Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Remobilization of dormant carbon from Siberian-Arctic permafrost during three past warming events

Arctic Ocean sediments reveal permafrost thaw and carbon release during three large warming events of the past 27,000 years. Carbon cycle models suggest that past warming events in the Arctic may have caused large-scale permafrost thaw and carbon remobilization, thus affecting atmospheric CO2 levels. However, observational records are sparse, preventing spatially extensive and time-continuous reconstructions of permafrost carbon release during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene. Using carbon isotopes and biomarkers, we demonstrate that the three most recent warming events recorded in Greenland ice cores—(i) Dansgaard-Oeschger event 3 (~28 ka B.P.), (ii) Bølling-Allerød (14.7 to 12.9 ka B.P.), and (iii) early Holocene (~11.7 ka B.P.)—caused massive remobilization and carbon degradation from permafrost across northeast Siberia. This amplified permafrost carbon release by one order of magnitude, particularly during the last deglaciation when global sea-level rise caused rapid flooding of the land area thereafter constituting the vast East Siberian Arctic Shelf. Demonstration of past warming-induced release of permafrost carbon provides a benchmark for the sensitivity of these large carbon pools to changing climate.
OddEyeCam: A Sensing Technique for Body-Centric Peephole Interaction Using WFoV RGB and NFoV Depth Cameras

The space around the body not only expands the interaction space of a mobile device beyond its small screen, but also enables users to utilize their kinesthetic sense. Therefore, body-centric peephole interaction has gained considerable attention. To support its practical implementation, we propose OddEyeCam, which is a vision-based method that tracks the 3D location of a mobile device in an absolute, wide, and continuous manner with respect to the body of a user in both static and mobile environments. OddEyeCam tracks the body of a user using a wide-view RGB camera and obtains precise depth information using a narrow-view depth camera from a smartphone close to the body. We quantitatively evaluated OddEyeCam through an accuracy test and two user studies. The accuracy test showed the average tracking accuracy of OddEyeCam was 4.17 and 4.47cm in 3D space when a participant is standing and walking, respectively. In the frst user study, we implemented various interaction scenarios and observed that OddEyeCam was well received by the participants. In the second user study, we observed that the peephole target acquisition task performed using our system followed Fitts? law. We also analyzed the performance of OddEyeCam using the obtained measurements and observed that the participants completed the tasks with suffcient speed and accuracy.
Servo-Gaussian Model to Predict Success Rates in Manual Tracking: Path Steering and Pursuit of 1D Moving Target

We propose a Servo-Gaussian model to predict success rates in continuous manual tracking tasks. Two tasks were conducted to validate this model: path steering and pursuit of a 1D moving target. We hypothesized that (1) hand movements follow the servo-mechanism model, (2) submovement endpoints form a bivariate Gaussian distribution, thus enabling us to predict the success rate at which a submovement endpoint falls inside the tolerance, and (3) the success rate for a whole trial can be predicted if the number of submovements is known. The cross-validation showed R^2>0.92 and MAE<4.9% for steering and R^2>0.95 and MAE<6.5% for pursuit tasks. These results demonstrate that our proposed model delivers high prediction accuracy even for unknown datasets.
Shifting & Warping: A Case for the Combined Use of Dynamic Passive Haptics and Haptic Retargeting in VR

Passive haptic feedback for virtual reality can provide immersive sensations but suffers from scalability issues. To tackle these, two independent concepts have been proposed previously: Dynamic Passive Haptic Feedback (DPHF), leveraging actuated props that change their physical state, and Haptic Retargeting, redirecting the user's hand during interaction. While past research on both techniques reported promising results, up to now, these concepts remained isolated. This paper advocates the combined use of DPHF and Haptic Retargeting. We introduce two thought experiments showcasing that the combination of both techniques in an example scenario is beneficial to solve two central challenges of prop-based VR haptics: haptic similarity and co-location of proxies and virtual objects.
GyroSuite: General-Purpose Interactions for Handheld Perspective Corrected Displays

Handheld Perspective-Corrected Displays (HPCDs) are physical objects that have a notable volume and that display a virtual 3D scene on their entire surface. Being handheld, they create the illusion of holding the scene in a physical container (the display). This has strong benefits for the intuitiveness of 3D interaction: manipulating objects of the virtual scene amounts to physical manipulations of the display. HPCDs have been limited so far to technical demonstrators and experimental tools to assess their merits. However, they show great potential as interactive systems for actual 3D applications. This requires that novel interactions be created to go beyond object manipulation and to offer general-purpose services such as menu command selection and continuous parameter control. Working with a two-handed spherical HPCD, we report on the design and informal evaluations of various interaction techniques for distant object selection, scene scaling, menu interaction and continuous parameter control. In particular, our design leverages the efficient two-handed control of the rotations of the display. We demonstrate how some of these techniques can be assemble in a self-contained anatomy learning application. Novice participants used the application in a qualitative user experiment. Most participants used the application effortlessly without any training or explanations.
Understanding the Dynamics of Online Social Conformity

