Quantitative analysis in a heuristic evaluation experiment

In usability context of interactive systems the heuristic evaluation method is widespread. In most applications the results tend to be qualitative, describing such aspects that require some improvement for the benefit of usability. However, these qualitative results do not allow us to determine how usable it is or how it becomes an interactive system. Hence the need for quantitative results may also be very necessary in order to determine the effort that would be needed to get a sufficiently usable system.This article describes, following the idea of the UsabAIPO Project, a new experiment to obtain quantitative results after a heuristic evaluation. This new experimentation has required some variation on the original idea, working with a set of different heuristic categories, while considering the use of the score depending on severity and frequency parameters.     

Trade‐Offs in Seed Dispersal Strategies Across Riparian Trees: The How Matters as Much as the When

Riparian Salicaceae are prolific producers of short‐lived seeds that require very restrictive hydro‐geomorphic conditions for establishment. It is generally assumed that if floods are able to create nursery sites timed with seed dispersal, recruitment will occur. Other spatial and temporal seed dispersal patterns besides the dispersal period have historically received little attention. However, seed dispersal patterns can be highly variable between regions, species and over the years. In this paper, we report the seed dispersal patterns of three dominant riparian Salicaceae trees in Europe: Populus alba, P. nigra and Salix alba to suggest possible trade‐offs between seed dispersal patterns, germinability, longevity and establishment. Seed rain of the three species was monitored in 33 glue‐coated traps for three months yearly from 2006 to 2008 in an 8‐km stretch of the Middle Ebro River (N Spain), which has a pluvio‐nival regime. P. alba dispersed seeds earlier during a shorter time period and with a fewer number of seed release pulses compared with P. nigra, and especially with S. alba. With overlapping seed dispersal periods, the two latter species occupy similar landform units but rarely compete with P. alba, usually at higher elevations, as shown in a previous study in the same study area. The three species had very high germinability immediately after release (>90%), but longevity in S. alba was eight times shorter than that of its two Populus counterparts. We suggest that S. alba has compensated its lower seed quality with a more spaced seed release in several pulses of similar magnitude. With similar seed dispersal patterns and germinability but a higher longevity, P. nigra had a much higher density of individuals than S. alba in the recruitment zones of the study area. We hope that our results may inform river managers about how to optimize river flows to promote sexual regeneration of these species. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The EuQoS system: a solution for QoS routing in heterogeneous networks [Quality of Service based Routing Algorithms for Heterogeneous Networks]

EuQoS is the acronym for "end-to-end quality of service support over heterogeneous networks", which is a European research project aimed at building an entire QoS framework, addressing all the relevant network layers, protocols, and technologies. This framework, which includes the most common access networks (xDSL, UMTS, WiFi, and LAN) is being prototyped and tested in a multidomain scenario throughout Europe, composing what we call the EuQoS system. In this article we present the novel QoS routing mechanisms that are being developed and evaluated in the framework of this project. The preliminary performance results validate the design choices of the EuQoS system, and confirm the potential impact this project is likely to have in the near future     

Online error correcting output codes

This article proposes a general extension of the error correcting output codes framework to the online learning scenario. As a result, the final classifier handles the addition of new classes independently of the base classifier used. In particular, this extension supports the use of both online example incremental and batch classifiers as base learners. The extension of the traditional problem independent codings one-versus-all and one-versus-one is introduced. Furthermore, two new codings are proposed, unbalanced online ECOC and a problem dependent online ECOC. This last online coding technique takes advantage of the problem data for minimizing the number of dichotomizers used in the ECOC framework while preserving a high accuracy. These techniques are validated on an online setting of 11 data sets from UCI database and applied to two real machine vision applications: traffic sign recognition and face recognition. As a result, the online ECOC techniques proposed provide a feasible and robust way for handling new classes using any base classifier.     

An ensemble-based method for linear feature extraction for two-class problems

In this paper we propose three variants of a linear feature extraction technique based on Adaboost for two-class classification problems. Unlike other feature extraction techniques, we do not make any assumptions about the distribution of the data. At each boosting step we select from a pool of linear projections the one that minimizes the weighted error. We propose three different variants of the feature extraction algorithm, depending on the way the pool of individual projections is constructed. Using nine real and two artificial data sets of different original dimensionality and sample size we compare the performance of the three proposed techniques with three classical techniques for linear feature extraction: Fisher linear discriminant analysis (FLD), Nonparametric discriminant analysis (NDA) and a recently proposed feature extraction method for heteroscedastic data based on the Chernoff criterion. Our results show that for data sets of relatively low-original dimensionality FLD appears to be both the most accurate and the most economical feature extraction method (giving just one-dimension in the case of two classes). The techniques based on Adaboost fare better than the classical techniques for data sets of large original dimensionality.

