Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Crowding, Race, and Ethnicity: A Case Study at Onondaga Cave State Park

This study investigated crowding perceptions of adult visitors who took guided tours at Onondaga Cave State Park in Leasburg, Missouri. An on-site survey was conducted on weekends, alternating between Saturdays and Sundays from May until October 2015. Crowding perceptions of White and Asian visitors were compared using an independent t-test, while a regression model examined the effects of different factors associated with perceived crowding. Results showed that Asian visitors felt more crowded on cave tours than Whites. Being Asian or White, along with tour satisfaction, were negatively associated with crowding perception. Implications for outdoor recreation management, both in theory and practice, were discussed.
Human rights education and the plight of vulnerable groups with specific reference to people with albinism in Tanzania

Although all human beings are vulnerable, some are more vulnerable than others, for example, people with albinism. Similarly, although albinism occurs in all parts of the world, it is more prevalent in some societies than in others. For example, Tanzania, in common with other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, has a high prevalence of albinism. Apart from being subjected to blatant discrimination and abuse, people with albinism suffer atrocious attacks sometimes resulting in death. This paper explores the nature and extent of discrimination and human rights violations of people with albinism in Tanzania in the context of the relevant legal framework available for their protection. Using people with albinism in Tanzania as a proxy, the paper argues that there is a need for human rights education not only to empower vulnerable people to defend and protect their rights but also to sensitize societies to respect and not violate the rights of such people. The paper concludes with several recommendations that apply to people with albinism in Tanzania as much as they would apply to any vulnerable group anywhere else in the world.
Interracial Contact in Virtual Reality: Best Practices

Interracial interactions are occurring more frequently in virtual reality (VR) environments (e.g., multiplayer games, virtual classrooms, medical appointments). Individuals bring their biases and prejudices with them as they enter virtual spaces. Drawing from theories of real-world interracial interaction, predictable affective, cognitive, and behavioral processes undermine the quality of live interracial interactions. Emerging research using VR suggests that these same challenges occur in virtual social interactions. These challenges can be addressed using evidence-based best practices and policy recommendations: Improving racial/ethnic representation in VR, regulating codes of conduct, ensuring transparency about privacy/consent, and reducing explicit and implicit racist behavior. Following these recommendations can improve VR interracial contact and, in turn, real-world interracial interactions. While VR can serve as a unique tool to bring people together, carefully considered policies must mitigate the negative effects of racial bias that can hinder the progress of improved interracial interactions.
Visualizing Program Genres' Temporal-Based Similarity in Linear TV Recommendations

There is an increasing evidence that data visualization is an important and useful tool for quick understanding and filtering of large amounts of data. In this paper, we contribute to this body of work with a study that compares chord and ranked list for presentation of a temporal TV program genre similarity in next-program recommendations. We consider genre similarity based on the similarity of temporal viewing patterns. We discover that chord presentation allows users to see the whole picture and improves their ability to choose items beyond the ranked list of top similar items. We believe that similarity visualization may be useful for the provision of both the recommendations and their explanations to the end users.
Bring2Me: Bringing Virtual Widgets Back to the User's Field of View in Mixed Reality

Current Mixed Reality (MR) Head-Mounted Displays (HMDs) offer a limited Field Of View (FOV) of the mixed environment. Turning the head is thus necessary to visually perceive the virtual objects that are placed within the real world. However, turning the head also means loosing the initial visual context. This limitation is critical in contexts like augmented surgery where surgeons need to visually focus on the operative field. To address this limitation we propose to bring virtual objects/widgets back to the users' FOV instead of forcing the users to turn their head. We carry an initial investigation to demonstrate the approach by designing and evaluating three new menu techniques to first bring the menu back to the users' FOV before selecting an item. Results show that our three menu techniques are 1.5s faster on average than the baseline head-motion menu technique and are largely preferred by participants.
Rethinking the group: Group processes in the digital age

This special issue of Group Processes & Intergroup Relations (GPIR) on group processes in the digital age began life in the middle of 2019, when the world was a rather different place. As we write this editorial in the middle of 2020, the world has become all too familiar with the transformations brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic and is experiencing the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement after the murder of George Floyd. All the papers in this special issue were written before those seismic events forced their way into our consciousness. And yet, the papers are all remarkably prescient.
Herpes simplex virus entry by a non-conventional endocytic pathway

Herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1) causes significant morbidity and mortality in humans worldwide. HSV-1 enters epithelial cells via an endocytosis mechanism that is low pH-dependent. However, the precise intracellular pathway has not been identified, including the compartment where fusion occurs. In this study, we utilized a combination of molecular and pharmacological approaches to better characterize HSV entry by endocytosis. HSV-1 entry was unaltered in both cells treated with siRNA to Rab5 or Rab7 and cells expressing dominant-negative forms of these GTPases, suggesting entry is independent of the conventional endo-lysosomal network. The fungal metabolite brefeldin A (BFA) and the quinoline compound Golgicide A (GCA) inhibited HSV-1 entry via beta-galactosidase reporter assay and impaired incoming virus transport to the nuclear periphery, suggesting a role for trans Golgi network (TGN) functions and retrograde transport in HSV entry. Silencing of Rab9 or Rab11 GTPases, which are involved in the retrograde transport pathway, resulted in only a slight reduction in HSV infection. Together these results suggest that HSV enters host cells by an intracellular route independent of the lysosome-terminal endocytic pathway. IMPORTANCE HSV-1, the prototype alphaherpesvirus, is ubiquitous in the human population and causes lifelong infection that can be fatal in neonatal and immunocompromised individuals. HSV enters many cell types by endocytosis, including epithelial cells, the site of primary infection in the host. The intracellular itinerary for HSV entry remains unclear. We probed the potential involvement of several Rab GTPases in HSV-1 entry, and suggest that endocytic entry of HSV-1 is independent of the canonical lysosome-terminal pathway. A non-traditional endocytic route may be employed, such as one that intersects with the TGN. These results may lead to novel targets for intervention.
V-DOOR: A Real-Time Virtual Dressing Room Application Using Oculus Rift

In recent years and with its accessibility, the use of online shopping for clothing has increased. Virtual Dressing Rooms (VDRs) represent an effective way to enact the ability to "try before buying, thus removing an important obstacle for online shopping. While most of the VDR tools that have been realized so far are based on Augmented Reality and are installed directly inside the retail shops, this paper proposes a real-time VDR application titled V-DOOR that leverages the features of Oculus Rift to create an immersive experience that enables customers to try on clothes virtually in the comfort of their own home rather than physically in the retail shop.
Modelling Data Visualization Interactions: from Semiotics to Pragmatics and Back to Humans

This paper makes a point of current perspectives on Data Visualization research that were essentially conceived to provide guidelines for finding the best mapping between data and visual representations. Going back to foundational concepts of HCI that rely on manipulation of visual symbols, we propose a new perspective, with the aim to focus on a different configuration, that considers visual signs, professional contexts and user practices. We argue that, so far, user practices have been neglected or left behind in design, evaluation and recommendation scenarios, reducing them to the pure relational focus among kind of data, kind of charts and in lab tasks. This may underestimate the potential of the pragmatic side of this relation, where humans manipulate and interpret signs on the basis of their "practical knowledge, a factor that should be considered to improve human interactions with Data Visualization tools. The perspective discussed here would bring into light and help frame open problems such as interactions in routine tasks and the interpretation of data through visual interactive tools in daily professional practices. By proposing a light but formal model of investigation of these pragmatic interactions, we would like to contribute to the current debate around data visualization as the new strategic tool for dealing with the growing complexity of big data streams, digitization of life, sensor and hardware-embedded intelligence.
Are Thermal Attacks Ubiquitous?: When Non-Expert Attackers Use Off the shelf Thermal Cameras

Recent work showed that using image processing techniques on thermal images taken by high-end equipment reveals passwords entered on touchscreens and keyboards. In this paper, we investigate the susceptibility of common touch inputs to thermal attacks when non-expert attackers visually inspect thermal images. Using an off-the-shelf thermal camera, we collected thermal images of a smartphone's touchscreen and a laptop's touchpad after 25 participants had entered passwords using touch gestures and touch taps. We show that visual inspection of thermal images by 18 participants reveals the majority of passwords. Touch gestures are more vulnerable to thermal attacks (60.65% successful attacks) than touch taps (23.61%), and attacks against touchscreens are more accurate than on touchpads (87.04% vs 56.02%). We discuss how the affordability of thermal attacks and the nature of touch interactions make the threat ubiquitous, and the implications this has on security.
Incidental Visualizations: Pre-Attentive Primitive Visual Tasks

