Factors contributing to young moped rider accidents in Denmark

Young road users still constitute a high-risk group with regard to road traffic accidents. The crash rate of a moped is four times greater than that of a motorcycle, and the likelihood of being injured in a road traffic accident is 10–20 times higher among moped riders compared to car drivers. Nevertheless, research on the behaviour and accident involvement of young moped riders remains sparse.Based on analysis of 128 accident protocols, the purpose of this study was to increase knowledge about moped accidents. The study was performed in Denmark involving riders aged 16 or 17. A distinction was made between accident factors related to (1) the road and its surroundings, (2) the vehicle, and (3) the reported behaviour and condition of the road user. Thirteen accident factors were identified with the majority concerning the reported behaviour and condition of the road user. The average number of accident factors assigned per accident was 2.7. Riding speed was assigned in 45% of the accidents which made it the most frequently assigned factor on the part of the moped rider followed by attention errors (42%), a tuned up moped (29%) and position on the road (14%). For the other parties involved, attention error (52%) was the most frequently assigned accident factor. The majority (78%) of the accidents involved road rule breaching on the part of the moped rider.The results indicate that preventive measures should aim to eliminate violations and increase anticipatory skills among moped riders and awareness of mopeds among other road users. Due to their young age the effect of such measures could be enhanced by infrastructural measures facilitating safe interaction between mopeds and other road users.     

Adopt,adapt, abandon: Understanding why some young adults start,and then stop,using instant messaging

Instant messaging (IM) has become a popular and important mode of staying in touch for teens and young adults. It allows for easy, frequent and lightweight interaction that contributes to building and sustaining friendships, as well as coordinating social activities. Despite the initial appeal of IM, however, some have found it too distracting and have changed their usage or abandoned it. I interviewed 21 former users of IM about their adoption, usage and eventual abandonment of the technology. Results show that participants were initially attracted to features of IM that enabled them to maximize their use of leisure time via easy and frequent interaction with their friends, but that, in a different usage context, these same features became distracting and annoying. Participants adapted their behavior to avoid these drawbacks, but IM did not support these adaptations effectively. In particular, IM did not allow for control over interruptions, which became more important as their contact lists grew and social time became scarce; and they ultimately abandoned the technology. These results point to a need for understanding use beyond adoption, and a theoretical and practical focus on understanding the adaptation and changing utility that accompany long-term usage of technologies.     

The effect of visualizing the flow of multimedia content among and inside devices

This study introduces a user interface, referred to as the flow interface, which provides a graphical representation of the movement of content among and inside audio/video devices. The proposed interface provides a different frame of reference with content-oriented visualization of the generation, manipulation, storage, and display of content as well as input and output. The flow interface was applied to a VCR/DVD recorder combo, one of the most complicated consumer products. A between-group experiment was performed to determine whether the flow interface helps users to perform various tasks and to examine the learning effect of the flow interface, particularly in regard to hooking up and recording tasks. The results showed that participants with access to the flow interface performed better in terms of success rate and elapsed time. In addition, the participants indicated that they could easily understand the flow interface. The potential of the flow interface for application to other audio video devices, and design issues requiring further consideration, are discussed.     

Mapping standards for home networking

In this study, we apply a step-by-step approach for the identification of standards for home networking. We develop a classification and we use this classification to categorize sixty-four (sets of) standards. By developing this categorization, we have brought order to the chaos of home networking standards.     

智能家居的“春天”来了

论述了智能家居的概念,着重阐述了智能家居及其核心技术的国内外发展历程,理清了智能家居的发展脉络。随后从技术、生产厂家、市场规模、消费者意识等方面论证了智能家居的“春天”已经来临。最后,对智能家居的未来发展进行了展望。     

Plumes of discolored water of volcanic origin and possible implications for algal communities. The case of the Home Reef eruption of 2006 (Tonga, Southwest Pacific Ocean)

The Home Reef volcano (Tonga, Southwest Pacific Ocean) erupted in August 2006. Initially a submarine eruption it quickly evolved into a subaerial event upon the formation of an ephemeral island.Remote sensing data from different sensors including MODIS, ASTER, EO-1 ALI and Landsat-7 ETM+ were used to analyze the event, focusing on the plumes of discolored water, ocean chlorophyll-a concentration (OCC) and sea surface temperature.An early classification system for the plumes was devised based on spectral properties and point of origin. Plumes originated at the volcano were named Type-I and those associated to the pumice rafts Type-II.Anomalies in ocean chlorophyll-a concentration, measured using MODIS data, were analyzed and a large bloom, presumably dominated by Trichodesmium sp. was identified. The bloom, which contributed to OCC values 17 times higher than the background, was spatially and temporally coincident with a Type-I plume of discolored water. The OCC increase appears to have been caused by a combined effect of both ocean fertilizations by the subsurface volcanic plume and rising sea surface temperatures.The Home Reef event offers a good candidate for a case of ocean enrichment by a submarine volcano and highlights the need for continuous monitoring of the eruptions even after the end of the explosive, more spectacular stages.     

A digital photography framework enabling affective awareness in home communication

By transforming the personal computer into a communication appliance, the Internet has initiated the true home computing revolution. As a result, Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) technologies are increasingly used in domestic settings, and are changing the way people keep in touch with their relatives and friends. This article first looks at how CMC tools are currently used in the home, and points at some of their benefits and limitations. Most of these tools supportexplicit interpersonal communication, by providing a new medium for sustaining conversations. The need for tools supportingimplicit interaction between users, in more natural and effottless ways, is then argued for. The idea of affective awareness is introduced as a general sense of being in touch with one's family and friends. Finally, the KAN-G framework, which enables affective awareness through the exchange of digital photographs, is described. Various components, which make the capture, distribution, observation and annotation of snapshots easy and effortless, are discussed.     

User-configurable semantic home automation

The ideas of smart home and home automation have been proposed for many years. However, when discussing homes of the future, related studies have usually focused on deploying various smart appliances (or devices) within a home environment and employing those appliances automatically by pre-defined procedures. The difficulties of supporting user-configurable automation are due to the complexity of various dynamic home environments. Moreover, within their home domains, users usually think semantically; for example, “I want to turn off all the lights on the second floor”. This paper proposes a semantic home automation system, USHAS (User-configurable Semantic Home Automation System), which adopts Web Service and WSBPEL for executing automated process; OWL and OWL-S for defining home environments and service ontology; and a self-defined markup language, SHPL (Semantic Home Process Language), for describing semantic processes.     

智慧家庭服务系统过程建模与设计

智慧家庭服务系统是现代服务计算和云计算环境下服务系统的新形态和新应用,对智慧家庭服务业务过程的分析、建模与设计问题进行了研究。介绍了智慧家庭的新理念,提出了智慧家庭服务系统的体系结构。在详细分析家庭服务业务过程基础上,提出了基于BPMN建模语言的智慧家庭服务过程建模方法。最后以具有典型性的采购服务为例,建立了服务过程模型,并给出了设计与实现方案。