Social conformity is a widespread social phenomenon, where individuals change their personal opinions and behaviour to agree with an opposing majority's expectations. While conformity has been extensively studied in face-to-face groups, its dynamics in online groups is yet to be understood. While literature notes both positive (e.g., sense of belonging) and negative (e.g., undue pressure) implications of online social conformity, it is unclear how online group settings can be designed accounting for conformity effects to facilitate positive group interactions. Thus, this research has three main contributions. First, I aim to thoroughly investigate the effects of contextual and personal determinants of face-to-face conformity in online settings. Second, I will explore the impact of social presence and gender, which may manifest differently in online settings in comparison to face-to-face groups. I then aim to present a set of empirically validated design guidelines to inform the design of healthy online communities, accounting for both positive and negative implications of social conformity.
LamiFold: Fabricating Objects with Integrated Mechanisms Using a Laser cutter Lamination Workflow

We present LamiFold, a novel design and fabrication workflow for making functional mechanical objects using a laser cutter. Objects fabricated with LamiFold embed advanced rotary, linear, and chained mechanisms, including linkages that support fine-tuning and locking position. Laser cutting such mechanisms without LamiFold requires designing for and embedding off-the-shelf parts such as springs, bolts, and axles for gears. The key to laser cutting our functional mechanisms is the selective cutting and gluing of stacks of sheet material. Designing mechanisms for this workflow is non-trivial, therefore we contribute a set of mechanical primitives that are compatible with our lamination workflow and can be combined to realize advanced mechanical systems. Our software design environment facilitates the process of inserting and composing our mechanical primitives and realizing functional laser-cut objects.
bARefoot: Generating Virtual Materials using Motion Coupled Vibration in Shoes

Many features of materials can be experienced through tactile cues, even using one's feet. For example, one can easily distinguish between moss and stone without looking at the ground. However, this type of material experience is largely not supported in AR and VR applications. We present bARefoot, a prototype shoe providing tactile impulses tightly coupled to motor actions. This enables generating virtual material experiences such as compliance, elasticity, or friction. To explore the parameter space of such sensorimotor coupled vibrations, we present a design tool enabling rapid design of virtual materials. We report initial explorations to increase understanding of how parameters can be optimized for generating compliance, and to examine the effect of dynamic parameters on material experiences. Finally, we present a series of use cases that demonstrate the potential of bARefoot for VR and AR.
SurfaceFleet: Exploring Distributed Interactions Unbounded from Device, Application, User, and Time

Knowledge work increasingly spans multiple computing surfaces. Yet in status quo user experiences, content as well as tools, behaviors, and workflows are largely bound to the current device-running the current application, for the current user, and at the current moment in time. SurfaceFleet is a system and toolkit that uses resilient distributed programming techniques to explore cross-device interactions that are unbounded in these four dimensions of device, application, user, and time. As a reference implementation, we describe an interface built using SurfaceFleet that employs lightweight, semi-transparent UI elements known as Applets. Applets appear always-on-top of the operating system, application windows, and (conceptually) above the device itself. But all connections and synchronized data are virtualized and made resilient through the cloud. For example, a sharing Applet known as a Portfolio allows a user to drag and drop unbound Interaction Promises into a document. Such promises can then be fulfilled with content asynchronously, at a later time (or multiple times), from another device, and by the same or a different user.
TickTalkTurk: Conversational Crowdsourcing Made Easy

This demo presents TickTalkTurk, a tool that can assist task requesters in quickly deploying crowdsourcing tasks in a customizable conversational worker interface. The conversational worker interface can convey task instructions, deploy microtasks, and gather worker input in a dialogue-based workflow. The interface is implemented as a Web-based application, which makes it compatible with popular crowdsourcing platforms. The tool we developed is demonstrated through two microtask crowdsourcing examples with different task types. Results reveal that our conversational worker interface is capable of better engaging workers and analyzing workers performance.
Capacitivo: Contact-Based Object Recognition on Interactive Fabrics using Capacitive Sensing

We present Capacitivo, a contact-based object recognition technique developed for interactive fabrics, using capacitive sensing. Unlike prior work that has focused on metallic objects, our technique recognizes non-metallic objects such as food, different types of fruits, liquids, and other types of objects that are often found around a home or in a workplace. To demonstrate our technique, we created a prototype composed of a 12 x 12 grid of electrodes, made from conductive fabric attached to a textile substrate. We designed the size and separation between the electrodes to maximize the sensing area and sensitivity. We then used a 10-person study to evaluate the performance of our sensing technique using 20 different objects, which yielded a 94.5% accuracy rate. We conclude this work by presenting several different application scenarios to demonstrate unique interactions that are enabled by our technique on fabrics.
MHC genotyping from next-generation sequencing: detailed methodology for the gidgee skink, Egernia stokesii

