Lab Study Research Articles

Deep profile adjustment and oil displacement sweep control technique for abnormally high temperature and high salinity reservoirs

Abstract To improve water flooding sweeping efficiency and oil displacement efficiency in reservoirs with abnormally high temperature and high salinity during late development stage, taking Gasikule E 3 1 reservoir as the research object, lab study and field test of sweep control technique (SCT) were conducted. Performance evaluation and field test results of soft microgel (SMG) agent show that: SCT has good thermal stability in the target reservoir and an effective period of 100−120 d in the field test, and the success rate of SCT can be greatly increased by adjusting particle size and concentration of the gel. Unlike polymer flooding or polymer-gel flooding which improves oil recovery by enhancing sweep efficiency, SCT can improve oil displacement and water sweep efficiency, and its displacement mechanisms have been confirmed by the lab experiment and field test. The SCT has been applied in six well groups in the target reservoir, resulting in a cumulative oil increment of 1.03×10 4 tons, water production drop of 4.79×10 4 m 3 , and an input-output ratio of 1:2.09. But when international oil price is low, SCT project may have high failure risk in application to reservoirs with abnormally high temperature and high salinity.

A Method Based on Patterns for Deriving Key Performance Indicators from Organizational Objectives

Organizational strategic alignment implies consistency among the organizational elements. Organizational objectives act as essential elements for leading such alignment. In addition, key performance indicators (KPIs) have demonstrated usefulness for assisting the strategic alignment allowing for a holistic control of the organization. Some approaches emphasizing objective-KPI relationships have been proposed; however, they lack of a fully appropriate method for treating organizational objectives, KPIs, and objective-KPI relationships. They exhibit some drawbacks in terms of ambiguity, stakeholder understandability, and subjectivity. In this paper, we propose a method for overcoming such drawbacks, by using pre-conceptual-schema-based organizational patterns as a way to operationalize organizational objectives in terms of the KPIs. So, a systematic method for deriving a set of candidate KPIs from a specific organizational objective is provided. In addition, we present a lab study in order to illustrate the main aspects of this proposal.

Natural Shell

Scripting is a widely-used way to automate the execution of tasks. Despite the popularity of scripting, it remains difficult to use for both beginners and experts: because of the cryptic commands for the first group, and incompatible syntaxes across different systems, for the latter group. The authors introduce Natural Shell, an assistant for enabling end-users to generate commands and scripts for various purposes. Natural Shell automatically synthesizes scripts for different shell systems based on natural language descriptions. By interacting with Natural Shell, new users can learn the basics of scripting languages without the obstacles from the incomprehensible syntaxes. On the other hand, the authors' tool frees more advanced users from manuals when they switch shell systems. The authors have developed a prototype system and demonstrate its effectiveness with a benchmark of 50 examples of popular shell commands collected from online forums. In addition, the authors analyzed the usage of Natural Shell in a lab study that involves 10 participants with different scripting skill levels. Natural Shell effectively assists the users to generate commands in assigned syntaxes and greatly streamlines their learning and using experience.

Of Waste and Waists: The Effect of Plate Material on Food Consumption and Waste

AbstractTwo lab studies and three field studies indicate that plate disposability influences the amount of food wasted. The first lab study indicates that more food served on disposable (i.e., paper) plates is wasted than when the same food is served on permanent (i.e., hard plastic) plates. Study 2 employs an implicit association test (IAT) to confirm that disposable plates are strongly associated with behavior to stop eating while, simultaneously, permanent plates are more strongly associated with a keep eating behavior. Three field studies (3A, 3B, and 3C) indicate that this effect maintains when instead of being served a fixed quantity of food, participants select the amount and type of food.

