the first section of our framework, we focus on answering the need for a specification model tailored for the WS architecture. To this end, we introduce WS-SAGAS, a new transaction model. WS-SAGAS introduces key concepts that are not part of the WS architecture pillars, namely, arbitrary nesting, state, vitality degree, and compensation, to specify failure-endurable CWS as a hierarchy of recursively nested transactions. In addition, to define the CWS execution semantics, without suffering from the hindrance of an XML-based notation, we describe a textual notation that describes a WSC in terms of definition rules, composability rules, and ordering rules, and we introduce graphical and formal notations. These rules provide the solid foundation needed to formulate the execution semantics of a CWS in terms of execution correctness verification dependencies. To ensure dependable execution of the CWS, we present in the second section of FENECIA our architecture THROWS, in which the execution control of the resulting CWS is distributed among engines, discovered dynamically, that communicate in a peer-to-peer fashion. A dependable execution is guaranteed in THROWS by keeping track of the execution progress of a CWS and by enforcing forward and backward recovery. We concentrate in the third section of our approach on showing how the failure consideration is trivial in acquiring more accurate CWS QoS estimations. We propose a model that assesses several QoS properties of CWS, which are specified as WS-SAGAS transactions and executed in THROWS. We validate our proposal and show its feasibility and broad applicability by describing an implemented prototype and a case study.     

Production of monodisperse water-in-oil emulsions consisting of highly uniform droplets using asymmetric straight-through microchannel arrays

This paper reports the production of monodisperse water-in-oil (W/O) emulsions using new microchannel emulsification (MCE) devices, asymmetric straight-through MC arrays that were hydrophobically modified. The silicon asymmetric straight-through MC arrays consisted of numerous pairs of microslots and circular microholes whose cross-sectional sizes were 10 μm. This paper primarily focused on investigating the effect of the osmotic pressure of a dispersed phase (Π_d) on MCE. This paper also investigated the effects of the type of continuous-phase oils and the dispersed-phase flux (J _d) on MCE. The dispersed phases were Milli-Q water and Milli-Q water solutions containing sodium chloride. The continuous phases were decane (as control), hexane, medium chain triacylglyceride (MCT), and refined soybean oil (RSO) solutions containing tetraglycerin monolaurate condensed ricinoleic acid ester (TGCR) as a surfactant. At Π_d of exceeding threshold, highly uniform aqueous droplets with coefficients of variation of less than 3% were stably generated via hydrophobic asymmetric straight-through MCs. Monodisperse W/O emulsions with average droplet diameters between 32 and 45 μm were produced using the alkane–oil and triglyceride–oil solutions as the continuous phase. This work also demonstrated that the hydrophobic asymmetric straight-through MC array had remarkable ability to produce highly uniform aqueous droplets at very high J _d of up to 1,200 L m⁻² h⁻¹.     

Quantitative structural analysis of twin boundary in alpha-Zn7Sb2O12 using HAADF STEM method

The structure and composition of the 1/4{110} twin boundary in alpha-Zn7Sb2O12 have been determined by using quantitative high-angle annular dark field scanning transmission electron microscopy (HAADF STEM) analysis. The noise in the experimental HAADF STEM images is reduced by using the maximum entropy method and average processing, and the parameters used in dynamical simulations are experimentally determined. From the analysis, it has been found that octahedral sites in the twin boundary slightly shift parallel to the [110] direction, and a reduction of the Sb concentration at the octahedral sites on the plane adjacent to the twin boundary was detected. The reduction was measured from three regions in the same twin boundary, and the Sb concentrations were 4 +/- 3, 8 +/- 3 and 19 +/-2 at% from 33 at%.     

Superconductivity in the tetragonal phase of La1.9Bi0.1CuO4+δ annealed under high oxygen pressure

We have investigated the relation between the crystal structure and superconductivity in La_1.9Bi_0.1CuO₄₊ , in which the phase separation observed in La₂CuO₄₊ is suppressed. A phase diagram in theT– plane is given for La_1.9Bi_0.1CuO₄₊ with excess oxygen. For very small values, the crystal structure is orthorhombic, and an orthorhombic-tetragonal phase transition occurs markedly at 0.03 in the measured temperature range between 13 and 293 K. Superconductivity is observed in the range of 0.04<<0.11. This is clear evidence thathigh-T _c superconductivity also appears in the tetragonal phase.     

A low wall-loading DEMO reactor design with high priority for early and reliable realization of a tokamak fusion reactor over the cost performance

Based on scientific databases adopted for designing ITER plasmas and on the advancement of fusion nuclear technology from the recent R&D program, a low wall-loading DEMO fusion reactor has been designed, where high priority has been given to the early and reliable realization of a tokamak fusion plasma over the cost performance. Since the major radius of this DEMO reactor is chosen to be 10 m, plasma ignition is achievable with a low fusion power of 0.8 GW and an operation period of 4–5 hours is available only with inductive current drive. The low ignition power makes it possible to adopt a first wall with an austenitic stainless steel, for which significant databases and operating experience exists, due to its use in the presence of neutron irradiation in fission reactors. In step with development of advanced materials, a step-wise increase of the fusion power seems to be feasible and realistic, because this DEMO reactor has the potential to produce a fusion power of 5 GW.