Exploring the Affective Loop

Research in psychology and neurology shows that both body and mind are involved when experiencing emotions (Damasio 1994, Davidson et al. 2003). People are also very physical when they try to communicate their emotions. Somewhere in between beings consciously and unconsciously aware of it ourselves, we produce both verbal and physical signs to make other people understand how we feel. Simultaneously, this production of signs involves us in a stronger personal experience of the emotions we express. Emotions are also communicated in the digital world, but there is little focus on users' personal as well as physical experience of emotions in the available digital media. In order to explore whether and how we can expand existing media, we have designed, implemented and evaluated /eMoto/, a mobile service for sending affective messages to others. With eMoto, we explicitly aim to address both cognitive and physical experiences of human emotions. Through combining affective gestures for input with affective expressions that make use of colors, shapes and animations for the background of messages, the interaction "pulls" the user into an /affective loop/. In this thesis we define what we mean by affective loop and present a user-centered design approach expressed through four design principles inspired by previous work within Human Computer Interaction (HCI) but adjusted to our purposes; /embodiment/ (Dourish 2001) as a means to address how people communicate emotions in real life, /flow/ (Csikszentmihalyi 1990) to reach a state of involvement that goes further than the current context, /ambiguity/ of the designed expressions (Gaver et al. 2003) to allow for open-ended interpretation by the end-users instead of simplistic, one-emotion one-expression pairs and /natural but designed expressions/ to address people's natural couplings between cognitively and physically experienced emotions. We also present results from an end-user study of eMoto that indicates that subjects got both physically and emotionally involved in the interaction and that the designed "openness" and ambiguity of the expressions, was appreciated and understood by our subjects. Through the user study, we identified four potential design problems that have to be tackled in order to achieve an affective loop effect; the extent to which users' /feel in control/ of the interaction, /harmony and coherence/ between cognitive and physical expressions/,/ /timing/ of expressions and feedback in a communicational setting, and effects of users' /personality/ on their emotional expressions and experiences of the interaction

Withdrawing from Custom: Choosing Between Default Rules

Denna rapport redogör kompressorns beteende i en turboladdare för ett givet arbetsintervall. Med det ökande behovet av lösningar till att sänka koldioxidutsläppen så har turboladdaren fått fler och nya användningsområden. Från att till en början vara en produkt som används för att öka motoreffekten så bidrar turboladdaren idag till att minska motorerna med bibehållen effekt och på sätt minimera utsläpp av exempelvis koldioxid. Surge är ett kritiskt tillstånd för turboladdaren som bör undvikas då det oscillerande trycket som uppstår vid surge kan leda till att turboladdaren och motorn skadas. Hur surge-tillståndet förekommer och dess negativa inverkan på turboladdaren beskrivs i denna rapport. Utförandet av arbetet har skett med hjälp av KTH CICERO strömningslabb som drivs av Competence Center for Gas Exchange (CCGEx) som är ett samarbete mellan KTH och näringslivet, strömningslabbet är byggt för att kunna analysera turboladdaren (Garrett GT1752). I denna rapport används strömningslabbet för att få en bättre uppfattning om vad som händer med kompressorn när den arbetar i surge. Sedan byggs en modell i ett 1-dimensionellt simuleringsprogram som heter GT-Power. Eftersom att fullskaliga laboratorier kostar mycket pengar och tid undersöks i vilken utsträckning GT-Power kan användas till att beskriva turboladdarens prestanda genom att jämföra mätdata från experiment i strömningslabbet och simuleringar. Denna rapport ger en insikt på möjligheterna som finns för att optimera en turboladdare i fordonsindustrin.The turbocharger was originally designed and used to boost engine power of vehicles. Nowadays, when the demand for low carbon vehicles is increasing rapidly, a new application for the turbocharger has been found by using it to downsizing the engine. Using experimental as well as theoretical simulation models we can estimate the outcome and behavior of the compressor in an extended work range. An aspect that has a substantial effect on the turbocharger and engine is the surge line. Surge is a problematic stage where the compressor creates unwanted behavior which could damage the turbocharger as well as the engine. The surge line is a line where the transition to surge occurs. By changing the surge line, through simulations and calculations surge can be avoided, you can optimize and improve the turbocharger. This report mainly discusses and investigates the possibility to use fast one-dimensional simulation software instead of full scaled laboratories in the automotive industry, and estimate the work range of the given compressor.

Parental Separation and Children's Educational Attainment: A Siblings Analysis on Swedish Register Data

This article analyzes whether the commonly found negative relationship between parental separation in childhood and educational outcomes is causal or mainly due to selection. We use data on about 100,000 Swedish full biological siblings, born in 1948-63, and perform cross-section and sibling-difference estimations. Outcomes are measured as educational attainment in 1996. Our cross-section analysis show the expected negative and significant relationship, while the relationship is not significant, though precisely estimated, in the sibling-difference analysis. This finding was robust to the sensitivity tests performed and is consistent with selection, rather than causation, being the explanation for the negative relationship. JEL Classification: Keywords:divorce; child welfare; siblings estimators

Swedish Consumers' Willingness to Pay for Food Safety - a Contingent Valuation Study on Salmonella Risk

