Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Towards Narrative-Driven Atmosphere for Virtual Classrooms

In this paper, we propose the integration of audience atmosphere generation techniques into Interactive Storytelling (IS) engines to obtain more realistic and variable Virtual Reality (VR) training systems. We outline a number of advantages of this novel combination compared to current atmosphere generation techniques. The features of recent IS engines can be extended to automatically adapt the atmosphere produced by a group of virtual humans in response to user intervention while staying coherent with the unfolding story of the training scenario. This work is currently being developed in the context of a VR training for teachers, in which they learn to manage a difficult classroom under the guidance of an instructor.
Enjoy the Silence: Noise Control with Smartphones

While a certain sound serves a purpose to someone, for others, the same sound could be noise. Specifically, an alarm sound would be necessary for someone to wake up and start the day, while it would be an unwanted sound for people sharing the same room, who need not wake up as early. Noise cancellation is useful in this scenario, but most existing techniques require costly equipments (e.g., high quality speakers or microphones) or devices that are uncomfortable to wear during sleep. We thus explore the possibility of using only commodity smartphones to achieve active noise control and present Virtual Earplugs. As most people own a smartphone that include a microphone and speakers, and has an alarm clock feature, we believe our system could be easily used in practice. We highlight the technical challenges in realizing our vision and demonstrate the feasibility of our approach using our preliminary prototype. Our results indicate that we can reduce the alarm sound by up to 19~dB in only 2.1~seconds of processing delay.
Expected-Experience Entanglements: Reframing Morning Experience through Design Fiction and Sound Interaction

This research, starting from breakfast to explore varied morning experiences and expectations, aims to reframe morning experience through diverse possibilities. A good morning keeps people in good psychological and physical conditions, thus improving efficiency at work. In Taiwan, multiple ethnic groups and long working hours are common, which is also embodied by the choice of local breakfast. However, according to a Herbalife research in 2018 [4], around 25% of all Taiwanese lack the habit of eating breakfast every day. Our research starts to explore the role breakfast plays in people's morning routine, as well as the morning expectations and experiences of different lifestyles. The end goal is to create designs that give people a different perspective to engage with a good experience of the beginning of their day, to wonder about how their morning could be, not just about breakfast but about morning experience as well.
System-Level Simulation for Land Mobile Satellite Services

This preliminary study describes the application of a link-level modelling to the performance analysis of a typical land mobile satellite user link. The approach is based on a physical-statistical model and integrates a new point of view differentiating the temporal availability and the spatial coverage. The physical nature of the method highlights the role of the most preponderant parameters.
FoBo: Towards Designing a Robotic Companion for Solo Dining

Despite the known benefits of commensal eating, eating alone is becoming increasingly common as people struggle to find time and manage geographical boundaries to enjoy a meal together. Eating alone however can be boring, less motivating and shown to have negative impact on health and wellbeing of a person. To remedy such situations, we undertake a celebratory view on robotic technology to offer unique opportunities for solo-diners to feel engaged and indulged in dining. We present, Fobo, a speculative design prototype for a mischievous robotic dining companion that acts and behaves like a human co-diner. Besides tackling solo-dining, this work also aims to reorient the perception that robots are not always meant to be infallible. They could be erroneous and clumsy, like we humans are.
Mental development and learning disorders in children with single suture craniosynostosis.

OBJECTIVE This study examined the global intellectual development and presence/absence of learning disorders in children with nonsyndromic metopic, sagittal, and unilateral coronal synostosis who had early surgery (under 1 year of age), late surgery (over 1 year of age), or no surgery to correct the synostosis across three time periods. DESIGN The design was longitudinal. Children were assessed at initial team evaluation, 1 year after surgery or initial evaluation if surgery was not performed, and annually thereafter. PARTICIPANTS Participants included 84 consecutively evaluated patients. Seventy-two children were evaluated at Time 1 (T1), 8 months; 57 at Time 2 (T2), 21 months; and 39 at Time 3 (T3), 50 months. Data on learning disorders or mental retardation were available on 34 children who were school age. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES The Mental Development Index from the Bayley Scales of Infant Development was the main outcome measure for T1 and T2. The General Cognitive Index from the McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities was the main outcome measure for T3. Learning disorders were determined from school and clinical records. RESULTS Repeated measures analyses of variance found no statistical differences in the development of children based on diagnosis or surgical status across time. Base rate of mental retardation at T1 was consistent with normative data; however, the incidence of retardation was two to three times the expected rate at T2 and T3. Learning disorders were present in 47% of school-age children who were not retarded. Chi-square analysis showed no significant differences between rates of retardation or learning disorders based on surgical status. CONCLUSIONS Most children with nonsyndromic craniosynostosis obtain developmental quotients within the normal range in infancy. Rates of retardation may increase relative to normative expectations as children mature. A high rate of learning disorders was identified. Results are preliminary due to sample size.
Design, Calibration, and Evaluation of a Backpack Indoor Mobile Mapping System

