<div> <div> <div> <p>This study focused on a physical property of human finger touch: finger contact area (FCA). The value of FCA lies not only in optimizing the interface layout design but also in streamlining the process of sensitivity tuning for capacitive devices. However, from previous research, whether the target size and display position have effects on the FCA is unknown, and the data of FCA in the contexts of touching various appliances had never been explored. A within-subjects experiment was conducted to study the FCA in the context of four target sizes and two display positions. Forty-two participants were recruited, and both their demographic data as well as touch data were collected and analyzed. As a result, both the target size and the display position have significant effects on the FCA size, and users would implement different finger approach angles (FAA) in varying contexts accordingly. In general, larger target size and vertical touch surface would lead to a larger FCA size, but other factors such as finger joint circumference, stature, touch force did not show significant effects in the experiment. Overall, this study contributes to a clearer understanding of FCA data as well as how users behave in the touch interaction on the capacitive touch interface of appliances. Moreover, it pointed out what factors were related or unrelated to the FCA. This knowledge would directly help designers and engineers to develop optimized capacitive buttons with appropriate sizes as well as sensitivity on touch interfaces of appliances and could improve the usability of the capacitive touch interface in the future. </p> </div> </div> </div>

With the onset of globalization, the economic contexts and working conditions within many countries are changing, presenting new challenges' for governments, organizations, and workers. Amid these challenges, concerns about personal finances are prevalent among employees and detrimental to workers' health, well-being, and families. Research on how this financial stress affects employees at work is lacking. In this thesis, I propose an appraisal-based model of financial stress whereby actual income and expenses are related to perceptions of income adequacy to afford wants and needs. These adequacy perceptions are, in turn, related to financial strain, representing a heightened negative affective state regarding one's financial situation. I hypothesize that, through a drain in emotional resources, financial strain will negatively predict life satisfaction by potentially inhibiting participation in healthy, enjoyable behaviors. I argue that this drain in emotional resources will also inhibit successful task performance and restrict participation in discretionary citizenship behaviors. Data from two working samples provide support for the hypothesized financial stress model and establish preliminary evidence of construct validity for new financial stress scales. In a prospective investigation, financial strain fully mediated the effects of income adequacy on subsequent life satisfaction, but was not related to job performance. Instead, perceived income adequacy to afford wants had a direct negative relationship with both task performance and citizenship behaviors at work, while income adequacy to afford needs had a positive direct effect on organizational citizenship behaviors. This work resolves many conceptual inconsistencies about financial stress in the literature, and contributes to the understanding of how income perceptions and financial stress might influence psychological resources and work motivation. This work has important implications for how organizations manage employees who may be experiencing low income adequacy and high financial strain. Finally, there are several meaningful opportunities for future research that would substantially build upon existing theory and evidence in this new area of financial stress and work.

Context: Technical debt, the process of introducing sub-optimal so-lutions for short-term profit at the expense of long-term effectiveness,is a new and upcoming research field and has been shown in multiplestudies to affect different human aspects, such as moral and affectivestates. Objectives: The aim of this study is to investigate how technicaldebt impacts stress in both developers and project managers. Methods: The study consisted of two main parts, one literature re-view and one case study. The case study consisted of semi-structuredinterviews with 11 participants which were then thematically analyzed. Results: The results show that technical debt which directly impactsthe efficiency and performance of the developers has a negative impacton stress, which the study found to primarily consist of test debt andcode debt. It also suggests that project managers are generally lessimpacted by technical debt and are more liberal towards introducingit to the system. Conclusions: The study found that developers are more directlyimpacted by technical debt and are, hence, more critical towards itsintroduction. Project managers, on the other hand, are impacted byit to a lesser degree and therefore, in combination with the pressuresand requirements by the customer, prefers a “good enough” solutionover a perfect solution.

