How In-Home Technologies Mediate Caregiving Relationships in Later Life

In-home technologies can support older adults' activities of daily living, provide physical safety and security, and connect elders to family and friends. They facilitate aging in place while reducing caregiver burden. One of older adults' primary concerns about in-home technologies is their potential to reduce human contact, particularly from cherished caregivers. In this exploratory in situ study, we provided an ecosystem of networked monitoring technologies to six older adults and their caregivers. We analyzed the amount and content of communication between them. The amount of noncomputer-mediated communication did not decrease through the 6-week study. The content of communication coalesced into four themes: communication about the technologies, communication facilitated by technologies, intrusiveness of technologies, and fun and playfulness with the technologies. Results suggest that in-home technologies, designed with sensitivity to older adults' primary motivations, have the potential to shape and tailor important relationships in later life.     

A formative analysis of individual differences in the effectiveness of learning objects in secondary school

The purpose of this study was to examine individual differences in the effectiveness of learning objects in secondary school classrooms. Specifically, gender, age, grade, subject area, and computer comfort (self-efficacy) were examined in 850 students. Effectiveness was measured in terms of student attitude (learning, quality, and engagement) and student performance. No gender differences were observed between males and females with respect to student attitudes or performance. Age was significantly correlated with student attitudes and performance, however correlation coefficients were small. Grade 12 students were more positive about learning objects and performed better than grade 9 and 10 students. Science students had significantly more positive attitudes and performed better than mathematics students. Finally, students who were more comfortable about computers, appreciated learning objects more than their less confident peers, however performance was unaffected.     

Graph-Theoretical Analysis of the Swiss Road and Railway Networks Over Time

Recent research of complex networks has significantly contributed to the understanding how networks can be classified according to its topological characteristics. However, transport networks attracted less attention although their importance to economy and daily life. In this work the development of the Swiss road and railway network during the years 1950–2000 is investigated. The main difference between many of the recently studied complex networks and transport networks is the spatial structure. Therefore, some of the well-established complex network measures may not be applied directly to characterise transport networks but need to be adapted to fulfil the requirements of spatial networks. Additionally, new approaches to cover basic network characteristics such as local network densities are applied. The focus of the interest hereby is always not only to classify the transport network but also to provide the basis for further applications such as vulnerability analysis or network development. It could be showed that the proposed measures are able to characterise the growth of the Swiss road network. To proof the use of local density measures to explain the robustness of a network however needs further research.

Spray-Coating of Superhydrophobic Coatings for Advanced Applications

Superhydrophobic coatings are widely applicable, e.g., as self-cleaning surfaces or water–oil separation membranes, yet their wider usage is impeded due to costs of fabrication, size, or substrate limitation. Spray-coating is a versatile coating procedures and might offer a good solution for the fabrication of these superhydrophobic coatings, due to the fact that coatings can be fabricated on various materials in a simple, fast, and inexpensive manner. Most procedures rely on hybrid coatings of hydrophobized nanoparticles and a polymeric matrix, which have several drawbacks including the easy loss of nanoparticles and difficult waste handling. Here, the fabrication of the superhydrophobic material, called Fluoropor, for the first time, by spray-coating on various substrates including metals, tissues, concrete, and glass is presented. It is fabricated by spray-coating a mixture of a highly fluorinated monomer blended with porogens followed by photopolymerization. The superhydrophobicity of the material relies on the porous structure on the micro-/nanoscale across the bulk material and does not require any nanoparticles. Excellent self-cleaning ability of these coatings, resistance against thermal and abrasive impact, and their application as oil–water separation membranes are shown. This versatile applicability is highly promising for real-world application as self-cleaning coatings or oil–water separating membranes.     

Measures for investigating the contextual modulation of information transmission

The aim of this paper is to show how information theoretic measures can be used to analyse and interpret the results of psychophysical experiments designed to search for conditions under which information from one source modulates the transmission of information from another source. We therefore use measures of mutual and conditional information to analyse systems with two inputs. The information transmitted by such a system can be split into three components depending on whether it is shared between the two inputs or is specific to each. We are concerned here with distinguishing systems that use one input to modulate transmission of information about the other from systems that simply add both inputs, and show how the three components provide evidence for distinguishing between additive and modulatory effects. We also report numerical simulations of the sampling biasses and variances of these measures as a function of the sample size and propose minimum sample sizes that should be used to overcome the bias.     

Interactive Fibre Structure Visualization of the Heart

The heart consists of densely packed muscle fibres. The orientation of these fibres can be acquired by using Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) ex vivo. A good way to visualize the fibre structure in a cross section of the heart is by showing short line segments originating from the cross section and aligned with the local direction of the fibres. If the line segments are placed dense enough, one can see how the fibre orientations change. However, generation of the line segments takes time and thus the user has to wait for new geometry to be generated when the plane defining the cross section is changed. We present a new direct rendering method for the visualization of the 3D vector field in a 2D user‐definable cross section of a heart. On the intersection of the plane with the vector field, the full 3D vectors are rendered as 3D line segments with a local ray casting approach. No preprocessing of the data is needed and no geometry is generated. This technique allows a fast inspection of the data to identify interesting areas where further analysis is necessary (e.g. quantification or generation of streamlines). We also show how the technique is generalized to other glyph shapes than line segments by implementing ellipsoids.     

How the Kano model contributes to Kansei engineering in services

Recent studies show that products and services hold great appeal if they are attractively designed to elicit emotional feelings from customers. Kansei engineering (KE) has good potential to provide a competitive advantage to those able to read and translate customer affect and emotion in actual product and services. This study introduces an integrative framework of the Kano model and KE, applied to services. The Kano model was used and inserted into KE to exhibit the relationship between service attribute performance and customer emotional response. Essentially, the Kano model categorises service attribute quality into three major groups (must-be [M], one-dimensional [O] and attractive [A]). The findings of a case study that involved 100 tourists who stayed in luxury 4- and 5-star hotels are presented. As a practical matter, this research provides insight on which service attributes deserve more attention with regard to their significant impact on customer emotional needs. STATEMENT OF RELEVANCE: Apart from cognitive evaluation, emotions and hedonism play a big role in service encounters. Through a focus on delighting qualities of service attributes, this research enables service providers and managers to establish the extent to which they prioritise their improvement efforts and to always satisfy their customer emotions beyond expectation.