Take Me Out: Space and Place in Library Interactions

Information interactions are strongly affected by the place where they occur. Specific locations are ofen associated with searches on particular topics, and individual users perform different tasks in habituated places. A classic example of habituated space is the commuter who regularly reads the news on the train. This paper investigates these associations through four user studies that examine different uses of place in information interaction. Through this, we reveal the ways in which the location of information interactions makes them effective or ineffective. This extends our interpretation of the role of place in information interaction beyond established foci such as location-based search

Getting creative in everyday life: Investigating arts and crafts hobbyists' information behavior

While there has been increasing interest in how creative professionals find information to drive creative outputs, previous information behavior research has largely ignored how arts and crafts hobbyists look for information sources in their everyday lives. To fill this literature gap, we conducted interviews and observations with arts and crafts hobbyists to find out how they conceive potential DIY projects. The findings highlight three themes: the dearth of human sources, the prevalence of domain-specific information, and the use of self-curated information. In addition to empirical results, this work also broadens the understanding of information behavior in an arts and crafts context by studying populations beyond professional artists

Reflecting on Users’ Strategies for Resilient Interactions

One crucial contributor to the resilience and reliability of interactions with technical and sociotechnical systems is the resilience of users themselves. While the study of human factors has traditionally focused on the negative aspects or frailties of human performance, attention is increasingly turning to also consider the proactive and positive contributions human performance can make across a range of tasks and settings. In this position paper, we introduce the notion of Resilience Strategies, summarise some of our current work in this area and discuss examples of resilience strategies we have encountered during the course of this work. We also discuss how work into resilience strategies is situated in terms of broader work into the high-level resilience of sociotechnical systems, and interactions with technical systems

Learning Lessons from Controlled Studies to Investigate Users' Resilience Strategies

This work describes the development and implementation of a controlled study into the way users form and utilise resilience strategies to overcome threats to performance. Despite a carefully considered design, participants demonstrated creative and unanticipated strategies to overcome deliberately ‘designed-in’ challenges in our task, thus circumventing the errors and responses we had predicted. We discuss the variety of unanticipated resilience strategies we observed during the course of this study, as well as methodological lessons learned as a result. Furthermore, we describe a forthcoming study which seeks to build upon the initial investigation, utilising a revised task paradigm to address and overcome its limitations

Heuristic Refinement Method for the Derivation of Protein Solution Structures: Validation on Cytochrome B562

A method is described for determining the family of protein structures compatible with solution data obtained primarily from nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Starting with all possible conformations, the method systematically excludes conformations until the remaining structures are only those compatible with the data. The apparent computational intractability of this approach is reduced by assembling the protein in pieces, by considering the protein at several levels of abstraction, by utilizing constraint satisfaction methods to consider only a few atoms at a time, and by utilizing artificial intelligence methods of heuristic control to decide which actions will exclude the most conformations. Example results are presented for simulated NMR data from the known crystal structure of cytochrome b562 (103 residues). For 10 sample backbones an average root-mean-square deviation from the crystal of 4.1 A was found for all alpha-carbon atoms and 2.8 A for helix alpha-carbons alone. The 10 backbones define the family of all structures compatible with the data and provide nearly correct starting structures for adjustment by any of the current structure determination methods

CloudBooks: An infrastructure for reading on multiple devices

The use of light, portable devices such as iPads whose reading angle is readily changed is radically different to reading on a desktop or laptop. However, it would be naive to view this as mere evolution. Rather, such devices permit reading activity to more closely mirror paper. A light, keyboardless device can be used in many different locations and orientations. This paper reports an infrastructure for supporting reading on multiple slate devices using a single cloud-based system to provide for numerous configurations

"It feels like I'm managing myself": HIV+ people tracking their personal health information

Nearly 37 million people live with HIV globally and recent advances in medicine have transformed HIV to a chronic disease, if managed. Previous research in Personal Health Informatics has investigated how people self-manage other chronic conditions, such as diabetes, by tracking and reflecting on their health information but there is little knowledge of how people do so for complex and socially stigmatized diseases like HIV. A better understanding of their specialized needs could lead to the development of more appropriate tools to self-manage their condition. Our paper introduces an iterative process model of Personal Health Informatics. We then describe the results of an empirical study involving HIV+ adults aimed at understanding their issues, concerns and actions in each of the stages of this process model. We provide implications for the design of personal informatics tools and open research directions that can lead to better self-management for people living with HIV

Capacitive Micromachined Ultrasonic Transducer Array with Pencil Beam Shape and Wide Range Beam Steering

AbstractA capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT) array is designed as an alternative to conventional piezoelectric transducers. A thin silicon nitride membrane is suspended over a bottom electrode on a silicon wafer. In the immersion mode, the transducer cell shape and dimensions are optimized for an operating frequency of 10MHz. We show that the proposed imager array can generate a pencil shape beam with a ∼1.5° half beam width, enhancing the detector resolution. A phased array technique is employed to excite multiple cells using time-delayed signals to steer the acoustic beam toward the object. This eliminates the need to mechanically move the detector, simplifying the transducer driving system. Moreover, unlike conventional transducers, the pencil beam can be effectively steered over a wide range of angles without producing grating lobes, which minimizes power loss in undesired directions. This can also improve the signal to noise ratio of the imager CMUT array

TicQR: Flexible, Lightweight Linking of Paper and Digital Content Using Mobile Phones

In this paper we introduce TicQR - a photo-based checkbox-enabled interface which bridges the physical and digital document domains, allowing automatic download or processing of useful data from paper documents. There is a long demonstrated need for people to be able to connect between printed material and digital information and services. By using a combination of image recognition and QR codes we are able to detect user marks on paper documents via a single photograph taken with a standard smart phone. This information can then be used to access the equivalent digital content, save contacts or URLs, or even order goods directly from local retailers