Predictors of seniors’ interest in assistive applications on smartphones:Evidence from a population-based survey in Slovenia

Assistive applications (apps) on smartphones could contribute to a better quality of life for seniors living independently at home. At present, there is a lack of empirical evidence of seniors’ acceptance of such apps. The Cycle of Technology Acquirement by Independent-Living Seniors (C-TAILS) model was recently proposed for studying the interplay between acceptance factors by integrating the personal, social and technological domains of seniors’ daily lives. This study aimed to explore how four groups of factors, clustered in accordance with the C-TAILS model, predict seniors’ interest in assistive apps, on a representative sample of the Slovenian population aged 55 years or older. The 617 respondents, who were contacted though a telephone survey, answered a questionnaire about their interest in three groups of assistive apps and four groups of potentially associated acceptance factors. Three linear regression models were used to analyse the association between the factors and the seniors’ interest in the three types of assistive apps. Smartphone-related dispositional traits were the strongest predictors across all three models. Among mobile phone usage patterns, smartphone use and the breadth of mobile phone features used were significant factors, while the significance of seniors’ personal characteristics and socio-economic conditions varied across the models. Hence, awareness that these factors play different roles in the acceptance of different assistive apps is needed in order to design viable interventions for their acceptance among seniors

Methodological strategies to understand smartphone practices for social connectedness in later life

Digital practices in later life are not yet well understood. Therefore, this paper discusses the framework for a research design project that aims at tracing differences and similarities in how older adults use their smartphones in circumstances in and outside their homes in Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Canada. The research questions of this international research project focus on the extent to which digital mobile practices relate to perceived social connectedness among older adults aged 55–79 years old. While studies have shown that the subjective experience of ‘being connected’ supports continued wellbeing in later life, there remains an insufficient understanding of the processes through which digital mediated social interaction is effective for social connectedness. The analytical framework of the project prioritizes the co-constituency of (digital) technology and ageing, and takes digital practices in everyday life as its entry point. The main data collection tool will be the tracking of smartphone activity of 600 older adults (150 per country) during four weeks. An online survey and qualitative interviews will gather data about the meanings of the quantified digital practices, and how they shape (if they do) the participants’ connection to the world. This approach will allow us not only to get insight into what older adults say how they used their smartphone but also to gain insight into their real-life daily use. The assessment of the challenges, strengths, and weaknesses of the methods contributes towards an accurate and appropriate interpretation of empirical results and their implications

Predictors of seniors’ interest in assistive applications on smartphones: Evidence from a population-based survey in Slovenia

Assistive applications (apps) on smartphones could contribute to a better quality of life for seniors living independently at home. At present, there is a lack of empirical evidence of seniors’ acceptance of such apps. The Cycle of Technology Acquirement by Independent-Living Seniors (C-TAILS) model was recently proposed for studying the interplay between acceptance factors by integrating the personal, social and technological domains of seniors’ daily lives. This study aimed to explore how four groups of factors, clustered in accordance with the C-TAILS model, predict seniors’ interest in assistive apps, on a representative sample of the Slovenian population aged 55 years or older. The 617 respondents, who were contacted though a telephone survey, answered a questionnaire about their interest in three groups of assistive apps and four groups of potentially associated acceptance factors. Three linear regression models were used to analyse the association between the factors and the seniors’ interest in the three types of assistive apps. Smartphone-related dispositional traits were the strongest predictors across all three models. Among mobile phone usage patterns, smartphone use and the breadth of mobile phone features used were significant factors, while the significance of seniors’ personal characteristics and socio-economic conditions varied across the models. Hence, awareness that these factors play different roles in the acceptance of different assistive apps is needed in order to design viable interventions for their acceptance among senior

Fault diagnosis of a vacuum cleaner motor by means of sound analysis

Achieving high quality standards and 100% defect-free deliverables is becoming a trend among manufacturers of household appliances. In that respect, thorough and reliable end-tests represent an important step towards this goal. This paper deals with the design of end-test procedures for vacuum cleaner motors based on sound analysis. It is well known that sound carries important information about the condition of contact surfaces in rotating parts. The paper aims first to provide a thorough analysis of sound sources within the motor. Second, by using simple yet effective signal processing tools, it is shown that with sound analysis alone it is possible to clearly distinguish fault-free motors from those with mechanical faults. Moreover, the proposed algorithm exhibits a certain isolation capability, i.e., it is able to distinguish three clusters of faults. Finally, a summary of experimental results obtained on a sample of 75 motors is provided

