ExoPranayama: a biofeedback-driven actuated environment for supporting yoga breathing practices

Both breathing and internal self-awareness are an integral part of any yoga practice. We describe and discuss the development of ExoPranayama, an actuated environment that physically manifests users’ breathing in yoga. Through a series of trials with yoga practitioners and expert teachers, we explore its role in the practice of yoga. Our interview results reveal that biofeedback through the environment supported teaching and improved self-awareness, but it impacted group cohesion. Two practical uses of the technology emerged for supporting breath control in yoga: (1) biofeedback can provide new information about users’ current internal states; (2) machine-driven feedback provides users with a future state or goal and leads to improved cohesiveness.     

A case study of factor influencing role improvisation in crisis response teams

Common characteristics of crisis situations are ambiguous and unplanned for events. The need for improvised roles can therefore be an imperative factor for the success of an operation. The aim of this study is to deepen the understanding of the processes taking place during improvised work “as it happens”. A case study of a crisis management team at work is presented and provides an in-depth analysis of the information and communication flow of persons acting in improvised roles, including contextual factors influencing the task at hand. The analysis suggests that three main factors lay behind decreased performance by the team when some of its members were forced to take on roles for which they lacked professional training; lack of language skills, lack of domain knowledge and insufficient organizational structure of the tasks. Based on the observations from this case study, we suggest three ways of improving a team’s performance and hence resilience when forced to improvise due to lack of personnel in one or more required competence areas. These are training to take on the responsibility for tasks or roles outside ones professional area of specialization, developing formal routines for changes in roles and tasks and developing and using tools and routines for information sharing.     

Non-encapsulated thermo-liquid crystals for digital particle tracking thermography/velocimetry in microfluidics

The ever accelerating state of technology has powered an increasing interest in heat transfer solutions and process engineering innovations in the microfluidics domain. In order to carry out such developments, reliable heat transfer diagnostic techniques are necessary. Thermo-liquid crystal (TLC) thermography, in combination with particle image velocimetry, has been a widely accepted and commonly used technique for the simultaneous measurement and characterization of temperature and velocity fields in macroscopic fluid flows for several decades. However, low seeding density, volume illumination, and low TLC particle image quality at high magnifications present unsurpassed challenges to its application to three-dimensional flows with microscopic dimensions. In this work, a measurement technique to evaluate the color response of individual non-encapsulated TLC particles is presented. A Shirasu porous glass membrane emulsification approach was used to produce the non-encapsulated TLC particles with a narrow size distribution and a multi-variable calibration procedure, making use of all three RGB and HSI color components, as well as the proper orthogonally decomposed RGB components, was used to achieve unprecedented low uncertainty levels in the temperature estimation of individual particles, opening the door to simultaneous temperature and velocity tracking using 3D velocimetry techniques.     

Usability study of ME2.0

Mobile context-aware applications execute in the background of hosts mobile devices. The applications source process and aggregate hosts’ contextual and personal information. This information is disclosed to ubiquitously pervasive services that adapt their offerings to individual preferences. Unfortunately, many developers continue to ignore the user perspective in context-aware application designs as they complicate their overall task and generate exponential requirements. The additional incorporation of privacy mechanisms in context-aware applications to safeguard context and personal information disclosures also complicates users’ tasks resulting to misconfigured or completely abandoned applications. Misconfigured applications give end-users a false assurance of privacy exposing them to comprising services. We present a usability study on Mobile Electronic Personality Version 2 a privacy enhanced context-aware mobile application for personalising ubiquitous services and adapting pervasive smart-spaces. We draw conclusions on key issues related to user needs, based on user interviews, surveys, prototypes and field evaluations. Users’ needs are evaluated against five themes, learn-ability, efficiency, memorability, errors, satisfaction and privacy contention. In addition, design layout preferences, privacy manageability and consensus design comprehension are also evaluated. Clarity of priorities in context-aware mobile applications shaped by usability studies effectively increases the acceptance of levels of potential users.     

A visual language for modeling and executing traceability queries

Current software and systems engineering tools provide only basic trace features, and as a result users are often compelled to construct non-trivial traceability queries using generic query languages such as SQL. In this paper, we present an alternative approach which defines traceability strategies for a project using UML class diagrams and then constructs trace queries as constraints upon subsets of the model. The visual trace modeling language (VTML) allows users to model a broad range of trace queries while hiding underlying technical details and data structures. The viability and expressiveness of VTML for use in a real project are demonstrated through modeling a broadly representative set of queries for a web-based health-care system. It is then evaluated through an experiment with human users to assess the readability and writability of VTML queries in comparison to generic SQL queries. We found that users read and constructed traceability queries considerably faster using VTML than using SQL. Furthermore, visually constructed traceability queries were substantially more correct compared to the same queries constructed with SQL.     