The Company We Keep: A Competitive Test for How Another's Obesity Impacts Employee Job Performance

Amidst the growing prevalence of both obesity and organizational efforts to promote climates of inclusion, work has shown that discrimination of the obese may be transferring to the coworkers around the obese (i.e. a mere proximity effect). In a field and lab study, I test when and how another’s stigmatized classification may be transferring to a non-stigmatized employee. I further test its impact on job-performance. In a competitive test of three theoretically driven explanations, I see if the innocent proximal bystander is not so innocent. Amidst an explanation of global discrimination for being around the obese, I also test if the employee may be taking on the stereotypes of the obese or may be ruining the relationship with the obese because of negative views. I find that obesity stigma does transfer to the non-obese working around the obese, and, further, that this has an impact on the employee’s job performance. In contrast to the discrimination lens taken from past research, results show the proximal employee is not being discriminated against but uses the obese coworker as a prime to take on cognitive and emotional stereotypes of the obese. Results further show that employees are more vulnerable to stereotypes if they hold a bias against obesity. In all, it appears that those stigmatized in an organization can affect those around them, but that it causes an internal rather than external change. Implications for the discrimination and justice literature are discussed.

Impediments to forgiveness: Victim and transgressor attributions of intent and guilt.

We investigate the possibility that victims and transgressors are predictably miscalibrated in their interpretation of a transgression, and that this has important implications for the process of forgiveness. Across 5 studies, we find that victims underestimate how much transgressors desire forgiveness. This is driven by a 2-part mediating mechanism: First, victims are more likely than transgressors to see the transgression as intentional, and second, this causes victims to believe transgressors feel less guilty than transgressors report feeling. Ultimately, this chain of asymmetries stymies the processes of forgiveness because victims tend to withhold forgiveness from those who actually desire it. The predicted effect emerged in the context of scenario studies (Studies 3 and 5), a real transgression that occurred in the lab (Study 4), transgressions from participants' pasts (Study 1), and transgressions from the same day (Study 2). In Study 4, we describe a new procedure in which 1 participant commits a real transgression against another participant, providing an effective means for researchers to study real-time transgressions from the perspective of both parties involved. Furthermore, in Study 5, we found that when victims were encouraged to empathize with the transgressor, the asymmetries were attenuated, suggesting a means of overcoming this impediment to forgiveness. (PsycINFO Database Record

A Performance Comparison of On-Hand versus On-Phone Nonvisual Input by Blind and Sighted Users

On-body interaction, in which the user employs one's own body as an input surface, has the potential to provide efficient mobile computing access for blind users. It offers increased tactile and proprioceptive feedback compared to a phone and, because it is always available, it should allow for quick audio output control without having to retrieve the phone from a pocket or bag. Despite this potential, there has been little investigation of on-body input for users with visual impairments. To assess blind users’ performance with on-body input versus touchscreen input, we conducted a controlled lab study with 12 sighted and 11 blind participants. Study tasks included basic pointing and drawing more complex shape gestures. Our findings confirm past work with sighted users showing that the hand results in faster pointing than the phone. Most important, we also show that: (1) the performance gain of the hand applies to blind users as well, (2) the accuracy of where the pointing finger first lands is higher with the hand than the phone, (3) on-hand pointing performance is affected by the location of targets, and (4) shape gestures drawn on the hand result in higher gesture recognition rates than those on the phone. Our findings highlight the potential of on-body input to support accessible nonvisual mobile computing.

Two ' s company, but three ' s no crowd

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to investigate when and how people working in collaboration could be benefitted by an exploratory search task, specifically focussing on team size and its effect on the outcomes of such a task.Design/methodology/approach– The paper investigates the effects of team sizes on exploratory search tasks using a lab study involving 68 participants – 12 individuals, ten dyads, and 12 triads. In order to assess various factors during their exploratory search sessions, an evaluation framework is synthesized using relevant literature. The framework consists of measures for five groups of quantities relevant to exploratory search: information exposure, information relevancy, information search, performance, and learning.Findings– The analyses on the user study data using the proposed framework reveals that while individuals working alone cover more information than those working in teams, the teams (dyads and triads) are able to achieve better information coverage and search performance due to their collaborative strategies. In many of the measures, the triads are found to be even better than the dyads, demonstrating the value of adding a collaborator to a search process with multiple facets.Originality/value– The findings shed light on not only how collaborative work could help in achieving better results in exploratory search, but also how team sizes affect specific aspects – information exposure, information relevancy, information search, performance, and learning – of exploratory search. This has implications for system designers, information managers, and educators.

