As the volume and complexity of distributed online work increases, the collaboration among people who have never worked together in the past is becoming increasingly necessary. Recent research has proposed algorithms to maximize the performance of such teams by grouping workers according to a set of predefined decision criteria. This approach micro-manages workers, who have no say in the team formation process. Depriving users of control over who they will work with stifles creativity, causes psychological discomfort and results in less-than-optimal collaboration results. In this work, we propose an alternative model, called Self-Organizing Teams (SOTs), which relies on the crowd of online workers itself to organize into effective teams. Supported but not guided by an algorithm, SOTs are a new human-centered computational structure, which enables participants to control, correct and guide the output of their collaboration as a collective. Experimental results, comparing SOTs to two benchmarks that do not offer user agency over the collaboration, reveal that participants in the SOTs condition produce results of higher quality and report higher teamwork satisfaction. We also find that, similarly to machine learning-based self-organization, human SOTs exhibit emergent collective properties, including the presence of an objective function and the tendency to form more distinct clusters of compatible teammates.
The safety and effectiveness of plasma devices are of crucial importance for medical applications. This study presents the novel design of an atmospheric plasma torch (SteriPlas) and its characterisation. The SteriPlas was characterised to ascertain whether it is safe for application on human skin. The emission spectrum discharged from the SteriPlas was shown to be the same as the emission from the MicroPlaSter Beta. The UV emitted from the SteriPlas was measured, and the effective irradiance was calculated. The effective irradiance enabled the determination of the maximum UV exposure limits, which were shown to be over two hours: significantly longer than the current two-minute treatment time. The use of an extraction system with a higher flow rate appears to reduce slightly the effective irradiance at the treatment area. The NOx and ozone emissions were recorded for both SteriPlas configurations. The NOx levels were shown to be orders of magnitude lower than their safety limits. The ozone emissions were shown to be safe 25 mm from the SteriPlas cage. A discussion of how safety standards differ from one regulatory body to another is given.
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