Blog

• Personal traits and type of phone chosen influence the stress caused by technology. Different ‘technostress’ levels for different users.

  

  09 September 2015

  A recent study carried out by Yu-Kung Lee and his colleagues, written in the ‘journal of Behaviour & Information Technology’, analysed the concept of technostress and its related factors. The study focused in the relationship among the level of stress experienced, four key personality traits and the kind of phones used by subjects.

• Psychology and Computer science come together to innovate education: the challenge of ‘machine teaching’

  

  01 September 2015

  Learning is a complex activity, where time required and speed of the process differs according to several factors. Teaching programs play an important role in the delivery of the information to learn.

• Researchers developing architecture to build cyber security into systems

  

  12 August 2015

  A team of researchers at The University of Alabama in Huntsville is developing lightweight virtualisation architecture to use in cyber security development. The new technology may benefits the security of products and tools such as industrial control systems, cloud-based systems as well as automobiles.

• Using thoughts’ power to control robots. A multi-year project to enhance disabled people

  

  02 August 2015

  A team of researchers at the Defitech Foundation Chair in Brain-Machine Interface (CNBI), tried to find a solution to limited mobility disabilities, working on a revolutionary brain-machine approach to solve the problem by helping the disabled retrieving a sense of independence. The idea behind the approach consists in the remote control of a robot from home through the use of thoughts.

• Photonics researchers innovates fibre optic communication, overcoming power and distance barriers.

  

  23 July 2015

  Researchers at the University of California, San Diego, succeeded in increasing the maximum power, and consequently distance, of optical transmission through optical fibres. The new progress hides an interesting potential in increasing the data transmission rates for the optic cables.

• Technology and green energy come together for innovative egg-shaped housing solutions.

  

  14 July 2015

  An innovative housing product, the Ecocapsules, could allow people to live essentially everywhere up to a year. Those egg shaped capsules resembles a modern spaceship, including futuristic cells and even antennae on it.

• Positive feedbacks, as well as positive sales, may not always be prophecy of success for new products.

  

  05 July 2015

  A study in the Journal of Marketing Research explains that there is a group of consumers that has a tendency to purchase products that tend to flop and fail in the market. Basing the market’s predictions on this people’s positive feedbacks leads to flops in sales and consequent failure of the product.

• Mobile devices and cloud storage to protect the environment: an alternative business model that could benefit everybody.

  

  22 June 2015

  The current mobile business model in mobile devices market is costing a lot both the manufacturer and the environment, due to its frequent upgrades. An investigation led by the University of Surrey analysed the life cycle of mobile devices, from the manufacture and use until the disposal, to understand the impact of the different stages on the environment.

• Tablets may represent the crossing point against the “digital divide” affecting elders and previous generations. Smaller, lighter and intuitive, those devices open an easier path toward technology.

  

  12 June 2015

  A research carried out by the New Michigan State University discovered that using tables makes technology easier to use for elder people, overcoming the traditional barriers of the “digital divide”.

• Thumbnails become miniature wireless trackpad: the wearable innovation that may change the way we use technology

  

  10 May 2015

  Researchers belonging to the MIT Media Laboratory are currently developing a new wearable device capable of turning the users’ thumbnails into an alternative wireless track pad. The technology may help controlling devices when  the hands are full and the user is busy doing specific tasks.