2,978 research outputs found
Novel Interactive Systems Promoting More Intentional Technology Use
No full textDigital technology permeates modern life, offering numerous benefits while simultaneously creating potential risks of dependency and overuse. Digital Self-Control Tools (DSCTs) represent the predominant attempted solution for digital wellbeing problems; however, they frequently prove ineffective for sustainable behavior change. My research investigates novel interactive systems that promote more intentional technology use, overcoming existing limitations. One of the approaches I pursued, grounded in psychological theories of behavior change, focused on improving current DSCTs through artificial intelligence integration to provide personalized guidance tailored to individual needs and help users improve their digital habits. Future validation may prove that an AI-based tailored approach to digital self-control can lead to actual change of habits and improvement in the long run. A second approach consisted of educational interventions through an educational system promoting digital wellbeing among youth to encourage young people to develop independently healthier technology usage patterns. Future approaches may emphasize more gamified or game-like systems to widen the target of digital educational means
Community Detection as a Tool for District Metered Areas Identification
No full textAbstractWater losses, the portion of water introduced in a pipe network but not consumed by users, represent a significant problem in water distribution system (WDS) management. Modern guidelines suggest to divide the pipe network in clusters, in order to compute a water balance and measure water consumption by each group. These clusters are called district metered areas (DMAs). The division of a pipe network in DMAs is usually realized with a visual exam supported by technical experience. This approach, which is convenient for small WDSs, becomes difficult to apply to large WDSs characterized by thousands of user nodes and pipes. Therefore, it is necessary to have an automatic tool to recognize the affinity degree of neighbouring nodes and to decide how to assign a node to a particular DMA. We propose an automated approach to subdivide pipes, that only requires flow rates through the network. The method has been tested to a large WDS often used as benchmark. The approach successfully divides the pipe network in an acceptable number of DMAs. Each resulting DMA is characterized by a low number of external links and by a proper number of users
An assessment of the impact of possible CAP reform scenarios on Romanian agriculture
No full textUsing a simplified model, with key-variable the prices of two different possible scenarios of CAP reform after 2013 (moderate and radical), this paper present a comparison between the price effects of implementation of each reform scenario at 2015 horizon on Romanian agriculture. This short analysis shows that, under the presented hypotheses, the net welfare effect, due to the price changes, for the selected products, is positive in both reform scenarios, yet greater in the case of the radical reform. Integrated in the large context of Romanian development, it seems that the influence of CAP reform upon agriculture and rural areas will be most likely a gradual one: an interpenetration between the two scenarios is foreseeable, starting with the moderate reform that will dominate the period around 2013, the reform measures acquiring a more radical character afterwards.CAP reform, Romania, welfare effects, Agricultural and Food Policy,
Investigating How Computer Science Researchers Design Their Co-Writing Experiences With AI
No full textRecent advancements in AI have significantly enhanced collaboration between humans and writing assistants. However, empirical evidence is still lacking on how this collaboration unfolds in scientific writing, especially considering the variety of tools researchers can use nowadays. We conducted observations and retrospective interviews to investigate how 19 computer science researchers collaborated with intelligent writing assistants while working on their ongoing projects. We adopted a design-in-use lens to analyze the collected data, exploring how researchers adapt writing assistants during their use to overcome challenges and meet their specific needs and preferences. Our findings identify issues such as workflow disruptions and over-reliance on AI, and reveal five distinct design-in-use styles - teaching, resisting, repurposing, orchestrating, and complying - each consisting of different practices used by researchers. This study contributes to understanding the evolving landscape of human-AI co-writing in scientific research and offers insights for designing more effective writing assistants
Intelligent Support for Digital Wellbeing: a Design Framework through a Systematic Literature Review
