How do designers represent to themselves the users' needs?

This paper reports on an ergonomic study carried out during the design of a cutting machine-tool for the composite material in carbody parts casting. During this design process, the users’ needs were inferred by the designers on the basis of their own mental representations of the use of the new device. These representations of the users’ needs, correct or false, play a decisive role in the choice of a solution. The aim of the study is to identify their particularity. Analyzing the design meetings, we have highlighted that users are considered either as subsystems or basic design principles or elements of an imagined scenario. We have shown that these representations are linked to the types of meetings held during the design process. Accordingly, a diversification of the types of meetings should be promoted by the project leader, so that designers extend their points of view of the operators.     

Polarization Phase-Based Method For Material Classification In Computer Vision

A robust and accurate polarization phase-based technique for material classification is presented. The novelty of this technique is three-fold in (i) its theoretical development, (ii) application, and, (iii) experimental implementation. The concept of phase of polarization of a light wave is introduced to computer vision for discrimination between materials according to their intrinsic electrical conductivity, such as distinguishing conducting metals, and poorly conducting dielectrics. Previous work has used intensity, color and polarization component ratios. This new method is based on the physical principle that metals retard orthogonal components of light upon reflection while dielectrics do not. This method has significant complementary advantages with respect to existing techniques, is computationally efficient, and can be easily implemented with existing imaging technology. Experiments for real circuit board inspection, nonconductive and conductive glass, and, outdoor object recognition have been performed to demonstrate its accuracy and potential capabilities.     

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Modeling subjectively perceived annoyance of H.264/AVC video as a function of perceived artifact strength

This paper is concerned with the subjective perception of video coding artifacts in H.264/AVC encoded and decoded video. Our objective is to model the perceived annoyance of such low bit rate video sequences as a function of perceived artifact strength. We introduce a new method for determining this function and apply it to the data from two psychophysical experiments. Both experiments produced numerical judgments of the subjectively perceived annoyance of artifact combinations and the perceived strength of the respective coding artifacts. Our method produces a discrete multi-dimensional representation of the relationships in the data from which the function relating annoyance to artifact strength is derived. The method is applied to the data of the first experiment and the resulting function is shown to describe the data from the second experiment as well.     

Low current plasma effect optical switch on InP

Optical InP-GaInAsP directional coupler switches with a total length of 2 mm have been fabricated and operated by carrier injection. Switching is achieved at a very low injection current of 4 mA. For both switching states a crosstalk suppression exceeding 20 dB is obtained. In addition, the insertion loss estimated from the loss contributions of waveguides, bends and free carriers is as low as 1.3 dB.<>     

Vacuolar and extracellular maturation of Saccharomyces cerevisiae proteinase A

The vacuolar aspartyl protease proteinase A (PrA) of Saccharomyces cerevisiae is encoded as a preproenzyme by the PEP4 gene and transported to the vacuole via the secretory route. Upon arrival of the proenzyme proPrA to the vacuole, active mature 42 kDa PrA is generated by specific proteolysis involving the vacuolar endoprotease proteinase B (PrB). Vacuolar activation of proPrA can also take place in mutants lacking PrB activity (prb1). Here an active 43 kDa species termed pseudoPrA is formed, probably by an autocatalytic process. When the PEP4 gene is overexpressed in wild-type cells, mature PrA can be found in the growth medium. We have found that prb1 strains overexpressing PEP4 can form pseudoPrA extracellularly. N-terminal amino acid sequence determination of extracellular, as well as vacuolar pseudoPrA showed that it contains nine amino acids of the propeptide, indicating a cleavage between Phe67 and Ser68 of the preproenzyme. This cleavage site is in accordance with the known substrate preference for PrA, supporting the notion that pseudoPrA is formed by autoactivation. When a multicopy PEP4 transformant of a prb1 mutant was grown in the presence of the aspartyl protease inhibitor pepstatin A, a significant level of proPrA was found in the growth medium. Our analyses show that overexpression of PEP4 leads to the secretion of proPrA to the growth medium where the zymogen is converted to pseudoPrA or mature PrA in a manner similar to the vacuolar processing reactions. Amino acid sequencing of secreted proPrA confirmed the predicted cleavage by signal peptidase between Ala22 and Lys23 of the preproenzyme.     

The growth of InAsSb/InAsP strained-layer superlattices for use in infrared emitters

We describe the metalorganic chemical vapor deposition of InAsSb/InAsP strained-layer superlattice (SLS) active regions for use in mid-infrared emitters. These SLSs were grown at 500°C, and 200 Torr in a horizontal quartz reactor using TMIn, TESb, AsH₃, and PH₃. By changing the layer thickness and composition, we have prepared structures with low temperature (≤20K) photoluminescence wavelengths ranging from 3.2 to 4.4 μm. Excellent performance was observed for a SLS light emitting diode (LED) and both optically pumped and electrically injected SLS lasers. An optically pumped, double heterostructure laser emitted at 3.86 μm with a maximum operating temperature of 240K and a characteristic temperature of 33K. We have also made electrically injected lasers and LEDs utilizing a GaAsSb/InAs semi-metal injection scheme. The semi-metal injected, broadband LED emitted at 4 μm with 80 μW of power at 300K and 200 mA average current. The InAsSb/InAsP SLS injection laser emitted at 3.6 μm at 120K.     

The open reading frame YAL048c affects the secretion of proteinase A in S. cerevisiae

Over-expression of the yeast PEP4 gene encoding the vacuolar aspartic protease proteinase A (PrA) leads to saturation of the vacuolar targeting system of the cell and missorting of PrA to the growth medium. In a screen for genes affecting the secretion of over-expressed PrA we found that multiple copies of the open reading frame (ORF) YAL048c enhanced PrA secretion. Since no function has hitherto been ascribed to YAL048c, we undertook further studies of this ORF. Deletion of YAL048c resulted in slightly reduced secretion of over-produced PrA. Furthermore, strains deleted for YAL048c showed a growth inhibition phenotype resulting in wrinkled colony morphology when grown on rich medium containing high concentrations of calcium. YAL048c is predicted to encode a polypeptide of 662 amino acid residues containing two consensus ATP/GTP-binding site motifs and a putative carboxy-terminal transmembrane region. In addition, the amino acid sequence contains two putative calcium-binding domains. The YAL048c protein may be evolutionarily conserved, as homologues exist in humans and Caenorhabditis elegans. We suggest that the YAL048c protein is involved in vesicle transport in the secretory pathway.     

Routing protocols for vehicular Ad Hoc networks in rural areas

Research on vehicular ad hoc networks has focused mainly on efficient routing protocol design under conditions where there are relatively large numbers of closely spaced vehicles. These routing protocols are designed principally for urban areas with high node density and fully connected networks and are not suitable for packet delivery in a sparse, partially connected VANET. In this article, we examine the challenges of VANETs in sparse network conditions, review alternatives including epidemic routing, and propose a border node-based routing protocol for partially connected VANETs. The BBR protocol can tolerate network partition due to low node density and high node mobility. The performance of epidemic routing and BBR are evaluated with a geographic and traffic information- based mobility model that captures typical highway conditions. The simulation results show that under rural network conditions, a limited flooding protocol such as BBR performs well and offers the advantage of not relying on a location service required by other protocols proposed for VANETs.