Supporting the creative drive: investigating paralinguistic voice as a mode of interaction for artists with upper limb disabilities

For people with upper limb disabilities visual art is an important activity that allows for expression of individuality and independence. They show remarkable endurance, patience and determination to adapt their remaining capabilities to create visual art. There are significant advantages of digital technologies in assisting artists with upper limb disabilities. Paralinguistic voice recognition technologies have proven to be a particularly promising mode of interaction. Despite these benefits, technological support for people with upper limb disabilities to create visual art is scarce. This paper reports on a number of case studies of several artists with upper limb disabilities. These case studies illustrate the struggles they face to be creative and also show the significant advantages of digital technologies in assisting such artists. An investigation into people’s ability to use the volume of their voice to control cursor movement to create drawings on the screen is also reported. With motivation, training and practise, use of volume to control drawing tasks shows great promise. It is believed that paralinguistic voice has wider implications beyond assisting artists with upper limb disabilities, such as: an alternative mode of interaction for disabled people to perform tasks other than creating visual art, alternative mode of interaction for hands busy environments and as a voice training system for people with speech impairments.     

Effects of Missile Size and Glass Type on Impact Resistance of “Sacrificial Ply” Laminated Glass

Experiments were performed as part of a larger study to develop the “sacrificial ply” design concept for laminated architectural glass. This concept allows windborne debris impacts in severe windstorm environments to break the outer laminated architectural glass ply while the inner ply is preserved in order to carry the design wind pressure. Steel ball size and inner/outer glass ply type (level of thermal tempering) were varied to determine their effects on the impact resistance of the inner glass ply of laminated architectural glass when impacted on the outer glass ply. A mean minimum breakage velocity (MMBV) was determined for each variation in steel ball size and glass temper level, which defines the mean debris impact velocity on the outer glass ply that causes breakage in the inner glass ply. A 46% reduction in MMBV was observed for an increase in steel ball size from 2 g (7.9 mm diameter) to 8.4 g (12.7 mm diameter), and a 65% reduction in MMBV was observed for an increase in steel ball size from 2 g (7.9 mm diameter) to 28.2 g (19.1 mm diameter). Laminated architectural glass constructed with heat-strengthened or fully tempered inner glass plies, regardless of outer-glass-ply type, was found to have a significantly higher MMBV than laminated architectural glass constructed with annealed glass plies. In contrast, changing the outer glass ply from annealed to fully tempered glass was found to reduce the MMBV, regardless of the inner glass ply type. Relating these results to those in a previous impact study by Kaiser et al. suggests that the order of importance for design variables that most influence the inner glass ply impact resistance of sacrificial ply laminated architectural glass is the following, starting with the most important: (1) inner glass ply type; (2) inner glass ply thickness; (3) polyvinyl butyral (PVB) interlayer thickness; and (4) outer glass ply thickness.     

Fabrication of hybrid ceramic matrix composites

The desire to improve the transverse properties and microcracking stress of unidirectional continuous fiber reinforced ceramic matrix composites has led to development of the hybrid ceramic matrix composite (HCMC). This paper discusses the techniques we used in the fabrication of HCMC specimens used for mechanical characterization.     

Bioaugmentation of a sequencing batch reactor with <Emphasis Type="Italic">Archaea</Emphasis> for the treatment of reject water

In this study, the bioaugmentation of a sequencing batch reactor (SBR) for the treatment of reject water from wastewater treatment plant was evaluated. For the bioaugmentation step a product containing an enrichment of microorganisms from the Archaea domain was used to enhance the performance of the reactor for treating reject water. The experiment was carried out in two parallel lab-scale sequencing batch reactors. The first one (SBR A) was bioaugmented with a suspension of microorganisms from the Archaea domain, while the second reactor (SBR B) was not bioaugmented. The results here presented show that the SBR technology could sustain efficient NH ₄ ⁺ –N and chemical oxyden demand removal rates and can be applied for the treatment of reject water. Moreover, the addition of microorganisms belonging to the Archaea domain improved the SBR overall operation, especially when the loading in the influent was increased. Administering Archaea to the reactor had also a positive effect on ammonia oxidation as well as on the nitrite removal.     

Human Endometrial Carcinogenesis Is Associated with Significant Reduction in Long Non-Coding RNA,TERRA

Telomeres are transcribed as long non-coding RNAs called TERRAs (Telomeric repeat containing RNA) that participate in a variety of cellular regulatory functions. High telomerase activity (TA) is associated with endometrial cancer (EC). This study aimed to examine the levels of three TERRAs, transcribed at chromosomes 1q-2q-4q-10q-13q-22q, 16p and 20q in healthy (n = 23) and pathological (n = 24) human endometrium and to examine their association with cellular proliferation, TA and telomere lengths. EC samples demonstrated significantly reduced levels of TERRAs for Chromosome 16p (Ch-16p) (p < 0.002) and Chromosome 20q (Ch-20q) (p = 0.0006), when compared with the postmenopausal samples. No significant correlation was found between TERRA levels and TA but both Ch-16p and Ch-20q TERRA levels negatively correlated with the proliferative marker Ki67 (r = −0.35, p = 0.03 and r = −0.42, p = 0.01 respectively). Evaluation of single telomere length analysis (STELA) at XpYp telomeres demonstrated a significant shortening in EC samples when compared with healthy tissues (p = 0.002). We detected TERRAs in healthy human endometrium and observed altered individual TERRA-specific levels in malignant endometrium. The negative correlation of TERRAs with cellular proliferation along with their significant reduction in EC may suggest a role for TERRAs in carcinogenesis and thus future research should explore TERRAs as potential therapeutic targets in EC.     

Breakage Prediction of Laminated Glass Using the “Sacrificial Ply” Design Concept

Laminated architectural glass has proven to be well suited for use in glazing systems that must resist wind-borne debris impacts. When the inner glass ply in a laminated window unit remains unbroken after wind-borne debris impacts on the outer glass ply, the integrity of the building envelope is preserved. A mechanics-based analytical model is developed to predict the cumulative probability of inner glass ply breakage in laminated architectural glass subjected to simulated wind-borne debris impacts on the outer glass ply. A nonlinear dynamic finite-element analysis is employed to compute stresses in each layer of the laminate due to impact. Based on the cumulative damage theory, the two-parameter Weibull distribution is used to characterize the cumulative probability of inner glass ply breakage. The analytical predictive model is calibrated using available experimental data on material parameters. Cumulative probabilities of inner glass ply breakage predicted by the analytical model are in agreement with the corresponding experimental data.     

Effect of interfacial mobility on flexural strength and fracture toughness of glass/epoxy laminates

Mechanical testing and surface fractography were used to characterize the fracture of E-glass fiber reinforced epoxy composites as a function of the silane coupling agent used. -Aminopropyltriethoxysilane (APS) and -aminobutyltriethoxysilane (ABS) were used because these have been shown to have different interfacial mobilities at multilayer coverage. The values of the properties studied generally increased from untreated c, as determined from a Mode I translaminar fracture toughness tests, for the untreated composites (10.5 ± 0.4 kJ/m²) was lower than that for the ABS-treated composites (14.3 ± 2.1 kJ/m²) which was lower than that for the APS-treated composites (17.1 ± 2.4 kJ/m²). Macroscopic observations showed that a larger fiber debonding area was formed in the crack tip region for the untreated glass composites, suggesting poorer bonding compared to those treated with coupling agents. Since these silanes have similar chemistry, the differences were attributed to differences in the interfacial mobility of the coupling agent layers.