SensiBlend: Sensing blended experiences in professional and social contexts

Unlike traditional workshops, SensiBlend is a living experiment about the future of remote, hybrid, and blended experiences within professional and other social contexts. The interplay of interpersonal relationships with tools and spaces-digital and physical-has been abruptly challenged and fundamentally altered as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. With this meta-workshop, we seek to scrutinize and advance the role and impact of Ubiquitous Computing in the new "blended"social reality, and raise questions relating to the specific attributes of socio-Technical experiences in the future organization of interpersonal relationships. How do we better equip people to deal with blended experiences? What dimensions of socio-Technical experiences are at stake? To this end, we will utilize the occasion of a virtual UbiComp in combination with novel remote-working tools and participatory sensing with attendees to collectively examine, discuss, and elicit the potential routes of augmenting social practices in a discourse about the future of blended working, socializing, and living

The future of hybrid work is blended and interpersonal

The way we work has profoundly changed. The well-known eight-hour workday within the confines of the office, and the salient boundaries between work and personal life, are now an outdated reality. For many individuals, what used to be physical and co-located has now been replaced with notions of hybrid, blended, and flexible. However, this flexibility may create turbulence between employees and employers, depending on how employees manage their workdays, productivity, and well-being. Simply put, if we are to rethink a new future of work, we need to let go of old work habits and norms and embrace a brand-new reality of hybrid and blended experiences

Preparation of highly efficient thermoelectric Bi-doped Mg2Si0.55-xSn0.4Gex (x = 0 and 0.05) materials with a scalable mechanical alloying method

Mg2Si-type compounds are highly promising materials for use in thermoelectric devices for waste heat energy harvesting. These compounds have great potential because they exhibit high thermoelectric performance, but the scalability of their synthesis is a major issue for applications. In this study, Bi-doped Mg2Si0.55-xSn0.4Gex (x = 0 and 0.05) materials were prepared by mechanical alloying combined with hot press sintering in order to increase the mass capabilities of their synthetic route compared with the typical solid state reaction. The optimum thermoelectric properties were achieved for the best Mg2Si0.57Sn0.4Bi0.03 and Mg2Si0.53Sn0.4Ge0.05Bi0.02 compositions by ball milling for 32 h and the maximum figure of merit (ZT) values were 1.07 and 1.2, respectively

Double Networks Based on Amphiphilic Cross-Linked Star Block Copolymer First Conetworks and Randomly Cross-Linked Hydrophilic Second Networks

This study presents the preparation and characterization of double networks (DN) based on a first amphiphilic polymethacrylate conetwork (APCN) and a second polyacrylamide network. The APCN first network comprised interconnected "in-out" star copolymers of 2-(dimethylamino)ethyl methacrylate (DMAEMA, hydrophilic ionizable monomer) and 2-ethylhexyl methacrylate (EHMA, hydrophobic comonomer) or lauryl methacrylate (LauMA, second hydrophobic comonomer), synthesized using group transfer polymerization, following one-pot, sequential, monomer, and hydrophobic cross-linker (ethylene glycol dimethacrylate, EGDMA) additions. The second network was prepared by the aqueous photopolymerization of acrylamide (AAm) at two different concentrations, 2 and 5 M, and N,N′-methylenebis(acrylamide) cross-linker in the presence of the fully ionized (via HCl addition) APCN. After synthesis, all DNs and single (first and second) (co)networks, equilibrium-swollen in water, were characterized in terms of their mechanical properties in compression. The DNs exhibited improved mechanical properties (stress and strain at break, and elastic modulus) compared to the corresponding single networks. Better reinforcement was achieved in the DNs whose APCN first networks bore a lower hydrophobic content and whose hydrophobic monomer was EHMA rather than LauMA. The best DN exhibited stress at break above 8 MPa and strain at break nearly 80%, close to the values of the best DNs in the literature. Nanoindentation studies were also performed on selected DNs which proved again the enhanced mechanical properties of the present DNs, manifested as high resistance to penetration and low creep displacement. Small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) indicated a broad correlation peak for all APCN first networks, suggestive of microphase separation with short-range order, arising from the presence of the hydrophobic segments. The single correlation peak was preserved in the SAXS profiles of the DNs, which was, however, shifted to lower q-values, consistent with further network swelling. Despite the SAXS evidence for only weak phase separation on the nanoscale in the DNs, half of the water-swollen DNs (the ones with a 5 M AAm concentration in the second network) exhibited strong birefringence which probably arose from the stretching of the charged DMAEMA segments rather than the presence of anisotropic nanophases