Indoor mobile mapping systems are important for a wide range of applications starting from disaster management to straightforward indoor navigation. This paper presents the design and performance of a low-cost backpack indoor mobile mapping system (ITC-IMMS) that utilizes a combination of laser range-finders (LRFs) to fully recover the 3D building model based on a feature-based simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) algorithm. Specifically, we use robust planar features. These are advantageous, because oftentimes the final representation of the indoor environment is wanted in a planar form, and oftentimes the walls in an indoor environment physically have planar shapes. In order to understand the potential accuracy of our indoor models and to assess the system’s ability to capture the geometry of indoor environments, we develop novel evaluation techniques. In contrast to the state-of-the-art evaluation methods that rely on ground truth data, our evaluation methods can check the internal consistency of the reconstructed map in the absence of any ground truth data. Additionally, the external consistency can be verified with the often available as-planned state map of the building. The results demonstrate that our backpack system can capture the geometry of the test areas with angle errors typically below 1.5° and errors in wall thickness around 1 cm. An optimal configuration for the sensors is determined through a set of experiments that makes use of the developed evaluation techniques.
First Steps Towards Walk-In-Place Locomotion and Haptic Feedback in Virtual Reality for Visually Impaired

This paper presents the first results on a user study in which people with visual impairments (PVI) explored a virtual environment (VE) by walking in a virtual reality (VR) treadmill. As recently suggested, we have now acquired first results from our feasibility study investigating this walk-in-place interaction. This represents a new, more intuitive way of for example virtually exploring unknown spaces in advance. Our prototype consists of off-the-shelf VR components (i.e., treadmill, headphones, glasses, and controller) providing a simplified white cane simulation and was tested by six visually impaired subjects. Our results indicate that this interaction is yet difficult, but promising and an important step to make VR more and better usable for PVIs. As an impact on the CHI community, we would like to make this research field known to a wider audience by sharing our intermediate results and suggestions for improvements, on some of which we are already working on.
Agile portfolio management patterns: a research design

Agile service delivery teams with high autonomy and self-organization are spreading throughout many organizations. To foster alignment of the teams to the enterprise strategic vision while maintaining their autonomy, a corresponding IT portfolio management as linking mechanism is perceived necessary. Organizations are facing a growing number of possible approaches for agile IT portfolio management. However, empirical and theoretical evidence on best practices for being able to choose a fitting approach to the own needs and the relevance of business IT alignment on agility is scarce. In this paper, we outline our initial research proposal to design a set of patterns for agile IT portfolio management and highlight their boundaries of application. As we pursue both practical relevant and scientific rigorous results, we combine theoretical and empirical input for both designing and evaluating the patterns within the applied design science research cycle.
Evaluation of the Potential of Convolutional Neural Networks and Random Forests for Multi-Class Segmentation of Sentinel-2 Imagery

Motivated by the increasing availability of open and free Earth observation data through the Copernicus Sentinel missions, this study investigates the capacity of advanced computational models to automatically generate thematic layers, which in turn contribute to and facilitate the creation of land cover products. In concrete terms, we assess the practical and computational aspects of multi-class Sentinel-2 image segmentation based on a convolutional neural network and random forest approaches. The annotated learning set derives from data that is made available as result of the implementation of European Union’s INSPIRE Directive. Since this network of data sets remains incomplete in regard to some geographic areas, another objective of this work was to provide consistent and reproducible ways for machine-driven mapping of these gaps and a potential update of the existing ones. Finally, the performance analysis identifies the most important hyper-parameters, and provides hints on the models’ deployment and their transferability.
Ethnic disparities in clinical severity and services for alcohol problems: results from the National Alcohol Survey.

