Front end development for building automation systems using JavaScript Frameworks

Automation technologies are widely acclaimed to have the potential to significantly reduce energy consumption and energy-related costs in buildings. However, despite the abundance of commercially available technologies, automation in domestic environments keep on meeting commercial failures. The main reason for this is the development process that is used to build the automation applications, which tend to focus more on technical aspects rather than on the needs and limitations of the users. An instance of this problem is the complex and poorly designed home automation front-ends that deter customers from investing in a home automation product. On the other hand, developing a usable and interactive interface is a complicated task for developers due to the multidisciplinary challenges that need to be identified and solved. In this context, the current research work investigates the different design problems associated with developing a home automation interface as well as the existing design solutions that are applied to these problems. The Qualitative Data Analysis approach was used for collecting data from research papers and the open coding process was used to cluster the findings. From the analysis of the data collected, requirements for designing the interface were derived. A home energy management functionality for a Web-based home automation front-end was developed as a proof-of-concept and a user evaluation was used to assess the usability of the interface. The results of the evaluation showed that this holistic approach to designing interfaces improved its usability which increases the chances of its commercial success.

Searching for music archives and composition manuscripts from the Viola database

Music archives and composition manuscripts from the Viola database.

Skill Development in Music Reading. The Eye-Movement Approach

This dissertation examined skill development in music reading by focusing on the visual processing of music notation in different music-reading tasks. Each of the three experiments of this dissertation addressed one of the three types of music reading: (i) sight-reading, i.e. reading and performing completely unknown music, (ii) rehearsed reading, during which the performer is already familiar with the music being played, and (iii) silent reading with no performance requirements. The use of the eye-tracking methodology allowed the recording of the readers’ eye movements from the time of music reading with extreme precision. Due to the lack of coherence in the smallish amount of prior studies on eye movements in music reading, the dissertation also had a heavy methodological emphasis. The present dissertation thus aimed to promote two major issues: (1) it investigated the eye-movement indicators of skill and skill development in sight-reading, rehearsed reading and silent reading, and (2) developed and tested suitable methods that can be used by future studies on the topic. Experiment I focused on the eye-movement behaviour of adults during their first steps of learning to read music notation. The longitudinal experiment spanned a nine-month long music-training period, during which 49 participants (university students taking part in a compulsory music course) sight-read and performed a series of simple melodies in three measurement sessions. Participants with no musical background were entitled as “novices”, whereas “amateurs” had had musical training prior to the experiment. The main issue of interest was the changes in the novices’ eye movements and performances across the measurements while the amateurs offered a point of reference for the assessment of the novices’ development. The experiment showed that the novices tended to sight-read in a more stepwise fashion than the amateurs, the latter group manifesting more back-and-forth eye movements. The novices’ skill development was reflected by the faster identification of note symbols involved in larger melodic intervals. Across the measurements, the novices also began to show sensitivity to the melodies’ metrical structure, which the amateurs demonstrated from the very beginning. The stimulus melodies consisted of quarter notes, making the effects of meter and larger melodic intervals distinguishable from effects caused by, say, different rhythmic patterns. Experiment II explored the eye movements of 40 experienced musicians (music education students and music performance students) during temporally controlled rehearsed reading. This cross-sectional experiment focused on the eye-movement effects of one-bar-long melodic alterations placed within a familiar melody. The synchronizing of the performance and eye-movement recordings enabled the investigation of the eye-hand span, i.e., the temporal gap between a performed note and the point of gaze. The eye-hand span was typically found to remain around one second. Music performance students demonstrated increased professing efficiency by their shorter average fixation durations as well as in the two examined eye-hand span measures: these participants used larger eye-hand spans more frequently and inspected more of the musical score during the performance of one metrical beat than students of music education. Although all participants produced performances almost indistinguishable in terms of their auditory characteristics, the altered bars indeed affected the reading of the score: the general effects of expertise in terms of the two eye- hand span measures, demonstrated by the music performance students, disappeared in the face of the melodic alterations. Experiment III was a longitudinal experiment designed to examine the differences between adult novice and amateur musicians’ silent reading of music notation, as well as the changes the 49 participants manifested during a nine-month long music course. From a methodological perspective, an opening to research on eye movements in music reading was the inclusion of a verbal protocol in the research design: after viewing the musical image, the readers were asked to describe what they had seen. A two-way categorization for verbal descriptions was developed in order to assess the quality of extracted musical information. More extensive musical background was related to shorter average fixation duration, more linear scanning of the musical image, and more sophisticated verbal descriptions of the music in question. No apparent effects of skill development were observed for the novice music readers alone, but all participants improved their verbal descriptions towards the last measurement. Apart from the background-related differences between groups of participants, combining verbal and eye-movement data in a cluster analysis identified three styles of silent reading. The finding demonstrated individual differences in how the freely defined silent-reading task was approached. This dissertation is among the first presentations of a series of experiments systematically addressing the visual processing of music notation in various types of music-reading tasks and focusing especially on the eye-movement indicators of developing music-reading skill. Overall, the experiments demonstrate that the music-reading processes are affected not only by “top-down” factors, such as musical background, but also by the “bottom-up” effects of specific features of music notation, such as pitch heights, metrical division, rhythmic patterns and unexpected melodic events. From a methodological perspective, the experiments emphasize the importance of systematic stimulus design, temporal control during performance tasks, and the development of complementary methods, for easing the interpretation of the eye-movement data. To conclude, this dissertation suggests that advances in comprehending the cognitive aspects of music reading, the nature of expertise in this musical task, and the development of educational tools can be attained through the systematic application of the eye-tracking methodology also in this specific domain.

