Typografiska riktlinjer och textframställning för smartphones

Idag använder allt fler människor sina smartphones för att surfa och använda tjänster online. Detta innebär att en stor del text läses på små skärmar. Detta arbete handlar om hur text bäst utformas och struktureras för att enklast kunna läsas och uppfattas på en mobilskärm. Faktorer som berörs är typgrad, ljusrum, textlängd, teckensnittsklass, radlängd, bild i text och kontrastverkan. Arbetet utgår från en normativ, svensk person utan funktionsnedsättningar. Arbetet är grundat på litteratur, egna analyser, intervjuer med branschfolk, enkätundersökning och test med fokusgrupp. Resultatet blev att en text på smartphone bäst utformas med flera styckesindelningar i form av blankrader, med bilder där bilden tillför något i informativt syfte och textlängd baserat på ämneskategori. Bilden bör sättas ovanför brödtexten. Längre texter ska sättas med scrollfunktion. Kontrast har stor betydelse på mobiltelefoner, texter går bra att läsa även när de är satta negativt. Teckensnittsklass är enligt resultatet av denna rapport inte av betydelse. Både seriff och sanserif kan läsas utan problem på smartphones. Typgraden bör förstoras något i förhållande till telefonens default-inställningar. På grund av att text på skärm inte stödjer avstavningar rekommenderas korta ord där det är möjligt för att förhindra en allt för hackig högerkant.

Dialekter och röstigenkänning : Ett röstigenkännings-API:s förmåga att uppfatta svenska dialekters kännetecken och röstkombinationer

Allt eftersom utvecklingen går framåt inom applikationer och system så förändras också sättet på vilket vi interagerar med systemet på. Hittills har navigering och användning av applikationer och system mestadels skett med händerna och då genom mus och tangentbord. På senare tid så har navigering via touch-skärmar och rösten blivit allt mer vanligt. Då man ska styra en applikation med hjälp av rösten är det viktigt att vem som helst kan styra applikationen, oavsett vilken dialekt man har. För att kunna se hur korrekt ett röstigenkännings-API (Application Programming Interface) uppfattar svenska dialekter så initierades denna studie med dokumentstudier om dialekters kännetecken och ljudkombinationer. Dessa kännetecken och ljudkombinationer låg till grund för de ord vi valt ut till att testa API:et med. Varje dialekt fick alltså ett ord uppbyggt för att vara extra svårt för API:et att uppfatta när det uttalades av just den aktuella dialekten. Därefter utvecklades en prototyp, närmare bestämt en android-applikation som fungerade som ett verktyg i datainsamlingen. Då arbetet innehåller en prototyp och en undersökning så valdes Design and Creation Research som forskningsstrategi med datainsamlingsmetoderna dokumentstudier och observationer för att få önskat resultat. Data samlades in via observationer med prototypen som hjälpmedel och med hjälp av dokumentstudier. Det empiriska data som registrerats via observationerna och med hjälp av applikationen påvisade att vissa dialekter var lättare för API:et att uppfatta korrekt. I vissa fall var resultaten väntade då vissa ord uppbyggda av ljudkombinationer i enlighet med teorin skulle uttalas väldigt speciellt av en viss dialekt. Ibland blev det väldigt låga resultat på just dessa ord men i andra fall förvånansvärt höga. Slutsatsen vi drog av detta var att de ord vi valt ut med en baktanke om att de skulle få låga resultat för den speciella dialekten endast visade sig stämma vid två tillfällen. Det var istället det ord innehållande sje- och tje-ljud som enligt teorin var gemensamma kännetecken för alla dialekter som fick lägst resultat överlag.

Catalytic properties of nanofibrous carbon in selective oxidation of hydrogen sulphide

Nanofibrous carbonaceous materials (NFC) as a new class of materials having many applications, can catalyze the selective oxidation of H2S to sulfur. The correlation between NFC structure and its activity and selectivity in H2S oxidation was determined. It is demonstrated that selectivity can be improved if NFC with more ordered structure be synthesized and the portion of the original catalyst in carbon be reduced by increasing the carbon accumulated in the catalyst.