In InfoVis design, visualizations make use of pre-attentive features to highlight visual artifacts and guide users' perception into relevant information during primitive visual tasks. These are supported by visual marks such as dots, lines, and areas. However, research assumes our pre-attentive processing only allows us to detect specific features in charts. We argue that a visualization can be completely perceived pre-attentively and still convey relevant information. In this work, by combining cognitive perception and psychophysics, we executed a user study with six primitive visual tasks to verify if they could be performed pre-attentively. The tasks were to find: horizontal and vertical positions, length and slope of lines, size of areas, and color luminance intensity. Users were presented with very simple visualizations, with one encoded value at a time, allowing us to assess the accuracy and response time. Our results showed that horizontal position identification is the most accurate and fastest task to do, and the color luminance intensity identification task is the worst. We believe our study is the first step into a fresh field called Incidental Visualizations, where visualizations are meant to be seen at-a-glance, and with little effort.
High data-rate optical communication payload for CubeSats

Space industry has undergone a significant change over the last years. The development moved from large and costly spacecrafts to cost-efficient designs and shorter development times. While the satellites became smaller, the resolution of high compact sensors increased which led to a high data-volume to be transmitted and increasing demands for higher data rates on small satellites. This motivated for a highly compact version of DLR’s optical communication payload OSIRIS for small LEO satellites. DLR’s Institute of Communications and Navigation has developed the OSIRIS (Optical Space Infrared Downlink System) program starting with payloads on the satellites Flying Laptop of Univ. of Stuttgart and BiROS of DLR. Combining miniaturization to the flight-proven developments with novel concepts, OSIRIS4CubeSat allows integration in a standard CubeSat bus. The development of OSIRIS4CubeSat (industrialized under the product name “CubeLCT”) is conducted in close collaboration with Tesat Spacecom, DLR’s commercialization partner. The first implementation will be demonstrated within the PIXL-1-Mission on a 3Unit CubeSat. Furthermore, OSIRIS4CubeSat (O4C) has been chosen to support scientific missions together with university partners in the field of Quantum Key Distribution (QUBE). In the future, the modular design will enable extensions for optical inter-satellite links. This paper will give an overview about the development of the O4C payload and the current status of the PIXL-1- Mission. Furthermore, it will show the adaptation of the payload for the scientific mission QUBE. Besides these projects, the paper will give an outlook for future extensions of the O4C payload and the necessity of high data-rates in other scenarios such as inter-satellite links.
Practicing What We Preach

Today, environmental, cultural, and historical sites are emphasizing educational and interactive visitor experiences. An institution's educational philosophy should form the core of volunteer training and in turn be reflected in public programs. This comparative case study examined two training programs at a history and art museum. Data were collected through interviews, training/ promotional materials, and observations. Analysis revealed that the learning theory touted to volunteers for use with the public is not applied by educators during training. Findings suggest a need for aligning an institution's educational philosophy with its training practices and assessing the impact of such alignment on volunteer training and program delivery.
Tiered versus tierless IoT stacks: comparing smart campus software architectures

Internet of Things (IoT) software stacks are notoriously complex, conventionally comprising multiple tiers/components and requiring that the developer not only uses multiple programming languages, but also correctly interoperate the components. A novel alternative is to use a single tierless language with a compiler that generates the code for each component, and for their correct interoperation. We report the first ever systematic comparison of tiered and tierless IoT software architectures. The comparison is based on two implementations of a non-trivial smart campus application. PRSS has a conventional tiered Python-based architecture, and Clean Wemos Super Sensors (CWSS) has a novel tierless architecture based on Clean and the iTask and mTask embedded DSLs. An operational comparison of CWSS and PRSS demonstrates that they have equivalent functionality, and that both meet the University of Glasgow (UoG) smart campus requirements. Crucially, the tierless CWSS stack requires 70% less code than the tiered PRSS stack. We analyse the impact of the following three main factors. (1) Tierless developers need to manage less interoperation: CWSS uses two DSLs in a single paradigm where PRSS uses five languages and three paradigms. (2) Tierless developers benefit from automatically generated, and hence correct, communication. (3) Tierless developers can exploit the powerful high-level abstractions such as Task Oriented Programming (TOP) in CWSS. A far smaller and single paradigm codebase improves software quality, dramatically reduces development time, and improves the maintainability of tierless stacks.
Taking the Long View: Structured Expert Evaluation for Extended Interaction

This paper proposes first steps in the development of practical techniques for the expert evaluation of long-term interactions driven by the need to perform expert evaluation of such systems in a consultancy framework. Some interactions are time-limited and goal-driven, for example withdrawing money at an ATM. However, these are typically embedded within longer-term interactions, such as with the banking system as a whole. We have numerous evaluation and design tools for the former, but long-term interaction is less well served. To fill this gap new evaluation prompts are presented, drawing on the style of cognitive walkthroughs to support extended interaction.
An Evaluation of the “Authority of the Resource” Interpretive Technique by Rangers in Eight Wilderness/Backcountry Areas