BACKGROUND This study reports lifetime estimates of the extent of unmet need for alcohol services across the 3 largest ethnic groups in America, and examines factors that may contribute to ethnic differences in service use. Prior studies report mixed findings as to the existence of ethnic disparities in alcohol services, with some suggesting that minorities are over-represented in treatment settings. METHODS Drawing on the most recent National Alcohol Surveys, we compare rates and factors associated with the lifetime service use for alcohol problems among Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics who meet lifetime criteria for alcohol abuse or dependence. RESULTS While bivariate analyses revealed few ethnic differences in service use, there were significant differences by ethnicity in multivariate models that included alcohol problem severity and its interactions with ethnicity. At higher levels of problem severity, both Hispanics and Blacks were less likely to have utilized services than comparable Whites. Hispanics, on the whole, reported higher-severity alcohol problems than Whites. Yet, they were less likely to have received specialty treatment and multiple types of alcohol services, and were more likely to cite economic and logistical barriers as reasons for not obtaining care. CONCLUSIONS Future efforts to study ethnic disparities in alcohol services should utilize analytic approaches that address potential confounding between ethnicity and other factors in service use, such as alcohol problem severity. Our findings suggest that Hispanics and Blacks with higher-severity alcohol problems may utilize services at lower rates than comparable Whites, and that, particularly for Hispanics, this may in part be attributable to financial and logistical barriers to care.
Software security in agile software development: a literature review of challenges and solutions

There has been a surge in number of software security threats and vulnerabilities in recent times. At the same time, expectations towards software and data security are growing. Thus there is a need to ensure that security-related tasks are effectively integrated in the software development process. However, integrating security practices with agile software development is not trivial due to, for instance, differences in process dynamics and concentration on functional vs non-functional requirements. In this short paper we present a literature review on challenges and solutions when adopting security in agile software development contexts. Our findings show that there are ongoing efforts to integrate security-practices in agile methods, but more research is needed to make the processes more optimized and simpler for developers.
THERMOPHILIC BACILLUS The bacillus grows well on nutrient agar or in nutrient broth and luxuriantly on Trypticase Soy Agar and Trypticase

A thermophilic bacillus (minimal growth temperature 41 C, optimal 55 to 58 C, and maximal 65 C) was isolated from a manure pile. It is very similar to Bacillus stearothermophilus, but it differs in its inability to hydrolyze starch. The thermophilic isolate is a prototroph which grows in a minimal medium consisting of glucose, ammonium salt, phosphate buffer, and inorganic salts. At all temperatures studied (low to high), the same minimal nutritional requirements prevailed. The Arrhenius constant for growth was found to be 15,000 and 13,500 cal/mole in the minimal and rich media, respectively.
Angry-builds: an empirical study of affect metrics and builds success on github ecosystem

Automatic and repeatable builds are an established software engineering practices for achieving continuous integration and continuous delivery processes. The building phase of modern software systems is an important part of the development process such that dedicated roles as "Release Engineer" are more and more required. Software development is a collaborative activity, and when multiple developers work on the same project, they will be changing a shared master development branch at overlapping intervals. This overlap occurs because developers create parallel branches for working and then merge these branches when features are completed. Continuous integration, CI, is a workflow strategy which helps ensure everyoneâĂŹs changes will integrate with the current version of the project. This activity allows developers to catch bugs and reduce merge conflicts. Improving the building process leads to higher productivity and therefore shorter time to market, but understanding or measuring such a delicate phase is a big challenge. Open Source Communities provide valuable empirical data such as GitHub an Travis CI. These repositories represent a golden mine containing important data which can help researchers understanding the process behind the manufacturing of a software artifact. By analyzing Travis CI logs, we can directly connect a particular build with the development process behind it, not only regarding code changes but also regarding human activities, such as discussions about the implementation of a specific feature or bug resolution. Thanks to this information we can analyze the social activities of the build process enabling us to apply the same approach used for the development process.
Importance and Limits of Ischemia in Renal Partial Surgery: Experimental and Clinical Research

Introduction. The objective is to determine the clinical and experimental evidences of the renal responses to warm and cold ischemia, kidney tolerability, and available practical techniques of protecting the kidney during nephron-sparing surgery. Materials and methods. Review of the English and non-English literature using MEDLINE, MD Consult, and urology textbooks. Results and discussion. There are three main mechanisms of ischemic renal injury, including persistent vasoconstriction with an abnormal endothelial cell compensatory response, tubular obstruction with backflow of urine, and reperfusion injury. Controversy persists on the maximal kidney tolerability to warm ischemia (WI), which can be influenced by surgical technique, patient age, presence of collateral vascularization, indemnity of the arterial bed, and so forth. Conclusions. When WI time is expected to exceed from 20 to 30 minutes, especially in patients whose baseline medical characteristics put them at potentially higher, though unproven, risks of ischemic damage, local renal hypothermia should be used.
Challenges with lack of trust in agile projects with autonomous teams and fixed-priced contracts

