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Indoor Positioning Systems (IPS) appear to offer great potential to study the movement and interaction of people and their working environment, including office workplaces. But little is known about appropriate durations for data collection. In this study, location observations collected from 24 office workers on a 1220 m

Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) reflects a building's performance in relation to the health, comfort and wellbeing of its occupants. Conventional IEQ measurement strategies fail to capture spatial or temporal variations in IEQ. Recent technological developments in IEQ monitoring and occupant location tracking provide opportunities to monitor IEQ across the entire floorplate of a building and to develop deeper insights into individuals' IEQ exposure. The aims of this study were 1) to establish the feasibility of synthesising continuous IEQ exposure based on high-resolution real-time location data, and 2) to investigate individuals' exposure to the indoor climate by mapping occupant location relative to IEQ. IEQ was measured continuously using 12 autonomous desk-mounted devices spread out across the office floorplate. A Real Time Location System (RTLS) tracked occupant location continuously over one month, with 47 location sensors across the research site (1220 m2) and 45 tags attached to occupants' staff-ID access cards. We estimated IEQ spatial distributions across the entire floorplate using cubic splines and fused these with occupants' high-resolution spatiotemporal coordinates. We confirm that it is possible to infer continuous exposure to IEQ conditions from diverse data sources. In this case, we identified distinct IEQ zones across the floorplate that were reflected in the exposure profiles for individual occupants. While there were several limitations to the study, future research could expand this data fusion framework to investigate IEQ relative to occupant health and wellbeing by including occupant-reported data. The framework could also be useful for future investigations aimed at simultaneously optimising building energy and occupant comfort.

Office workers can spend significant periods of time being stationary whilst at work, with potentially serious health consequences. The development of effective health interventions could be aided by a greater understanding of the location and environmental context in which this stationary behaviour occurs. Real time location systems (RTLS) potentially offer the opportunity to gather this much needed information, but they have not been extensively trialled in office workplaces, nor rigorously compared against more familiar devices such as accelerometers. The aim of this paper was to determine whether an RTLS can measure and spatially locate the non-stationary and stationary behaviours of adults working in an office work environment. Data collected from a series of comparison studies undertaken in a commercial office building suggests that RTLS can measure the velocity at which people are moving and locate them, when stationary, with an accuracy of 0.668 m (SD 0.389). This opens up significant opportunities to further understand how people move within buildings, the indoor physical environmental influences on that movement, and the development of effective interventions to help people to move more whilst at work.

This review addresses a fundamental neuroscientific question in food perception: how multimodal features of food are integrated. Much research and conceptualization has emerged related to multisensory integration in vision, audition and somatosensation, while it remains poorly understood and researched within the chemical and mouth feel senses. This review aims to bridge this gap. We discuss the main concepts in the fields of auditory, visual and somatosensory multisensory integration and relate them to oral-sensory (gustatory and somatosensory) and olfactory (orolfactory) interactions. We systematically review the psychophysical literature pertaining to intra- and intermodal interactions related to food perception, while making explicit distinctions between peripheral and central interactions. As the neural bases of crossmodal orolfaction currently are poorly understood, we introduce several plausible neuroscientific models, which provide a framework for further neuroscientific exploration in this area. We are guided by a new meta-analysis of the odor-taste neuroimaging literature, as well as by single-unit, anatomical and psychophysical studies. Finally, we propose strong involvement of recurrent neural networks in multisensory integration and make suggestions for future research.

The effects of nonoral sensations, such as visual texture and odor, on the size of the first bite were investigated in a series of studies using specially constructed food delivery cups with lower, from which custards were ingested ("ingested custard"), and upper, from which a custard was viewed and/or smelled ("upper custard") compartments. Ingested and upper custards were either the same or different. Bite size was defined as the weight of custard sucked out of the lower compartment during a single suck through an I I -mm diameter straw. The results from the first study indicated that the recognition of oral qualities of custards via vision or olfaction determined the size of the first bite. When this recognition was favorable, e.g., when the upper custard was known to be creamy, a relatively large bite was taken, irrespective of the custard that was actually ingested. When this recognition was unfavorable, a relatively small bite was taken. The second study showed that when recognition was prevented by modifications of the upper custard's color, odor, or visual texture, bite size was determined by the oral qualities of the ingested custard. This was confirmed in a third study, where the oral characteristics of the ingested custard were varied by adding a flavorant (benzaldehyde) and/or by using nose clips to eliminate retronasal smelling. Bite sizes decreased significantly when these variations reduced creaminess. Odor and visual texture characteristics of the upper custard significantly affected the perception of creaminess and other attributes related to the food's viscosity, melting, and thickness. (C) 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The size of a bolus determines how it will be manipulated in the mouth and swallowed. Ten healthy individuals assessed the size of ball bearings of five sizes (4-11 mm diameter) and four materials with different densities in order to investigate the effect of weight on oral size perception. To study the role of the tongue and palate, the experiment was performed with and without a custom-made plastic palate. The results revealed that size itself determines size perception, and that material and weight are negligible factors. An illusional effect in the direction of under-estimation was found for the ball bearings, especially for the small sizes up to 8 mm diameter. While wearing a plastic palate a significant improvement (P0.05) occurred; the participants performed better and there was less under-estimation. An explanation for this could be that only a minor part of the total area of the ball bearing touches the palate and is hence detected, while the tongue alone is more compliant and thereby able to sense the ball's whole size.

Background: Prolonged sitting is a specific occupational hazard in office workers and there is growing evidence that prolonged sitting is detrimental to metabolic health. Purpose: The aim of this study was to determine whether providing officeworkerswith an adjustable sit-standworkstation together with targeted education, or targeted education alone would lead to changes in sedentary behaviour at work compared with no intervention. Methods: A randomized control trial with three groups. We recruited 60 academic and administrative university employeeswhose normal role involved>15 hours perweek of computer work. Participants were randomised to one of three groups as described below. The intervention period was four weeks. Group 1: Education based on “The Happy Body at Work’ program Group 2: The same education program as Group 1 and provision of an adjustable sit-stand workstation Group 3: No intervention control The primary outcome was the average daily sedentary time during work hours. Participants wore an accelerometer during working hours for five working days prior to randomisation, then for another five days at four week follow up. Secondary outcomes included self-report of sitting behavior using Occupational Sitting and Physical Activity Questionnaire (OSPAQ). Mixed models analysis was performed for continuous variables comparing the average outcome score at baseline and follow-up between random allocation groups. Cohen’s D was used to measure the magnitude of these differences. For the categorical outcomes, there was a low number of participants who changed pain/disability status between baseline and follow-up overall therefore descriptive and nonparametric statistics (Fishers Test) were used to examine differences in change in pain/disability profiles between random allocation groups. Results: Data from 59 participants were available for the mixed model analysis. No significant differences were found between both intervention groups and the control group in any primary or secondary outcome. However, consistently large effect size (Cohen’s D) differences were observed between the groups favouring the combined education/sitstand workstation intervention. For this group, subjective but not objectively measured sitting time per work day, and per work week, (OSPAQ) were respectively 65 and 369minutes less at follow up compared to baseline (Cohen’sD−0.61 and −0.69, p< 0.01 for both). No significant within group difference in these outcomes was found for either the education only intervention or the control group. Conclusion(s):While not significant, the trend in the data favouring the combined intervention is in line with the effects found by other recently published studies evaluating the use of similar activity permissive workstations. Implications: To effect positive change in sedentary behaviour in non-motivated individuals a longer adoption period may be required together with regular promoting and reinforcement to increase adherence.