Publishing Engineering Education Resources: A Collaborative Web Project.

Web is a powerful hypermedia-based information retrieval mechanism that provides a user-friendly access across all major computer platforms connected over Internet. This paper demonstrates the application of Web technology when used as an educational delivery tool. It also reports on the development of a prototype electronic publishing project where Web technology was used to deliver power engineering educational resources. The resulting hyperbook will contain diverse teaching resources such as hypermedia-based modular educational units and computer simulation programs that are linked in a meaningful and structured way. The use of Web for disseminating information of this nature has many advantages that cannot possibly be achieved otherwise. PREAMBLE The continual increase of low-cost functionality available in desktop computing has opened up a new possibility in learning within a wider educational framework. This technology also is supported by enhanced features offered by new and ...

Web searching and Σ2 queries

In the terminology of Logic programming, current search engines answer Sigma1 queries (formulas of the form where is a boolean combination of attributes). Such a query is determined by a particular sequence of keywords input by a user. In order to give more control to users, search engines will have to tackle more expressive queries, namely, Sigma2 queries (formulas of the form ). The purpose of the talk is to examine which directions could be explored in order to move towards more expressive languages, more powerful search engines, and the benefits that users should expect.

The interactive potential of Web 2.0

Following the position of Beer and Burrows (2007) this paper poses a re-conceptualization of Web 2.0 interaction in order to understand the properties of action possibilities in and of Web 2.0. The paper discusses the positioning of Web 2.0 social interaction in light of current descriptions, which point toward the capacities of technology in the production of social affordances within that domain (Bruns 2007; Jenkins 2006; O’Reilly 2005). While this diminishes the agency and reflexivity for users of Web 2.0 it also inadvertently positions tools as the central driver for the interactive potential available (Everitt and Mills 2009; van Dicjk 2009). In doing so it neglects the possibility that participants may be more involved in the production of Web 2.0 than the technology that underwrites it. It is this aspect of Web 2.0 that is questioned in the study with particular interest on how an analytical option may be made available to broaden the scope of investigations into Web 2.0 to include a study of the capacity for an interactive potential in light of how action possibilities are presented to users through communication with others (Bonderup Dohn 2009).

Lift@Weimar : sustainable interaction with food, technology, and the city (Workshop)

This workshop explores innovative approaches to understanding and cultivating sustainable food culture in urban environments via human-computer-interaction (HCI) design and ubiquitous technologies. We perceive the city as an intersecting network of people, place, and technology in constant transformation. Our 2009 OZCHI workshop, Hungry 24/7? HCI Design for Sustainable Food Culture, opened a new space for discussion on this intersection amongst researchers and practitioners from diverse backgrounds including academia, government, industry, and non-for-profit organisations. Building on the past success, this new instalment of the workshop series takes a more refined view on mobile human-food interaction and the role of interactive media in engaging citizens to cultivate more sustainable everyday human-food interactions on the go. Interactive media in this sense is distributed, pervasive, and embedded in the city as a network. The workshop addresses environmental, health, and social domains of sustainability by bringing together insights across disciplines to discuss conceptual and design approaches in orchestrating mobility and interaction of people and food in the city as a network of people, place, technology, and food.

Food literacy : time for a new term or just another buzzword?

Eating is an essential everyday life activity that has fascinated, captivated and defined society since time began. We currently exist in a society where over-consumption of food is an established risk factor chronic disease, the rate of which is increasing alarmingly. 'Food literacy' is an emerging term used to describe what we, as individuals and as a community know and understand about food and how to use it to meet our need, and thus potentially support and empower citizens to make healthy food choices. What exactly the components of food literacy are and how they influence food choice are poorly defined and understood, but increasingly gaining interest among health professionals, policy makers, community workers, educators and members of the public. This paper will build the argument for why concepts of 'food literacy' need to extend beyond existing terms and measures used in the literature to describe the food skills and knowledge needed to make use of public health nutrition messages.

Pet food from bovine origin drying by green heat pump technology and fluidization

Bovine intestine was dried in a heat pump fluid bed combination. Minimum fluidisation velocity was calculated by Ergun Equation and some relations were established.

HCI & sustainable food culture : a design framework for engagement

The current food practices around the world raises concerns for food insecurity in the future. Urban / suburban / and peri-urban environments are particularly problematic in their segregation from rural areas where the natural food sources are grown and harvested. Soaring urban population growth only deteriorates the lack of understanding in and access to fresh produce for the people who live, work, and play in the city. This paper explores the role of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) design in encouraging individual users to participate in creating sustainable food cultures in urban environments. The paper takes a disciplinary perspective of urban informatics and presents five core constituents of the HCI design framework to encourage sustainable food culture in the city via ubiquitous technologies: the perspective of transdisciplinarity; the domains of interest of people, place, and technology; and the perspective of design.

