Despite all technological advances in the energy research field and the ubiquitous presence of technology in all aspects of life, the lack of information is still recognized as a gap to engage people in a pro-environmental behaviour towards energy conservation. Consumption feedback is elementary to tackle this paradox, but not enough to trigger a social change. It is still necessary to motivate...

Recently, the renewable power grids that carry electricity generated by wind, solar, and tidal have received new investments to turn out to be feasible and to optimize their use based on the concept of smart grids [2]. Among all sources of electric energy applied to this new concept, wind generation has emerged as one of the most promising presented techniques and has been the focus of several ...

People suffering from a loss of autonomy caused by a cognitive deficit generally have to perform important daily tasks (such as cooking) using devices and appliances designed for healthy people, which do not take into consideration their cognitive impairment. Using these devices is risky and may lead to a tragedy (e.g. fire). A potential solution to this issue is to provide automated systems, w...

Despite a growing desire to create smart homes, we know little about how networked technologies interact with a house’s infrastructure. In this paper, we begin to close this gap by presenting findings from a study that examined the relationship between home networking and the house itself—and the work that results for householders as a consequence of this interaction. We discuss four themes tha...

Sex differences in toy preferences in children are marked, with boys expressing stronger and more rigid toy preferences than girls, whose preferences are more flexible. Socialization processes, parents, or peers encouraging play with gender-specific toys are thought to be the primary force shaping sex differences in toy preference. A contrast in view is that toy preferences reflect biologically...

The postural sway patterns of newly standing infants were compared under two conditions: standing while holding a toy and standing while not holding a toy. Infants exhibited a lower magnitude of postural sway and more complex sway patterns when holding the toy. These changes suggest that infants adapt postural sway in a manner that facilitates visually fixating on and stabilizing the toy in the...

The Tangle toy [Zaw15, Zaw85] is a topological manipulation toy that can be twisted and turned in a variety of different ways, producing different geometric configurations. Some of these configurations lie in 3D space while others may be flattened into planar shapes. The toy consists of several curved, quarter-circle pieces fit together at rotational/twist joints. Each quarter-circle piece can ...