When do we eat? An evaluation of food items input into an electronic monitoring application

We present a formative study that examines what, when, and how participants in a chronic kidney disease (stage 5) population input food items into an electronic intake monitoring application. Participants scanned food item barcodes or voice recorded food items they consumed during a three week period. The results indicated that a learning curve was associated with barcode scanning; participants with low literacy skills had difficulty describing food items in voice recordings; and participants input food items depending on when they had dialysis treatment. Participants thought this electronic self monitoring application would be helpful for chronically ill populations in their first year of treatmen

An analysis into early customer experiences of self-service checkouts:lessons for improved usability

The research aims to examine the perceptions of relative novice users of self-service checkouts (SSCOs) and if these perceptions change before, during and following use. Employing a diary approach with 31 respondents relatively unfamiliar with SSCOs, the research will document their experiences with this technology across stationary, hardware and grocery stores in two Scottish cities (Glasgow and Dundee). Findings suggest that the majority of respondents were motivated to use the technology because of time saving and convenience. However, the actual experience of using SSCOs was not always considered quicker when compared to staffed checkouts because of technical issues, lack of staff assistance and the impersonal, sometimes stressful and controlled nature of the cramped SSCO environment. Following post-use reflections, the majority of respondents’ opinions did not change from their initial perceptions and indicated that they would prefer not to use the technology in the future. Based on the findings, this study makes some practical suggestions centring on the design and usability of SSCOs, which may go some way to reducing customer dissatisfaction and frustration with the technology, especially from the perspective of new users of the technology

Barcoding and ILS Migration from Start to Finish: A Case Study

This practice-oriented article outlines one institution’s process of implementing both electronic checkout and a new integrated library system (ILS) for an academic library of 187,000 physical items. Special attention is given to the need for background research, administrative buy-in, and project management. Lessons learned and recommendations conclude the article

Bronco Books: Textbook E-commerce Platform

College students purchase textbooks for the classes they take every quarter, but current solutions for selling back those textbooks are insufficient, requiring that the student pay to utilize the selling platforms or that the student build rapport within a given community. Our project, Bronco Books, offers a solution by being a native mobile application open to only SCU students. Bronco Books will be free to access and will act as an e-commerce platform where students go to sell their textbooks. We were motivated to create Bronco Books primarily because we wanted to help alleviate the financial burden that comes with purchasing textbooks. This document covers the requirements, use cases, and activity diagrams for Bronco Books. We also explain our rationale behind some of our design decisions, such as the technologies we will be using for this project, and our followed timeline. We conclude the document by discussing the lessons we learned and the developmental future of Bronco Books

Does Micro-CT scanning damage DNA in museum specimens?

X-ray micro-computed tomography and DNA sequencing are useful and increasingly common tools in taxonomy and collections research. Whilst the benefits of each method are continually evaluated and debated individually, how the methods impact each other requires more attention. We compared DNA fragment length and the barcode sequence CO1 in samples throughout a CT-scanning protocol, for a range of X-ray exposures and energies. We found no evidence of DNA damage, but advise caution when using precious or archival material, highlighting the need for further investigations and considering potential areas for research.NatSCA supports open access publication as part of its mission is to promote and support natural science collections. NatSCA uses the Creative Commons Attribution License (CCAL) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/ for all works we publish. Under CCAL authors retain ownership of the copyright for their article, but authors allow anyone to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute, and/or copy articles in NatSCA publications, so long as the original authors and source are cited. The attached file is the published version of the article

From Codes to Patterns: Designing Interactive Decoration for Tableware

ABSTRACT We explore the idea of making aesthetic decorative patterns that contain multiple visual codes. We chart an iterative collaboration with ceramic designers and a restaurant to refine a recognition technology to work reliably on ceramics, produce a pattern book of designs, and prototype sets of tableware and a mobile app to enhance a dining experience. We document how the designers learned to work with and creatively exploit the technology, enriching their patterns with embellishments and backgrounds and developing strategies for embedding codes into complex designs. We discuss the potential and challenges of interacting with such patterns. We argue for a transition from designing ‘codes to patterns’ that reflects the skills of designers alongside the development of new technologies

MMM: May I Mine Your Mind?

Consider the following set-up for the plot of a possible future episode of the TV series Black Mirror: human brains can be connected directly to the net and MiningMind Inc. has developed a technology that merges a reward system with a cryptojacking engine that uses the human brain to mine cryptocurrency (or to carry out some other mining activity). Part of our brain will be committed to cryptographic calculations (mining), leaving the remaining part untouched for everyday operations, i.e., for our brain's normal daily activity. In this short paper, we briefly argue why this set-up might not be so far fetched after all, and explore the impact that such a technology could have on our lives and our society.Comment: 4 pages, 0 figure, Accepted at the "Re-Coding Black Mirror" workshop of the International World Wide Web Conferences (WWW