User-friendly Design Research Articles

Recent progress with high resolution X-ray microscopy at the XM-1

The XM-1 x-ray microscope is located at the Advanced Lights Source at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. It is a full-field transmission x-ray microscope utilizing zone plates for both the condenser and objective lenses. It was designed to be a high-throughput tool for high-resolution x-ray microscopy. It continues to be a valuable scientific tool with a user-friendly design, and in recent years has been modified to probe a wider range of scientific samples. It has a spatial resolution of 25 nanometers using high-precision optics fabricated with electron beam lithography. It has been used for magnetic imaging with contrast due to x-ray magnetic circular dichroism. This enables high-resolution, element-specific imaging of magnetic domains, even in applied magnetic fields. It has been used for cryo-tomography of biological samples with freezing and preservation of samples by helium gas. It has been used to study cement formation with high resolution imaging of the hydrated reaction. It has been used for studies of interconnects by exploiting the recently increased energy range that allows imaging at up to I .8 keV for transmission through silicon.

The Cambridge grammar of the English language

This book presents a new and comprehensive descriptive grammar of English, written by the principal authors in collaboration with an international research team of a dozen linguists in five countries. It represents a major advance over previous grammars by virtue of drawing systematically on the linguistic research carried out on English during the last forty years. It incorporates insights from the theoretical literature but presents them in a way that is accessible to readers without formal training in linguistics. It is based on a sounder and more consistent descriptive framework than previous large-scale grammars, and includes much more explanation of grammatical terms and concepts, together with justification for the ways in which the analysis differs from traditional grammar. The book contains twenty chapters and a guide to further reading. Its usefulness is enhanced by diagrams of sentence structure, cross-references between sections, a comprehensive index, and user-friendly design and typography throughout.

Decontamination of reusable instruments in primary care.

Staff who undertake effective decontamination in non-centralized settings such as general practices must be provided with training and easy-to-follow guidance. In this article we present a distillation of the current guidance in an industrial quality control format of fishbone charts. A fishbone chart (or cause-and-effect chart) depicts all the causes of an outcome in a logical way to facilitate the identification of a specific problem. We developed our fishbone chart to include instructions that, if followed, would achieve safe and effective cleaning and sterilization. A survey of those given the charts showed high user acceptability: 76% found the fishbone better than existing guidelines - although the response rate was low at 46%. The charts will enable those involved in decontamination of instruments, including managers and infection control staff, to audit the facilities, equipment and practices. The use of industrial quality tools may assist other specialties that require complicated and comprehensive guidelines to be presented in a more user-friendly design.

Computer simulation and optimization of pervaporation process

A computational model has been developed for the simulation and optimization of the pervaporation process. This model involves solving coupled mass and energy balances, and chemical potential equations using a genetic algorithm. A visual, windows-based, user-friendly design software has been developed using VB programming language. Using this software, two dehydration cases have been studied. The results presented here indicate the value of this software as a design tool.

Evaluating internet for extension in agriculture

Summary Effective adoption of Internet for extension in agriculture is elusive despite substantial investments in human capital and other resources. To better understand the process EUNITA (a concerted EU project www.eclipse.it/EUNITA/main.html), INEA (the Italian National Institute of Agricultural Economics - www.inea.it) and the Toscana Extension service sponsored a workshop in Alberese, Italy, to evaluate its adoption's critical success factors and failures. A summary of participant's opinions indicated general agreement on benefits such as: Updated and comprehensive information; availability of new types, “Just in time”, more and competing information sources; “One stop information shopping”; ease of exchange of information and/or ideas and facilities to discuss them; easier collaboration and/or access to peers, other farmers and experts; a ranked list of useful information such as updated market lists, weather information, plant protection regulations, recommendations and products, news, bulletins, and more. There was general agreement relating to critical success factors such as: Internet accessibility on individual farms or at farmer-gathering locations; inputting of information that farmers/extension want and/or need; identifying a tangible benefit to information users; defining and serving target audiences; packaging information in a way that it can be understood and applied; a simple, user-friendly search engine and interface design; responsibility for the information quality and reliability; revealed preference as a guiding factor for Internet development. The going deeper into the summary of detailed participant's opinions provided a practical, baseline, reference for Internet adoption planning, program implementation and goal achievement evaluation.

Control System Design Automation for Mechanical Systems

In this paper, a user-friendly and comprehensive control system design package called Control System Design Automation (CSDA) is described. The system consists of five main blocks: a requirement interpretation block, a modeling block, an analysis/design block, a database management and knowledge base block, and a verification block. The requirement interpretation block transforms the specifications in terms of the application to those in terms of control. The analysis/design block selects an optimal control structure and determines the controller parameters. In addition to the conventional design methods, CSDA also contains the more recent design methods such as the LMI design approach and the Kessler/Manabe method. The LMI approach can obtain a controller which satisfies multiple specification items at the same time. The configuration of the system as well as the analysis/design block are described in detail in this paper.

