HelpWave: an integrated web centred system

In developed societies populations are aging. Facing the global slump states are reducing expenses bringing crisis to health care systems. Solutions to decrease costs are needed. Within ICT, smartphones’ features can help provide personalised health and care services that meet individual needs. There is a huge rise of applications that effectively help people but they act independently, each one for a certain purpose. In this paper we propose the HelpWave system, a cloud-centred architecture information system that integrates data from the users’ smartphones APPs. Conceived as a social care network its aim is to reinforce connection between caregivers and carereceiver as for instance, older people

Final Recommendations towards a Methodology for Technology Watch at EU Level: STACCATO Deliverable 2.2.1

As part of the PASR 2006 supporting activity STACCATO an investigation into a European ¿Technology Watch¿ for security was conducted using amongst other means an expert workshop. This activity was run in parallel to the competence mapping of the security industry and academia of Europe which resulted in a database and separate report (STACCATO Deliverable 2.1.1). Primary tasks for the technology watch could be 1: policy support: i.e. identifying security areas/topics in need of greater European focus and feedback on outcome of enacted policy; 2: ¿technology warning¿, monitoring emerging technologies for possible side effects detrimental to societal security; 3. technology transfer support, particularly for SME¿s since they are generally not capable of fielding their own technology watch efforts. A Technology watch effort should be based on one or more already existing stakeholder networks of established European actors in the security arena ¿ a ¿club of the willing¿, containing at least 10 actors from both industry and academia. Such an organisation would need to be relied upon to be neutral and impartial, thus the work process must be fully transparent and open to scrutiny, i.e. with all conclusions traceable to their individual sources. The organisation and supporting processes need to promote speed and flexibility, in particular in order to help accelerate the standardisation process of emerging technologies and solutions.JRC.G.6-Security technology assessmen

Influence of social networks on communication and culture

Má bakalářská práce je zaměřena na problematiku sociálních sítí a jejich vliv na dnešní společnost. Zabývá se jejich historií od prvotních pokusů až po nejnovější globální sociání sítě. Poté práce vysvětluje základní myšlenku vedoucí k vytvoření sociálních sítí i jejich charakteristické znaky. Dále nastiňuje problémy související se snadnou dostupností a nadměrným využíváním sociálních sítí, které následně ovlivňuje lidskou společnost. Práce se věnuje vlivu sociálních sítí na jazyk, mezilidskou komunikaci a kulturní adaptaci.My bachelor thesis is focused on issues with social networking services and their influence on modern society. It addresses their history from the very first attempts to create a social networking service to the modern global ones. Later the thesis provides an explanation of the creation of a social networking service and its characteristic traits. Furthermore it outlines problems connected with the availability and overuse of social networking services that are subsequently influencing the human society. The thesis also analyzes the influence of social networks on language, interpersonal communication and cultural adaptation.

Participatory research in and against time

The staccato rhythms of experiential time remain obscured in much of the literature on participatory research, where time is treated as a reassuring constant – a backdrop for human activity. This article addresses the discordances between lived temporalities and existing theorisations of participatory methodologies. It takes participatory research with lone child migrants as a particularly rich case to think with, given the proliferation of contradictory and often punitive applications of time these young people encounter in their interactions with migration and welfare regimes. The core argument developed is that unless temporality is given due theoretical and methodological attention, aims of contesting and unsettling inequities through participatory research will have limited success and can wind up reproducing exclusions and oppressions. In response to these critiques, the paper temporalizes participatory research through three reconstructions: working with and against time, de-centring shared time and collectivising the time of participatory research

The Mobile Health Revolution?

Rarely does a class of technologies excite physicians, patients, financeers, gadgeteers, and policymakers alike. But mobile health — the use of mobile devices like smartphones and tablets for health or medical purposes — has captured our collective imagination. Observers predict that mobile health, also referred to as “mHealth” or “medical apps,” can save millions of lives, billions in spending, and democratize access to health care. Proponents argue that mobile health technologies will transform the ways in which we deliver, consume, measure, and pay for care; disrupting our sclerotic health care system. This Article evaluates mobile health and its many ambitions. Given the significant hype surrounding mobile health, I try to provide a relatively sober, dispassionate review of the many claims here. I begin by surveying the universe of mobile health technologies, offering a typology of products based on their functions, many of which have regulatory significance. The Article then considers the federal government’s posture towards mobile health. To date, Congress and over half a dozen federal agencies have addressed mobile health. Contrary to the prevailing wisdom, federal regulators are sympathetic, not hostile, to these technologies. However, I demonstrate how one agency, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), is repeating the same mistakes that it made when it first confronted medical device software 25 years ago, relying on nonbinding guidance documents that are largely weak and unenforceable. I argue that, somewhat counter-intuitively, mobile health will only reach its immense potential if regulators like the FDA provide meaningful oversight. Otherwise, users will be flooded with mobile technologies that are ineffective, or worse, unsafe

Data-enabled design for social change: Two case studies

Smartness in contemporary society implies the use of massive data to improve the experience of people with connected services and products. The use of big data to collect information about people's behaviours opens a new concept of "user-centred design" where users are remotely monitored, observed and profiled. In this paradigm, users are considered as sources of information and their participation in the design process is limited to a role of data generators. There is a need to identify methodologies that actively involve people and communities at the core of ecosystems of interconnected products and services. Our contribution to designing for social innovation in ecosystems relies on developing new methods and approaches to transform data-driven design using a participatory and co-creative data-enabled design approach. To this end, we present one of the methods we have developed to design "smart" systems called Experiential Design Landscapes (EDL), and two sample projects, Social Stairs and [Y]our Perspective. Social Stairs faces the topic of behaviour change mediated by sensing technologies. [Y]our Perspective is a social platform to sustain processes of deliberative democracy. Both projects exemplify our approach to data-enabled design as a social proactive participatory design approach

Towards a Better Understanding of Emotion Communication in Music: An Interactive Production Approach.

It has been well established that composers and performers are able to encode certain emotional expressions in music, which in turn are decoded by listeners, and in general, successfully recognised. There is still much to discover, however, as to how musical cues combine to shape different emotions in the music, since previous literature has tended to focus on a limited number of cues and emotional expressions. The work in this thesis aims to investigate how combinations of tempo, articulation, pitch, dynamics, brightness, mode, and later, instrumentation, are used to shape sadness, joy, calmness, anger, fear, power, and surprise in Western tonal music. In addition, new tools for music and emotion research are presented with the aim of providing an efficient production approach to explore a large cue-emotion space in a relatively short time. To this end, a new interactive interface called EmoteControl was created which allows users to alter musical pieces in real-time through the available cues. Moreover, musical pieces were specifically composed to be used as stimuli. Empirical experiments were then carried out with the interface to determine how participants shaped different emotions in the pieces using the available cues. Specific cue combinations for the different emotions were produced. Findings revealed that overall, mode and tempo were the strongest contributors to the conveyed emotion whilst brightness was the least effective cue. However, the importance of the cues varied depending on the intended emotion. Finally, a comparative evaluation of production and traditional approaches was carried out which showed that similar results may be obtained with both. However, the production approach allowed for a larger cue-emotion space to be navigated in a shorter time. In sum, the production approach allowed participants to directly show us how they think emotional expressions should sound, and how they are shaped in music

The George-Anne

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