This document is submitted in partial fulfilment for the degree: Masters of Architecture [Professional] at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2015 / The focus of architecture in South Africa is often centered on intense urban areas in the country. However, important though these areas are, they represent only one facet of the greater country. The rural areas around South Africa are repeatedly overlooked. Added to that, our rich heritage and increasingly unique and threatened relationship with the natural systems around us is often sidelined. Our relationship with the natural world is a complicated one. Humans, perhaps the only species on earth able to do so, have the opportunity to decide whether to live symbiotically with nature or parasitically. Unfortunately the choice is often the latter. One of the areas where our rather strained and openended relationship with the natural world is most apparent is in the impoverished rural Bonjaneni Community of the Amazizi Tribal Authority located in the Okhahlamba District of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Mankind’s negative impacts on this regions natural mechanisms are being felt locally and nationally in three particular areas that form the key points of focus for the thesis: grasslands, water systems and the decline of the Cape Vulture population. Grassland is of utmost importance ecologically, economically and socially for the region, without healthy grassland community livestock cannot survive, thatch cannot be gathered and the landscape will become prone to severe erosion during the rainy season. Erosion negatively affects the Tugela River water catchment basin too. Without healthy vegetation cover the landscape and community will become prone to flooding. Silt from the erosion will impact numerous dams further downstream that supply water to KwaZulu-Natal and the economic heartland of South Africa, Gauteng. The repercussions of a threatened population of Cape Vultures are also of concern. Without the specialised scavenger animal corpses will be left to fester in the sun, developing carrion borne diseases that can negatively affect the health of pets, people and livestock. These problems result in a considerable financial burden to the community and the government, yet these are all problems that can be addressed through responsible stewardship of the land and an awareness of our position in the natural world. / EM2017

El texto completo de este trabajo no está disponible en el Repositorio Académico UPC por restricciones de la casa editorial donde ha sido publicado. / The Human Resources (HR) outsourcing market in Peru is growing; however, it is dominated by large companies in this area, which prevents the development of new organizations or small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The latter, in spite of providing the same services, fail to reach the expected sales volume, thus reporting low profitability. This article analyzes the different factors that impede the growth of SMEs through a fishbone (Ishikawa) diagram and the assessment of initial indicators. It also proposes a model that is based on the three pillars of Digital Transformation and the importance of their alignment in its implementation. A pilot model has been conducted for validation in an SME that provides HR outsourcing services. The research results denote an increase in the company’s profitability and capacity.