This paper examines the value to Swedish citizens of reducing the risk for salmonella bacteria in chicken filet. The contingent valuation (CV) study is based on the results of a postal questionnaire that was distributed to 2 000 randomly selected Swedish citizens aged 18-74. The valuation format used is a stated preference double bounded dichotomous choice. We employ the non-parametric Turnbull Lower Bound method in combination with Monte Carlo simulations to obtain lower bound estimates of the mean and median values of expected willingness-to-pay (WTP) for reducing the risk for salmonellosis, as well as values of a statistical case (VSC) and a statistical life (VSL). We find a VSC of between SEK 121 045 (110 297–131 814) and SEK 182 966 (167 915–197 896) depending on the format used (values in parentheses constitute a 90 percent confidence interval). VSL values of SEK 13.3 million and 48.3 million are estimated using different formats, but neither estimation is statistically significant. Since this is the first Swedish study on WTP for food safety, mean and median values of VSL and VSC cannot be directly compared with previous results, but the values obtained are in line with comparable Swedish studies on WTP for traffic safety as well as with international studies related to food safety. We do not find any strong linkage between WTP and income, age or gender. Scale sensitivity seems to depend on which model is chosen, while household size, risk perception ability and perceived Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALY:s) lost seem to be strong predictors of WTP.Contingent valuation; Food safety; Health risk; Salmonellosis

Partner Choice and Women's Paid Work in Sweden - The Role of Earnings

Recent observations of higher labour -market activity among women with a high-earning spouse and widened household inequality have spurred research interest in earnings homogamy and in effects of own and spouse’s earnings on female labour supply. This article studies trends in earnings homogamy among married and cohabiting parents and in effects of own and spouse’s earnings on mothers’ time in employment and non-employment in Sweden. We analyse, first, correlations between spouses’ earnings and, second, effects of time -varying own and spouse’s earnings on mothers’ transitions between part-time and full-time work, on their exits from and re-entries into employment and on their exits from parental leave over the years 1968-92. We use individual life histories from the 1992 Swedish Family Survey combined with longitudinal information on earnings from the national taxation register. A unique aspect of this data set is that it has very accurate longitudinal earnings information for both married and cohabiting spouses, including former spouses. We find that mothers’ own earnings have a larger and more significant impact on their labour -market transitions than spouse’s earnings and that the impact of the latter has even declined over time.-

A user-centred approach to affective interaction

We have built eMoto, a mobile service for sending and receiving affective messages, with the explicit aim of addressing the inner experience of emotions. eMoto is a designed artifact that carries emotional experiences only achieved through interaction. Following on the theories of embodiment, we argue emotional experiences can not be design in only design for. eMoto is the result of a user-centered design approach, realized through a set of initial brain-storming methods, a persona, a Laban-analysis of body language and a two-tiered evaluation method. eMoto is not a system that could have been designed from theory only, but require an iterative engagement with end-users, however, in combination with theoretical work. More specifically, we will show how we have managed to design an ambiguous and open system that allows for users’ emotional engagement

eMoto - Affectively Involving both Body and Mind

It is known that emotions are experienced by both body and mind. Oftentimes, emotions are evoked by sub-symbolic stimuli, such as colors, shapes, gestures, or music. We have built eMoto, a mobile service for sending affective mes-sages to others, with the explicit aim of addressing such sensing. Through combining affective gestures for input with affective expressions that make use of colors, shapes and animations for the background of messages, the interac-tion pulls the user into an embodied ‘affective loop’. We present a user study of eMoto where 12 out of 18 subjects got both physically and emotionally involved in the interac-tion. The study also shows that the designed ‘openness’ and ambiguity of the expressions, was appreciated and under-stood by our subjects

A Foundation for Emotional Expressivity

To express emotions to others in mobile text messaging in our view require designs that can both capture some of the ambiguity and subtleness that characterizes emotional interaction and keep the media specific qualities. Through the use of a body movement analysis and a dimensional model of emotion experiences, we arrived at a design for a mobile messaging service, eMoto. The service makes use of the sub-symbolic expressions; colors, shapes and animations, for expressing emotions in an open-ended way. Here we present the design process and a user study of those expressions, where the results show that the use of these sub-symbolic expressions can work as a foundation to use as a creative tool, but still allowing for the communication to be situated. The inspiration taken from body movements proved to be very useful as a design input. It was also reflected in the way our subjects described the expressions

Does Marriage Lead to Specialization? An Evaluation of Swedish Trends in Adult Earnings Before and After Marriage

We examine whether marriage leads to specialization in Sweden by implementing a model that differentiates specialization in the household by cohabitation and marriage. Our paper evaluates this model using panel data to analyze trends in earnings before and after marriage between 1985 and 1995 for married and long-term cohabiting Swedish couples with children. To identify the effect of marriage on earnings we use the reform of the widow’s pension system that resulted in a marriage boom in Sweden in 1989 and difference-in-difference estimation. Our results show that most of the male marriage premium can be explained by positive selection whereas the female marriage penalty reflects increased specialization in home production and childcare. The findings suggest that the positive selection of men into marriage translates into the increased specialization of women. We also find evidence that marriage facilitates specialization in the few couples where mothers earn more than fathers, resulting in a marriage premium for women and a marriage penalty for men. Finally, we find that the net effect of marriage on family earnings is zero because the male marriage premium is offset by the female marriage penalty. Our results show that specialization results from the legal arrangement of marriage, not from the living arrangement of the household.Marriage; Marriage premium; Specialization

Willingness to pay and QALYs: What can we learn about valuing foodborne risk?

This study examines the value of reducing foodborne risk. Research on the valuation of health risk has been dominated by the study of mortality risk. Foodborne risk is, however, in most cases non-fatal and this study therefore focuses on individuals' preferences for reducing morbidity risk related to food consumption. We obtain estimates of the value of a statistical case (VSC) for morbidity risk and the value of a statistical life (VSL) for mortality risk in line with previous findings in the literature. However, we also examine whether WTP is proportional to the expected change in QALYs and estimate a WTP per QALY. We find that WTP is increasing with but not proportional to the change in QALYs. Our monetary estimates are significantly higher than expected and suggest that respondents may have found it dificult to evaluate both a change in risk and health level.Contingent valuation, Food safety, QALY, Willingness to pay