Turning Up the Heat on Energy Monitoring in the Home

The use of domestic electrical energy monitoring systems is becoming more common however gas usage has received comparatively little attention. This paper presents a new technique for monitoring gas-powered heating and hot water usage in the home integrated into a prototype energy monitoring platform. Compared to usual meter-based approaches this technique provides finer-grained usage data and uses simple temperature sensors. The main motivation for this work is to provide more meaningful energy information to users for inclusion in novel mobile and embedded applications. This is part of ongoing work which aims to reduce energy use among teenagers in the UK and make lasting attitude changes. The development and findings from a prototype deployed in a typical UK house over 7 days are presented. The findings highlight the utility of the technique and simplicity of the sensing approach. The novel requirements that inspired the development of this technique are also presented

Constructing the Cool Wall: A Tool to Explore Teen Meanings of Cool

This paper describes the development and exploration of a tool designed to assist in investigating ‘cool’ as it applies to the design of interactive products for teenagers. The method involved the derivation of theoretical understandings of cool from literature that resulted in identification of seven core categories for cool, which were mapped to a hierarchy. The hierarchy includes having of cool things, the doing of cool activities and the being of cool. This paper focuses on a tool, the Cool Wall, developed to explore one specific facet of the hierarchy; exploring shared understanding of having cool things. The paper describes the development and construction of the tool, using a heavily participatory approach, and the results and analysis of a study carried out over 2 days in a school in the UK. The results of the study both provide clear insights into cool things and enable a refined understanding of cool in this context. Two additional studies are then used to identify potential shortcomings in the Cool Wall methodology. In the first study participants were able to populate a paper cool wall with anything they chose, this revealed two potential new categories of images and that the current set of images covered the majority of key themes. In the second study teenagers interpretations of the meaning of the images included in the Cool Wall were explored, this showed that the majority of meanings were as expected and a small number of unexpected interpretations provided some valuable insights

Too Cool at School - Understanding Cool Teenagers

Cool can be thought about on three levels; the having of cool things, the doing of cool stuff and the being of cool. Whilst there is some understanding of cool products, the concept, of being cool is much more elusive to designers and developers of systems. This study examines this space by using a set of pre-prepared teenage personas as probes with a set of teenagers with the aim of better understanding what is, and isn’t cool about teenage behaviours. The study confirmed that teenagers are able to rank personas in order of cool and that the process of using personas can provide valuable insights around the phenomenon of cool. The findings confirm that cool is indeed about having cool things but in terms of behaviours cool can be a little bit, but not too, naughty

Localized Soil Management in Fertilizer Injection Zone to Reduce Nitrate Leaching

Nitrogen fertilization of row crops in humid regions can result in leaching of NO3, which represents an inefficient use of resources and may result in environmental degradation. A localized compaction and doming (LCD) fertilizer injector was developed to alter the physical properties of soil surrounding knife-injected N. Injection by LCD includes smearing macropores below the injection slot, formation of a localized compacted soil layer over the injected N, and formation of a surface dome to cover the compacted soil layer and the fertilizer band. The LCD injector was tested, along with a conventional knife injector (without a covering disk), to evaluate its effect on leaching by determining NO3 and Br tracer redistribution after NO3 fertilizer injection. Chemical distributions were determined by intensive soil sampling to 0.8 m below the soil surface. In a second experiment, corn (Zea mays L.) yield response to both N injectors was evaluated. Four fertilization rates (67, 112, 157, and 202 kg N ha−1 of UAN [urea-ammonium nitrate]) were used to define yield response. During seasons when rainfall was below average, neither NO3 redistribution nor crop yield showed a response to fertilizer injection technique. During a growing season with above-average rainfall, 26 kg ha−1 more NO3 and 25 kg ha−1 more Br remained in the top 0.8 m of soil when LCD.injected. LCD injection increased crop yield approximately 0.48 Mg ha−1 over injection by the conventional knife method during an above-average rainfall season, indicating that one-fifth of the conventional knife-applied N was lost prior to crop uptake during the wet year. These findings suggest that the LCD injector may be effective at reducing leaching losses during growing seasons when rainfall is abundant

