We present the design, implementation, and deployment of a wearable computing platform for measuring and analyzing human behavior in organizational settings. We propose the use of wearable electronic badges capable of automatically measuring the amount of face-to-face interaction, conversational time, physical proximity to other people, and physical activity levels in order to capture individual and collective patterns of behavior. Our goal is to be able to understand how patterns of behavior shape individuals and organizations. By using on-body sensors in large groups of people for extended periods of time in naturalistic settings, we have been able to identify, measure, and quantify social interactions, group behavior, and organizational dynamics. We deployed this wearable computing platform in a group of 22 employees working in a real organization over a period of one month. Using these automatic measurements, we were able to predict employees' self-assessments of job satisfaction and their own perceptions of group interaction quality by combining data collected with our platform and e-mail communication data. In particular, the total amount of communication was predictive of both of these assessments, and betweenness in the social network exhibited a high negative correlation with group interaction satisfaction. We also found that physical proximity and e-mail exchange had a negative correlation of r = -0.55 (p 0.01), which has far-reaching implications for past and future research on social networks.

SummaryThis article introduces sociometric badges as a research tool that captures with great accuracy fine-scale speech patterns and body movements among a group of individuals at a scale that heretofore has been impossible in groups and teams studies. Such a tool offers great potential for studying the changing ecology of team structures and new modes of collaboration. Team boundaries are blurring as members disperse across multiple cultures, convene through various media, and operate in new configurations. As the how and why of collaboration evolves, an opportunity emerges to reassess the methods used to capture these interactions and to identify new tools that might help us create synergies across existing approaches to teams research. We offer sociometric badges as a complement to existing data collection methods-one that is well-positioned to capture real-time collaboration in new forms of teams. Used as one component in a multi-method approach, sociometric badges can capture what an observer or cross-sectional survey might miss, contributing to a more accurate understanding of group dynamics in new teams. We also revisit traditional teams research to suggest how we might use these badges to tackle long-standing challenges. We conclude with three case studies demonstrating potential applications of these sociometric badges.

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We show that it is possible to identify individual personality traits and measure group performance in a Postanesthesia Care Unit (PACU) using wearable sensors. We instrumented a group of 67 nurses working in the PACU of a Boston area hospital with sociometric badges capable of measuring physical activity, speech activity, face-to-face interaction, and physical proximity. Using the data collected with these sensors we were able to estimate the daily average length of stay (LOS) and number of delays.

We have investigated theoretically the effect of hydrostatic pressure on interatomic bond lengths and energy band gaps of g-InSe. Total energy calculations were performed using the linear augmented plane wave (LAPW) method, taking into account scalar relativistic corrections as well as spin-orbit coupling. Internal structural parameters were optimized for different pressures by adopting as input the unit cell parameters known from experiment. Our theoretical results for the nearest-neighbor In-Se bond length are in excellent agreement with a recent experimental determination from high-pressure EXAFS measurements. The covalent In-In bond is found to be more compressible than the partially ionic In-Se bond. We also present the calculated pressure dependence of band gaps and compare to recent highpressure experimental studies of optical and transport properties. A large negative pressure coefficient is obtained for the indirect Z-A gap. This leads to a crossover from a direct to an indirect fundamental gap within the stability range of the g-polytype of InSe, in qualitative agreement with recent experiments.Introduction Indium selenide is a layered semiconductor with a direct optical gap near 1.2 eV. The layers consist of Se-In-In-Se sheets with three Se atoms coordinated to one In atom (see Fig. 1). Covalent In-In bonds are oriented perpendicular to the layers. The bonding between the layers is weak and, as in other layered III-VI semiconductors, there exist several polytypes characterized by different stacking sequences of the layers. Bridgman-grown InSe crystals are usually of the g-polytype with a three-layer stacking sequence and a rhombohedral (trigonal) crystal structure (space group R3m, C

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Rachel Armstrong highlights how developments in molecular biology and genetics are providing architects with insights into the properties of living matter, which are set to revolutionise design through the genesis of artificially evolving architectures. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

We introduce the concept of sensor-based applications for the daily business settings of organizations and their individual workers. Wearable sensor devices were developed and deployed in a real organization, a bank, for a month in order to study the effectiveness and potential of using sensors at the organizational level. It was found that patterns of physical interaction changed dynamically while e-mail is more stable from day to day. Different patterns of behavior between people in different rooms and teams (p < 0.01), as well as correlations between communication and a worker's subjective productivity, were also identified. By analyzing a fluctuation of network parameters, i.e., "betweenness centrality," it was also found that communication patterns of people are different: some people tend to communicate with the same people in regular frequency (which is hypothesized as a typical pattern of throughput-oriented jobs) while some others drastically changed their communication day by day (which is hypothesized as a pattern of creative jobs). Based on these hypotheses, a reorganization, such that people having similar characteristics work together, was proposed and implemented.