A Scoping Review of Technological Approaches to Environmental Monitoring

Indoor environment quality (IEQ) can negatively affect occupant health and wellbeing. Air quality, as well as thermal, visual and auditory conditions, can determine how comfortable occupants feel within buildings. Some can be measured objectively, but many are assessed by interpreting qualitative responses. Continuous monitoring by passive sensors may be useful to identify links between environmental and physiological changes. Few studies localise measurements to an occupant level perhaps due to many environmental monitoring solutions being large and expensive. Traditional models for occupant comfort analysis often exacerbate this by not differentiating between individual building occupants. This scoping review aims to understand IEQ and explore approaches as to how it is measured with various sensing technologies, identifying trends for monitoring occupant health and wellbeing. Twenty-seven studies were reviewed, and more than 60 state-of-the-art and low-cost IEQ sensors identified. Studies were found to focus on the home or workplace, but not both. This review also found how wearable technology could be used to augment IEQ measurements, creating personalised approaches to health and wellbeing. Opportunities exist to make individuals the primary unit of analysis. Future research should explore holistic personalised approaches to health monitoring in buildings that analyse the individual as they move between environments

Towards an holistic view of the energy and environmental impacts of domestic media and IT

To date, research in sustainable HCI has dealt with eco-feedback, usage and recycling of appliances within the home, and longevity of portable electronics such as mobile phones. However, there seems to be less awareness of the energy and greenhouse emissions impacts of domestic consumer electronics and information technology. Such awareness is needed to inform HCI sustainability researchers on how best to prioritise efforts around digital media and IT. Grounded in inventories, interview and plug energy data from 33 undergraduate student participants, our findings provide the context for assessing approaches to reducing the energy and carbon emissions of media and IT in the home. In the paper, we use the findings to discuss and inform more fruitful directions that sustainable HCI research might take, and we quantify how various strategies might have modified the energy and emissions impacts for our participants

Exploring (un)sustainable growth of digital technologies in the home

HCI and Ubicomp research often centres around the support of humans interacting with digital technology. Despite this obvious focus, there seems to be less work on understanding how these digital technologies can lead to growth in use, dependence, and influence practices in everyday life. In this paper we discuss how digital technologies have been, and continue to be, adopted in domestic practices—and how the growth of interactions with various ecologies of digital technologies can lead to growth in use and energy consumption. We further the discussion within ICT4S and sustainable HCI on how to promote research that encourages sustainability as a core concern—socially, economically, and ecologically—emphasising that defining limits to growth are important when trying to affect change in sustainable directions. We echo calls for more significant sustainability research from HCI, and set out some avenues of design for moving in this direction

Demand in my pocket:mobile devices and the data connectivity marshalled in support of everyday practice

This paper empirically explores the role that mobile devices have come to play in everyday practice, and how this links to demand for network connectivity and online services. After a preliminary device-logging period, thirteen participants were interviewed about how they use their iPhones or iPads. Our findings build a picture of how, through use of such devices, a variety of daily practices have come to depend upon a working data connection, which sometimes surges, but is at least always a trickle. This aims to inform the sustainable design of applications, services and infrastructures for smartphones and tablets. By focusing our analysis in this way, we highlight a little-explored challenge for sustainable HCI and discuss ideas for (re)designing around the principle of 'light-weight' data 'needs'

Low-cost, multimodal environmental monitoring based on the Internet of Things

Monitoring Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) is of growing interest for health and wellbeing. New building standards, climate targets and adoption of homeworking strategies are creating needs for scalable, monitoring solutions with onward Cloud connectivity. Low-cost Micro-Electromechanical Systems (MEMS) sensors have potential to address these needs, enabling development of bespoke multimodal devices. Here, we present insights into the development of a MEMS-based Internet of things (IoT) enabled multimodal device for IEQ monitoring. A study was conducted to establish the inter-device variability and validity to reference standard sensors/devices. For the multimodal, IEQ monitor, intraclass correlations and Bland-Altman analyses indicated good inter-sensor reliability and good-to-excellent agreement for most sensors. All low-cost sensors were found to respond to environmental changes. Many sensors reported low accuracy but high precision meaning they could be calibrated against reference sensors to increase accuracy. The multimodal device developed here was identified as being fit-for-purpose, providing general indicators of environmental changes for continuous IEQ monitoring

