The untapped potential of the gaming community: Narrative review.

Background: Video gamers are a population at heightened risk of developing obesity due to the sedentary nature of gaming, increased energy intake, and the disruption caused to their sleep. This increases their risk of developing a number of noncommunicable diseases. To date, research seeking to improve health behaviors has focused on developing novel video games to promote behavior change. Although positive results have emerged from this research, large-scale success has been limited due to the lack of transferability to mainstream games and the focus on children and adolescents. The gaming community has a number of unique aspects, which have received comparatively less attention than the development of new video games. Objective: The purpose of this paper is to highlight under-researched areas that have the potential to encourage positive health behavior among this community. Methods: A narrative review of the lay and academic literature was conducted to provide context and support to our claims that further research could be beneficial in this area. Results: Research has found that advertising can have implicit effects on an individual’s memories, which could influence later decisions. However, the effect of the exponential growth of in-game advertisements and the brand sponsorship of gaming events and professional gamers have not been explored in the gaming community. The possibility of using advertising techniques to encourage positive health behaviors within games or at these events has also not been explored. Research suggests that virtual communities can be effective at disseminating health information, but the efficacy of this needs to be explored using known community influencers within the gaming community. Conclusions: This paper has highlighted a number of potential avenues for the development of interventions within the gaming community. Further research must be conducted alongside game developers to ensure that any in-game developed interventions do not deter gameplay and gamers to ensure that potential approaches are acceptable

IEA SHC Task 42 / ECES Annex 29 WG A1: Engineering and Processing of PCMs, TCMs and Sorption Materials

An overview on the recent results on the engineering and characterization of sorption materials, PCMs and TCMs investigated in the working group WG A1 "Engineering and processing of TES materials" of IEA SHC Task 42 / ECES Annex 29 (Task 4229) entitled "Compact Thermal Energy Storage" is presented

Оценка надежности высоконадежных систем с учетом ЗИП

Предложены приближенные верхние и нижние оценки коэффициента готовности высоконадежной восстанавливаемой системы со структурной избыточностью. Полученные расчетные соотношения могут использоваться для оценки надежности высоконадежных систем с учетом различных стратегий пополнения ЗИП

Automatic summarization of voicemail messages using lexical and prosodic features

This article presents trainable methods for extracting principal content words from voicemail messages. The short text summaries generated are suitable for mobile messaging applications. The system uses a set of classifiers to identify the summary words with each word described by a vector of lexical and prosodic features. We use an ROC-based algorithm, Parcel, to select input features (and classifiers). We have performed a series of objective and subjective evaluations using unseen data from two different speech recognition systems as well as human transcriptions of voicemail speech

The Preparation and Characterization of Chitosan-Gelatin Microcapsules and Microcomposites with Fatty Acids as Thermal Energy Storage Materials

After cellulose, chitosan is the second-most-abundant natural resource and can be used as shell material during microencapsulation. In this study, chitosan-gelatin (CG) microcapsules and microcomposites containing either caprylic or decanoic acid were prepared according to the complex coacervation method and cross-linked by glutaraldehyde. To study the influence of the glutaraldehyde mass ratio upon encapsulation, as well as both the physical and thermal properties of the resulting microcapsules, the properties of microencapsulated phase-change materials (microPCMs) were analyzed by using scanning electron microscopy, differential scanning calorimetry, and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. Results show the successful synthesis of microPCMs and melting temperatures of approximately 11.5 and 24.2°C with latent heat storage capacities of 79 and 73Jg-1 for microPCMs containing caprylic acid and those containing decanoic acid, respectively. © 2015 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim

Phase change material sandwich panels for managing solar gain in buildings

In this study, a phase change material (PCM) sandwich panel was developed and tested to evaluate the resulting decrease in heating and cooling loads of a test cabin in Adana, Turkey, where Mediterranean climate prevails. The panel was formed by a macropackage of microencapsulated PCM layer together with an insulation panel. Two different PCMs, with melting points 26°C and 23°C, were used in the panel. Temperature distribution in he cabin was measured for four different cases. In summer, the maximum average temperature reduction achieved in the cabin was 2.5°C when only the PCM was used. This corresponded to a summer cooling load reduction of 7%. In winter, the maximum average temperature increase achieved in the cabin was 2.2°C with the PCM sandwich panel. The winter heating load was decreased by 17%. Energies conserved in cooling and heating were calculated as 186 kWh/year and 206 kWh/year, respectively. Copyright © 2009 by ASME

