A Report on the First IFIP/IEEE Workshop on Quality of Experience Centric Management (QCMan 2013)

The first IFIP/IEEE international workshop on quality of experience (QoE) centric management (QCMan 2013) was held on May 31, 2013 in Ghent, Belgium. This report summarizes the keynotes, presentations and discussions in QCMan 2013 and provides a high-level view of ideas, challenges, strategies and the current state of the research activities in the field of QoE management.     

Thermal comfort of patients: Objective and subjective measurements in patient rooms of a Belgian healthcare facility

In healthcare facilities, the prediction of mean thermal comfort perception of patients and staff is necessary to formulate requirements for the architectural and building systems design and control, and for establishing guidelines for the use of clothing and bedding systems.     

Simplified digital acquisition of microdischarge pulses

A new concept of the measurement of the height of microdischarge pulses is proposed and implemented on a special hardware assembly. The concept utilizes the highly asymmetric shape of microdischarge pulses, i.e. the sharp rise edge and slowly decaying tail that forms an almost `horizontal' plateau. The maximum height of a pulse can be determined by imposing a certain time delay in saving sample points. The time delay must be equal to or longer than the time necessary for the full rise of the front edge of the pulse. The new concept completely removes time-consuming procedures seeking for signal local maxima used in current digitizers with logic circuits. This makes the system very fast and brings it to the very limit of the underlying natural process itself which represents the main advantage compared with other existing methods. A certain disadvantage of the new concept is in its restriction to asymmetric pulses only, but, however, this class of pulses comprises the broad spectrum of pulsating phenomena appearing in various branches of science and technology. This gives the proposed concept good applicability not only in the field of electric microdischarges but also in many other experimental domains     

Energy saving in existing housing

In one of several pilot projects financed through the Swedish Council of Building Research, the Department of Building Technology at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, showed how energy consumption could be reduced by more than 50 per cent in a typical three-storey block of flats built around 1940. Thermal insulation levels of the building were low by Swedish standards — walls and roofs having U-values of 1.2 W/m². °C — and oil consumption was as high as 60 litres per m² of net dwelling area.     

Utilization and transformation of aquatic humic substances by autochthonous microorganisms

Aquatic humic substances (HS) from a bog lake water, a riverwater, and a groundwater were isolated after enrichment on XAD 8 columns and added to a Czapek-Dox nutrient broth which was used either in full strength or without glucose and/or NaNO3. The individual flasks were inoculated with natural microbial populations of corresponding water samples or with a Pseudomonas fluorescens strain isolated from groundwater. The presence of HS resulted in an increase of bacterial numbers in nearly all cultures incubated for 3 weeks at 25 degrees C on a shaker. HS reisolated from cultures without glucose or NaNO3 showed no or only minor quantitative differences as compared to those from sterile controls. In full strength nutrient broth up to 27% of HS were utilized. Data obtained by spectroscopic methods (UV/vis/FTIR) and elemental analysis indicated a decrease in particle size and a loss in aromaticity and aliphatic carbon in HS reisolated from the microbial cultures. Simultaneously an increase in the N content of HS was observed, which probably originated from some constituents of microbial biomass such as proteins and amino sugars. The NMR data also documented that significant transformations of HS occurred in the individual microbial cultures. After incubation, increased amounts of aromatic acids were detected in some liquid media and residual HS by GC/MS or capillary electrophoresis. 1H NMR spectroscopy was less effective in indicating structural differences in the HS than 13C NMR but revealed considerable detail of the microbial degradation of riverine HS, when limited sample was available. The newly developed NMR increment analysis provided substantial detail of aromatic structures in a microbially altered HS. The microbial degradation of HS strongly depended on the composition of the HS, the species selection of the microorganisms, and to a lesser extent on the culture conditions. For any series of identical inoculum and HS, full broth media initiated the most extensive alteration of HS.     

Optical Kerr switching technique for the production of a picosecond,multiwavelength CO2 laser pulse

A wavelength-independent method for optical gating, based on the optical Kerr effect, has been demonstrated. Using this method, we produced 100-ps, 10-kW, two-wavelength pulses (10.3 and 10.6 microm) with a signal-to-background ratio contrast of 10(5) by slicing a long CO2 pulse. The capability of gating consecutive pulses separated on a picosecond time scale with this method is also shown.     

Reduced autobiographical memory specificity and rumination in predicting the course of depression.

Reduced autobiographical memory (AM) specificity is a known vulnerability factor for depression. AM specificity was investigated as a predictor of depression with the Autobiographical Memory Test (J. M. G. Williams & K. Broadbent, 1986). When baseline depression scores were partialed, reduced AM specificity to negative cue words predicted higher levels of depression at 7-month follow-up. Once rumination was taken into account by means of the Rumination on Sadness Scale (M. Conway, P. A. R. Csank, S. L. Holm, & C. K. Blake, 2000), AM specificity no longer predicted depression, suggesting that the predictive value of AM specificity observed in previous studies might be--at least partly--explained as an effect of rumination. Further mediation analyses indeed revealed support for rumination as a mediator of the relation between reduced AM specificity and poor outcome of depression. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Digital image analysis of hydrodynamics two-dimensional bubbling fluidized beds

A new method of digital image analysis has been developed to study the hydrodynamics of two-dimensional bubbling fluidized beds with a digital video camera. The method comprises simultaneous of the size and velocity of gas bubbles, and the axial and radial distribution of bubble voidage. It provides a better estimation of the visible bubble flow than from local probe methods. Also a good estimation of the throughflow can be gotten, which is of great importance for combustor applications.Parallel to the approach of Darton et al. (Transactions of the Institution Chemical Engineering 55 (1977) 274) for three-dimensional fluidized beds, an equation for the bubble diameter of two-dimensional beds is developed,