Menestystarinoilla maailmalle : Music Export Finland musiikkialan yrittäjien tukena kansainvälistymisessä

Opinnäytetyö on kirjallinen selvitys, jossa kartoitetaan musiikkialan ammattilaisten näkemyksiä musiikkialan vientiorganisaatio Music Export Finlandin vienninedistämistyön palveluista. Työn tarkoituksena on selvittää, minkälaiseksi vientityötä jo jonkin aikaa tehneet yrittäjät kokevat ja määrittelevät yhdistyksen roolin sekä sen palveluiden tarpeellisuuden omassa käytännön vientityössään. Teoreettinen viitekehys muodostettiin vientitoiminnan käsikirjoista sekä asiantuntijaorganisaatio Finpron kansainvälistymisstrategian mallista, jonka pohjalta tehtiin myös kuuden asiantuntijan haastattelut. Musex tarjoaa palveluita lähinnä vientitoiminnan käytännön toteutusvaiheeseen. Musexin olemassaolo koetaan alalla yleisesti positiiviseksi asiaksi, vaikka vientityötä jo jonkin aikaa tehneet yrittäjät eivät välttämättä hyödykään yhdistyksen palveluista käytännön tasolla. Musex näyttäytyy heille lähinnä alan yleisen tiedottajan roolissa, musiikkialan yhteisenä äänitorvena, jonka tehtävä on ylläpitää toimivia suhteita valtiovaltaan, lisätä toimialan näkyvyyttä ja edesauttaa toimialan rakenteiden kehittämistä alan intressien mukaisesti. Heille on tärkeää, että musiikkitoimialan tunnettuus ja arvostus lisääntyvät julkisen vallan edustajien joukossa, mitä kautta tarvittavaa rakennemuutosta voidaan viedä konkreettisesti eteenpäin. Musiikkialalla menestyy se, joka hallitsee koko laajan liiketoiminnallisen paketin sekä pystyy tarjoamaan faneilleen jotain ainutlaatuista ja eksklusiivista. Musiikkialan yrityksissä harjoitetaan ammattimaista vientitoimintaa alalle ominaisilla tavoilla ja strategioilla, jotka useinkin poikkeavat monen muun alan menettelytavoista. Vientityön tekeminen edellyttää yrityksiltä halua ja kykyä ajatella liiketoiminnallisesti koko toimintaa, sekä paljon työtä. Yhteistyö koko alan kesken on kansainväliselle toiminnalle ehdotonta. Musiikkitoimialan suurin kompastuskivi yhä edelleen on yleisen arvostuksen ja uskottavuuden puute tai sen vähäisyys, sekä rahoitus. Opinnäytetyö on hankkeistettu sekä Musexin kanssa että Stadian t&k -hankkeeseen Suomalaisten musiikkialan pienyrittäjien vientivalmiuksien kehittäminen.

