In the recent past, when bank statements contained errors or the telephone network broke down, the general public usually blamed "the computer," making no distinction between hardware and software. However, high-profile disasters and the ensuing debates in the press are alerting more people to the crucial nature of software quality in their everyday lives. Before long, we can expect increasing ...

Washing machines are a common feature today in the Indian household. The most important utility a customer can derive from a washing machine is that he saves the effort he/she had to put in brushing, agitating and washing the cloth. Most of the people wouldn’t have noticed (but can reason out very well) that different type of cloth need different amount of washing time which depends directly on...

PREFACE .......................................................................................327 I. OVERVIEW .......................................................................................327 II. SOLITARY CONFINEMENT CAN CAUSE SEVERE PSYCHIATRIC HARM .......................................................................................333 A. Solitary Confinement Can Cause a Specific ...

growing cost of human resources and the pressing need for increased productivity, industry is turning more and more towards automation, specifically the use of robots. But exactly what is a robot? The word itself comes from the Czech word robota, meaning work, and Webster's calls it "an automatic device that performs functions ordinarily ascribed to human beings." However, with that description...

Previous work has identified that providing real time feedback or interventions to consumers can persuade consumers to change behaviour and reduce domestic electricity consumption. However, little work has investigated what exactly those feedback mechanisms should be. Most past work is based on an in-home display unit, possibly complemented by lower tariffs and delayed use of non-essential home...

The water conservation campaigns in residential households are hindered by the poor understanding of residents of how much water they use. For the better designed interventions new tools are necessary to educate the consumers on the water usage of different consumption events. In this paper we use the fine grained (0.5 Hz) water consumption data that was collected nonintrusively in a household ...

The application of process control automation software for the recycle of peroxide bleaching rinse water to fabric scouring on a continuous preparation range is presented. Analytical data taken on wastewater samples document operating conditions of the preparation range and the quality of the recycle water. An economic analysis of the recycle process and the cost of range modifications to insta...

This paper describes the participation of the TUB-IRML group to the MediaEval 2014 Visual Privacy task. We present a method for privacy protection of individuals in surveillance videos. In order to achieve this, our method obscures both shape and appearance of identity-related regions through blurring and color remapping. The intelligibility is preserved by displaying edges and anomalous events...