The Authority of the Resource Technique (ART) is a multi-pronged interpretive approach for dealing with undesirable visitor behavior in protected areas. Although ART has been used and supported anecdotally by agency personnel since 1991, this study provides the first systematic field evaluation of its use. During the 1998 field season, 25 USFS and NPS wilderness/backcountry rangers from seven areas were given training in the use of ART and asked to make structured journal entries each time they chose to use ART while addressing undesirable visitor behaviors. An elaboration of the theoretical grounding for ART was used to help frame the evaluation. Among the results were findings that rangers using only ART with no law enforcement recorded high levels of verbalized intention to comply, observed compliance, and rated ART contacts as very or moderately effective for more than 75% of those contacts. Contacts rated as “very effective” were likely to include more of the multiple intervention strategies made available by the ART approach. Recommendations are given that could improve the effectiveness of ART and its ability to influence visitor beliefs, attitudes, intentions, and behaviors.
Categories and Completeness of Visual Programming and Direct Manipulation

Recent innovations in visual programming and the use of direct manipulation for programming have demonstrated promise, but also raise questions about how far these approaches can be generalized. To clarify these issues, we present a categorization of systems for visual programming, programming-by-example, and similar systems. By examining each category, we elucidate the advantages, limitations, and ways to extend systems in each category. Our work makes it easier for researchers and designers to understand how visual programming languages (VPLs) and similar systems relate to each other, and how to extend them. We also indicate directions for future research.
TeMoCo-Doc: A visualization for supporting temporal and contextual analysis of dialogues and associated documents

A common task in a number of application areas is to create textual documents based on recorded audio data. Visualizations designed to support such tasks require linking temporal audio data with contextual data contained in the resulting documents. In this paper, we present a tool for the visualization of temporal and contextual links between recorded dialogues and their summary documents.
The Possibilities and Limitations of Private Prediction Markets

We consider the design of private prediction markets, financial markets designed to elicit predictions about uncertain events without revealing too much information about market participants’ actions or beliefs. Our goal is to design market mechanisms in which participants’ trades or wagers influence the market’s behavior in a way that leads to accurate predictions, yet no single participant has too much influence over what others are able to observe. We study the possibilities and limitations of such mechanisms using tools from differential privacy. We begin by designing a private one-shot wagering mechanism in which bettors specify a belief about the likelihood of a future event and a corresponding monetary wager. Wagers are redistributed among bettors in a way that more highly rewards those with accurate predictions. We provide a class of wagering mechanisms that are guaranteed to satisfy truthfulness, budget balance on expectation, and other desirable properties while additionally guaranteeing ε-joint differential privacy in the bettors’ reported beliefs, and analyze the trade-off between the achievable level of privacy and the sensitivity of a bettor’s payment to her own report. We then ask whether it is possible to obtain privacy in dynamic prediction markets, focusing our attention on the popular cost-function framework in which securities with payments linked to future events are bought and sold by an automated market maker. We show that under general conditions, it is impossible for such a market maker to simultaneously achieve bounded worst-case loss and ε-differential privacy without allowing the privacy guarantee to degrade extremely quickly as the number of trades grows (at least logarithmically in number of trades), making such markets impractical in settings in which privacy is valued. We conclude by suggesting several avenues for potentially circumventing this lower bound.
SNPP and N20 VIIRS solar vector orientation knowledge error detected by SDSM sun views

The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) is a passive scanning Earth observing satellite radiometer. The VIIRS has 22 spectral bands with design center wavelengths from 0.41 to 12.01 m, providing data to generate more than 20 Earth’s biogeophysical parameters. Fourteen of the 22 VIIRS bands are the reflective solar bands (RSBs), detecting Earth reflected sunlight. To ensure data quality, regular on-orbit radiometric calibrations of the RSBs are performed, mainly through observations of an onboard solar diffuser (SD). The spectral radiance provided by the sunlit SD depends on the SD screen transmittance which is a function of the solar vector orientation. Additionally, on orbit the SD’s bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) changes its value due to solar bombardment. The BRDF change is derived from the SD stability monitor (SDSM) measurements. The SDSM views the Sun through a screen with through holes (the SDSM screen) and the SD at almost the same time. The time series of the ratio of the signal strengths is a measure of the SD BRDF on-orbit change. Hence the measurements of the on-orbit SD BRDF change depends on the SDSM screen relative transmittance which is also solar vector orientation dependent. In this paper for both the SNPP and the NOAA-20 VIIRS instruments we examine the solar vector orientation knowledge error through matching the SDSM screen relative effective transmittances derived from the calibration data collected on the yaw maneuver and the regular orbits.