Does electronic cigarette liquid nicotine concentration and user experience influence plasma nicotine concentration?

Does electronic cigarette liquid nicotine concentration and user experience influence plasma nicotine concentration?

Content analysis of cannabis smartphone applications

Content analysis of cannabis smartphone applications

The Affective Experience of Novice Computer Programmers

Novice students (N = 99) participated in a lab study in which they learned the fundamentals of computer programming in Python using a self-paced computerized learning environment involving a 25-min scaffolded learning phase and a 10-min unscaffolded fadeout phase. Students provided affect judgments at approximately 100 points (every 15 s) over the course of viewing videos of their faces and computer screens recorded during the learning session. The results indicated that engagement, confusion, frustration, boredom, and curiosity were the most frequent affective states, while anxiety, happiness, anger, surprise, disgust, sadness, and fear were rare. Confusion + frustration and curiosity + engagement were identified as two frequently co-occurring pairs of affective states. An analysis of affect dynamics indicated that there were reciprocal transitions between engagement and confusion, confusion and frustration, and one way transitions between frustration and boredom and boredom and engagement. Considering interaction events in tandem with affect revealed that constructing code was the central activity that preceded and followed each affective state. Further, confusion and frustration followed errors and preceded hint usage, while curiosity and engagement followed reading or coding. An analysis of affect-learning relationships after partialling out control variables (e.g., scholastic aptitude, hint usage) indicated that boredom (r = −.149) and frustration (r = −.218) were negative correlated with learning while transitions between confusion → frustration (r = .103), frustration → confusion (r = .105), and boredom → engagement (r = .282) were positively correlated with learning. Implications of the results to theory on affect incidence and dynamics and on the design of affect-aware learning environments are discussed.

Investigating On-Screen Gamepad Designs for Smartphone-Controlled Video Games

On-screen gamepads are increasingly used as controllers for video games on distant screens, yet lack the typical tactile feedback known from hardware controllers. We conducted a comparative lab study to investigate four smartphone gamepads inspired by traditional game controllers and mobile game controls (directional buttons, directional pad, floating joystick, tilt control). The study consisted of both completing a formal control test as well as controlling two popular video games of different genres ( Pac-Man and Super Mario Bros. ). The results indicate that the directional buttons require the most attention of the user, however, work precisely for direction-restricted navigational tasks. Directional pad and joystick showed a similar performance, yet they encourage drifting and unintended operations when the user is focused on the remote screen. While currently unfamiliar to many users, the floating joystick can reduce the glances at the device. Tilt turned out to be not sufficiently precise and quick for the investigated tasks. The article concludes with derived design guidelines with easily realizable measures for typical contexts such as casual gaming at home or spontaneous gaming on public displays.

The motivation and inhibition of breaking the rules: Personal values structures predict unethicality

We theorized and tested the relationship of personal value systems with unethical attitudes and behavior. Results from three studies using 16 diverse multi-national samples (N=107,087) demonstrated the complexity of motivations underlying unethicality. Across contexts and cultures, for attitudes (Study 1 meta-analysis) and behaviors in the lab (Study 2) and in real-life (Study 3), we consistently found that the values theory circumplex structure predicted the inhibition and motivation of unethicality. Unethicality was positively associated with self-enhancement values and negatively associated with self-transcendence and conservation values. However, self-transcendence and conservation values were associated with the inhibition of different types of unethicality. The relationship of openness-to-change values with unethicality was generally positive but the effect size varied depending on context.

