creasingly demanding requirements stemming from the need to cope with significant degrees of uncertainty, as well as with more dynamic environments, and to provide greater flexibility. This, in turn, means that control systems software is highly complex in that it invariably has a large number of interacting parts [20]. This complexity requires that state-of-the-art software engineering methods...

Midbrain dopamine neurons respond to reward-predictive stimuli. In the natural environment reward-predictive stimuli are often perceptually complicated. Thus, to discriminate one stimulus from another, elaborate sensory processing is necessary. Given that previous studies have used simpler types of reward-predictive stimuli, it has yet to be clear whether and, if so, how dopamine neurons obtain...

The demands of Internet applications have grown significantly in terms of required resources and types of services. Overlay networks have emerged to accommodate such applications. The performance of an overlay network is, however, highly dependent on its topology; keeping logical links in an overlay network from interfering with each other is crucial in achieving high throughput. In this thesis...

Poor visual ergonomics is associated with visual and neck/shoulder discomfort, but the relation between visual demands and neck/shoulder muscle activity is unclear. The aims of this study were to investigate whether trapezius muscle activity was affected by: (i) eye-lens accommodation; (ii) incongruence between accommodation and convergence; and (iii) presence of neck/shoulder discomfort. Sixty...

Biofeedback tools generally use visualizations to display physiological information to the user. As such, these tools are incompatible with visually demanding tasks such as driving. While auditory or haptic biofeedback may be used in these cases, the additional sensory channels can increase workload or act as a nuisance to the user. A number of studies, however, have shown that music can improv...

Demanding work settings often require the deferral of intended actions. In 3 experiments, participants were to withhold a response until they encountered a task change (which occurred 5, 15, or 40 sec later). To approximate highly demanding settings, the experimenters sometimes divided attention during the delay period. During some of the delays the experimenters interrupted the participants wi...

This paper presents a human-aware software agent to support a human performing a task that demands substantial amounts of attention. The agent obtains human awareness in an adaptive manner by use of a dynamical model of human attention which is parameterised for specific characteristics of the human. The agent uses a built-in adaptation model to adapt on the fly the values of these parameters t...

BACKGROUND Investigating whether certain individual or background characteristics are associated with an increased risk of experiencing an excessively demanding work environment in younger workers may help to reduce future inequality in health and maximize their labour market participation. AIMS To describe the work environment of Danish 20- to 21-year olds and to investigate the influence of...

Consumerism arises when patients acquire and use medical information from sources other than their physicians. This practice has been hailed as a means of improving quality. This need not be the result. Our theoretical model identifies a channel through which consumerism may reduce quality: consumerist patients place additional demands on their doctors’ time, thus imposing a negative externalit...

Recent developments in cooled mercury cadmium telluride (MCT or HgCdTe) infrared detector technology have made possible the development of high performance infrared cameras for use in a wide variety of demanding thermal imaging applications. These infrared cameras are now available with spectral sensitivity in the shortwave , mid-wave and long-wave spectral bands or alternatively in two bands. ...