ABSTRACT Next-generation sequencing has revolutionised molecular ecology. Its key advantages are a more accurate representation of genetic variation made possible by the generation of large volumes of data, more quickly and at a lower price per sequence than traditional sequencing methods. Yet these benefits come with a cost. For example, next-generation sequencing is error prone and requires increased quality control compared with traditional methods. Problems associated with next-generation sequencing may be exacerbated when sequencing gene complexes such as the major histocompatibility complex (MHC). Although not eliminated, significant progress has been made in addressing some of those problems and there is an increasing literature utilising this technology for studies of the MHC. However, what is generally lacking is detailed documentation of the methods used, and clear reasoning, for each step. Here we document detailed methodology, using an Australian lizard, Egernia stokesii, as a case study, with explanations, for MHC amplification, sequencing and allele identification. This work provides molecular ecologists with a comprehensive guide to follow, particularly when first employing next-generation sequencing techniques similar to those used here. In addition, the E. stokesii MHC genotypes derived from this work provide foundation data for future investigations of the influence of social structure on the MHC.
FS-Pad: Video Game Interactions Using Force Feedback Gamepad

Force feedback has not been fully explored in modern gaming environments where a gamepad is the main interface. We developed various game interaction scenarios where force feedback through the thumbstick of the gamepad can be effective, and categorized them into five themes. We built a haptic device and control system that can support all presented interactions. The resulting device, FS-Pad, has sufficient fidelity to be used as a haptic game interaction design tool. To verify the presented interactions and effectiveness of the FS-Pad, we conducted a user study with game players, developers, and designers. The subjects used an FS-Pad while playing a demo game and were then interviewed. Their feedback revealed the actual needs for the presented interactions as well as insight into the potential design of game interactions when applying FS-Pad.
Study of translational control using cell-free translation systems and primer extension inhibition assays

Telomeres and subtelomere regions have vital roles in cellular homeostasis and can facilitate niche adaptation. However, information on telomere/subtelomere structure is still limited to a small number of organisms. The availability of genome sequence data promised to rectify this situation but, unfortunately, telomeres tend to be poorly represented in genome sequence databases. Prior to this project, the Neurospora crassa genome assembly contained only seven of the fourteen telomeres. The missing telomeres were first identified through bioinformatic mining of raw sequence data, and were then assigned chromosomal locations based on paired-end read information, or by RFLP mapping. One of the Neurospora telomeres is attached to the ribosomal repeat array, which appears to be prone to terminal truncation. The remaining chromosome ends have atypical structures because they lack distinct subtelomere domains and are devoid of telomere-associated tandem repeats. Many of the chromosome ends terminate in highly AT-rich sequences that appear to be the products of repeat-induced point mutation yet, surprisingly, most are not repeated sequences. Several chromosome termini in the Oak Ridge strain were compared to their homologous counterpart in Mauriceville. This revealed that, in nearly all cases, the sequences immediately adjacent to the telomeres are genome-specific. Collaboration with the laboratory of Dr. Eric U. Selker at the University of Oregon, and the laboratories of Dr. Chuck Staben and Dr. Mark L. Farman at the University of Kentucky. Material in this or similar form is contained in the manuscript entitled Characterization of chromosome ends in the filamentous fungus Neurospora crassa by Wu, C. , Kim, Y. -S. , Smith, K. , Li, W. , Hood, H. M. , Staben, C. , Selker, E. U. , Sachs, M. S. and Farman, M. L.
Back-Hand-Pose: 3D Hand Pose Estimation for a Wrist-worn Camera via Dorsum Deformation Network

The automatic recognition of how people use their hands and fingers in natural settings -- without instrumenting the fingers -- can be useful for many mobile computing applications. To achieve such an interface, we propose a vision-based 3D hand pose estimation framework using a wrist-worn camera. The main challenge is the oblique angle of the wrist-worn camera, which makes the fingers scarcely visible. To address this, a special network that observes deformations on the back of the hand is required. We introduce DorsalNet, a two-stream convolutional neural network to regress finger joint angles from spatio-temporal features of the dorsal hand region (the movement of bones, muscle, and tendons). This work is the first vision-based real-time 3D hand pose estimator using visual features from the dorsal hand region. Our system achieves a mean joint-angle error of 8.81 degree for user-specific models and 9.77 degree for a general model. Further evaluation shows that our system outperforms previous work with an average of 20% higher accuracy in recognizing dynamic gestures, and achieves a 75% accuracy of detecting 11 different grasp types. We also demonstrate 3 applications which employ our system as a control device, an input device, and a grasped object recognizer.
Testing configurable software systems: the failure observation challenge

