Hybridizing food cultures in computer-mediated environments: Creativity and improvisation in Greek food blogs

This paper focuses on the ways in which food blogs influence the evolution of food cultures in computer-mediated environments. Food blogs provide a unique setting in which to study individual creativity and improvisation, as they make everyday food practices visible, pubic and transmittable. This paper proposes a cultural framework of human–computer interaction (HCI) and applies it to the context of food blogging. It stresses the effects of remediation on hybridisation of disciplines, roles and practices, which in turn lead to individual creative practices in the form of bricolage. Three case studies of Greek food blogs abroad are analysed to illustrate the proposed framework and to develop research implications for human–food interaction (HFI).     

An intelligence-based route choice model for pedestrian flow in a transportation station

This study proposes a method that uses an artificial neural network (ANN) to mimic human decision-making about route choice in a crowded transportation station. Although ANN models have been developed rapidly and widely adopted in various fields in the last three decades, their application to predict human decision-making in pedestrian flows is limited, because the video clip technology used to collect pedestrian movement data in crowded conditions is still primitive. Data collection must be carried out manually or semi-manually, which requires extensive resources and is time consuming. This study adopts a semi-manual approach to extract data from video clips to capture the route choice behaviour of travellers, and then applies an ANN to mimic such decision-making. A prediction accuracy of 86% (ANN model with ensemble approach) is achieved, which demonstrates the feasibility of applying the ANN approach to decision-making in pedestrian flows.     

A field study of human factors and vehicle performance associated with PHEV adaptation

Smart-grid and electric-vehicle technologies are rapidly diffusing, yet important policy implications remain to be fully analyzed. This multi-year field study sought to fill part of this gap by exploring human adaptation to plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) performance and vehicle charging in smart-grid environments. Homes were equipped with smart meters in a smart-grid experiment conducted by the local utility. Study households were organized by either standard or time-of-use electricity pricing, and randomly assigned to “managed” or “unmanaged” charging scenarios. Using a mixed-methods approach, study data were collected through vehicle data loggers, smart-plugs interviews, and questionnaires. The paper describes vehicle operations and performance; the ways in which households managed PHEV charging; and the manner in which they responded to smart-grid, smart-plug, and dashboard feedback. Findings indicate that households actively managed PHEV charging; however, they preferred flexible charging scenarios. Charging-management decisions were influenced by electricity-pricing. Online feedback on household- and vehicle-electricity consumption was generally ignored, but drivers responded to dashboard feedback as they drove. These results provide empirical bases for government and corporate policymakers to improve policy decisions relative to PHEV impacts on electricity loads, design of smart-grid feedback, and design of charging infrastructures.     

Systematic layout planning in human–system interface: An evaluation of alarm displays with spatial proximity for accidents diagnosis of advanced boiling water reactor

To ensure safety in nuclear power plants, this study investigated the interface design of a digital alarm system by analyzing the diagnosing process of operating information. This study focused on the layout planning of alarm windows and followed proximity compatibility principle and nuclear human–system interface design review guidelines to improve the human–system interface. This study adopt systematic layout planning to modify the design of alarm windows. The time of alarm handling, and accuracy, as well as human reliability were evaluated to compare the original layout with the improved one. In the end, according to the results of the comparison, an alternative alarm window layout human–system interface, which fits diagnosing process, is suggested.Relevance to industryThe similar layout planning process could be applied to design control centers in high reliability organizations, in particular which need decision-making by person.     

Measuring human-induced vibrations of civil engineering structures via vision-based motion tracking

We present a novel framework for measuring the body motion of multiple individuals in a group or crowd via a vision-based tracking algorithm, thus to enable studies of human-induced vibrations of civil engineering structures, such as floors and grandstands. To overcome the difficulties typically observed in this scenario, such as illumination change and object deformation, an online ensemble learning algorithm, which is adaptive to the non-stationary environment, is adopted. Incorporated with an easily carried and installed hardware, the system can capture the characteristics of displacements or accelerations for multiple individuals in a group of various sizes and in a real-world setting. To demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed system, measured displacements and calculated accelerations are compared to the simultaneous measurements obtained by two widely used motion tracking systems. Extensive experiments illustrate that the proposed system achieves equivalent performance as popular wireless inertial sensors and a marker-based optical system, but without limitations commonly associated with such traditional systems. The comparable experiments can also be used to guide the application of our proposed system.     