Mobile music marketing: willingness towards mobile music recommendations and viral marketing

Matkapuhelimet ovat uusia markkinointikanavia, joiden avulla ihmiset voidaan tavoittaa melkein missä ja milloin vain. Mobiilimarkkinoinnin avulla on mahdollista lähettää henkilökohtaisia mainosviestejä tai tarjota kullekin parhaiten sopivia palveluja. Viraalimarkkinointia voidaan käyttää apuna viestien levittämisessä, aivan kuten internetmainonnassa. Tässä tutkimuksessa on keskitytty matkapuhelimiin lähetettäviin musiikkisuosituksiin sekä siihen miten ihmiset suhtautuvat niihin ja olisivatko he valmiita lähettämään viestejä edelleen kavereilleen. Mobiilimusiikkikysely tehtiin, jotta saataisiin selville asiakkaiden halukkuutta vastaanottaa musiikkisuosituksia matkapuhelimiin, sekä heidän halukkuuttaan viraalimarkkinointia kohtaan. Kyselyyn vastasi kaiken kaikkiaan lähes1300 opiskelijaa. Kyselyn tulokset osoittavat, että lisätutkimusta tulisi tehdä alle 18-vuotiaiden matkapuhelimenkäyttäjien joukossa. Tutkimuksen perusteella löydettiin tekijöitä, jotka vaikuttavat opiskelijoiden halukkuuteen vastaanottaa musiikkisuosituksia matkapuhelimiinsa sekä heidän halukkuuttaan viraalimarkkinointiin.

Gas-liquid mass transfer in bubbly flow: Estimation of mass transfer, bubble size and reactor performance in various applications

Gas-liquid mass transfer is an important issue in the design and operation of many chemical unit operations. Despite its importance, the evaluation of gas-liquid mass transfer is not straightforward due to the complex nature of the phenomena involved. In this thesis gas-liquid mass transfer was evaluated in three different gas-liquid reactors in a traditional way by measuring the volumetric mass transfer coefficient (kLa). The studied reactors were a bubble column with a T-junction two-phase nozzle for gas dispersion, an industrial scale bubble column reactor for the oxidation of tetrahydroanthrahydroquinone and a concurrent downflow structured bed.The main drawback of this approach is that the obtained correlations give only the average volumetric mass transfer coefficient, which is dependent on average conditions. Moreover, the obtained correlations are valid only for the studied geometry and for the chemical system used in the measurements. In principle, a more fundamental approach is to estimate the interfacial area available for mass transfer from bubble size distributions obtained by solution of population balance equations. This approach has been used in this thesis by developing a population balance model for a bubble column together with phenomenological models for bubble breakage and coalescence. The parameters of the bubble breakage rate and coalescence rate models were estimated by comparing the measured and calculated bubble sizes. The coalescence models always have at least one experimental parameter. This is because the bubble coalescence depends on liquid composition in a way which is difficult to evaluate using known physical properties. The coalescence properties of some model solutions were evaluated by measuring the time that a bubble rests at the free liquid-gas interface before coalescing (the so-calledpersistence time or rest time). The measured persistence times range from 10 msup to 15 s depending on the solution. The coalescence was never found to be instantaneous. The bubble oscillates up and down at the interface at least a coupleof times before coalescence takes place. The measured persistence times were compared to coalescence times obtained by parameter fitting using measured bubble size distributions in a bubble column and a bubble column population balance model. For short persistence times, the persistence and coalescence times are in good agreement. For longer persistence times, however, the persistence times are at least an order of magnitude longer than the corresponding coalescence times from parameter fitting. This discrepancy may be attributed to the uncertainties concerning the estimation of energy dissipation rates, collision rates and mechanisms and contact times of the bubbles.