The present study was a longitudinal analysis of the information needs of Red Angus cattle breeders and their use of networked information services. It was based on two surveys. The first, conducted in 1995--96, polled all 1067 ranches of the Red Angus Association of America. Responses from 192 Red Angus breeders were used to determine the value of different information types and to evaluate perceptions of the greatest barriers to the adoption of network information services. The second survey, mailed to 41 Red Angus breeders in 1998, focused on early adopters and likely users of network services. Responses from 15 breeders were used to evaluate perceptions of the greatest barriers to the effective use of Web-based information services.

Humans are very effective at evaluating information visually. Scientific visualization is concerned with the process of presenting complex data in visual form to exploit this capability. A large array of tools is currently available for visual presentation. This research attempts to evaluate the effectiveness of three different presentation models that could be used for scientific visualization. The presentation models studied were, two-dimensional perspective rendering, field sequential stereoscopic three dimensional rendering and immersive virtual reality rendering. A large section of a three dimensional sub surface seismic survey was modeled as four-dimensional data by including a value for seismic reflectivity at each point in the survey. An artificial structure was randomly inserted into this data model and subjects were asked to locate and identify the structures. A group of seventeen volunteers from the University of Houston student body served as subjects for the study. Detection time, discrimination time and discrimination accuracy were recorded. The results showed large inter subject variation in presentation model preference. In addition the data suggest a possible gender effect. Female subjects had better overall performance on the task as well as better task acquisition.