EdgeBraille: Braille-based text input for touch devices

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discuss the issue of tailored text input methods for visually impaired and blind users that are needed on touchscreen devices to support their accessibility. Previous approaches still have issues related to the necessity of searching for characters, slow entry speeds or cumbersome handling. Design/methodology/approach – The authors developed a new Braille-based text input method named EdgeBraille, which allows entering six-point Braille characters by swiping one finger along the edges of the touchscreen in an arbitrary sequence. The approach was compared with the current standard method of a talking keyboard, first in a short-term lab study (14 participants) and then during two weeks of daily training (seven participants). Findings – Overall EdgeBraille was perceived well by the users and possesses favourable handling characteristics. In terms of user performance (words per minute and error rate) the authors found no significant differences between the two methods. However, based on the evaluation results and the feedback of the participants the authors identified possibilities for improvement in terms of a smaller EdgeBraille version allowing the entry of eight-point Braille characters, and conducted a proof-of-concept study (seven participants). Originality/value – In the paper the authors comprehensively reflect on advantages and disadvantages of Braille-based methods in general and EdgeBraille in particular. The authors argue why and how Braille-based methods should serve as complement to current text input paradigms based on talking keyboard and indicate future directions of research.

Derailing the streetcar named desire. Cognitive distractions reduce individual differences in cravings and unhealthy snacking in response to palatable food

People who are sensitive to food temptations are prone to weight gain and obesity in food-rich environments. Understanding the factors that drive their desire to eat is key to limiting their reactions to available food. This study tested whether individual differences in sensitivity to hedonic food cues are cognitively based and, accordingly, can be regulated by blocking cognitive resources. To this end, one lab study (Study 1; N = 91) and one field study (Study 2; N = 63) measured sensitivity to hedonic food cues using the Power of Food Scale (PFS; Lowe et al., 2009) and assessed participants' appetitive responses to high-calorie food options. To test the role of cognitive elaboration of food cues, participants completed a menu-selection task to induce food cravings and then were free to elaborate those cravings (control group) or were blocked from doing so by cognitive distraction (playing Tetris, solving puzzles; experimental group). Compared to non-sensitive participants, sensitive participants displayed a greater attentional bias to high-calorie food (Study 1), reported stronger cravings (Study 2), and more often chose an unhealthy snack (Studies 1 & 2), but only when they had not been distracted. When distracted, all participants were similarly unresponsive to high-calorie food. This finding suggests that temptation can be effectively controlled by blocking people's cognitive resources, even for people highly sensitive to hedonic food cues.

CStress: Towards a Gold Standard for Continuous Stress Assessment in the Mobile Environment.

Recent advances in mobile health have produced several new models for inferring stress from wearable sensors. But, the lack of a gold standard is a major hurdle in making clinical use of continuous stress measurements derived from wearable sensors. In this paper, we present a stress model (called cStress) that has been carefully developed with attention to every step of computational modeling including data collection, screening, cleaning, filtering, feature computation, normalization, and model training. More importantly, cStress was trained using data collected from a rigorous lab study with 21 participants and validated on two independently collected data sets - in a lab study on 26 participants and in a week-long field study with 20 participants. In testing, the model obtains a recall of 89% and a false positive rate of 5% on lab data. On field data, the model is able to predict each instantaneous self-report with an accuracy of 72%.

A Difference-Education Intervention Equips First-Generation College Students to Thrive in the Face of Stressful College Situations

A growing social psychological literature reveals that brief interventions can benefit disadvantaged students. We tested a key component of the theoretical assumption that interventions exert long-term effects because they initiate recursive processes. Focusing on how interventions alter students’ responses to specific situations over time, we conducted a follow-up lab study with students who had participated in a difference-education intervention 2 years earlier. In the intervention, students learned how their social-class backgrounds mattered in college. The follow-up study assessed participants’ behavioral and hormonal responses to stressful college situations. We found that difference-education participants discussed their backgrounds in a speech more frequently than control participants did, an indication that they retained the understanding of how their backgrounds mattered. Moreover, among first-generation students (i.e., students whose parents did not have 4-year degrees), those in the difference-education condition showed greater physiological thriving (i.e., anabolic-balance reactivity) than those in the control condition, which suggests that they experienced their working-class backgrounds as a strength.