Behavior and Design of Single Adhesive Anchors under Tensile Load in Uncracked Concrete

A user-friendly model for the design of single adhesive anchors subjected to tension loading in uncracked concrete is presented. Descriptions of the various types of adhesive anchor systems is included as well as a summary of previously published design models. The development of the user-friendly design model includes a comparison of the model and previously published models to a database including 888 European and American tests. The comparison shows that the simple user-friendly model provides a better fit to the database than more complicated design models previously presented. Although the model is limited to anchors located away from free edges, it provides the basis for development of models that account for the effect of edges, anchor groups, and other design conditions.

On-line calculation of the dispersion of radıoactive substances in air on the basıs of a Lagrangian model / Online-Berechnung der Ausbreitung luftgetragener radioaktiver Stoffe mit einem Lagrange-Modell

The Federal Land Bavaria introduced, in the year 1978, the first remote monitoring system for nuclear reactors (KFU) in the world. A dispersion model developed on the basis of Gaussian dispersion theory was incorporated into this in the form of systems module. In the third developmental stage of the Bavarian KFU system, a Lagrangian particle model is applied for the calculation of the dispersion of air-borne radioactive releases. In the process of this, the influence factors arising from topographical and meteorological conditions, the nature of buildings in close proximity to the nuclear power plant, and the variability of emissions over time, are brought into the calculation, and the accuracy of the results is thus considerably increased. By means of a user-friendly menu design, graphic presentations of air concentration and ground contamination as well as the resulting radiation exposure are offered for the immediate area within a range of 5 km, for a mid-range zone of up to 10 km distance, and for a more distant field within a radius of 50 km around the nuclear power plants, with, in each case, several options for the background grid, providing information on administrative borders, the road network, or the form of grid. The Lagrangian particle model has been in use in the Bavarian State Ministry for Development and Environmental Affairs in its off-line version, since the autumn of 1996. The on-line version will, in 1997, be put into use within the Bavarian KFU system.

User-friendly design method for fuzzy logic controller

A new means for designating membership functions in a fuzzy logic controller (FLC) is presented. The method allows a novice to construct a set of membership functions, called shrinking-span membership functions (SSMFs), for a specific linguistic variable systematically by using only two parameters: number of elements of the term set and the shrinking factor for that linguistic variable. The SSMFs have different spans for various term set elements in the universe of discourse and this gives the FLC more power to deal with the nonlinearity of the control problems encountered in the real applications. When there is not enough domain knowledge about the process, the SSMFs make it possible for a designer to set up a reasonable and practical rule base for the FLC. According to the computational simulations presented, the satisfactory performance of such an FLC for several test problems can be acquired without laborious optimisation of the tuning parameters. Therefore the proposed approach narrows the gap between a theoretical FLC and a practical one and makes the FLC more down-to-earth.

An improved stem heat balance method using analog heat control

This paper describes a modified sap flow meter appropriate for sap flow measurements even on plants having an irregular stem and/or heat-sensitive bark, such as apple trees. The modifications build on the plant-friendly but not very user-friendly design of Weibel and De Vos (Plant and Soil, 1994). Three important improvements are achieved (1) the number of heat-controlling gauges that can be connected to one ‘Campbell 21X’ datalogger is increased from three to 32 by using an analog algorithm together with additional circuity consisting of sample-and-hold and power amplifiers; (2) the sap flow gauge is easier to install; (3) the gauge has a better adaptability to stem growth in the radial direction and to diurnal stem shrinking. Accuracy tests with the modified system were carried out under glasshouse conditions with potted apple trees having stem diameters between 15 and 45 mm. Using gravimetric weight loss as a reference method we found good reliability of all technical components and excellent measuring accuracy, with errors of less than 4% over a 24 h measuring interval and less than 15% over a period of 15 min. Also, in a 4 month field experiment with sap flow measurements on six 3-year-old apple trees rooted in the ground, the modified system proved highly reliable. After removing the gauges the stems were not ‘strangled’, nor was the tissue of the bark affected. Error analyses on the need to include a term for stored energy in the heat balance equation showed that the importance of stored energy increases substantially when the tree stem diameter is more than 30 mm.

User-Friendly Design Concept and Americans with Disabilities Act: Implications for the Architectural and Rehabilitation Communities

Survey forms were sent to the 113 architecture programs listed in the Guide to Architecture Schools in North America to determine the amount of focus on user-friendly design in their curricula. Eighty-four percent of the programs surveyed completed the form. The results indicate that only eight percent of the programs offer a specific course on the topic of user-friendly design, whereas, forty-five percent offer a course in which user-friendly design is covered as a sub-topic. Implications of the results for the architectural community and the rehabilitation community in relation to the Americans with Disabilities Act are presented.