No full textRecent advancements in AI, particularly Generative AI (GenAI) and Large Language Models (LLMs), have facilitated the integration of AI techniques into digital wellbeing applications, i.e., digital tools that aim at helping people's wellbeing as a sum of mental and emotional wellness. These AI-powered systems hold the potential to foster healthier habits by collecting and analyzing user behavioral data to provide personalized and dynamic solutions tailored to each user's needs and lifestyle, therefore improving the efficacy with respect to traditional non-AI interventions. Yet, their development presents significant challenges, including ethical concerns, privacy risks, and the potential for over-reliance on automated interventions. In this paper, we conduct a systematic literature review to examine the key characteristics, challenges, and opportunities in the existing research about AI-powered digital wellbeing tools. Based on our findings, we propose a design framework that outlines 6 critical dimensions and 23 sub-dimensions, spacing from user data and privacy to intervention strategies and personalization, offering practical guidance for researchers and practitioners developing AI-powered digital wellbeing applications. The framework emphasizes the importance of developing tailored and adaptive user-centered interventions adhering to scientific principles, psychological models and responsible data collection. We discuss the applicability and utility of our framework in evaluating and guiding the integration of AI in digital wellbeing applications
Water Distribution System Modeling and Optimization: A Case Study
No full textIn the last years, the scientific literature has reported an increasing use of hydraulic models to describe water distribution systems (WDS). Hydraulic models represent tools for managing the complexity of WDSs, and a number of optimization methods have been proposed to improve the performance of these infrastructures. However, because of the lack of available data on WDSs many works have only considered synthetic WDS with idealized behaviour or small-sized WDSs with simple topology and limited complexity. This lack of complex case studies has often hindered the demonstration of the potential of hydraulic models and of the optimization approaches relying on their use. In this work, we present a case study about a real large WDS. The system is composed of approximately 3000 pipes (>170 km) and 3000 demand nodes (corresponding to 50,000 users) that are spread across a hilly area over a 200 m elevation gradient. Water is provided by ten wells and it is distributed by five pumping stations and four tanks at different elevations. Pump operation is partly automatically controlled by water levels in tanks and partly by a fixed temporal schedule. This complexity results in a nontrivial hydraulic behaviour that is well reproduced by our hydraulic model. The model is also used with a multi-objective genetic algorithm solver to identify different operational scenarios that lead to a reduction of energy consumption and water leakages
Dialogues with digital wisdom: can LLMs help us put down the phone?
No full textThe use of Large Language Models (LLMs) to counter problematic smartphone use and support users’ digital wellbeing has recently gained research interest. Yet, such an approach is still in its infancy, particularly when compared to traditional digital self-control interventions. In this paper, we explore the possibility of using LLMs as “digital wellbeing assistants.” Specifically, we first reviewed the HCI literature and developed four user personas that exemplify widely recognized issues associated with smartphone (over)use. Then, we assessed the capabilities of four popular LLMs-powered chatbots, i.e., Bing, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude.AI, in understanding problematic smartphone uses and suggesting practical strategies to address them, using the developed personas as a testing ground. Despite some variations, results show that all three LLMs can offer tailored suggestions based on user characteristics, opening doors for smarter digital self-control interventions that leverage AI to support users’ self-monitoring and regulation capabilities
Rich, Sturmian, and trapezoidal words
No full textIn this paper we explore various interconnections between rich words, Sturmian words, and trapezoidal words. Rich words, first introduced by the second and third authors together with J. Justin and S. Widmer, constitute a new class of finite and infinite words characterized by having the maximal number of palindromic factors. Every finite Sturmian word is rich, but not conversely. Trapezoidal words were first introduced by the first author in studying the behavior of the subword complexity of finite Sturmian words. Unfortunately this property does not characterize finite Sturmian words. In this note we show that the only trapezoidal palindromes are Sturmian. More generally we show that Sturmian palindromes can be characterized either in terms of their subword complexity (the trapezoidal property) or in terms of their palindromic complexity. We also obtain a similar characterization of rich palindromes in terms of a relation between palindromic complexity and subword complexity
Characterization Results for the Poset Based Representation of Topological Relations - I: Introduction and Models
No full text@article{DBLP:journals/informaticaSI/ForlizziN99,
author = {Luca Forlizzi and
Enrico Nardelli},
title = {Characterization Results for the Poset Based Representation
of Topological Relations - I: Introduction and Models.},
journal = {Informatica (Slovenia)},
volume = {23},
number = {2},
year = {1999},
bibsource = {DBLP, http://dblp.uni-trier.de}
Characterization Results for the Poset Based Representation of Topological Relations - II: Intersection and Union
No full text@article{DBLP:journals/informaticaSI/ForlizziN00,
author = {Luca Forlizzi and
Enrico Nardelli},
title = {Characterization Results for the Poset Based Representation
of Topological Relations - II: Intersection and Union.},
journal = {Informatica (Slovenia)},
volume = {24},
number = {1},
year = {2000},
bibsource = {DBLP, http://dblp.uni-trier.de}
- …
