BACKGROUND: Seven out of every 10 adults in the United States can benefit from weight loss. Overweight and obesity have emerged at the forefront of public health concerns and are associated with significant morbidity and mortality. Primary care providers have the opportunity to identify overweight/obese patients and initiate weight loss efforts with an efficacious treatment plan that addresses individual challenges and barriers. Modest weight loss of 5-10% can be achieved with referral to a high-intensity, on-site, comprehensive lifestyle intervention program. However, most overweight/obese patients do not enroll in these programs; thus, there is a significant demand for alternative weight loss strategies. Providers can help patients individualize and apply the 3 evidence-based components of lifestyle intervention (reduced calorie diet, increased physical activity, and behavior modification) to create a plan that defines weight loss goals, dietary and physical activity targets, and behavior change strategies. LITERATURE REVIEW: mHealth applications show promise for augmenting weight loss efforts, likely by facilitating behavior change strategies such as self-monitoring. High-quality data is lacking to define the precise role of mHealth apps in weight loss, but a limited number of studies report significant app features and average frequency of use associated with weight loss. PROPOSED PROJECT: Preliminary evidence-based recommendations advise patients to use an mHealth app to log dinner and 1 other meal every day, log all minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, and log body weight 2-3 times per week. Wearable sensors can be used to enhance user experience, but should not substitute for manually logging physical activity. Patients should monitor their caloric intake, minutes of physical activity, and body weight frequently with reference to their goals and prescribed recommendations. CONCLUSION & SIGNIFICANCE: Overweight/obesity is a disease that demands attention from the medical profession due to the high prevalence and associated morbidity and mortality. Primary care providers can begin to address the obesity epidemic by propagating patient weight loss efforts. Clinically significant weight loss can be accomplished with lifestyle modification, so providers should be encouraged to prescribe evidence-based lifestyle recommendations for reduced caloric intake, increased physical activity, and behavior change strategies. Patients can actively engage with these recommendations by using an mHealth app with guidance from their providers. Employing pragmatic lifestyle interventions that incorporate evidence-based strategies and encourage longevity may decrease the prevalence of overweight/obesity and its’ associated chronic conditions.

The purpose of this thesis was to learn more about geo-social networking applications and how they are used by women to meet sexual partners. Currently, there are no known studies that have looked at heterosexually-oriented geo-social networking applications or at the way women have used these apps for heterosexual sexual encounters. This thesis attempts to begin to bridge this gap in the literature. For the first study, apps were selected based on their appearance in popular media articles about dating applications. Results generally related to online safety concerns, while occasional features were related to sexual safety concerns. Communication options were limited, and apps shared information with users about how far away they were from one another, from half a mile away to 5 miles away, depending on the app. Findings suggest that this is an area in need of more study, as how these apps are used by app users is currently unknown. The second recruited four women aged 18-24 who reported willingly having had sex with a male partner they met over an app. The study found that participants were sharing personally identifying information over apps (full names, phone numbers, etc.), and occasionally meeting partners in private residences for the first time. All participants reported using condoms the first time they had sex with a partner they met over an app. Findings suggest there is much more research required on how individuals meet partners over geo-social networking applications and how to safely navigate these apps.

ZigBee home automation systems have been around for years. They include smart energy efficient wireless systems that connect devices via mesh networking. It has always been a problem to connect to these ZigBee nodes with existing technologies we use daily. The premise of this project is to provide easy access to these nodes via near field communication, which is a technology that is available on a majority of smart phones today. The report details the design and implementation of N2Z, a device that translates data provided by an Android app through a NFC interface to a ZigBee device and vice- versa. We first discuss the requirements and use cases for the device and application. Then the report goes on to discuss the base technologies behind N2Z, which include the Android platform, Near Field Communication (NFC) & the ZigBee platform. The report then goes on to discuss the design and implementation of the system. Consequently, we discuss the final results of the system with certain use cases and provide some empirical data that gives us insight into system operation. Next we discuss other existing technologies that exist in the market. Finally we conclude the report with a discussion on future work and thoughts on the future of ZigBee. / text

