Gamified budgeting for managing household finances

The current UK economic climate is leading households into debt. The rising cost of living and inflation are resulting in households struggling with financial management. This has implications on the quality of life and economic mobility. Early motivation for and the utilisation of financial management tools can alleviate the risk of spiralling debt. In this paper, we present the case for a gamified collaborative financial management tool. We explain how current research has focused on individuals yet households often have shared and interweaving finances which would benefit from collaborative tools. We articulate the importance of motivation in financial administration and discuss the potential of gamification to motivate households in the proactive management of finances. In this regard, we describe the results of conducting a survey to investigate the case for gamification in household financial management. Our findings suggest that gamification may offer new ways to motivate household financial management and can help households manage their exposure to debt

Gamified budgeting for managing household finances

The current UK economic climate is leading households into debt. The rising cost of living and inflation are resulting in households struggling with financial management. This has implications on the quality of life and economic mobility. Early motivation for and the utilisation of financial management tools can alleviate the risk of spiralling debt. In this paper, we present the case for a gamified collaborative financial management tool. We explain how current research has focused on individuals yet households often have shared and interweaving finances which would benefit from collaborative tools. We articulate the importance of motivation in financial administration and discuss the potential of gamification to motivate households in the proactive management of finances. In this regard, we describe the results of conducting a survey to investigate the case for gamification in household financial management. Our findings suggest that gamification may offer new ways to motivate household financial management and can help households manage their exposure to debt

A Least Squares Closure Approximation for Liquid Crystalline Polymers

An introduction to existing closure schemes for the Doi-Hess kinetic theory of liquid crystalline polymers is provided. A new closure scheme is devised based on a least squares fit of a linear combination of the Doi, Tsuji-Rey, Hinch-Leal I, and Hinch-Leal II closure schemes. The orientation tensor and rate-of-strain tensor are fit separately using data generated from the kinetic solution of the Smoluchowski equation. The known behavior of the kinetic solution and existing closure schemes at equilibrium is compared with that of the new closure scheme. The performance of the proposed closure scheme in simple shear flow for a variety of shear rates and nematic polymer concentrations is examined, along with that of the four selected existing closure schemes. The flow phase diagram for the proposed closure scheme under the conditions of shear flow is constructed and compared with that of the kinetic solution. The study of the closure scheme is extended to the simulation of nematic polymers in plane Couette cells. The results are compared with existing kinetic simulations for a Landau-deGennes mesoscopic model with the application of a parameterized closure approximation. The proposed closure scheme is shown to produce a reasonable approximation to the kinetic results in the case of simple shear flow and plane Couette flo

Neurotransmitter Specific, Cellular-Resolution Functional Brain Mapping Using Receptor Coated Nanoparticles: Assessment of the Possibility.

Receptor coated resonant nanoparticles and quantum dots are proposed to provide a cellular-level resolution image of neural activities inside the brain. The functionalized nanoparticles and quantum dots in this approach will selectively bind to different neurotransmitters in the extra-synaptic regions of neurons. This allows us to detect neural activities in real time by monitoring the nanoparticles and quantum dots optically. Gold nanoparticles (GNPs) with two different geometries (sphere and rod) and quantum dots (QDs) with different sizes were studied along with three different neurotransmitters: dopamine, gamma-Aminobutyric acid (GABA), and glycine. The absorption/emission spectra of GNPs and QDs before and after binding of neurotransmitters and their corresponding receptors are reported. The results using QDs and nanorods with diameter 25nm and aspect rations larger than three were promising for the development of the proposed functional brain mapping approach