The influence of music on mood and performance while driving

Mood can influence our everyday behaviour and people often seek to reinforce, or to alter their mood, for example by turning on music. Music listening while driving is a popular activity. However, little is known about the impact of music listening while driving on physiological state and driving performance. In the present experiment, it was investigated whether individually selected music can induce mood and maintain moods during a simulated drive. In addition, effects of positive, negative, and no music on driving behaviour and physiological measures were assessed for normal and high cognitive demanding rides. Subjective mood ratings indicated that music successfully maintained mood while driving. Narrow lane width drives increased task demand as shown in effort ratings and increased swerving. Furthermore, respiration rate was lower during music listening compared to rides without music, while no effects of music were found on heart rate. Overall, the current study demonstrates that music listening in car influences the experienced mood while driving, which in turn can impact driving behaviour. Practitioners Summary: Even though it is a popular activity, little is known about the impact of music while driving on physiological state and performance. We examined whether music can induce moods during high and low simulated drives. The current study demonstrates that in car music listening influences mood which in turn can impact driving behaviour. The current study shows that listening to music can positively impact mood while driving, which can be used to affect state and safe behaviour. Additionally, driving performance in high demand situations is not negatively affected by music

Factors influencing experience in crowds – the organiser perspective

© 2017 Elsevier Ltd Crowds are a commonplace encounter but the experience for participants can be highly variable. Crowds are complex sociotechnical phenomenon, affected by many interacting factors. Little is known, however, about how those responsible for organising crowd situations approach their responsibilities. This study conducted semi-structured interviews (n = 41) with organisers responsible for different aspects of the design, planning, management and operations of events and other crowd situations. The objective was to understand organisers' priorities, along with the consideration given to the experience of crowd participants. The interviews revealed that organisers generally prioritised finance, security and health and safety aspects, whilst giving limited explicit attention to other important factors that affect participant experience. Organisers tended to approach their planning and decisions on the basis of their own experience and judgement, without accessing training or reference to guidance. It is suggested that the non-use of guidance is in part due to problems with the guidance currently available, both its content and its form. The organisers of infrequent or small-scale events have the greatest knowledge and experience gap. It is concluded that in order to achieve a consistent, high quality experience for crowd participants, there needs to be improved understanding among organisers of the complexity of crowds and the multiple factors influencing participant experience. Guidance and tools need to be usable and tailored to organisers’ requirements. Organisers of infrequent or small-scale events are especially in need of support

Integrating Social Media with Ontologies for Real-Time Crowd Monitoring and Decision Support in Mass Gatherings

Situation awareness plays an essential role in making real-time decisions in mass gatherings. In the last few years, social media data analysis has been proved to be an effective approach to enable and enhance situation awareness. Mass gathering events are dynamic and critical environments where thousands of people attend. During the event, there is a potential for injuries and other health hazards, and thus it is critical for emergency medical services to access real-time and situational awareness information, especially concerning the nature of the crowd. It has been well recognized in the literature that crowd mood and behaviour can have a direct impact on the crowd safety and patient presentation rates. We describe a mobile social media-enabled crowd monitoring architecture that aims to improve emergency management decision-making by analysing the data from social networks in real-time. The proposed architecture incorporates a crowd behaviour classification model, which facilitates real-time situation awareness and provides a better understanding of analysis results. Awareness and perception of crowd mood and behaviour during the event can significantly improve prediction of patient presentation rates; leading to timely and effective medical care provision. The implementation and evaluation of the proposed framework on an Android mobile phone is described

Future bathroom: A study of user-centred design principles affecting usability, safety and satisfaction in bathrooms for people living with disabilities

Research and development work relating to assistive technology 2010-11 (Department of Health) Presented to Parliament pursuant to Section 22 of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 197

Creativity, Virtue and the Challenges from Natural Talent, Ill-Being and Immorality

We praise and admire creative people in virtually every domain. We also sometimes blame, condemn or withhold praise from those who fail creatively. This article outlines and develops my virtue theoretic account of exemplary creativity that makes sense of how and why we think in this way. If we are interested in a robust account of creative excellence we need to look at the underlying psychological mechanisms that enable individuals to be imaginative, surprising or original (and those which undermine them). I will suggest that what it is to be a creatively excellent person depends – amongst other things - upon certain admirable character traits such as curiosity, courage and perseverance. Creative virtues are admirable character traits that ground creative excellence and contribute to individual flourishing. Once the view is laid out the rest of the paper will be devoted to addressing apparent objections to this view emerging from the psychological and philosophical literature: challenges based on claims concerning a) the idea that it is natural talent not character that matters for creativity b) if being creative is significantly linked to mental illness then being creative promotes ill-being rather than well-being or flourishing and c) potential and apparent conflicts between moral and creative virtues

CHORUS Deliverable 2.1: State of the Art on Multimedia Search Engines

Based on the information provided by European projects and national initiatives related to multimedia search as well as domains experts that participated in the CHORUS Think-thanks and workshops, this document reports on the state of the art related to multimedia content search from, a technical, and socio-economic perspective. The technical perspective includes an up to date view on content based indexing and retrieval technologies, multimedia search in the context of mobile devices and peer-to-peer networks, and an overview of current evaluation and benchmark inititiatives to measure the performance of multimedia search engines. From a socio-economic perspective we inventorize the impact and legal consequences of these technical advances and point out future directions of research