A cross‐cultural comparison of colour emotion for two‐colour combinations

Psychophysical experiments were conducted in the UK, Taiwan, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Argentina, and Iran to assess colour emotion for two‐colour combinations using semantic scales warm/cool, heavy/light, active/passive, and like/dislike. A total of 223 observers participated, each presented with 190 colour pairs as the stimuli, shown individually on a cathode ray tube display. The results show consistent responses across cultures only for warm/cool, heavy/light, and active/passive. The like/dislike scale, however, showed some differences between the observer groups, in particular between the Argentinian responses and those obtained from the other observers. Factor analysis reveals that the Argentinian observers preferred passive colour pairs to active ones more than the other observers. In addition to the cultural difference in like/dislike, the experimental results show some effects of gender, professional background (design vs. nondesign), and age. Female observers were found to prefer colour pairs with high‐lightness or low‐chroma values more than their male counterparts. Observers with a design background liked low‐chroma colour pairs or those containing colours of similar hue more than nondesign observers. Older observers liked colour pairs with high‐lightness or high‐chroma values more than young observers did. Based on the findings, a two‐level theory of colour emotion is proposed, in which warm/cool, heavy/light, and active/passive are identified as the reactive‐level responses and like/dislike the reflective‐level response. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 2012     

Problems and Benefits of Requirements Gathering With Focus Groups: A Case Study

Focus group interviews are considered as a rather weak, nonquantitative method of assessing user needs, ideas, and reactions in an early stage of the interface design process (Nielsen, 1993). Given this fact, it is relevant to reflect the practical use of focus groups step by step to determine their real strengths and limitations. In this article, we share our experience of planning, running, and analyzing focus groups within the design process of a home automation system. We describe the pre- and postwork in detail so that the pros and cons of gathering requirements with focus groups become apparent.     

Fatigue assessment of arc welded automotive components using local stress approaches: Application to a track control arm

The applicability of the structural and notch stress approach is examined on the basis of arc welded and dynamically loaded steel structures, taken from the automotive sector. In detail, this is a transverse control arm. Components and specimens with critical regions of failure are tested under cyclic loading with constant and variable amplitudes. With the help of strain gauges, the crack initiation is determined. The specimens are the basis for the application and evaluation of the different approaches for the assessment of fatigue life. The numerical determination of the nominal, structural and notch stresses is performed with finite-element models. Finally the experimental and computational results allow the derivation of structural and notch Woehler S-N curves.     

Characterizing cerebral oxygen metabolism employing oxygen-17 MRI/MRS at high fields

This article provides a comprehensive overview of oxygen (¹⁷O) magnetic resonance spectroscopy and imaging, including the advantages and challenges offered by the different methods developed thus far. The physiological role and relevance of oxygen, and its participation in aerobic metabolism, are addressed to emphasize the importance of the investigations and the efforts related to these developments. Furthermore, a number of methods employed in the determination of the cerebral metabolic rate of oxygen in neural cells will be presented, focusing primarily on methodologies enabling absolute quantification.     

Simulating the emergence of norms in different scenarios

This paper deals with EMIL-S, a software tool box which was designed during the EMIL project for the simulation of processes during which norms emerged in an agent society. This tool box implements the cognitive architecture of normative agents which was designed during the EMIL project which is also discussed in other papers in this issue. This implementation is described in necessary detail, and two examples of its application to several different scenarios are given, namely a scenario in which persons involved in micro finance are simulated and learn how to sanction free riders and how to learn from these sanctions, and a scenario in which simulated persons move through a simulated airport where they more often than not have to wait in queues and learn how to behave properly in queues.