Predicting Productive Performance in Grow-Finisher Pigs Using Birth and Weaning Body Weight

peer-reviewedThis study aimed to (1) investigate the effect of birth and weaning body weight (BW) on performance indicators of grow-finisher pigs and (2) estimate birth and weaning BW cut-off values in order to identify slow growing pigs (SGP). Pigs (n = 144) were classified as SMALL (0.9 ± 0.13 kg) or BIG (1.4 ± 0.20 kg) at birth and re-classified as SMALL (5.4 ± 1.6 kg) or BIG (6.3 ± 1.91 kg) at weaning. Individual BW was recorded bi-weekly, and feed intake was recorded on a daily basis. Average daily gain (ADG) and feed intake, feed conversion ratio (FCR) and days to target slaughter weight (TSW) were calculated. SMALL–SMALL pigs had lower ADG (p 0.05). Pigs weaned at <3.7 kg BW would likely be SGP. Pigs born at ≥1.1 kg BW or weaned at ≥6.4 kg BW are more likely to reach TSW at 22 weeks of age. The results suggest that birth BW might not be the best predictor for subsequent performance, as some small-born pigs were able to catch up with their bigger counterparts. The cut-off values identified could be used to design specific management and nutritional strategies for SGP

Towards remote healthcare monitoring using accessible IoT technology: State-of-the-art, insights and experimental design

Healthcare studies are moving toward individualised measurement. There is need to move beyond supervised assessments in the laboratory/clinic. Longitudinal free-living assessment can provide a wealth of information on patient pathology and habitual behaviour, but cost and complexity of equipment have typically been a barrier. Lack of supervised conditions within free-living assessment means there is need to augment these studies with environmental analysis to provide context to individual measurements. This paper reviews low-cost and accessible Internet of Things (IoT) technologies with the aim of informing biomedical engineers of possibilities, workflows and limitations they present. In doing so, we evidence their use within healthcare research through literature and experimentation. As hardware becomes more affordable and feature rich, the cost of data magnifies. This can be limiting for biomedical engineers exploring low-cost solutions as data costs can make IoT approaches unscalable. IoT technologies can be exploited by biomedical engineers, but more research is needed before these technologies can become commonplace for clinicians and healthcare practitioners. It is hoped that the insights provided by this paper will better equip biomedical engineers to lead and monitor multi-disciplinary research investigations

Towards a Responsible Innovation Agenda for HCI

In recent years responsible innovation has gained significant traction and can be seen to adorn a myriad of research platforms, education programs, and policy frameworks. In this workshop, we invite HCI researchers to discuss the relations between the CHI community and responsible innovation. This workshop looks to build provocations and principles for and with HCI researchers who are or wish to become responsible innovators. The workshop looks to do this by asking attendees to think about the social, environmental, and economic impacts of ICT and HCI and explore how research innovation frameworks speak to responsible HCI innovation. Through the workshop we look to examine 5 questions to develop a set of provocations and principles, which will help encourage HCI and computer science researchers, educators, and innovators to reflect on the impact of their research and innovatio

Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy Modulates the Immune Microenvironment in Metastases of Tubo-Ovarian High-Grade Serous Carcinoma

This research was funded by Swiss Cancer League (BIL KLS-2883-02-2012), the European Research Council (ERC322566), Cancer Research UK (A16354), and Barts and The London Charity (467/1307)

Exploring the critiques of the social model of disability: The transformative possibility of Arendt's notion of power

The social model of disability has demonstrated political success for disabled people in society. At the same time, it has been labelled an outdated ideology in need of further development. While the social model of disability has been used successfully for political activism, it has simultaneously created conflict and tensions in disability studies, sociology and the sociology of the body. This article sheds light on the confusion surrounding the social model of disability by discussing the historical emergence of its different forms. It then proceeds to analyse and evaluate key criticisms of the social model of disability. The article then goes on to explore the relevance of different forms of power to the current discourse on disability before proceeding to explore in depth what might be gained from the approach of one particular theorist on power; Hannah Arendt. It suggests that there may be merit in drawing on Arendt and illustrates some of the benefits of a more nuanced idea of a pluralistic body and experiences