Advancing design for sustainable food cultures

Our paper, “HCI & Sustainable Food Culture: A Design Framework for Engagement,” presented at the 2010 NordiCHI conference, introduced a design framework for understanding engagement between people and sustainable food cultures (Choi and Blevis, 2010). Our goal for this chapter “Advancing Design for Sustainable Food Cultures” is to expand our notion of this design framework and the programme of research it implies. This chapter presents the three elements of design framework for sustainability: (i) engagement across disciplines; (ii) engagement with and amongst users/non-users and; (iii) engagement for sustained usability. The uses a corresponding sample of photographic records of experiences that reflect three key issues in the current sustainable food domain: respectively, (i) context of food cultures, (ii) farmers’ markets, and (iii) producing food.

The relationship between substrate metabolism, exercise and appetite control : does glycogen availability influence the motivation to eat, energy intake or food choice?

The way in which metabolic fuels are utilised can alter the expression of behaviour in the interests of regulating energy balance and fuel availability. This is consistent with the notion that the regulation of appetite is a psychobiological process, in which physiological mediators act as drivers of behaviour. The glycogenostatic theory suggests that glycogen availability is central in eliciting negative feedback signals to restore energy homeostasis. Due to its limited storage capacity, carbohydrate availability is tightly regulated and its restoration is a high metabolic priority following depletion. It has been proposed that such depletion may act as a biological cue to stimulate compensatory energy intake in an effort to restore availability. Due to the increased energy demand, aerobic exercise may act as a biological cue to trigger compensatory eating as a result of perturbations to muscle and liver glycogen stores. However, studies manipulating glycogen availability over short-term periods (1-3 days) using exercise, diet or both have often produced equivocal findings. There is limited but growing evidence to suggest that carbohydrate balance is involved in the short-term regulation of food intake, with a negative carbohydrate balance having been shown to predict greater ad libitum feeding. Furthermore, a negative carbohydrate balance has been shown to be predictive of weight gain. However, further research is needed to support these findings as the current research in this area is limited. In addition, the specific neural or hormonal signal through which carbohydrate availability could regulate energy intake is at present unknown. Identification of this signal or pathway is imperative if a casual relationship is to be established. Without this, the possibility remains that the associations found between carbohydrate balance and food intake are incidental.

The impact of users’ cognitive style on their navigational behaviors in web searching

User-Web interactions have emerged as an important area of research in the field of information science. In this study, we investigate the effects of users’ cognitive styles on their Web navigational styles and information processing strategies. We report results from the analyses of 594 minutes recorded Web search sessions of 18 participants engaged in 54 scenario-based search tasks. We use questionnaires, cognitive style test, Web session logs and think-aloud as the data collection instruments. We classify users’ cognitive styles as verbalisers and imagers based on Riding’s (1991) Cognitive Style Analysis test. Two classifications of navigational styles and three categories of information processing strategies are identified. Our study findings show that there exist relationships between users’ cognitive style, and their navigational styles and information processing strategies. Verbal users seem to display sporadic navigational styles, and adopt a scanning strategy to understand the content of the search result page, while imagery users follow a structured navigational style and reading approach. We develop a matrix and a model that depicts the relationships between users’ cognitive styles, and their navigational style and information processing strategies. We discuss how the findings from this study could help search engine designers to provide an adaptive navigation support to users.

Assessing the potential impact of web services on business processes

Though web services offer unique opportunities for the design of new business processes, the assessment of the potential impact of Web services on existing business information systems is often reduced to technical aspects. This paper proposes a four-phase methodology which facilitates the evaluation of the potential use of Web services on business information systems both from a technical and from a strategic viewpoint. It is based on business process models, which are used to frame the adoption and deployment of Web services and to assess their impact on existing business processes. The application of this methodology is described using a procurement scenario.

Collaboration based on web services

Web services are software components designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interactions over a network, through the exchange of SOAP messages. Since the underlying technology is independent of any specific programming language, Web Services can be effectively used to interconnect business processes across different organizations. However, a standard way of representing such interconnections has not yet emerged and is the subject of an ongoing debate.

Web searching interaction model based on user cognitive styles

As more and more information is available on the Web finding quality and reliable information is becoming harder. To help solve this problem, Web search models need to incorporate users’ cognitive styles. This paper reports the preliminary results from a user study exploring the relationships between Web users’ searching behavior and their cognitive style. The data was collected using a questionnaire, Web search logs and think-aloud strategy. The preliminary findings reveal a number of cognitive factors, such as information searching processes, results evaluations and cognitive style, having an influence on users’ Web searching behavior. Among these factors, the cognitive style of the user was observed to have a greater impact. Based on the key findings, a conceptual model of Web searching and cognitive styles is presented.