Rigorous tests of gene-environment interactions in a lab study of the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR), alcohol exposure, and aggression.

Naturalistic studies of gene-environment interactions (G X E) have been plagued by several limitations, including difficulty isolating specific environmental risk factors from other correlated aspects of the environment, gene-environment correlation (rGE ), and the use of a single genetic variant to represent the influence of a gene. We present results from 235 Finnish young men in two lab studies of aggression and alcohol challenge that attempt to redress these limitations of the extant G X E literature. Specifically, we use a latent variable modeling approach in an attempt to more fully account for genetic variation across the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) and to robustly test its main effects on aggression and its interaction with alcohol exposure. We also modeled aggression as a latent variable comprising various indices, including the average and maximum levels of aggression, the earliest trial on which aggression was expressed, and the proportion of trials on which the minimum and maximum levels of aggression were expressed. The best fitting model for the genetic variation across OXTR included six factors derived from an exploratory factor analysis, roughly corresponding to six haplotype blocks. Aggression levels were higher on trials in which participants were administered alcohol, won, or were provoked. There was a significant main effect of OXTR on aggression across studies after controlling for covariates. The interaction of OXTR and alcohol was also significant across studies, such that OXTR had stronger effects on aggression in the alcohol administration condition. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Developing Design Guidelines for a Visual Vocabulary of Electronic Medical Information to Improve Health Literacy

Poor health literacy, or the ability to interpret and make judgments about one’s health, affects the effectiveness of healthcare services and people’s quality of life. We explored design principles on how to design visually salient, legible and interpretable medical graphics to promote comprehension and recall of electronic medical diagnostic information, an essential component of personal health records, for populations with limited health literacy. We first conducted a two-stage investigation to confirm that people can comprehend pictorial representations of medical conditions and treatments and improve their health literacy. We then designed a set of medical diagnostics graphics, based on the principles of information design derived from a large set of information graphics in various domains. Evaluated in a lab study, our medical diagnostic graphics were found to be capable of improving people’s perceived comprehension and recall, and were considered easy to understand and very useful for individuals with limited health literacy. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS • Medical graphics in electronic personal health records can improve people’s comprehension and recall of diagnostic information, and enhance their health literacy. • People are good at recognizing simple symptoms and actions from medical graphics, but have difficulty in integrating pieces of information to make differentiation and judgment. • Photo-realistic illustrations provide the most details to support interpretation, but can be disturbing; animations better depict procedure and change of status, but require patience in viewing; while clipart type of representations make good use of visual cues to convey details and process, and are quick to perceive. • It is important to properly design visual features that highlight important facts, reveal details, demonstrate cause–effects, elicit terminology and measurements, e.g. color, line, symbols, text and numbers, frames, view and perspective, change of scale, style, as well as the presence and design of human character.

Information Seeking in Uncertainty Management Theory: Exposure to Information About Medical Uncertainty and Information-Processing Orientation as Predictors of Uncertainty Management Success

Uncertainty management theory outlines the processes through which individuals cope with health-related uncertainty. Information seeking has been frequently documented as an important uncertainty management strategy. The reported study investigates exposure to specific types of medical information during a search, and one's information-processing orientation as predictors of successful uncertainty management (i.e., a reduction in the discrepancy between the level of uncertainty one feels and the level one desires). A lab study was conducted in which participants were primed to feel more or less certain about skin cancer and then were allowed to search the World Wide Web for skin cancer information. Participants’ search behavior was recorded and content analyzed. The results indicate that exposure to two health communication constructs that pervade medical forms of uncertainty (i.e., severity and susceptibility) and information-processing orientation predicted uncertainty management success.