Configurable software systems can be adapted or configured according to a set of features to increase reuse and productivity. The testing process is essential because configurations that fail may potentially hurt user experience and degrade the reputation of a project. However, testing configurable systems is very challenging due to the number of configurations to run with each test, leading to a combinatorial explosion in the number of configurations and tests. Currently, several testing techniques and tools have been proposed to deal with this challenge, but their potential practical application remains mostly unexplored. To encourage the research area on testing configurable systems, researchers and practitioners should be able to try out their solutions in common datasets. In this paper, we propose a dataset with 22 configurable software systems and an extensive test suite. Moreover, we report failures found in these systems and source code metrics to allow evaluating candidate solutions. We hope to engage the community and stimulate new and existing approaches to the problem of testing configurable systems.
Augmenting Physical Buttons with Vibrotactile Feedback for Programmable Feels

Physical buttons provide clear haptic feedback when pressed and released, but their responses are unvarying. Physical buttons can be powered by force actuators to produce unlimited click sensations, but the cost is substantial. An alternative can be augmenting physical buttons with simple and inexpensive vibration actuators. When pushed, an augmented button generates a vibration overlayed on the button's original kinesthetic response, under the general framework of haptic augmented reality. We explore the design space of augmented buttons while changing vibration frequency, amplitude, duration, and envelope. We then visualize the perceptual structure of augmented buttons by estimating a perceptual space for 7 physical buttons and 40 augmented buttons. Their sensations are also assessed against adjectives, and results are mapped into the perceptual space to identify meaningful perceptual dimensions. Our results contribute to understanding the benefits and limitations of programmable vibration-augmented physical buttons with emphasis on their feels.
Variability management: re-engineering microservices with delta-oriented software product lines

Combining microservices and software product line engineering (SPLE) is a challenge in variability management. This paper proposes a solution to that challenge by re-engineering existing webshop systems into a product line application. We first perform feature identification to analyze the features of subject systems. We introduce a mechanism that models the variability and designs a software product line architecture based on existing features. We use a UML diagram with the UML-DOP profile to abstract microservice variability in SPLE. Then, a transformation into a product line application is conducted to generate running applications based on selected features. We utilize a preliminary framework of microservice variability based on delta-oriented programming.
DeepFisheye: Near-Surface Multi-Finger Tracking Technology Using Fisheye Camera

Near-surface multi-finger tracking (NMFT) technology expands the input space of touchscreens by enabling novel interactions such as mid-air and finger-aware interactions. We present DeepFisheye, a practical NMFT solution for mobile devices, that utilizes a fisheye camera attached at the bottom of a touchscreen. DeepFisheye acquires the image of an interacting hand positioned above the touchscreen using the camera and employs deep learning to estimate the 3D position of each fingertip. We created two new hand pose datasets comprising fisheye images, on which our network was trained. We evaluated DeepFisheye's performance for three device sizes. DeepFisheye showed average errors with approximate value of 20 mm for fingertip tracking across the different device sizes. Additionally, we created simple rule-based classifiers that estimate the contact finger and hand posture from DeepFisheye's output. The contact finger and hand posture classifiers showed accuracy of approximately 83 and 90%, respectively, across the device sizes.
Understanding How Marginalized Hijra in Bangladesh Navigate Complex Social Media Ecosystem

There is a growing scholarly recognition of the experiences and diversity of gender and sexual orientations beyond hetero-normative identities [4, 6] in research; however, they ultimately categorize gender and sexuality through a strictly Western lens [1, 4]. This paper tries to add to this conversation and understand overall online participation and self-presentation behaviors of queer populations from a non-Western perspective, like Hijra from Bangladesh, who are a severely stigmatized third gender community in South Asia, through the lens of personal social media ecosystem using focus group discussions and semi-structured interviews of n=61 participants. The initial results indicate that Hijra's social media participation and self-presentation are influenced by their distinct audience related concerns and perceived affordances, which intersect with the technical skill-set they require.
Assessing dispersal among habitats for three New Zealand aquatic insects using mitochondrial DNA (COI) sequences

II ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS III TABLE OF CONTENTS V LIST OF TABLES VII LIST OF FIGURES VIII LIST OF APPENDENDICS XII CHAPTER I Thesis Introduction LITERATURE CITED 1 8 CHAPTER II Using DNA barcodes to assess aquatic insect dispersal among restored forest patches on Mount Taranaki, New Zealand ABSTRACT INTRODUCTIONINTRODUCTION MATERIALS AND METHODS RESULTS DISCUSSION ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS LITERATURE CITED LIST OF FIGURES SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL 16