New effective catalysts based on mesoporous nanofibrous carbon for selective oxidation of hydrogen sulfide

The systems based on granular mesoporous nanofibrous carbonaceous (NFC) materials synthesized by decomposition of hydrocarbons over nickel- containing catalysts are promising catalysts for selective oxidation of hydrogen sulfide. Sample series of nanofibrous carbon with three main types of their fiber structures and different contents of metal catalysts inherited from the catalysts for their synthesis were studied in this reaction. The correlation between NFC structure and its activity and selectivity in hydrogen sulfide oxidation was determined. The metal inherited from the initial catalysts for the synthesis of NFC influences the activity and selectivity of the resulting carbon catalysts. A particular influence is observed in the case of the catalyst withdrawn from the synthesis reactor at the stage of stationary operation of the metal catalyst (low specific carbon yields per unit weight of the catalyst). The presence of the metal phase results in an increase in the carbon catalyst activity and in a decrease in the selectivity to sulfur. NFC samples with the highest activity and selectivity are nanotubes and those with graphite planes perpendicular to the axis of the fibers. Carbon nanotubes have high selectivity, while samples obtained on copper–nickel catalysts also possess high activity. The promising NFC catalysts provide high conversion and selectivity (almost independent of the molar oxygen/hydrogen sulfide ratio) when a large excess of oxygen is contained in the reaction mixture.

A context-sensitive device to help people with autism cope with anxiety

We describe a smartphone application that helps people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) cope with anxiety attacks. Our prototype provides a one-touch interface for indicating a panic level. The device's response-to instruct, soothe, and/or contact carers-is sensitive to the user's context, consisting of time, location, ambient noise, and nearby friends. Formative evaluation unearths a critical challenge to building assistive technologies for ASD sufferers: can regimented interfaces foster flexible behaviour? Our observations suggest that a delicate balance of design goals is required for a viable assistive technology.

Portable form filling assistant for the visually impaired

The filling of printed forms has always been an issue for the visually impaired. Though optical character recognition technology has helped many blind people to ‘read’ the world, there is not a single device that allows them to fill out a paper-based form without a human assistant. The task of filling forms is however an essential part of their daily lives, for example, for access to social security or benefits. This paper describes a solution that allows a blind person to complete paper-based forms, pervasively and independently, using only off-the-shelf equipment including a Smartphone, a clipboard with sliding ruler, and a ballpoint pen. A dynamic color fiduciary (point of reference) marker is designed so that it can be moved by the user to any part of the form such that all regions can be “visited”. This dynamic color fiduciary marker is robust to camera focus and partial occlusion, allowing flexibility in handling the Smartphone with embedded camera. Feedback is given to the blind user via both voice and tone to facilitate efficient guidance in filling out the form. Experimental results have shown that this prototype can help visually impaired people to fill out a form independently.

Patient use of smartphones to communicate subjective data in clinical trials

Purpose. Various methods have been used in clinical trials to collect time-sensitive subjective responses, including study diaries, telephone interviews, and use of text messaging. However, all of these methods are limited by the uncertainty of when the participants enrolled in the study actually record their responses. This technical note reports on the utility of the BlackBerry smartphone to collect such data and why such a system provides advantages over other methods to report subjective ratings in clinical studies.

Methods. The Centre for Contact Lens Research developed an on-line web-enabled system that permits participants to record and immediately transmit subjective rating scores in numerical form directly into a web-enabled database. This, combined with the utility of BlackBerrys, enabled time-specific e-mail requests to be sent to the study participants and then for that data to be simultaneously transmitted to the web-enabled database. This system has been used in several clinical trials conducted at the Centre for Contact Lens Research, in which data were collected at various times and in several specific locations or environments.

Results. In the clinical trials conducted using this system, participants provided responses on 97.5% of occasions to the requests for data generated by the automated system. When the request was for data on a set date, this method resulted in responses of 84.1% of the time.

Conclusions. The series of clinical trials reported here show the benefits of the utilization of the BlackBerry to collect time- or environment-sensitive data via a web-enabled system.

Web service to deliver filtered RSS items to a mobile application

In the past decade there has been massive growth of data on the internet. Many people rely on XML based RSS feeds to receive updates from websites. In this paper, we propose a method for managing the RSS feeds from various news websites. A web service is developed to deliver filtered news items from RSS feeds to a mobile client. Each news item is indexed, subsequently, the indexes are used for filtering news items. Indexing is done in two steps. First, classical text categorization algorithms are used to assign a category to each news item, second, geoparsing is used to assign geolocation data to each news item. An android application is developed to access filtered news items by consuming the proposed web service. A prototype is implemented using Rapid miner 5.0 as the data mining tool and SVM as the classification algorithm. Geoparsing and geocoding web services, and Android API are used to implement location-based access to news items. Experimental results prove that the proposed approach is effective and saves a significant amount of information overload processing time.

