LIA TechX – the future is bright – with or without the tube!
Reflecting on the LIA last week with notes from the Controls stage, where I spent most of the day – acutely aware of missing lots of other great content and sad to miss Ricky Nutall’s presentation – thanks to, ironically, failed lights at Crewkerne Station…
ROI of smart tech should be seen in context of lifetime costs of a building – 1:5:200 ratio (construction, maintenance and operation). Numbers quoted by Chris Slatterly included 35% energy savings from data-guided recommissioning and 22% from predictive maintenance.
The flip side of that long term perspective is the need to derisk, integrate and upskill – the operator is too often left with a tangle of wires and unmarked kit in the ceiling, multiple data streams into single-function apps, opaque dashboards and legacy subscriptions to manage.
A couple of notes on solutions
- Specify functionality, not protocols, in the design phase, and opt for open-source when practical – who knows what (or who) will be out there next year, let alone in four or five years when the project goes ‘live’. Balance device-level and system-level interoperability to optimise performance and manage risk.
- Differentiate between control and insight: control draws small data and demands minimal latency – proximity is key, making lighting the ideal vector; while insight demands large data sets and is less time-sensitive – some level of latency may even be desirable.
International Listening Day – seeing ear to ear?
It’s no surprise that spending time with others is good for us: volunteering or participating in activities reduces risk of depression – Social participation and depressive symptoms in community-dwelling older adults: Emotional social support as a mediator, increases life expectancy – Trajectories of Social Engagement and Mortality in Late Life, and is even linked to risk of cognitive decline – Social Engagement and Amyloid-β-Related Cognitive Decline in Cognitively Normal Older Adults. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the promise of social interaction is one of the main drivers in the decision to relocate to relocate to a ‘retirement village’ or senior living setting – Factors affecting seniors’ decision to relocate to senior living communities.
Simply having a chat – especially about life experience (rather than task-oriented dialogue) boosts memory and mood – Does Everyday Conversation Contribute to Cognitive Functioning? A Comparison of Brain Activity During Task-Oriented and Life-Worldly Communication Using Near-Infrared Spectroscopy.
But making conversation gets harder with age.
When it comes to listening, We all struggle to hear with natural changes in the sensitivity of the inner ear – The effects of aging and hearing impairment on listening in noise, while many common over-the-counter drugs and prescription medications can have ototoxic effects. (A word for the pub quiz!) – From painkillers to antibiotics: five medicines that could harm your hearing.
At the same time, the neural networks that turn sounds into meaningful speech are changing, with a hyper-responsivity to the onset of a sound, with a reduced capacity to sustain response over time compared to younger adults – A neural signature of regularity in sound is reduced in older adults.
That reduced processing power means that older adults tend to rely more on contextual information to keep up, including the speakers’ tone, posture and facial expression – Efficiency of spoken word recognition slows across the adult lifespan.
When it comes to speaking, the pathways involved in ‘finding words’ are changing, leading to changes in vocabulary and more ‘filler words’ or disfluencies – Cognitive components of aging-related increase in word-finding difficulty. Depressed people tend to pause for longer between words, making conversation feel even more strained – The voice of depression: speech features as biomarkers for major depressive disorder.
Older adults’ voices also tend to become weaker and ‘thinner’ as the larynx and surrounding muscles become stiff, and breathing capacity and tone diminish – Here’s how your voice changes as you age.
So what’s that got to do with the lights?
- Go for the window seat – If you’re speaking in person, choose a spot close to a window, ideally with a view of nature, to boost mood and lateral thinking – Design by nature: The influence of windows on cognitive performance and affect.
- Boost with artificial light – Consider colour temperature and brightness – cooler light (higher CCT) seems to reduce the effort needed for auditory memory tasks in older adults – Lighting color temperature impacts effort-related cardiovascular response to an auditory short-term memory task, and higher brightness improves visual comfort for people with lower vision overall – but listen out for what works best for them – there is no ‘one size fits all’ – Interior luminous environment for the elderly: Recommended values of lighting parameters and comfort discriminant model.
- Teams tips – If you’re speaking on Teams (a lifeline if they’re a long way away), position yourself so your face is clearly visible, especially your mouth, because they aren’t getting any help from your body language. Check for distracting reflections from your glasses and blur the background to reduce visual clutter. Take time at the start of the call to ask them to adjust their position and lighting too – Face viewing behavior predicts multisensory gain during speech perception.
“I remind myself every morning: Nothing I say this day will teach me anything. So if I’m going to learn, I must do it by listening.”— Larry King, CNN
A Droite!
By the time you read this, I’ll be in Northern France with Wanda.
The French drive on the right-hand side- but it turns out they might be a bit safer if they drove on the left like les Anglais – (Side) effects of the rule of the road and neurophysiology on traffic safety: A hypothesis.
This American auto-enthusiast blog explains why – Why Some Countries Drive On The Left And Why It’s Better, starting with the observation that around one-third of the world follows the UK’s lead, tracing the origins of the left-hand rule back to the fact that the majority of us are right-handed and left-eye dominant, so it makes sense from a purely physiological perspective.
If you wear your sword on your right, you will want to pass on the left to defend your weapon. As ost of us have a dominant left eye, you are more likely to see traffic approaching on the left-hand side more easily. You even judge a mid-line to be further to the left, making you more likely to stay in your lane – Eye dominance modulates visuospatial attention.
So why am I driving on the right this weekend?
It’s thanks to Napoleon, a sworn enemy of the Brits. The celebrated French general was left handed and decreed that citizens should walk on the right in all the countries he invaded across Europe so that his sword would be protected and his hand would take centre stage. When the first Model T Ford rolled off the production line in 1908, instead of the steering wheel being positioned in the centre, it was on the left, encouraging passengers to get out on the right. This consistency made roads safer for pedestrians and other drivers and became the default for other manufacturers around the world.