<p>A runway incursion occurs when an aircraft, ground vehicle, or a pedestrian is present on a runway when they were not supposed to be there. Runway incursions are a decades-old and continuing problem. The runway incursion between two Boeing 747s at Tenerife airport in 1977 is still the worst accident in aviation history. Despite the aviation community’s efforts to mitigate runway incursions, the number of incursions has not decreased. Though most of the runway incursions that occur today are near-misses or incidents, and do not result in injuries or aircraft damage, we cannot count on fortune to prevent another deadly accident.</p><p>While the COVID-19 crisis has slowed air traffic, the industry is optimistic about recovery and return to the growth in air traffic we have seen over the past decade. With this growth comes the potential for more runway incursions. Therefore, we must develop better ways of preventing incursions. Runway incursion incidents are one way to learn more about how we can prevent similar incidents in the future and reduce the probability of serious accidents. Unfortunately, most incident reports lack detailed information on the causes of runway incursions. In the United States, trained investigators at the National Transportation Safety Board investigate aviation accidents, but not most incidents, including incursions. Air traffic controllers on duty at the time of incursion report the incident to the FAA. While most controller reports explain what happened, they often do not explain why the incident happened. We need deeper insight into why incidents occur so that we can develop more effective measures to reduce incursions.</p><p>After controllers submit their incident reports, reviewers at the FAA go through the controller-generated reports and determine the need for further investigation. They may contact the controllers for more information or talk to the pilots involved. This research considers one aspect of the reporting process — the reporting form. The research hypothesis is that an alternative reporting form that asks detailed questions and guides the controller to look deeper into an incident can provide more details on human error and causes of these errors than the current form, which does not necessarily prompt controllers to gather all the details of the incident.</p><p>The design of the alternative reporting form is based on the theoretical framework of expert systems. Expert systems, which provide tailored questions and guidance to medical doctors and others, have proven useful in other fields. The resulting alternative tool aims to guide controllers into answering three major questions: what happened (which aircraft were where, and when), how it happened (e.g., controller gave the wrong instruction), and why it happened (e.g., controller was fatigued).</p><p>To investigate how controllers interact with different reporting formats and what helps them or detracts them from creating useful reports, the research experiment involved controllers reporting two hypothetical runway incursions either using the alternative reporting tool or an online survey based on the current FAA form. The experiment used surveys, think-aloud protocols, observations, and interviews to collect data on what controllers included in their reports and how controllers generated these reports. The findings helped compare the type of information we get from the two reporting formats, and how the reporting formats affected the quality of the incident reports.</p><p>Overall, the alternative tool-generated reports provided more information than the online survey based on the current FAA form. Each controller who participated in the experiment approached preparing an incident report differently and different factors motivated them to specify details of the incident. While the format of the alternative reporting form helped one controller talk to the pilot and learn more about why the pilot made an error, the format did not have the same impact on another controller.</p><p>This research identifies ways of helping controllers prepare more useful reports. This research may help the FAA improve data collection. More useful reports in the future can help the aviation community identify the cause of human errors leading to incursions, and develop more effective mitigation strategies, ultimately saving lives.</p><p><br></p>

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Mobile robots can be used in situations and environments that are distant from an operator. In order for an operator to control a robot effectively he or she requires an understanding of the environment and situation around the robot. Since the robot is at a remote distant from the operator and cannot be directly observed, the information necessary for an operator to develop an understanding or awareness of the robot's situation comes from the user interface. The usefulness of the interface depends on the manner in which the information from the remote environment is presented. Conventional interfaces for interacting with mobile robots typically present information in a multi-windowed display where different sets of information are presented in different windows. The disjoint sets of information require significant cognitive processing on the part of the operator to interpret and understand the information. To reduce the cognitive effort to interpret the information from a mobile robot, requirements and technology for a three-dimensional augmented virtuality interface are presented. The 3D interface is designed to combine multiple sets of informationinto a single correlated window which can reduce the cognitive processing required to interpret and understand the information in comparison to a conventional (2D) interface. The usefulness of the 3D interface is validated, in comparison to a prototype of conventional 2D interfaces, through a series of navigation- and exploration-based user-studies. The user studies reveal that operators are able to drive the robot, build maps, find and identify items, and finish tasks faster with the 3D interface than with the 2D interface. Moreover, operators have fewer collisions, void walls better, and use a pan-tilt-zoom camera more with the 3D interface than with the 2D interface. Performance with the 3D interface is also more tolerant to network delay and distracting sets of information. Finally, principles for presenting multiple sets of information to a robot operator are presented. The principles are used to discuss and illustrate possible extensions of the 3D interface to other domains.

Studies about the dynamics of human-robot interactions have increased within the past decade as robots become more integrated into the daily lives of humans. However, much of the research into learning and robotics has been focused on methods that would allow robots to learn from humans and very little has been done on how and what, if possible, humans could learn from programmed robots. A between-subjects experiment was conducted, in which two groups were compared: a group where the participants learned a simple pick-and-place block task via video of a human-teacher and a group where the participants learned the same pick-and-place block task via video from a robotic-teacher. After being the taught the task, the participants performed a 15-minute distracter task and then were timed in their reconstruction of the block configuration. An exit survey asking about their level of comfort learning from robot and computer entities was given upon completion. Results showed that there was no significant difference in the rebuild scores of the two groups, but there was a marginally significant difference in the rebuild times of the two groups. Exit survey results, research implications, and future work are discussed.