Excess enthalpy surfaces for n-heptane + carboxylic acid, amylamine and n-octanol mixtures by the nrtl model

The temperature and composition dependences of the excess enthalpy, hE, have been calculated using the nrtl model for mixtures of n-heptane with the hydrogen-bonded liquids of acetic acid, propionic acid, amylamine and n-octanol. Reduced and partial molar excess enthalpies were also calculated. The temperature-dependent parameters of the nrtl model, estimated directly from hE data for more than one isotherm, were used in the calculations. The overall deviations of all the experimental data points fall in the range 0.5-6.5% which shows highly satisfactory correlation of hE data with the model. The temperature range for the mixtures is 285.15-330.15 K. The surfaces of excess enthalpy functions facilitate better understanding of the thermodynamic properties of the hydrogen-bonded mixtures. The nrtl model is a reliable thermodynamic model for studying the hydrogen-bonded mixtures in a qualitative and quantitative manner. © 1995

Polystyrene-based caprylic acid microencapsulation for thermal energy storage

In this study, caprylic (octanoic) acid microcapsules were synthesized with polystyrene shell material using the emulsion polymerization method. The influence of the type and concentration of the crosslinking agent on the phase-change properties of the microcapsules was examined. The structure and properties of the microcapsules have been characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), and thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA). A second main contribution of this work is to investigate whether we could synthesize microcapsules with the same thermal properties during serial production. The effects of serial production on microencapsulated caprylic acid (microPCMs) have been investigated by thermal methods. The results show that reproducibility is an important parameter in the microencapsulation process. It was determined that when the synthesis amount is increased, we obtained lower efficiency in the microencapsulation of caprylic acid. © 2016 Elsevier B.V.111M614We would like to thank The Scientific & Technical Research Council of Turkey ( TUBITAK ) (The Project Code: TUBITAK 111M614 ) for financial support for this study. We would also like to thank Mr. Süleyman Konuklu for his technical help for this study. Finally, we would like to extend special thanks to the editor, Dr. Carl M. Lampert, and the anonymous reviewers for their constructive suggestions

Calculations of thermodynamic derivative properties from the NRTL and UNIQUAC models

The local composition models NRTL and UNIQUAC with temperature-dependent parameters have been employed to calculate the surfaces of excess heat capacity, CE p, excess enthalpy, hE and thermodynamic factor, ? for binary liquid mixtures. These thermodynamic properties represent the derivatives of the models with respect to temperature, CE p, hE and composition, ?. The parameters used in evaluating CE p and hE are directly obtained from separate CE p and hE data at different isotherms. Experimental gE and hE data at more than one different isotherm are used simultaneously to estimate the parameters in the evaluation of ?. The following mixtures are considered: methanol(1)-methyl acetate(2); 2-propanol(2)-n-heptane(2); methanol(1)-water(2); benzene(1)-n-heptane(2) and ethanol(1)-water(2). These mixtures show close deviations between experimental and calculated values obtained from both models and also include associating mixtures. Performances of the models based on different types of experimental data have been compared. The models show considerable regional discrepancies of the same thermodynamic property over the entire composition and temperature ranges for the mixtures that show small overall deviations between the calculated and experimental data. © 1997 Elsevier Science B.V

Calculation of excess heat capacities for liquid mixtures

Experimental data of excess heat capacities for 29 binary liquid mixtures of various types have been correlated by the nrtl and uniquac models. For nine of these mixtures data at several isotherms is included. The parameters of the models, six for the nrtl and four for the uniquac, have been estimated by a minimization technique using Simplex and Fletcher techniques simultaneously. The partial molar excess heat capacities at infinite dilution are also calculated. Agreement between experimental and calculated values is satisfactory except for associating and highly non-ideal mixtures. The uniquac model performs better than the nrtl model. © 1992