Intelligent Systems

This book is dedicated to intelligent systems of broad-spectrum application, such as personal and social biosafety or use of intelligent sensory micro-nanosystems such as "e-nose", "e-tongue" and "e-eye". In addition to that, effective acquiring information, knowledge management and improved knowledge transfer in any media, as well as modeling its information content using meta-and hyper heuristics and semantic reasoning all benefit from the systems covered in this book. Intelligent systems can also be applied in education and generating the intelligent distributed eLearning architecture, as well as in a large number of technical fields, such as industrial design, manufacturing and utilization, e.g., in precision agriculture, cartography, electric power distribution systems, intelligent building management systems, drilling operations etc. Furthermore, decision making using fuzzy logic models, computational recognition of comprehension uncertainty and the joint synthesis of goals and means of intelligent behavior biosystems, as well as diagnostic and human support in the healthcare environment have also been made easier

The development and evaluation of a novel online tool for assessing dietary intake and physical activity levels for use in adult populations

The Synchronised Nutrition and Activity Program for Adults (SNAPA™) was developed to address the need for accurate, reliable, feasible, inexpensive and low burden methods for measuring diet and physical activity behaviours in free-living adult populations. Usability testing (n=5) identified a number of usability issues and the program was revised accordingly. Test-retest reliability (n=44) revealed no substantial systematic shifts in mean values. Outcome variables were percentage food energy from fat (%fat), number of fruit and vegetable portions (FV), and minutes of moderate to vigorous activity (MVPA). Single measure intra-class correlations (ICC) ranged from 0.62 to 0.72 and average measure ICC range from 0.76 to 0.84. The preliminary method comparison study (n=71) revealed correlations between SNAPA™ and multiple pass recall dietary interview-derived %fat and FV portions of 0.48 (bootstrapped 90% CI 0.31, 0.64) and 0.42 (bootstrapped 90% CI 0.22, 0.60) respectively. The correlation between SNAPA™ and accelerometry-derived MVPA was 0.39 (bootstrapped 90% CI 0.08, 0.64). The in-depth primary method comparison study (n=77) investigated the agreement between SNAPA™ and dietary observation and combined heart rate and accelerometry. The mean match and phantom rates between SNAPA™ and lunchtime dietary observation was 81.7% and 5.6%, respectively. Correlations between SNAPA™ and the reference method outcomes ranged between 0.39 and 0.56. Passing-Bablok (type II) regression analysis revealed both fixed and proportional bias for the estimation of energy intake; proportional bias for fat intake (g); a fixed bias for MVPA, and no substantial biases for %fat or FV portions. SNAPA™ was used to collect diet and physical activity data in a health promotion campaign, ‘Get a Better Life’ (n=1201), providing useful information on the feasibility of using the program in a real-world initiative. SNAPA™ is a promising tool for the surveillance of diet and physical behaviours at a group level in adult populations

User assemblages in design : an ethnographic study

This thesis presents an ethnographic study of the role of users in user-centered design. It is written from the perspective of science and technology studies, in particular developments in actor-network theory, and draws on the notion of the assemblage from the work of Deleuze and Guattari. The data for this thesis derives from a six-month field study of the routine discourse and practices of user-centered designers working for a multinational microprocessor manufacturer. The central argument of this thesis is that users are assembled along with the new technologies whose design they resource, as well as with new configurations of socio-cultural life that they bring into view. Informing this argument are two interrelated insights. First, user-centered and participatory design processes involve interminglings of human and non-human actors. Second, users are occasioned in such processes as sociotechnical assemblages. Accordingly, this thesis: (1) reviews how the user is variously applied as a practico-theoretical concern within human-computer interaction (HCI) and as an object of analysis within the sociology and history of technology; (2) outlines a methodology for studying users variously enacted within design practice; (3) examines how a non-user is constructed and re-constructed during the development of a diabetes related technology; (4) examines how designers accomplish user-involvement by way of a gendered persona; (5) examines how the making of a technology for people suffering from obesity included multiple users that served to format the designers’ immediate practical concerns, as well as the management of future expectations; (6) examines how users serve as a means for conducting ethnography-in-design. The thesis concludes with a theoretically informed reflection on user assemblages as devices that: do representation; resource designers’ socio-material management of futures; perform modalities of scale associated with technological and product development; and mediate different forms of accountability.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo