Do TETRA (Airwave) base station signals have a short-term impact on health and well-being? A randomized double-blind provocation study

Background: "Airwave" is the new communication system currently being rolled out across the United Kingdom for the police and emergency services, based on the Terrestrial Trunked Radio Telecommunications System (TETRA). Some police officers have complained about skin rashes, nausea, headaches, and depression as a consequence of using their Airwave handsets. In addition, a small subgroup in the population self-report being sensitive to electromagnetic fields (EMFs) in general. Objectives: We conducted a randomized double-blind provocation study to establish whether short-term exposure to a TETRA base station signal has an impact on the health and well-being of individuals with self-reported "electrosensitivity" and of participants who served as controls.Methods: Fifty-one individuals with self-reported electrosensitivity and 132 age and sex-matched controls participated in an open provocation test; 48 sensitive and 132 control participants went on to complete double-blind tests in a fully screened semianechoic chamber. Heart rate, skin conductance, and blood pressure readings provided objective indices of short-term physiological response. Visual analog scales and symptom scales provided subjective indices of well-being.Results: We found no differences on any measure between TETRA and sham (no signal) under double-blind conditions for either controls or electrosensitive participants, and neither group could detect the presence of a TETRA signal at rates greater than chance (50%). When conditions were not double blind, however, the self-reported electrosensitive individuals did report feeling worse and experienced more severe symptoms during TETRA compared with sham.Conclusions: Our findings suggest that the adverse symptoms experienced by electrosensitive individuals are due to the belief of harm from TETRA base stations rather than to the low-level EMF exposure itself

VoodooFlash: authoring across physical and digital form

Design tools that integrate hardware and software components facilitate product design work across aspects of physical form and user interaction, but at the cost of requiring designers to work with other than their accustomed programming tools. In this paper we introduce VoodooFlash, a tool designed to build on the widespread use of Flash while facilitating design work across physical and digital components. VoodooFlash extends the existing practice of authoring interactive applications in terms of arranging components on a virtual stage, and provides a physical stage on which controls can be arranged, linked to software components, and appropriated with other physical design materials

Investigating the Intelligibility of a Computer Vision System for Blind Users

Computer vision systems to help blind usersare becoming increasingly common yet often these systems are not intelligible. Our work investigates the intelligibility of a wearable computer vision system to help blind users locate and identify people in their vicinity. Providing a continuous stream of information, this system allows us to explore intelligibility through interaction and instructions, going beyond studies of intelligibility that focus on explaining a decision a computer vision system might make. In a study with 13 blind users, we explored whether varying instructions (either basic or enhanced) about how the system worked would change blind users’ experience of the system. We found offering a more detailed set of instructions did not affect how successful users were using the system nor their perceived workload. We did, however, find evidence of significant differences in what they knew about the system, and they employed different, and potentially more effective, use strategies. Our findings have important implications for researchers and designers of computer vision systemsfor blind users, as well more general implications for understanding what it means to make interactive computer vision systems intelligible

Pedestrian Detection with Wearable Cameras for the Blind: A Two-way Perspective

Blind people have limited access to information about their surroundings, which is important for ensuring one's safety, managing social interactions, and identifying approaching pedestrians. With advances in computer vision, wearable cameras can provide equitable access to such information. However, the always-on nature of these assistive technologies poses privacy concerns for parties that may get recorded. We explore this tension from both perspectives, those of sighted passersby and blind users, taking into account camera visibility, in-person versus remote experience, and extracted visual information. We conduct two studies: an online survey with MTurkers (N=206) and an in-person experience study between pairs of blind (N=10) and sighted (N=40) participants, where blind participants wear a working prototype for pedestrian detection and pass by sighted participants. Our results suggest that both of the perspectives of users and bystanders and the several factors mentioned above need to be carefully considered to mitigate potential social tensions.Comment: The 2020 ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2020

Anonymous reputation based reservations in e-commerce (AMNESIC)

Online reservation systems have grown over the last recent years to facilitate the purchase of goods and services. Generally, reservation systems require that customers provide some personal data to make a reservation effective. With this data, service providers can check the consumer history and decide if the user is trustable enough to get the reserve. Although the reputation of a user is a good metric to implement the access control of the system, providing personal and sensitive data to the system presents high privacy risks, since the interests of a user are totally known and tracked by an external entity. In this paper we design an anonymous reservation protocol that uses reputations to profile the users and control their access to the offered services, but at the same time it preserves their privacy not only from the seller but the service provider

A single-blind, pilot randomised trial of a weight management intervention for adults with intellectual disabilities and obesity: study protocol

Background: The prevalence of obesity in adults with intellectual disabilities has consistently been reported to be higher than the general population. Despite the negative impact of obesity on health, there is little evidence of the effectiveness of weight management interventions for adults with intellectual disabilities and obesity. Preliminary results from a single-stranded feasibility study of a multi-component weight management intervention specifically designed for adults with intellectual disabilities and obesity (TAKE 5) and that satisfied clinical recommendations reported that it was acceptable to adults with intellectual disabilities and their carers. This study aims to determine the feasibility of a full-scale clinical trial of TAKE 5.<p></p> Methods: This study will follow a pilot randomised trial design. Sixty-six obese participants (body mass index (BMI) ≥30 kg/m2) will be randomly allocated to the TAKE 5 multi-component weight management intervention or a health education ‘active’ control intervention (Waist Winners Too (WWToo)). Both interventions will be delivered over a 12-month period. Participants’ anthropometric measures (body weight, BMI, waist circumference, percentage body fat); indicators of activity (levels of physical activity and sedentary behaviour) and well-being will be measured at three time points: baseline, 6 and 12 months. The researcher collecting outcome measures will be blind to study group allocation.<p></p> Conclusions: The data from this study will generate pilot data on the acceptability of randomisation, attrition rates and the estimates of patient-centred outcomes of TAKE 5, which will help inform future research and the development of a full-scale randomised clinical trial