Constructing the Cool Wall: A tool to explore teen meanings of cool

This paper describes the development and exploration of a tool designed to assist in investigating ‘cool’ as it applies to the design of interactive products for teenagers. The method involved the derivation of theoretical understandings of cool from literature that resulted in identification of seven core categories for cool, which were mapped to a hierarchy. The hierarchy includes having of cool things, the doing of cool activities and the being of cool. This paper focuses on a tool, the Cool Wall, developed to explore one specific facet of the hierarchy; exploring shared understanding of having cool things. The paper describes the development and construction of the tool, using a heavily participatory approach, and the results and analysis of three studies. The first study was carried out over 2 days in a school in the UK. The results of the study both provide clear insights into cool things and enable a refined understanding of cool in this context. Two additional studies are then used to identify potential shortcomings in the Cool Wall methodology. In the second study participants were able to populate a paper cool wall with anything they chose, this revealed two potential new categories of images and that the current set of images covered the majority of key themes. In the third study teenagers interpretations of the meaning of the images included in the Cool Wall were explored, this showed that the majority of meanings were as expected and a small number of unexpected interpretations provided some valuable insights

Method to increase N-use efficiency and reduce leaching

A tool bar for placement of a band of fertilizer in soil has a vertical knife with a horizontal blade thereon to create an inverted T-shaped slot in the soil. A band of fertilizer is placed in the bottom of the slot through a tube on the knife. A first coulter fills the slot with soil and compacts the soil above the band. A second coulter forms a mound of soil over the compacted soil and creates an elongated furrow in the soil above and laterally removed from the band. The method of placement of a band of fertilizer in soil sequentially moves the soil and creates the band as accomplished by the foregoing structure

New Nitrogen Application/Placement Techniques to Increase Use-Efficiency and Reduce Nitrate Leaching

Nitrogen (N) fertilizer is used extensively in corn production in Iowa and the north-central region. In 1997, the 12.2 million acres of corn grown in Iowa received an average of 121lb/acre of N fertilizer; corresponding values for the region were 62.2 million acres and 130 lb/acre (USDA-NASS, 1998). Excess water leaving the root zone from this cropland is needed to replenish surface and groundwater supplies; however, the nitrate-nitrogen (N03-N) this water carries can contaminate both of these resources. Baker et al. ( 197 5), Baker and Johnson ( 1981 ), and others in the region (e.g., Gast et al., 1978; Kladivko et al., 1991) have shown that N03-N in subsurface drainage water from row-crop land usually exceeds 10 mg/L, the drinking water standard, with annual leaching losses averaging over 15 lb/acre. This water, if not intercepted by tile drains, can percolate to groundwater and cause contamination there. Drainage water intercepted by tile drains and short-circuited back to surface waters can cause contamination there. Studies (e.g., Johnson and Baker, 1982 and 1984; Hatfield et al., 1995) have shown that streams and rivers in Iowa, whose flow is often dominated by shallow subsurface drainage, can have sustained high levels ofN03-N in the range of 10 mg/L. In addition to concerns for drinking water quality, N03-N contamination of water in drainage to the Mississippi River from Iowa and the north-central region has been implicated as a possible cause of a hypoxic or dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico (Rabalais et al., 1996). Therefore, improved management of N fertilizer is needed to decrease contamination from this source

Are Online Labor Markets Spot Markets for Tasks?: A Field Experiment on the Behavioral Response to Wage Cuts

In some online labor markets, workers are paid by the task, choose what tasks to work on, and have little or no interaction with their (usually anonymous) buyer/employer. These markets look like true spot markets for tasks rather than markets for employment. Despite appearances, we find via a field experiment that workers act more like parties to an employment contract: workers quickly form wage reference points and react negatively to proposed wage cuts by quitting. However, they can be mollified with “reasonable” justifications for why wages are being cut, highlighting the importance of fairness considerations in their decision making. We find some evidence that “unreasonable” justifications for wage cuts reduce subsequent work quality. We also find that not explicitly presenting the worker with a decision about continuing to work eliminates “quits,” with no apparent reduction in work quality. One interpretation for this finding is that workers have a strong expectation that they are party to a quasi-employment relationship where terms are not changed, and the default behavior is to continue working