littleBits go LARGE: making electronics more accessible to people with learning disabilities

The “littleBits go LARGE" project extends littleBits electronic modules, an existing product that is aimed at simplifying electronics for a wide range of audiences. In this project we augment the littleBits modules to make them more accessible to people with learning disabilities. We will demonstrate how we have made the modules easier to handle and manipulate physically, and how we are augmenting the design of the modules to make their functions more obvious and understandable.

Internationalization motives: sell more, buy better, upgrade and escape

Purpose – The purpose of this the paper is to review the motives for internationalization to clarify previous arguments and provide a theory-driven classification. Design/methodology/approach – The authors build on behavioral economics and propose a classification of internationalization motives as the result of the interaction among two dimensions, an economics-driven exploitation of existing resources or exploration of new resources, and a psychology-driven search for better host country conditions or avoidance of poor home country conditions. Findings – These two dimensions result in four internationalization motives: sell more, in which the company exploits existing resources at home and obtains better host country conditions; buy better, in which the company exploits existing resources abroad and avoids poor home country conditions; upgrade, in which the company explores for new resources, and it obtains better host country conditions; and escape, in which the company explores for new resources and avoids poor home country conditions. Originality/value – This theory-driven classification provides predictive power for future analyses of internationalization motives.

Adaptive communication: languages with more non-native speakers tend to have fewer word forms

Explaining the diversity of languages across the world is one of the central aims of typological, historical, and evolutionary linguistics. We consider the effect of language contact-the number of non-native speakers a language has-on the way languages change and evolve. By analysing hundreds of languages within and across language families, regions, and text types, we show that languages with greater levels of contact typically employ fewer word forms to encode the same information content (a property we refer to as lexical diversity). Based on three types of statistical analyses, we demonstrate that this variance can in part be explained by the impact of non-native speakers on information encoding strategies. Finally, we argue that languages are information encoding systems shaped by the varying needs of their speakers. Language evolution and change should be modeled as the co-evolution of multiple intertwined adaptive systems: On one hand, the structure of human societies and human learning capabilities, and on the other, the structure of language.

Towards more precise sugar beet management based on geostatistical analysis of spatial variability within fields

Within-field variation in sugar beet yield and quality was investigated in three commercial sugar beet fields in the east of England to identify the main associated variables and to examine the possibility of predicting yield early in the season with a view to spatially variable management of sugar beet crops. Irregular grid sampling with some purposively-located nested samples was applied. It revealed the spatial variability in each sugar beet field efficiently. In geostatistical analyses, most variograms were isotropic with moderate to strong spatial dependency indicating a significant spatial variation in sugar beet yield and associated growth and environmental variables in all directions within each field. The Kriged maps showed spatial patterns of yield variability within each field and visual association with the maps of other variables. This was confirmed by redundancy analyses and Pearson correlation coefficients. The main variables associated with yield variability were soil type, organic matter, soil moisture, weed density and canopy temperature. Kriged maps of final yield variability were strongly related to that in crop canopy cover, LAI and intercepted solar radiation early in the growing season, and the yield maps of previous crops. Therefore, yield maps of previous crops together with early assessment of sugar beet growth may make an early prediction of within-field variability in sugar beet yield possible. The Broom’s Barn sugar beet model failed to account for the spatial variability in sugar yield, but the simulation was greatly improved when corrected for early canopy development cover and when the simulated yield was adjusted for weeds and plant population. Further research to optimize inputs to maximise sugar yield should target the irrigation and fertilizing of areas within fields with low canopy cover early in the season.

