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The surface energy of the printing material can be increased to desired levels with different chemicals or methods. However, the important thing is that the surface properties of printing material are not affected negatively. In this way the aim of this paper provide that the surface properties of matte and glossy coated paper is improved by the argon containing atmospheric pressure plasma device because the plasma treatment method does not occur surface damaging on the papers.

In experimental studies, test samples cut from 160 mm × 30 mm in size from 115 g/m² gloss- and matt-coated papers were used. The plasma treatments of paper samples were carried out with an argon containing atmospheric pressure plasma device of laboratory scale that produces plasma of the corona discharge type at radio frequency. The optimized plasma parameters were at a frequency of 20 kHz and plasma power 200 W. A copper electrode of length 12 cm and diameter 2.5 mm was placed in the centre of the nozzle.

Research findings showed that the surface energies of the papers increased with the increase in plasma application time. While the contact angle of the untreated glossy paper is 82.2, 8 second plasma applied G3 sample showed 54 contact angle value. Similarly, the contact angle of the base paper of matt coated is 91.1, while M3 is reduced to 60.4 contact angles by the increasing plasma time.

Plasma treatment has shown that no chemical coating is needed to increase the wettability of the paper surface by reducing the contact angle between the paper and the water droplet. In addition, the surface energies of all papers treated by argon gas containing atmospheric pressure plasma, increased. Plasma treatment provides to improve both the wettability of the paper and the adhesion property required for the ink, with an environmentally friendly approach.

Hearing impaired users often find it difficult to listen to voice over television, computer or public announcement systems due to background noise, music or poor sound quality. This paper presents a hearing impairment simulator that can help digital content developers to understand the auditory perception of hearing impaired users. Existing hearing impairment simulations often fail to publish results on validation or running the system on stored files. The present work describes validation result on a hearing impairment simulator and link to download the system that can simulate any sound stored as a wav file.

This work presents a simulator with a downloadable link to the software and results on a couple of user trials involving users with varying degrees of hearing impairment validating the system. The simulator also simulates frequency smearing which is not available in most online hearing impairment simulators. The simulator is part of a bigger project which also involves simulating visual, cognitive and motor impairment.

The result shows the present implementation can accurately simulate hearing perception for spoken voice. It also demonstrates that both frequency attenuation based on audiogram response and smearing are needed for accurate simulation as random frequency attenuation does not distort the sound well enough to be inaudible.

It should be noted that this simulation is not accurate enough to be used for medical purpose, rather aims to be an engineering tool to simulate approximately correct auditory perception of hearing impaired people. However, like other researches on user modelling and simulation in HCI, this simulator aims to enhance the design space where designers can optimize volume and quality of sound output and if necessary of background music or noise.

This paper presents a hearing impairment simulator that can help digital content developers to judge the sound quality of their content for hard of hearing users.

Existing literature on hearing impairment simulators either presents a software without detailed result on validation or focuses on detailed theoretical results on psychology without any easy deployable software. Most existing software also does not allow running simulation on stored file which limits their purpose. This work presents a simulator with a downloadable link to the software and results on a couple of user trials involving users with varying degrees of hearing impairment validating the system. The simulator also simulates frequency smearing which is not available in most online hearing impairment simulators.