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Mobile applications (“apps”) are increasingly used in medical education and practice. However, many medical apps are of variable quality, lack supporting evidence and fall outside the remit of regulators. In this thesis, I explore how the quality and credibility of apps for healthcare practitioners could be improved. I argue that interdisciplinary collaboration throughout the app life-cycle is critical and discuss how this can be facilitated. My argument rests on prior work in eHealth and neighbouring disciplines, and on original research in transfusion medicine. Blood transfusion can be a life-saving medical treatment. However, it also carries risks. Failures to provide irradiated and cytomegalovirus-negative blood components according to guidelines are frequently reported in the UK. Such incidents put patients at risk of serious complications. Haemovigilance data indicates that enhancing practitioner knowledge may reduce mistakes. Thus, I worked with medical experts to develop and evaluate the Special Blood Components (SBC) mobile learning app. To facilitate this work, I created two tools: the Web App Editor (WAE) and the Web App Trial (WAT). The former is a collaborative editor for building apps in a web browser and the latter is a system for conducting online randomised controlled app trials. The results are reported in five studies. Studies 1 and 2, based on interviews with seven practitioners, revealed shortcomings in an existing transfusion app and the SBC prototype. Study 3 demonstrated how students using theWAE were able to collaborate on apps, including an app in stroke medicine. Study 4, an evaluation of the revised SBC app with 54 medical students, established the ease of use as acceptable. In study 5, a WAT pilot study with 61 practitioners, the SBC app doubled scores on a knowledge test and was rated more favourably than existing hospital guidelines. In conclusion, creating high quality medical apps that are supported by evidence is a considerable undertaking and depends on a mix of knowledges and skills. It requires that healthcare practitioners, software developers and otherswork together effectively. Hence, the WAE and WAT are key research outcomes. They enabled participants to contribute improvements and assess the usability and efficacy of the SBC app. The results suggest that the SBC app is easy to use and can improve practitioner knowledge. Further work remains to pilot and evaluate the SBC app in a hospital setting.

Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka fördröjningsskillnader inom användargränssnitt mellan native­utvecklade appar (utveckling till varje plattform) och appar av typen generated apps. Eftersom arbetet syftar till att bidra med information om prestanda ansågs en experimentell metod vara det bästa valet. Mätning av laddningstider gjordes med hjälp av en videokamera som filmade utförandet av experimenten vilket gjorde metoden simpel och liknar det som en användare kommer att uppleva. Avgränsning till plattformarna Android och iOS gjordes där Xamarin valdes som ramverk inom tekniker som skapar generated apps. Mätdata från experiment som undersökte laddningstider, experiment med användare som hanterade listors respons samt undersökning av CPU­ och minnesanvändning tyder på ett återkommande mönster. Xamarin Forms med XAML är den teknik som presterat sämst under experimenten som sedan följs av Xamarin Forms. Xamarin Android/iOS hade inte lika stora prestandaförluster jämfört med native­utvecklade delar. Generellt hanterar Xamarin Forms telefonens resurser sämre än vad Xamarin Android/iOS och native gör. Resultat från studien kan användas som beslutsstöd vid val av teknik. Studien bidrar även med data som kan användas vid vidare forskning inom området. / The purpose of this study is to examine differences in delay during calculation and presentation of interfaces executing on different techniques. Specifically between native developed apps and generated apps. Since the work aims to contribute with information regarding performance, an experimental method was considered to be the best choice. Measurements of loading times was made with a video camera that captured the execution of the experiments which made the method simple and captures what the users would have experienced. Demarcation to the platforms Android and iOS was made and Xamarin was chosen as the framework for creating generated apps. Data from experiment that examined loading times, experiment with users that dealt with the responsiveness of lists and the analysis of CPU and memory usage indicate a recurring pattern. Xamarin Forms with XAML is the technique that has performed worst during the experiments, followed by Xamarin Forms. Xamarin Android/iOS didn’t have as big performance loss. Xamarin Forms does not manage the phones resources as efficient as Xamarin Android/iOS and native developed apps does. The results from this study can be used as material for making decisions witin organisations when choosing technology for creating apps. The study also contribute with data that can be used by other researchers.