Measuring internet skills in a general population

This study assessed the construct and criterion validity of the short version of the Internet Skills Scale and examined whether its four dimensions - Operational, Information Navigation, Social, and Creative skills - are influenced by a higher-order dimension of general internet skills as one second-order factor. In 2018, a face-to-face survey comprising ofthe 20-item Internet Skills Scale and 22 other items related to digital inclusion was conducted in a sample of 814 internet users in Slovenia. The results of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, as well as other multivariate methods, showed that the Internet Skills Scale is characterized by high to adequate convergent and divergent validity.Acceptable criterion validity was observed for Operational and Information Navigation skills. In terms of measurement invariance, the data supported configural and metric invariance, whereas the scalar invariance was not fully confirmed, suggesting that older adults\u27 lower scores on the Creative skills items were not related to lower levels of internet skills in the same way as they were among younger individuals. Last, the results provided original evidence of the Internet Skills Scale as a second-order construct, meaning that a single summative Internet Skills Scale score could be created as an adequate measure of an individual\u27s internet skills

Fluctuations and interactions between brain waves during deep and shallow anesthesia

Using gold plated electrodes, inserted into the rat's head above the dura of the left and right parietal cortex, we recorded EEG during deep and shallow anesthesia with either pentobarbital (PB) or ketamine-xylazine (KX). The fluctuations in time series were then analyzed using wavelet transforms and the spectral power was determined within 7 frequency intervals (slow wave 2, S2, 0.0067-0.0167 Hz; slow wave 1, S1, 0.02-0.19 Hz; delta, 0.2-3.9 Hz; theta, 4-7.9 Hz; alpha, 8-12.9 Hz; beta, 13-24.9 Hz and gamma, 25-34.9 Hz). In addition, the coupling strengths between individual oscillatory components during deep and shallow anesthesia were evaluated for both anesthetics. We show specific changes for both anesthetics indicating that during deep anesthesia PB reduces high and low frequency activity (0.2-35 Hz) and enhances coupling especially between delta, theta and alpha waves, while KX reduces low frequency activity (0.005 to 0.2 Hz) and enhances coupling between frequency waves alpha, beta and gamma. Our results, using two anesthetics known to block different ion channels, provide an insight into brain dynamics and could have wide implications in creating biomarkers for detecting various neurophysiological modifications, such as in Alzheimer and Parkinson's disease or Autism spectrum disorder, as well as in providing more realistic models of brain dynamics

Fault diagnosis of vacuum cleaner motors

In-depth and automatic quality end-tests in modern manufacturing represent an important means for the assurance of top-quality and flawless products. Tough competition on the market of vacuum cleaner motors is increasing the need for fast, reliable and objective quality assessment of every single unit at the end of the assembly cycle. As a step towards meeting these objectives, a prototype version of the diagnostic system for quality tests of vacuum cleaner motors has been designed. The core of the system contains four modules for features extraction that employ, respectively: analysis of commutation, vibration analysis, sound analysis and check of parity relations. The symptoms resulting therefrom are processed by an approximate reasoning module, which utilises the technique referred to as the transferable belief model (TBM). The comprehensive diagnostic procedure is able to clearly distinguish a faulty motor from a non-faulty one and to infer about the tentative fault location. Main contributions of the paper refer to the novel feature extraction procedures, which provide a reliable estimate of the motor's condition. The system performance has been surveyed on a set of about 100 motors subjected to a detailed experimental study. An excerpt is also presented, reflecting the key properties of the diagnostic system performance, such as precision, accuracy, robustness and reliability

Usability and Design Issues of Smartphone User Interface and Mobile Apps for Older Adults

Smartphones have become essential communication tools for older adults to stay connected with their family and peers. The older adults are generally perceived as techno-phobic, and this poses challenges for them to adopt some advanced features on smartphones. Moreover, smartphones and some mobile apps are not designed to meet the needs and expectations of older adults. This hinders them from fully utilizing their functions and services. A mobile-user interaction study was conducted to examine the usability of smartphone user interface and mobile apps among 80 older adults. The 4 tasks were ‘making and retrieving voice calls’, ‘using phone book’, ‘installing a mobile app from Google Play Store’, and ‘using WhatsApp’. The usability result revealed that the ‘voice call’ task had the highest success task completion rate (83.44%), followed by phonebook (70.16%), mobile app (63.13%) and using WhatsApp (60.42%). To conclude, majority faced problems downloading a mobile app from Play Store. Although WhatsApp is their favourite communication app, it reveals the usability problems of using features such as sending audio recording files. They feared of upgrading their apps as they were not familiar with the notifications. There is still some room to improve issues in smartphone user interface design especially for older adults’ cohort