The influence of serifs on 'h' and 'i': useful knowledge from design-led scientific research

The typographical naivety of much scientific legibility research has caused designers to question the value of the research and the results. Examining the reasons underlying this questioning, the paper discusses the importance of designers being more accepting of scientific findings, and why legibility investigations have value. To demonstrate how typographic knowledge can be incorporated into the design of studies to increase their validity, the paper reports on a new investigation into the role of serifs when viewed at a distance. The experiment looks into the identification of the lowercase letters ‘j’, ‘i’, ‘l’, ‘b’, ‘h’, ‘n’, ‘u’, and ‘a’ in isolation. All of the letters originate in the same typeface and are presented in one version with serifs and one version without serifs. Although the experiment found no overall legibility difference between the sans serif and the serif versions, the study showed that letters with serifs placed on the vertical extremes were more legible at a distance than the same letters in a sans serif. These findings can therefore provide specific guidance on the design of individual letters and demonstrate the product of collaboration between designer and scientist on the planning, implementation, and analysis of the study.

Precise analysis of array usage in scientific programs

The automatic transformation of sequential programs for efficient execution on parallel computers involves a number of analyses and restructurings of the input. Some of these analyses are based on computing array sections, a compact description of a range of array elements. Array sections describe the set of array elements that are either read or written by program statements. These sections can be compactly represented using shape descriptors such as regular sections, simple sections, or generalized convex regions. However, binary operations such as Union performed on these representations do not satisfy a straightforward closure property, e.g., if the operands to Union are convex, the result may be nonconvex. Approximations are resorted to in order to satisfy this closure property. These approximations introduce imprecision in the analyses and, furthermore, the imprecisions resulting from successive operations have a cumulative effect. Delayed merging is a technique suggested and used in some of the existing analyses to minimize the effects of approximation. However, this technique does not guarantee an exact solution in a general setting. This article presents a generalized technique to precisely compute Union which can overcome these imprecisions.

Expert consensus document: the International Scientific Association for Probiotics and Prebiotics consensus statement on the scope and appropriate use of the term probiotic.

An expert panel was convened in October 2013 by the International Scientific Association for Probiotics and Prebiotics (ISAPP) to discuss the field of probiotics. It is now 13 years since the definition of probiotics and 12 years after guidelines were published for regulators, scientists and industry by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the WHO (FAO/WHO). The FAO/WHO definition of a probiotic—“live microorganisms which when administered in adequate amounts confer a health benefit on the host”—was reinforced as relevant and sufficiently accommodating for current and anticipated applications. However, inconsistencies between the FAO/WHO Expert Consultation Report and the FAO/WHO Guidelines were clarified to take into account advances in science and applications. A more precise use of the term 'probiotic' will be useful to guide clinicians and consumers in differentiating the diverse products on the market. This document represents the conclusions of the ISAPP consensus meeting on the appropriate use and scope of the term probiotic.