Integrated simulation of buildings and evaporative cooling systems

Evaporative cooling can successfully be utilized for cooling indoor spaces in numerous areas in the world. These coolers are inexpensive, environmentally safe and energy efficient compared to conventional air-conditioners. To design the most efficient combination of a building and its evaporative cooling system an accessible and user-friendly design tool with short solution times is needed. Such a tool could not be found in existing literature. Available computer programs are either too complex or too simplified for successful design application. The lack of design tools can be ascribed to the difficulty in simplifying the simulation of the passive thermal performance of a building. A simplified but sufficiently accurate simulation procedure for passive buildings was recently developed and implemented in the computer program, EASY. This program provided a sound basis for the development of a design tool with the aid of which any type of evaporative cooler can be analysed. This includes regenerative systems coupled to any type of building. In this article it is shown how the analysis procedure for evaporative cooling systems was developed and coupled to the simplified building thermal simulation. The new tool is fast, easy to use and sufficiently accurate for design purposes. By utilizing this tool it was found that evaporative cooling systems can ensure thermal comfort in well-designed buildings in more than 80% of Southern Africa.

Needs and trends in integrated building and HVAC thermal design tools

Buildings are responsible for approximately 40% of the total energy consumption in developed countries. More than half of this is used to condition the indoor environment. Studies have shown that savings of between 30 and 70% may be realized through improved design and retrofit procedures for buildings and air conditioning equipment. Designing for energy efficiency requires a system approach that includes the building, the HVAC system and the controller. Traditional design philosophy based on load calculations is inadequate. New user-friendly design tools allowing an integrated simulation of the complete system are needed. The main features of a suitable design tool are identified. It should allow dynamic analysis of the passive performance of the building combined with pseudo-steady HVAC system simulation. HVAC component models should be based on simplified fundamental principle analysis to ensure flexibility. The tool should allow for a fully integrated simulation of the building, its HVAC system and controller. A flexible icon-based graphical interface must be complemented be expandable databases for all components to ensure user-friendly operation. The software must run on a personal computer and should also allow standard system design calculations, life-cycle cost analysis, automatic optimization features and data exchange with CAD software. No tool could be found that provided all of these needs. The use of such a tool will result in more energy-efficient solutions when designing, managing and retrofitting buildings. This will help to reduce the burden on the environment. The tool will make commissioning of new systems more precise and less laborious. The ability of the designer to guarantee desired comfort conditions will also be enhanced.

Selection of expert system shells for traffic signal design

Although the use of expert systems (ESs) as a problem-solving tool is relatively new in the transportation profession, it has been recognized that a well-designed ES can contribute in areas where knowledge domain requires an integration of expertise from various disciplines or is very complex and difficult to quantify. To minimize the effort involved in developing essential ES mechanisms, researchers often prefer to use ES shells which provide a standard inference procedure, knowledge representation, and a user-friendly design environment. However, commercial ES shells tend to be designed for only certain classes of problems, and are not as general and flexible as programming languages. More than 150 commercial ES shells are available in the microcomputer market. Most ES shells are ususally claimed by their vendors to be usable for almost any conceivable applications, but such claims have often proved to be extravagant. Hence, the selection of an efficient yet cost-effective commercial shell is one of the most critical tasks in ES development. In reviewing the the vital task of ES shell selection, this paper presents our experience in evaluating more than 30 ES shells for developing an ES for signal design. The proposed ES includes signal settings, phasing plans, controllers, and detector locations.

Diopran - An off-line Program System for Experimental System Analysis

DIOPRAN is an interactive program package for the experimental process analysis within the scope of analysis and design problems of systems and automation engineering. It contains robust methods for primary data processing as well as signal and system modelling. A user-friendly design of the user guiding has been particulary taken into consideration. The program system runs on 16- and 32 bit computers under the operating system MS-DOS.

A workstation approach to IC process and device design

IC designers are turning more and more to CAD tools to develop complex designs and to automate time-consuming tasks. Although there are a variety of integrated tools for many types of VLSI design, very few integrated systems have been built to address process and device design. Recognizing this need, researchers at MIT set out to define the requirements of a process and device design environment, implement a subset of these functions, and integrate the tools into a user-friendly design environment. As part of their work on creating a user-friendly environment, they developed the MASTIF workstation to provide graphic, window-oriented user interaction to process and device designers.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

The Man-Machine Interface for a Fault Tolerant Control System

Special problems arise in the design of the man-machine interface to a control computer that is fault tolerant. The interface to such a fault tolerant system presents challenges in design, operation and continuing diagnosis and maintenance. Design of a computer control system involves issues such as dealing with interrupts, satisfying the real time requirements, and scheduling of tasks that are incorporated with a real time operating system. A user friendly design interface is described, in which the system designer is freed from detailed considerations concerned with fault tolerance. During operation of the control system, the interface is designed not only for normal operator use, but also to deal with abnormal conditions such as system alarms. Normal operation also implies modification and enhancement of the control process. With a fault tolerant control system, it is additionally necessary to deal with the problem of detecting latent faults within the system. Diagnosis and repair combines hardware and software issues such as how to diagnose control problems, how to carry out hot repair of a system that is continuing to function, and the warm start problem of how to bring a newly repaired or replaced unit back into cooperative service. The paper examines the above issues and the particular problems and solutions to them that are appropriate when the control system is fault tolerant, i.e., is designed to mask the effect of faults.