Future space exploration missions and campaigns will require sophisticated tools to help plan and analyze logistics. To encourage their use, space logistics tools must be usable: a design concept encompassing terms such as efficiency, effectiveness, and satisfaction. This paper presents a usability study of two such tools: SpaceNet, a discrete event simulation tool and a comparable spreadsheet-...

In the 1970’s, Albert Crewe demonstrated with scanning transmission electron microscopy that field emission sources allowed spectacular improvement (i.e., atomic resolution) in the field of electron microscopy [1]. Several groups in the USA, Great Britain, and France began to work on point ion sources in order to bring similar improvements to ion instruments, especially to secondary ion mass sp...

Language-based tools necessarily translate textual source code into grammar-based representations. During translation, tools such as compilers and analyzers are generally free to discard comments and white space, which have no impact on the code’s formal meaning. Tools that produce transformed source code for human consumption enjoy no such freedom. Comments and white space are crucial to the c...

B ird and Emery report in this issue of PNAS (1) that rooks (Corvus frugilegus), corvids that do not habitually use tools in the wild, appear to possess tool-related capabilities hitherto known only in their tool-using relatives, the New Caledonian crows (Corvus moneduloides) (2–5). Their findings are striking in more than one respect, but it is of particular interest to evaluate their signific...

This paper interweaves the notions of distributed intelligence and scaffolding with fading in discussing the nature of the modes of use of artifacts as tools, particularly computational artifacts. We introduce the notions of tools for living and tools for learning as parts of a framework for evaluating how artifacts are used and as broad guidelines for the design of artifacts. The tools concept...

Chemical classification and labelling systems may be roughly similar from one country to another but there are significant differences too. In order to harmonize various chemical classification systems and ultimately provide consistent chemical hazard communication tools worldwide, the Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals (GHS) was endorsed by the United Natio...