Food geographies I: relational foodscapes and the busy-ness of being more-than-food

The study of foodscapes has spread throughout geography at the same time as food scholarship has spearheaded post-disciplinary research. This report argues that geographers have taken to post-disciplinarity to explore the ways that food is ‘more-than-food’ through analyses of the visceral nature of eating and politics and the vital (re)materializations of food’s cultural geographies. Visceral food geographies illuminate what I call the ‘contingent relationalities’ of food in the critical evaluation of the indeterminate, situated politics of ‘feeling food’ and those of the embodied collectivities of obesity. Questions remain, however, about how a visceral framework might be deployed for broader critiques within foodscapes and the study of human geography. The study of food’s vital materialisms opens up investigation into the practices of the ‘makings’ of meat, food waste and eating networks. Analysis of affect, embodiment and cultural practices is central to these theorizations and suggests consideration of the multiple materialisms of food, space and eating. There is, I contend, in the more radical, ‘post-relational’ approaches to food, the need for a note of caution. Exuberant claims for the ontological, vital agency of food should be tempered by, or at least run parallel to, critical questions of the real politik of political and practical agency in light of recent struggles over austerity, food poverty and food justice.

Investigating typographic differentiation: italics are more subtle than bold for emphasis

Text designers are likely to benefit from guidance on how to use typographic differentiation for emphasis. Three experiments use purposely-designed fonts to explore the size and nature of differences in the stylistic characteristics of fonts (weight, width, contrast, italic) which affect letter identification. Results indicate that words set in bold and expanded fonts, when alternated with words set in a Neutral test font, may impair performance, whereas changing to italic does not. Possible explanations are explored through measuring the physical and perceptual similarities of the test fonts.

'More-than-human’ resilience(s)? Enhancing community in Finnish forest farms

Community resilience is widely understood as a critical element in the relatively under-explored concept of social resilience. Through engaging with ‘more-than-human’ literatures, a more expansive view of the ‘social’ emerges, which repositions individuals as networked and agency as relational. This moves resilience away from its hegemonic positioning as a neoliberal strategy of individualisation and responsibilisation, with it instead emerging as an everyday ‘doing’ embedded in the human and non-human networks of relationality that we form and are formed by. The paper develops this socio-cultural conceptualisation through an original and empirically grounded discussion of Finnish farm communities and the role of the forest in developing, maintaining and enhancing these essential, connective assemblages. Resilience becomes conceptualised as dynamic, uneven, multiple and contextual performances or resiliences. While this further problematizes the comparative measurement and operationalisation of resilience, its networked and relational nature arguably offers a more inclusive and ethically grounded concept that, furthermore, negates the socio-ecological divide that persists in resilience thinking.

Consumption of a Flaxseed-Rich Food Is Not More Effective Than a Placebo in Alleviating the Climacteric Symptoms of Postmenopausal Women

Our objective in this work was to test the effects of daily intake of bread produced with partially defatted ground flaxseed on the climacteric symptoms and endometrial thickness of postmenopausal women. A double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized clinical trial was performed with 38 women who had been postmenopausal for 1-10 y and consumed 2 slices of bread containing 25 g of flaxseed (46 mg lignans) or wheat bran (<1 mg lignans; control) every day for 12 consecutive weeks. The outcome variables were the daily number of hot flashes, the Kupperman Menopausal Index (KMI), and endometrial thickness. The plasma lipid profile (total cholesterol and HDL, LDL, and VLDL cholesterol fractions and triglycerides) and the hormones estradiol, follicle-stimulating hormone, thyroid-stimulating hormone, and free thyroxine also were measured. Food intake was evaluated by means of 2 24-hrecalls, before and after the treatment. Twenty patients in the study group and 18 in the control group completed the study. The general characteristics did not differ between the 2 groups at the start of the study. Both had significant, but similar, reductions in hot flashes and KMI after 3 mo of treatment. Moreover, endometrial thickness was not affected in either group. Our findings clearly show that although flaxseed is safe, its consumption at this level (46 mg lignans/d) is no more effective than placebo for reducing hot flashes and KMI. J. Nutr. 140: 293-297, 2010.

