Blood glucose variance measured by continuous glucose monitors across the menstrual cycle

Past studies on how blood glucose levels vary across the menstrual cycle have largely shown inconsistent results based on limited blood draws. In this study, 49 individuals wore a Dexcom G6 continuous glucose monitor and a Fitbit Sense smartwatch while measuring their menstrual hormones and self-reporting characteristics of their menstrual cycles daily. The average duration of participation was 79.3 ± 21.2 days, leading to a total of 149 cycles and 554 phases in our dataset. We use periodic restricted cubic splines to evaluate the relationship between blood glucose and the menstrual cycle, after which we assess phase-based changes in daily median glucose level and associated physiological parameters using mixed-effects models. Results indicate that daily median glucose levels increase and decrease in a biphasic pattern, with maximum levels occurring during the luteal phase and minimum levels occurring during the late-follicular phase. These trends are robust to adjustments for participant characteristics (e.g., age, BMI, weight) and self-reported menstrual experiences (e.g., food cravings, bloating, fatigue). We identify negative associations between each of daily estrogen level, step count, and low degrees of fatigue with higher median glucose levels. Conversely, we find positive associations between higher food cravings and higher median glucose levels. This study suggests that blood glucose could be an important parameter for understanding menstrual health, prompting further investigation into how the menstrual cycle influences glucose fluctuation

Filteryedping: a dwell-free eye typing technique

The ability to type using eye gaze only is extremely important for individuals with a severe motor disability. To eye type, the user currently must sequentially gaze at letters in a virtual keyboard and dwell on each desired letter for a specific amount of time to input that key. Dwell-based eye typing has two possible drawbacks: unwanted input if the dwell threshold is too short or slow typing rates if the threshold is long. We demonstrate an eye typing technique, which does not require the user to dwell on the letters that she wants to input. Our method automatically filters out unwanted letters from the sequence of letters gazed at while typing a word. It ranks candidate words based on their length and frequency and presents them to the user for confirmation. Spell correction and support for typing words not in the corpus are also included.São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) (grant #2012/01510-0)CAPESCNP

Exploring how persons with dementia and care partners collaboratively appropriate information and communication technologies

Persons with dementia and their care partners have been found to adapt their own technological arrangements using commercially-available information and communication technologies (ICTs). Yet, little is known about these processes of technology appropriation and how care practices are impacted. Adopting a relational perspective of care, we longitudinally examined how four family care networks appropriated a new commercial ICT service into their existing technological arrangements and care practices. Cross-case analysis interpreted collaborative appropriation to encompass two interrelated processes of creating and adapting technological practices and negotiating and augmenting care relationships. Four driving forces were also proposed: motivating meanings that actors ascribe to the technology and its use; the learnability of the technology and actors’ resourcefulness; the establishment of responsive and cooperative care practices; and the qualities of empathy and shared power in care relationships. The importance of technological literacy, learning, meaning-making, and the nature and quality of care relationships are discussed. Future work is urged to employ longitudinal and naturalistic approaches, and focus design efforts on promoting synergistic care relationships and care practices

An Evaluation of Stylus-Based Text Entry Methods on Handheld Devices in Stationary and Mobile Settings

Effective text entry on handheld devices remains a significant problem in the field of mobile computing. On a personal digital assistant (PDA), text entry methods traditionally support input through the motion of a stylus held in the user's dominant hand. In this paper, we present the design of a two-handed software keyboard for a PDA which specifically takes advantage of the thumb in the non-dominant hand. We compare our chorded keyboard design to other stylus-based text entry methods in an evaluation that studies user input in both stationary and mobile settings. Our study shows that users type fastest using the miniqwerty keyboard, and most accurately using our two-handed keyboard. We also discovered a difference in input performance with the mini-qwerty keyboard between stationary and mobile settings. As a user walks, text input speed decreases while error rates and mental workload increases; however, these metrics remain relatively stable in our two-handed technique despite user mobility