The paper argues that inciting curiosity is the key educational requirement in teaching designers who wish to participate in HCI product development and research. An education case story is presented which illustrates the introduction of usability lab work into a course primarily concerned with ‘creative’ art and design approaches to designing interactive media and products. The novelty of eval...

After a long vacancy, the nation's top science job may be filled by fall. President George W. Bush last week chose John H. Marburger III, a 60-year-old physicist, former university president, and current national lab chief, as his nominee for the post. Marburger vows to bring scientific rigor to the Administration's decisions but warns that he will be just one of many voices offering advice on ...

Hot-melt pressure-sensitive adhesive (HMPSA) is an environmentally benign which typically processed without solvent in industries. However, casting solution method commonly used for experimental purposes the lab convenience. Therefore, seven types of with different polarities, including toluene as most solvent, were investigated this work to study feasibilities. Quick bond strength and holding ...

One of the great societal challenges that we face today concerns the move to more sustainable patterns of energy consumption, reflecting the need to balance both individual consumer choice and societal demands. In order for this ‘energy turnaround’ to take place, however, reducing residential energy consumption must go beyond using energy-efficient devices: More sustainable behaviour and lifest...

UNLABELLED To fabricate high-performance metal-halide perovskite solar cells, a thermal annealing process is indispensable in preparing high quality perovskite film. And usually such annealing is performed on hot plate. However hot-plate annealing could cause problems such as inhomogeneous heating (induced by non-tight contact between the sample and the plate), it is also not fit for large scal...

This study was conducted to verify the effect of an electric pulse on growth of crops (lettuce and hot pepper) that were cultivated in lab-scale soil. The electric pulse generated from direct-circuited 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 V of electricity by periodic exchange of the anode and cathode was charged to a culture soil that is an electrically pulsed culture soil (EPCS) but not charged to a conventiona...

To develop high-quality silage starters adapted to hot and humid weather, 12 LAB isolates from silage produced in Kyushu and Okinawa, Japan were characterized based on their morphological features, growth curves and sugar utilization. In addition, the nucleotide sequences of the V2-V3 region of their 16S rRNA genes and the 16S-23S rRNA intergenic spacer (ITS) regions were determined. The isolat...

Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) have been shown to be inhibitory toward various pathogenic bacteria during refrigerated storage of ground beef samples and in subprimals. In this study, the effectiveness of a combination of 4 strains of Lactobacillus at reducing Salmonella in turkey products was evaluated to improve the final safety of the product. Turkey breasts (hot and chilled) were inoculated wit...

We previously described in a paper published in BIOS an undergraduate lab activity involving the gene cloning, expression, and purification of Thermus aquaticus (Taq) DNA polymerase, an enzyme used in the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Based on the large number of requests for biological materials and questions about the protocols this paper invoked, we explored methods to simplify the protei...