Consumer neuroscience: Assessing the brain response to marketing stimuli using electroencephalogram (EEG) and eye tracking

Application of neuroscience methods to analyze and understand human behavior related to markets and marketing exchange has recently gained research attention. The basic aim is to guide design and presentation of products to optimize them to be as compatible as possible with consumer preferences. This paper investigates physiological decision processes while participants undertook a choice task designed to elicit preferences for a product. The task required participants to choose their preferred crackers described by shape (square, triangle, round), flavor (wheat, dark rye, plain) and topping (salt, poppy, no topping). The two main research objectives were (1) to observe and evaluate the cortical activity of the different brain regions and the interdependencies among the Electroencephalogram (EEG) signals from these regions; and (2) unlike most research in this area that has focused mainly on liking/disliking certain products, we provide a way to quantify the importance of different cracker features that contribute to the product design based on mutual information. We used the commercial Emotiv EPOC wireless EEG headset with 14 channels to collect EEG signals from participants. We also used a Tobii-Studio eye tracker system to relate the EEG data to the specific choice options (crackers). Subjects were shown 57 choice sets; each choice set described three choice options (crackers). The patterns of cortical activity were obtained in the five principal frequency bands, Delta (0–4 Hz), Theta (3–7 Hz), Alpha (8–12 Hz), Beta (13–30 Hz), and Gamma (30–40 Hz). There was a clear phase synchronization between the left and right frontal and occipital regions indicating interhemispheric communications during the chosen task for the 18 participants. Results also indicated that there was a clear and significant change (p < 0.01) in the EEG power spectral activities taking a place mainly in the frontal (delta, alpha and beta across F3, F4, FC5 and FC6), temporal (alpha, beta, gamma across T7), and occipital (theta, alpha, and beta across O1) regions when participants indicated their preferences for their preferred crackers. Additionally, our mutual information analysis indicated that the various cracker flavors and toppings of the crackers were more important factors affecting the buying decision than the shapes of the crackers.     

On the measurement of privacy as an attacker’s estimation error

A wide variety of privacy metrics have been proposed in the literature to evaluate the level of protection offered by privacy-enhancing technologies. Most of these metrics are specific to concrete systems and adversarial models and are difficult to generalize or translate to other contexts. Furthermore, a better understanding of the relationships between the different privacy metrics is needed to enable more grounded and systematic approach to measuring privacy, as well as to assist system designers in selecting the most appropriate metric for a given application. In this work, we propose a theoretical framework for privacy-preserving systems, endowed with a general definition of privacy in terms of the estimation error incurred by an attacker who aims to disclose the private information that the system is designed to conceal. We show that our framework permits interpreting and comparing a number of well-known metrics under a common perspective. The arguments behind these interpretations are based on fundamental results related to the theories of information, probability, and Bayes decision.     

Young children in the aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks.

The attacks of September 11, 2001, on the World Trade Center were unprecedented acts of terrorism on U.S. soil. The disaster provides an opportunity to understand the responses of young children to a traumatic event of this proportion. This retrospective study took place within a year of the attacks and examined the relationship of levels of exposure to the World Trade Center disaster and family level predictors to trauma symptoms in a highly exposed sample of 180 young children in New York City. Data were collected through interviews with parents of children five years or younger at the time of the attacks. Primary variables included direct exposure and post 9/11 child and parent functioning, including trauma symptoms. Child trauma symptoms were related to direct exposure to the disaster, previous trauma, negative changes in parenting, and increased couple tension. Findings support the conceptualization that children's responses to traumatic events must be addressed within the caregiving context of family relationships. Clinical and preventive intervention for young children should be aimed at multiple levels of the social ecology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Shark Skin Inspired Riblet Coatings for Aerodynamically Optimized High Temperature Applications in Aeroengines

The shark skin effect is the mechanism of wall friction reduction of a fluid due to a riblet structured surface. A new application for riblet surfaces may be jet engine blades. Riblet structured coatings on the blades would act as oxidation protection and additionally reduce the skin drag on the surface. In this study structuring surface areas of high temperature nickel‐based alloys is investigated. These alloys are used for compressor and turbine blades near the combustion chamber. Experiments are performed by depositing titanium on a nickel base alloy through particular metal grids using magnetron sputtering. For single‐digit micrometer structures, photolithography with subsequent electrodeposition of nickel as well as sputter deposition and thermal evaporation of several materials are investigated. Successfully fabricated structures are oxidized at 900–1 000 °C for up to 100 h and the resulting shape is characterized using scanning electron microscopy. The most accurate structures are obtained using photolithography and subsequent electrodeposition. The reduction of the wall shear stress was measured in an oil channel. The riblet structures prior to oxidation show a reduction of the wall shear stress of up to 4.9%.     

Efficient shape optimization for certain and uncertain aerodynamic design

In this paper, we present novel developments in aerodynamic shape optimization based on shape calculus as well as the proper treatment of aleatoric uncertainties in the field of aerodynamic design.     

Attribute‐Domain Matrix: A Reverse Engineering Method for Innovation

An innovative idea is a beautiful thing, but most innovative ideas do not become successful new products. For products that are successful, there is a variety of examples over more than 150 years of situations where customers used them in ways never planned by the designer. Only few companies are systematically exploiting non‐conventional use as a method to generate ideas for new product outcomes and problem solutions. TRIZ awareness of analogies systematizes the search for available alternate situations: the attribute‐domain matrix actively transfers product attributes to unexpected application domains, breaks the functional fixedness pattern and helps make aware the resources that are available in any product or system.