Today, there are a handful of different platforms for mobile phones. Writing an application natively for each mobile operating system is time consuming and expensive. This situation has created a need for using cross-platform frameworks, that allow programmers to create an application once and run it on all platforms. The problem is that it is not certain whether cross-platform apps can fully replace native ones, or if by using cross-platform tools some desired qualities are lost. Investigating this issue would allow to find out which one of these two application development methods is better, or in which situation it is better to choose one over the other. Such knowledge would allow to decrease development time and costs. Companies that create mobile applications on a daily basis have expertise in this area. Thus, thirteen interviews were done with thirteen distinct businesses in order to research this problem. The results showed that native development produces higher quality applications, but there are some situations where it might be better to use cross-platform frameworks.

Context-aware computing enables mobile applications to discover and benefit from valuable context information, such as user location, time of day and current activity. However, determining the users’ context throughout their daily activities is one of the main challenges of context-aware computing. With the increasing number of built-in mobile sensors and other input sources, existing context models do not effectively handle context information related to personal user context. The objective of this research was to develop an improved context-aware model to support the context awareness needs of mobile applications. An existing context-aware model was selected as the most complete model to use as a basis for the proposed model to support context awareness in mobile applications. The existing context-aware model was modified to address the shortcomings of existing models in dealing with context information related to personal user context. The proposed model supports four different context dimensions, namely Physical, User Activity, Health and User Preferences. A prototype, called CoPro was developed, based on the proposed model, to demonstrate the effectiveness of the model. Several experiments were designed and conducted to determine if CoPro was effective, reliable and capable. CoPro was considered effective as it produced low-level context as well as inferred context. The reliability of the model was confirmed by evaluating CoPro using Quality of Context (QoC) metrics such as Accuracy, Freshness, Certainty and Completeness. CoPro was also found to be capable of dealing with the limitations of the mobile computing platform such as limited processing power. The research determined that the proposed context-aware model can be used to successfully support context awareness in mobile applications. Design recommendations were proposed and future work will involve converting the CoPro prototype into middleware in the form of an API to provide easier access to context awareness support in mobile applications.

It is becoming increasingly evident that agriculture is playing a pivotal role in the socio-economic development of South Africa. The agricultural sector is important because it contributes approximately 2% to the gross domestic product of the country. However, many factors impact on the sustainability of traditional agriculture in South Africa. Unpredictable climatic conditions, land degradation and a lack of information and awareness of innovative farming solutions are among the factors plaguing the South African agricultural landscape. Various farming techniques have been looked at in order to mitigate these challenges. Among these interventions are the introduction of organic agriculture, greenhouse agriculture and hydroponic agriculture, which is the focus area of this study. Hydroponic agriculture is a method of precision agriculture where plants are grown in a mineral nutrient solution instead labour- intensive activity that requires an incessant monitoring of the farm environment in order to ensure a successful harvest. Hydroponic agriculture, however, presents a number of challenges that can be mitigated by leveraging the recent mobile Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) breakthroughs. This dissertation reports on the development of a wireless ICT monitoring application for hydroponic agriculture: HydroWatcher mobile app. HydroWatcher is a complex system that is composed of several interlacing parts and this study will be focusing on the development of the mobile app, the front-end of the system. This focus is motivated by the fact that in such systems the front-end, being the part that the users interact with, is critical for the acceptance of the system. However, in order to design and develop any part of HydroWatcher, it is crucial to understand the context of hydroponic agriculture in South Africa. Therefore, complementary objectives of this study are to identify the critical factors that impact hydroponic agriculture as well as the challenges faced by hydroponic farmers in South Africa. Thus, it leads to the elicitation of the requirements for the design and development of HydroWatcher. This study followed a mixed methods approach, including interviews, observations, exploration of hydroponic farming, to collect the data, which will best enable the researcher to understand the activities relating to hydroponic agriculture. A qualitative content analysis was followed to analyse the data and to constitute the requirements for the system and later to assert their applicability to the mobile app. HydroWatcher proposes to couple recent advances in mobile technology development, like the Android platform, with the contemporary advances in electronics necessary for the creation of wireless sensor nodes, as well as Human Computer interaction guidelines tailored for developing countries, in order to boost the user experience.

El presente trabajo de investigación muestra la viabilidad de implementar un aplicativo móvil en alianza con las ONG que operan en el país, con el objeto de interconectar a los jóvenes beneficiados por los programas sociales peruanos con personas que requieren de servicios no especializados, acercándolos con sus primeras experiencias laborales remuneradas.