The Army needs a distributed training environment that can be accessed whenever and wherever required for training and mission rehearsal. This paper describes an exploratory experiment designed to investigate the effectiveness of a prototype of such a system in training a navigation task. A wearable computer, acoustic tracking system, and see-through head mounted display (HMD) were used to wirelessly track users' head position and orientation while presenting a graphic representation of their virtual surroundings, through which the user walked using natural movement. As previous studies have shown that virtual environments can be used to train navigation, the ability to add natural movement to a type of virtual environment may enhance that training, based on the proprioceptive feedback gained by walking through the environment. Sixty participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: route drawing on printed floor plan, rehearsal in the actual facility, and rehearsal in a mixed reality (MR) environment. Participants, divided equally between male and female in each group, studied verbal directions of route, then performed three rehearsals of the route, with those in the map condition drawing it onto three separate printed floor plans, those in the practice condition walking through the actual facility, and participants in the MR condition walking through a three dimensional virtual environment, with landmarks, waypoints and virtual footprints. A scaling factor was used, with each step in the MR environment equal to three steps in the real environment, with the MR environment also broken into "tiles", like pages in an atlas, through which participant progressed, entering each tile in succession until they completed the entire route. Transfer of training testing that consisted of a timed traversal of the route through the actual facility showed a significant difference in route knowledge based on the total time to complete the route, and the number of errors committed while doing so, with "walkers" performing better than participants in the paper map or MR condition, although the effect was weak. Survey knowledge showed little difference among the three rehearsal conditions. Three standardized tests of spatial abilities did not correlate with route traversal time, or errors, or with 3 of the 4 orientation localization tasks. Within the MR rehearsal condition there was a clear performance improvement over the three rehearsal trials as measured by the time required to complete the route in the MR environment which was accepted as an indication that learning occurred. As measured using the Simulator Sickness Questionnaire, there were no incidents of simulator sickness in the MR environment. Rehearsal in the actual facility was the most effective training condition; however, it is often not an acceptable form of rehearsal given an inaccessible or hostile environment. Performance between participants in the other two conditions were indistinguishable, pointing toward continued experimentation that should include the combined effect of paper map rehearsal with mixed reality, especially as it is likely to be the more realistic case for mission rehearsal, since there is no indication that maps should be eliminated. To walk through the environment beforehand can enhance the Soldiers' understanding of their surroundings, as was evident through the comments from participants as they moved from MR to the actual space: "This looks like I was just here", and "There's that pole I kept having trouble with". Such comments lead one to believe that this is a tool to continue to explore and apply. While additional research on the scaling and tiling factors is likely warranted, to determine if the effect can be applied to other environments or tasks, it should be pointed out that this is not a new task for most adults who have interacted with maps, where a scaling factor of 1 to 15,000 is common in orienteering maps, and 1 to 25,000 in military maps. Rehearsal time spent in the MR condition varied widely, some of which could be blamed on an issue referred to as "avatar excursions", a system anomaly that should be addressed in future research. The proprioceptive feedback in MR was expected to positively impact performance scores. It is very likely that proprioceptive feedback is what led to the lack of simulator sickness among these participants. The design of the HMD may have aided in the minimal reported symptoms as it allowed participants some peripheral vision that provided orientation cues as to their body position and movement. Future research might include a direct comparison between this MR, and a virtual environment system through which users move by manipulating an input device such as a mouse or joystick, while physically remaining stationary. The exploration and confirmation of the training capabilities of MR as is an important step in the development and application of the system to the U.S. Army training mission. This experiment was designed to examine one potential training area in a small controlled environment, which can be used as the foundation for experimentation with more complex tasks such as wayfinding through an urban environment, and or in direct comparison to more established virtual environments to determine strengths, as well as areas for improvement, to make MR as an effective addition to the Army training mission.