Optimal approximation of signal priors

In signal restoration by Bayesian inference, one typically uses a parametric model of the prior distribution of the signal. Here, we consider how the parameters of a prior model should be estimated from observations of uncorrupted signals. A lot of recent work has implicitly assumed that maximum likelihood estimation is the optimal estimation method. Our results imply that this is not the case. We first obtain an objective function that approximates the error occurred in signal restoration due to an imperfect prior model. Next, we show that in an important special case (small gaussian noise), the error is the same as the score-matching objective function, which was previously proposed as an alternative for likelihood based on purely computational considerations. Our analysis thus shows that score matching combines computational simplicity with statistical optimality in signal restoration, providing a viable alternative to maximum likelihood methods. We also show how the method leads to a new intuitive and geometric interpretation of structure inherent in probability distributions.     

Hard and soft magnetic materials for electromagnetic microactuators

An important aspect of the development of electromagnetic microactuators is the search for suitable materials as well as the development of the respective deposition and patterning processes. Within the Collaborative Research Center 516 “Design and Fabrication of Active Microsystems”, it is the task of the subproject B1 “fabrication of magnetic thin films for electromagnetic microactuators” to perform these investigations. The materials of interest can be divided into two groups: hard magnetic materials and soft magnetic materials. Materials with optimized properties and fabrication processes have been developed within both groups. An example is Samarium–Cobalt (SmCo), which can either be deposited using magnetron sputtering as Sm₂Co₁₇ with a very high energy product or in the SmCo₅ phase using gas flow sputtering with very high deposition rates. In the area of soft magnetic materials, investigations on Nickel-Iron (NiFe) especially NiFe81/19 were followed by the evaluation of NiFe45/55, which features a higher saturation flux density B _s and relative permeability μ _r. Furthermore, current investigations focus on Cobalt-Iron (CoFe) and its further increased saturation flux density B _s and relative permeability μ _r. Current tasks include the stabilization of the fabrication processes to achieve good material properties (i.e. electroplating of CoFe) or a shortening (e.g. by using heated substrates during deposition) by using process alternative not used so far. Another topic is the integration into fabrication processes, i.e. the investigation of process stability and compatibility.     

Relationships between process, microstructure and properties of molded zirconia micro specimens

Due to size effects the mechanical behavior of micro-components with dimensions in the range of some 100 μm and structure details of about 10 μm differs markedly from those of larger components. This is a crucial aspect for the design of micro-components for applications where demands for high strength are critical. The present study, which was performed in the frame of the Collaborative Research Centre 499 (SFB 499), approaches this issue by investigating the relationship between production process, microstructure and the mechanical properties of micro-specimens made from zirconia using two different feedstocks. The specimens were produced by a sintering process. The sintering temperature was varied between 1,300 and 1,500°C. Mechanical and tribological behavior of the specimens was determined by three-point bending tests as well as static and sliding friction tests, respectively. Properties derived from these tests were then correlated to the surface states in the specimens such as porosity, edge radius and roughness. The strength of the micro-specimens was found to be significantly influenced by these surface features. Whilst low porosity alone is not sufficient for high strength, notch effects resulting from pores as well as surface roughness can lower the strength. With increasing edge radius the strength of the material also increases. The porosity, edge radius and surface roughness were mathematically correlated with the strength to allow for a forecast. Within the SFB 499 feedstocks with specific properties were designed and reliable processes were developed to guarantee desirable surface roughness and porosity in the specimens. A characteristic bending strength of about 2,000 MPa is realizable in the micro-specimens within a good statistical reliability. The tribological tests revealed that the wear properties of the zirconia micro-components are strongly dependent on the quality of the feedstock.     

Directed model checking with distance-preserving abstractions

In directed model checking, the traversal of the state space is guided by an estimate of the distance from the current state to the nearest error state. This paper presents a distance-preserving abstraction for concurrent systems that allows one to compute an interesting estimate of the error distance without hitting the state explosion problem. Our experiments show a dramatic reduction both in the number of states explored by the model checker and in the total runtime.