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Alumina coating on dense tungsten powder by fluidized bed metal organic chemical vapour deposition

In order to study the feasibility of coating very dense powders by alumina using Fluidized Bed Metal Organic Chemical Vapour Deposition (FB-MOCVD), experiments were performed on a commercial tungsten powder, 75 microm in median volume diameter and 19,300 kg/m3 in grain density. The first part of the work was dedicated to the experimental study of the tungsten powder fluidization using argon as carrier gas at room temperature and at 400 degrees C. Due to the very high density of the tungsten powder, leading to low initial fixed bed heights and low bed expansions, different weights of powder were tested in order to reach satisfactory temperature profiles along the fluidized bed. Then, using argon as a fluidized bed former and aluminium acetylacetonate Al(C5O2H7)3 as a single source precursor, alumina thin films were deposited on tungsten particles at a low temperature range (e.g., 370-420 degrees C) by FB-MOCVD. The influence of the weight of powder, bed temperature and run duration was studied. Characterizations of the obtained samples were performed by various techniques including scanning electron microscopy (SEM) coupled with Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (EDS) analyses, Field Emission Gun SEM (FEG-SEM) and Fourier Transform InfraRed (FT-IR) spectroscopy. The different analyses indicated that tungsten particles were uniformly coated by a continuous alumina thin film. The thickness of the film ranged between 25 and 80 nm, depending on the coating conditions. The alumina thin films were amorphous and contained carbon contamination. This latter may correspond to the adsorption of species resulting from incomplete decomposition of the precursor at so low deposition temperature.     

Fe(PyTACN)‐Catalyzed cis‐Dihydroxylation of Olefins with Hydrogen Peroxide

A family of iron complexes with general formula [Fe(II)(^R,Y,XPyTACN)(CF₃SO₃)₂], where ^R,Y,XPyTACN=1‐[2′‐(4‐Y‐6‐X‐pyridyl)methyl]‐4,7‐dialkyl‐1,4,7‐triazacyclononane, X and Y refer to the groups at positions 4 and 6 of the pyridine, respectively, and R refers to the alkyl substitution at N‐4 and N‐7 of the triazacyclononane ring, are shown to be catalysts for efficient and selective alkene oxidation (epoxidation and cis‐dihydroxylation) employing hydrogen peroxide as oxidant. Complex [Fe(II)(^Me,Me,HPyTACN)(CF₃SO₃)₂] ( 7 ), was identified as the most efficient and selective cis‐dihydroxylation catalyst among the family. The high activity of 7 allows the oxidation of alkenes to proceed rapidly (30 min) at room temperature and under conditions where the olefin is not used in large amounts but instead is the limiting reagent. In the presence of 3 mol% of 7 , 2 equiv. of H₂O₂ as oxidant and 15 equiv. of water, in acetonitrile solution, alkenes are cis‐dihydroxylated reaching yields that might be interesting for synthetic purposes. Competition experiments show that 7 exhibits preferential selectivity towards the oxidation of cis olefins over the trans analogues, and also affords better yields and high [syn‐diol]/[epoxide] ratios when cis olefins are oxidized. For aliphatic substrates, reaction yields attained with the present system compare favourably with state of the art Fe‐catalyzed cis‐dihydroxylation systems, and it can be regarded as an attractive complement to the iron and manganese systems described recently and which show optimum activity against electron‐deficient and aromatic olefins.     

State of the art on high-temperature thermal energy storage for power generation. Part 2—Case studies

Power generation systems are attracting a lot of interest from researchers and companies. Storage is becoming a component with high importance to ensure system reliability and economic profitability. A few experiences of storage components have taken place until the moment in solar power plants, most of them as research initiatives. In this paper, real experiences with active storage systems and passive storage systems are compiled, giving detailed information of advantages and disadvantages of each one. Also, a summary of different technologies and materials used in solar power plants with thermal storage systems existing in the world is presented.