Analysis of workload of tank crew under the conditions of informatization

A consensus has been reached that the tanks need to be integrated into the informatization battlefield. With the development of technology, the tank crew has being gradually decreased, so the research on two-soldier crew tank has become a hotspot. The workload of tank crew under the conditions of informatization is analyzed based on the combat mission of tank and the typical combat scenarios, and the impact of new technologies on workload is evaluated. The crew members in tank can be reduced from three to two, but it is necessary to substantially improve the automation of target search and the reliability of each subsystem and component.     

Environmental and human factors influencing thermal comfort of office occupants in hot—humid and hot—arid climates

The effects of environmental and individual factors on thermal sensation in air-conditioned office environments were analysed for two large, fully compatible thermal comfort field studies in contrasting Australian climates. In the hot—humid location of Townsville, 836 office workers were surveyed; 935 workers participated in hot—arid Kalgoorlie-Boulder. Overall perceived work area temperature and measured indoor operative temperature correlated moderately with thermal sensation for Townsville (T) subjects but only perceived temperature correlated with Kalgoorlie-Boulder (KB) sensation. Multiple regression analyses confirmed that indoor climatic variables (including Predicted Mean Vote) contributed to actual thermal sensation vote (24% T; 15% KB), with operative temperature having more of an effect in T than in KB. Subsequent analyses of individual characteristics showed no linear contributions to thermal sensation. The remaining variances were significantly related to perceived work area temperature (7% additional explained variance in T; 12% in KB). Mann Whitney analyses (after correction for climatic variables) showed that T subjects with higher job satisfaction had thermal sensations closer to ‘neutral’. Males, healthier subjects, non-smokers, respondents with earlier survey times and underweight occupants had lower median thermal sensations in KB. Townsville occupants appeared more adapted to their outdoor climatic conditions than Kalgoorlie-Boulder respondents, perhaps due to limited home air-conditioning. Further research into non-thermal impacts on gender-related thermal acceptability is suggested.     

Gut Microbial Metabolites of Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids Correlate with Specific Fecal Bacteria and Serum Markers of Metabolic Syndrome in Obese Women

The aim of this human study was to assess the influence of prebiotic-induced gut microbiota modulation on PUFA-derived bacterial metabolites production. Therefore, we analyzed the circulating fatty acid profile including CLA/CLnA in obese women treated during 3 months with inulin-type fructan prebiotics. In these patients, we had already determined gut microbiota composition by phylogenetic microarray and qPCR analysis of 16S rDNA. Some PUFA-derived bacterial metabolites were detected in the serum of obese patients. Despite the prebiotic-induced modulation of gut microbiota, including changes in CLA/CLnA-producing bacteria, the treatment did not impact significantly on the circulating level of these metabolites. However, some PUFA-derived bacterial metabolites were positively correlated with specific fecal bacteria (Bifidobacterium spp., Eubacterium ventriosum and Lactobacillus spp.) and inversely correlated with serum cholesterol (total, LDL, HDL). These correlations suggest a potential beneficial effect of some of these metabolites but this remains to be confirmed by further investigation.     

Telenoid android robot as an embodied perceptual social regulation medium engaging natural human–humanoid interaction

The present paper aims to validate our research on human–humanoid interaction (HHI) using the minimalist humanoid robot Telenoid. We conducted the human–robot interaction test with 142 young people who had no prior interaction experience with this robot. The main goal is the analysis of the two social dimensions (“Perception” and “Believability”) useful for increasing the natural behaviour between users and Telenoid. We administered our custom questionnaire to human subjects in association with a well defined experimental setting (“ordinary and goal-guided task”). A thorough analysis of the questionnaires has been carried out and reliability and internal consistency in correlation between the multiple items has been calculated. Our experimental results show that the perceptual behaviour and believability, as implicit social competences, could improve the meaningfulness and the natural-like sense of human–humanoid interaction in everyday life task-driven activities. Telenoid is perceived as an autonomous cooperative agent for a shared environment by human beings.