Under-reporting of energy intake is more prevalent in a healthy dietary pattern cluster

The aim of the present study was to determine whether under-reporting rates vary between dietary pattern Clusters. Subjects were sixty-five Brazilian women. During 3 weeks, anthropometric data were collected. total energy expenditure (TEE) was determined by the doubly labelled water method and diet Was Measured. Energy intake (El) and the daily frequency of consumption per 1000 kJ of twenty-two food groups were obtained from a FFQ. These frequencies were entered into a Cluster analysis procedure in order to obtain dietary patterns. Under-reporters were defined Lis those who did not lose more than 1 kg of body weight during the study and presented EI:TEE less than 0.82. Three dietary pattern clusters were identified and named according to their most recurrent food groups: sweet foods (SW). starchy foods (ST) and health), (H). Subjects from the healthy cluster had the lowest mean EI:TEE (SW = 0.86, ST = 0.71 and H = 0.58: P = 0.003) and EI - TEE (SW = -0.49 MJ, ST = - 3.20 MJ and H = -5.09 MJ; P = 0.008). The proportion of Under-reporters was 45.2 (95 % CI 35.5, 55.0) % in the SW Cluster: 58.3 (95 % CI 48.6, 68.0) % in the ST Cluster and 70.0 (95 % CI 61.0, 79) % in the H cluster (P=0.34). Thus, in Brazilian women, Under-reporting of El is not uniformly distributed among, dietary pattern clusters and tends to be more severe among subjects from the healthy cluster. This cluster is more consistent with both dietary guidelines and with what lay individuals usually consider `healthy eating`.

Dynamic portrait of the planetary 2/1 mean-motion resonance - I. Systems with a more massive outer planet

We analyse the global structure of the phase space of the planar planetary 2/1 mean-motion resonance in cases where the outer planet is more massive than its inner companion. Inside the resonant domain, we show the existence of two families of periodic orbits, one associated to the librational motion of resonant angle (sigma-family) and the other related to the circulatory motion of the difference in longitudes of pericentre (Delta pi-family). The well-known apsidal corotation resonances (ACR) appear as intersections between both families. A complex web of secondary resonances is also detected for low eccentricities, whose strengths and positions are dependent on the individual masses and spatial scale of the system. The construction of dynamical maps for various values of the total angular momentum shows the evolution of the families of stable motion with the eccentricities, identifying possible configurations suitable for exoplanetary systems. For low-moderate eccentricities, several different stable modes exist outside the ACR. For larger eccentricities, however, all stable solutions are associated to oscillations around the stationary solutions. Finally, we present a possible link between these stable families and the process of resonance capture, identifying the most probable routes from the secular region to the resonant domain, and discussing how the final resonant configuration may be affected by the extension of the chaotic layer around the resonance region.

Dynamic portrait of the planetary 2/1 mean-motion resonance - II. Systems with a more massive inner planet

This paper presents the second part in our study of the global structure of the planar phase space of the planetary three-body problem, when both planets lie in the vicinity of a 2/1 mean-motion resonance. While Paper I was devoted to cases where the outer planet is the more massive body, the present work is devoted to the cases where the more massive body is the inner planet. As before, outside the well-known Apsidal Corotation Resonances (ACR), the phase space shows a complex picture marked by the presence of several distinct regimes of resonant and non-resonant motion, crossed by families of periodic orbits and separated by chaotic zones. When the chosen values of the integrals of motion lead to symmetric ACR, the global dynamics are generally similar to the structure presented in Paper I. However, for asymmetric ACR the resonant phase space is strikingly different and shows a galore of distinct dynamical states. This structure is shown with the help of dynamical maps constructed on two different representative planes, one centred on the unstable symmetric ACR and the other on the stable asymmetric equilibrium solution. Although the study described in the work may be applied to any mass ratio, we present a detailed analysis for mass values similar to the Jupiter-Saturn case. Results give a global view of the different dynamical states available to resonant planets with these characteristics. Some of these dynamical paths could have marked the evolution of the giant planets of our Solar system, assuming they suffered a temporary capture in the 2/1 resonance during the latest stages of the formation of our Solar system.