Towards an understanding of the impact of advertising on data leaks

Recent investigations have determined that many Android applications in both official and non-official online markets expose details of the user's mobile phone without user consent. In this paper, for the first time in the research literature, we provide a full investigation of why such applications leak, how they leak and where the data is leaked to. In order to achieve this, we employ a combination of static and dynamic analysis based on examination of Java classes and application behaviour for a data set of 123 samples, all pre-determined as being free from malicious software. Despite the fact that anti-virus vendor software did not flag any of these samples as malware, approximately 10% of them are shown to leak data about the mobile phone to a third-party; applications from the official market appear to be just as susceptible to such leaks as applications from the non-official markets.

Emerging wireless personal area networks(WPANs) : - An analysis of techniques, tools and threats

Wireless Personal Area Networks provide a pivotal role in local area network technology complementing traditional Wireless Local Area Network technologies. Bluetooth, ZigBee and NFC (Near Field Communications) have emerged as key WPAN technologies with UWB (Ultra Wide Band) standards currently evolving. They are however subject to the usual range of security vulnerabilities found in wireless LANs such as spoofing, snooping, man-in-the-middle, denial of service and other attacks. However security in WPANs is not as mature as it is in Wireless LANs and further work is needed in order to provide comparable protection. This paper examines a range of WPAN technologies and security issues and proposes protection mechanisms that can mitigate risk in each case. © 2012 IEEE.

Book review: Studying mobile media: cultural technologies, mobile communication, and the iPhone, by Hjorth, Larissa, Burgess, Jean and Richardson, Ingrid (eds), Routledge, New York, 2012

A review of a series of articles exploring the role of online networked mobile devices, such as the iPhone, in changing communication, with multidisciplinary relevance. The articles examine the smartphone as a cultural object, a platform for specific uses as a multi-purpose input device and its evolution from a personal communication device to a multimedia tool with implications for politics and social change.

Applications of a TransFLash in an embedded system debugging

In this paper, the hardware and software design for using a TF card in debugging an embedded system are described. The used hardware platform is designed based on a PXA310 application processor. The Android open source operating system is used as the software platform. The design of the connection circuit between the application processor and the TF card is introduced first. Secondly, the design of the TF card driver program and the method for Android system to mount the TF card are described. In designing the TF driver program, an SPI operation mode and FAT32 file system are used. The transplant of the FAT32 file system is presented more detail. Finally, the paper introduced the system debugging and the test results are given for the TF card used in a video data acquisition unit of a video monitoring. It is shown that high speed data exchange and good universal property can be obtained by using a TF card to download a system image during developing and debugging. The TF card used in debugging can be used as a mass storage in the embedded product without the need of changing the design for debugging the system and it is also convenient for a user to upgrade operating system.

Healthcare professionals’ use of mobile phones and the internet in clinical practice

Background: Over the last few years mobile phone applications have been designed for healthcare professionals. However, little is known in regards to healthcare professionals’ use of and attitudes towards using smartphones (and applications) within clinical practice. Thus the aims of the present study were to enumerate the number of healthcare professionals that use mobile phones within clinical practice and their attitudes towards using them. Furthermore, given that the internet preceded smartphones, we also established healthcare professionals’ attitudes towards internet use in clinical practice as a comparison.

Method: Forty-three healthcare professionals from a range of disciplines and specialities who were predominantly working in Australia completed an anonymous online survey. 

Smart-phone obesity prevention trial for adolescent boys in low-income communities: the ATLAS RCT

The goal of this study was to evaluate the impact of the Active Teen Leaders Avoiding Screen-time (ATLAS) intervention for adolescent boys, an obesity prevention intervention using smartphone technology.

Preferential deposition of visceral adipose tissue occurs due to physical inactivity.

We hypothesised that strict inactivity (bed rest) would lead to regional differences in fat deposition. Twenty-four male subjects underwent 60 d bed rest and remained inactive (n = 9), performed resistance exercise plus whole-body vibration (RVE; n = 7) or resistance exercise only (RE; n = 8). Fat mass was assessed via dual X-ray absorptiometry. In the inactive subjects, fat deposition differed between body regions (P = 0.0005) with android region visceral adipose tissue increasing the most (+29% at the end of bed rest), followed by remainder of the trunk (from chin to the iliac crest; +10%) and the arms and legs (both +7%). Insulin sensitivity reduced in the inactive subjects at the end of bed rest (P = 0.036). RE did not have a significant impact on regional fat mass changes (P ⩾ 0.055). In RVE, increases in visceral adipose tissue (-14%; P = 0.028 vs inactive subjects) and in the arms (arms -8%, P = 0.011 vs inactive) were not seen. We conclude that inactivity leads to a preferential increase in visceral adipose tissue.