Designing screens for people to use easily

The use of interactive computer systems is expanding rapidly. In many applications users can communicate directly with computer-based systems through an interactive dialogue at a display terminal. However, this direct form of communication has created problems. Whereas early users of on-line systems were skilled computer professionals, today's users may have little or no training in computer technology. How then does this group communicate effectively with a computer systems?

The answer is that many users communicate only with considerable difficulty. The result is that the effectiveness of many systems is very much less than expected. The reason for this is simple: these systems are not very good at communicating with their users.

The most common communications bridge between a person and a computer system is a display screen. A well-designed screen format can enhance user productivity, eliminate or reduce user input errors, and promote end user satisfaction. A poorly designed screen has the opposite effect: it will decrease human processing speed, provoke user mistakes, and complicate computer operations.

Screen design requires the same care as designing the overall application. It employs the same techniques as planning and preparing good user documents. Screens, like documents, must be easy to understand and easy to use. To achieve these objectives, screen designers must make good choices regarding three ease-of-use parameters: format; screen content and layout; and style. This paper describes how standards may be established for each of these parameters in a proposed application or system. Futher, an interactive tutorial computer program has been developed (using Bricklin's DEMO program) which may be used to illustrate the application of these standards.     

Ein Überblick zur digitalen Bildverarbeitung in der Lebensmittelwissenschaft 1. Mitt. Bestimmung geometrischer Merkmale an isolierten Objekten

I. Fromhold-Treu und W. Kozerke: A survey on digital picture processing in food science. Part 1. Determination of geometrical properties of isolated objects The aim of this series of articles is a summary of procedures and methods of the digital picture processing with the point of view of their special application in the science of nutrition and food. After a short introduction to the fundamentals of the digital picture processing some effective procedures of the recognition of isolated objects in binary pictures are given. Furthermore there are defined geometrical properties for these objects.     

PROCESSES RELATED TO DRYING: PART I, THEORETICAL MODEL

The aim of this paper is to summarize ten years of work in order to model the drying of solids. Nowadays there is a general agreement amongst the various researchers worldwide. If the porous medium is viewed at the so-called “macroscopic” scale (that is to say when it is viewed as a continuous and homogeneous equivalent medium) a set of three partial derivative equations is derived, three state variables being necessary to thermodynamically describe the medium (temperature, moisture content and total pressure in the gaseous phase for example).

After a short historical survey of the modeling of drying, we want to obtain this set of equations drawing the readers attention to three particular points : the importance of the air mass balance, the right way to write the energy equation (and the associated boundary conditions) and the taking into account of the adsorbed water.

A second part of this article [I] will be devoted to the numerical solution of this problem and will illustrate these points.     

Kinetic study of the reaction between molybdenum trioxide and gaseous carbon tetrachloride

The kinetics of the chlorination reaction of molybdenum trioxide with gaseous carbon tetrachloride has been studied at temperatures between 713 and 753 K. The effects of temperature, reaction time, residence time and gaseous reactant concentration on conversion were studied throughout the reaction. In all cases, there was an increase in conversion when the above operating variables were increased. The kinetic model proposed is consistent with and correlates the experimental data. In the range studied for the different variables, the step that controls the rate of reaction is the surface chemical reaction. Values of the rate constant and the activation energy were estimated.     

热分析在PVA纤维预处理中的应用

用差热、热重法对原丝的热性能及由不同预处理方法所引起的PVA纤维的热行为变化进行了研究;并通过模拟脱水条件,用不同升温速率,求出了经不同预处理纤维的脱水反应活化能。结果表明,PVA原丝在230℃有一软化点,三种预处理都不同程度地影响了原丝的热效应变化;纤维在180～340℃主要为脱水反应;原丝及经脱水剂、O_3和O_3综合脱水剂处理的纤维,其脱水反应的表观活化能分别为:164.3kJ/mol,92.9kJ/mol,130.5kJ/mol和117.6kJ/mol。     

STATISTICAL ASSOCIATION LEARNING OF THE MARKOV DECISION PROCESS

A neural computing approach to the Markov decision problem is presented. The method makes use of historical records of rewards as inputs and average long-run incomes per epoch as targets for training a backpropagation network to associate the two quantities, without a priori knowledge of the state transition probabilities. Estimation of the long-run income, given a new reward matrix as input, is interpreted as a statistical-association learning problem. Following the training, the relevant functional relationship between the income (output) and the reward (input), that has been learned by the network, can be used to compute an unknown expected income. The present study examines network generalization to new inputs, considering the effects of different topological designs and the characteristics of training samples on neural computing accuracy. Successful performance of the best design, which is determined directly from the underlying mathematical model of the Markov decision problem, is demonstrated by a computer simulation experiment.     

Zeolite coated interdigital capacitors as a new type of gas sensor

The adsorption of a gas influences the dielectric constant of zeolites. This property is used as the sensitive component of a gas sensor.

Planar interdigital capacitors were coated with thin films of zeolites. When gas molecules are adsorbed, the dielectric constant of the zeolite is altered, which causes a change in the capacitance of the interdigital capacitor. This change is strongly dependent on the concentration of adsorbate in the gas phase.     

How to optimize high-Tc superconductive cuprates

Different ways to optimizeT _c 's and the magnetic properties of high-T _c superconductive cuprates are described and discussed. Oxygen intercalation-desintercalation phenomena and cationic substitutions (M³⁺ for M²⁺ or vice versa) lead to a variation of the hole carrier density and can have a drastic influence onT _c 's, as shown for bismuth, thallium, and lead-based cuprates, as well as for La₂CuO₄ and “123”-type superconductors. In the former, the role of hole reservoirs for the rock salt type layers is outlined. The modification of the hybridization of orbitals can also explain the variations ofT _c 's observed in some systems like Y_1?x Ca _x Ba₂Cu_3?x :Fe _x O₇ in which the oxidation state of copper remains constant. A critical current density enhancement can be realized by irradiating high-T _c materials by high-energy heavy ions because of the peculiar columnar structure of the heavy ion-induced tracks. The effects of such columnar defects, 70 Å in diameter, on flux pinning, magnetic relaxation, and location of the irreversibility line of bismuth-based 2212 crystals irradiated by 6-GeV Pb ions are reported. We observe a strong shift of the irreversibility line toward high fields and temperatures, indicating that pinning effects must be taken into account in the vortex lattice motion. Such induced changes are accompanied by a strong enhancement of the critical current density and a significant enlargement of the irreversibility region in theH,T plane.