Raising awareness of smartphone overuse among university students: a persuasive systems approach

Smartphone overuse can lead to a series of physical, mental and social disturbances. This problem is more prevalent among young adults as compared to other demographic groups. Additionally, university students are already undergoing high cognitive loads and stress conditions; therefore, they are more susceptible to smartphone addiction and its derived problems. In this paper, we present a novel approach where a conversational mobile agent uses persuasive messages exploring the reflective mind to raise users’ awareness of their usage and consequently induce reduction behaviors. We conducted a four-week study with 16 university students undergoing stressful conditions—a global lockdown during their semester—and evaluated the impact of the agent on smartphone usage reduction and the perceived usefulness of such an approach. Results show the efficacy of self-tracking in the behavior change process: 81% of the users reduced their usage time, and all of them mentioned that having a conversational agent alerting them about their usage was useful. Before this experiment, only 68% of them considered such an approach could be useful. In conclusion, users deemed it essential to have an engaging conversational agent on their smartphones, in terms of helping them become more aware of usage times.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Applying pen pressure, tilt and touch interactions to data visualizations

Bimanual interactions using pen and touch are natural to humans and have proven and explored in previous research. However, most of the previous work has been limited to using cartesian coordinates of fingers and pen tip. In this work, we go further by exploring additional pen data, like pressure and tilt, combined with multi touch inputs. We apply this combination to two data visualizations: Bubble Chart and Linear Regression combined with a Radar. We have performed a preliminary user study comparing Pen and Touch interactions with Mouse input. We have found the Pen and Touch interactions can consume less time while looking for specific values in the Bubble Chart, whereas Mouse can be faster while looking for specific relation in Linear Regression and Radar.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The Impact of Mobile Phone Reminders on Perceived Self-Care Levels of Informal Caregivers

: Informal caregivers play a fundamental role in caring for people that need assistance and provide an effective service in managing their loved ones’ health. Because of this, they have little time to attend to themselves and perform self-care practices. Some of these practices can improve mental health. By snowball sampling, we recruited 15 informal caregivers, 12 females and three males. Using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test, we analyzed the impact of the reminders on a self-care scale. We used the Mindful Self-Care Scale, comparing the same population without reminders and with reminders. Results indicated that total self-care scores with reminders increased statistically significantly, T = 13, Z = −2.481, p ≤ 0.013, with a large effect size (r = 0.64). This study shows a significant self-care increase in informal caregivers after using reminders. Future development of a reminders-based approach could focus on increasing self-care and the time caregivers take for themselves, empowering them to take a more active role in meeting their own needs.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Resistance Spot Welding of Dissimilar Steels: Temperature Curves

Resistance spot welding was used to joint AISI 316L austenitic stainless steel and AISI 1020 low carbon steel. During the welding process, temperature measurements were taken to obtain the temperature curves. Because of the different chemical compositions of the carbon steel and stainless steels, their thermal conductivity values are also different. Electrical resistivity is also an important parameter when carbon steel is spot welded to stainless steel. Differences in the thermal conductivity and in the electrical resistivity of metals lead to an asymmetrical weld nugget in the dissimilar joints. Dissimilar resistance spot welding can be more complex than similar welding due to different thermal cycle experienced with each metal

Primary Anti-Phospholipid Antibody Syndrome: Real-World Defining Features of Rethrombosis in the Course of Disease

Objective: We aimed to identify features that allow differentiation of primary antiphospholipid syndrome (PAPS) patients that suffer recurrent thrombotic events (RTE) despite anticoagulation, from the other diagnosed PAPS patients. Methods: This was an exploratory study of anticoagulated PAPS patients attending an Autoimmune Diseases Unit (1998-2018). From 2016, anti-phospholipid antibodies and lupus anticoagulant were determined for each patient at consecutive visits, collected together with retrospective clinical characteristics, laboratory, and therapeutic markers and compared according to the occurrence of thrombotic events during follow-up. Results: Overall, two thirds of the patients were female, 93% were Caucasian, with a median age of 40 years at diagnosis, for a median time of 11.5 years in follow-up. Out of 54 patients, 10 were identified with RTE. There were no significant differences among the RTE and non-RTE patients as far as classical risk factors for clotting disorders. The RTE group was characterized by a higher proportion of younger patients, male sex and positivity for all laboratory markers, and initially and over follow-up as well as a sustained high-risk profile based on APS laboratory markers. Anticardiolipin IgG at onset was the only statistically significant marker of the RTE group. At the end of follow-up, consistent reversion to negative status was a rare event, observed in 20% of RTE vs. 25% of non-RTE patients. Conclusions: Despite therapy, we were able to identify features associated to thrombotic events in patients with PAPS. Prospectively regular clinical and laboratory monitoring might be warranted in order to treat APS more assertively.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Incorporation of industrial wastes in wood pellets

ABSTRACT: The present work evaluates the incorporation of industrial wastes (Refuse Derived Fuel-RDF) into biomass for pellet production. Its influence on parameters such as pellet production, combustion and gas emissions was studied for up to 10% of residues incorporation. This approach also deals with the diverting of industrial waste from landfills. The main objectives were: increasing the heat value of the final product, diverting industrial residues with energy potential from landfill and assess the quality of different types of pellets with incorporation of industrial residues. Its implementation was carried out in three phases: selection and characterization of the different industrial residues, production of pellets from different mixtures of wastes and combustion tests. For this purpose a comprehensive characterization of the pellets, the gaseous emissions during combustion and the chemical characterization of the resulting ashes was carried out. The study has shown that the application of industrial residues is a promising route for their incorporation in pellets which should be balanced by the reduction of wastes for landfill. However a few problems were identified: higher difficulty in pelletizing and likely excessive wear of the pellet mill for some of the residues; combustion equipment requiring air supply adjustment and higher ash contents

Patterning of polymer nanofiber meshes by electrospinning for biomedical applications

The end-product of the electrospinning process is typically a randomly aligned fiber mesh or membrane. This is a result of the electric field generated between the drop of polymer solution at the needle and the collector. The developed electric field causes the stretching of the fibers and their random deposition. By judicious selection of the collector architecture, it is thus possible to develop other morphologies on the nanofiber meshes. The aim of this work is to prepare fiber meshes using various patterned collectors with specific dimensions and designs and to evaluate how those patterns can affect the properties of the meshes relevant to biomedical applications. This study aims at verifying whether it is possible to control the architecture of the fiber meshes by tailoring the geometry of the collector. Three different metallic collector topographies are used to test this hypothesis. Electrospun nonwoven patterned meshes of polyethylene oxide (PEO) and poly(ε-capro-lactone) (PCL) were successfully prepared. Those fiber meshes were analyzed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Both mechanical properties of the meshes and cell contacting experiments were performed to test the effect of the produced patterns over the properties of the meshes relevant for biomedical applications. The present study will evaluate cell adhesion sensitivity to the patterns generated and the effect of those patterns on the tensile properties of the fiber meshes