Agile principles and autonomous teams is a challenge in fixed-price, fixed-scope projects which often arise when IT providers work with public customers. We report from a large agile development project, where a software provider is developing a new large administrative system in the public sector in Norway. A qualitative case study was conducted. The data was collected mainly from observations and interviews. The data analysis pointed out several challenges in fixed-price agile projects. One of main challenges was that the project suffered from lack of trust. The customer (with the fixed priced contract) did not trust the software provider (trying to work agile with autonomous teams) and vice versa. Pleasing the customer and stronger customer involvement are actions to create trust, which also will give more room for a flexible scope.
Robots are Always Social: Robotic Movements are Automatically Interpreted as Social Cues

Physical movement is a dominant element in robot behavior. We evaluate if robotic movements are automatically interpreted as social cues, even if the robot has no social role. 24 participants performed the Implicit Associations Test, classifying robotic gestures into direction categories ("to-front" or "to-back") and words into social categories (willingness or unwillingness for interaction). Our findings show that social interpretation of the robot's gestures is an automatic process. The implicit social interpretation influenced both classification tasks, and could not be avoided even when it decreased participant's performance. This effect is of importance for the HCI community as designers should consider, that even if a robot is not intended for social interaction (e.g. factory robot), people will not be able to avoid interpreting its movement as social cues. Interaction designers should leverage this phenomenon and consider the social interpretation that will be automatically associated with their robots' movement.
Structure and molecular weight of the dynein ATPase

Dynein has been examined by scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM). Samples of 30S dynein from tetrahymena cilia were applied to carbon films and either were freeze- dried and examined as unstained, unfixed specimens, or were negatively stained with uranyl sulfate. A totally new image of the dynein molecule was revealed showing three globular heads connected by three separate strands to a common base. Two of the heads appeared to be identical and exhibited a diameter of 10 nm while the third head was somewhat larger (approximately 12 nm). The overall length of the particle was 35 nm. Mass analysis, based upon the integration of electron scattering intensities for unstained particles, gave a molecular weight of 1.95 (+/-)0.24) megadaltons. Mass per unit length analysis was performed using bovine brain microtubules decorated with dynein under conditions where the dynein shows a linear repeat of 24 nm with seven dynein molecules surrounding a microtubule made up of 14 protofilaments. Undecorated microtubules gave a molecular weight per unit length of 21,000+/-1,900 daltons/A, compared to a value of 84,400+/-2,200 daltons/A for the fully decorated microtubules. Taken together, these data give a molecular weight of 2.17 (+/- 0.14) megadaltons per dynein molecule, in agreement with measurements on the isolated particles. Mass analysis of individual globular heads observed in isolated particles gave a molecular weight distribution with a mean of 416+/- 76 kdaltons. These data could also be viewed as the sum of two populations of head with two-thirds of the heads at approximately 400 kdaltons and one-third at approximately 550 kdaltons, although more precise data will be required to distinguish two classes of heads with confidence. The mass of the dynein-microtubule complex as a function of distance from the midline of the particle was analysed to distinguish which end of the dynein molecule was bound to the microtubule. The projected mass distribution was consistent with a model where the three dynein heads were oriented toward the microtubule and clearly not consistent with the opposite orientation. These data indicate that the three globular heads form the ATP-sensitive site in this heterologous dynein-microtubule system and suggest that the rootlike base of the dynein molecule forms the structural attachment site to the A-subfiber of the outer doublet in cilia and flagella. The structure and function of the dynein are dicussed in terms of these new results.
SociaBowl: A Dynamic Table Centerpiece to Mediate Group Conversations

In this paper, we introduce SociaBowl, a dynamic table centerpiece to promote positive social dynamics in 2-way cooperative conversations. A centerpiece such as a bowl of food, a decorative flower arrangement, or a container of writing tools, is commonly placed on a table around which people have conversations. We explore the design space for an augmented table and centerpiece to influence how people may interact with one another. We present an initial functional prototype to explore different choices in materiality of feedback, interaction styles, and animation and motion patterns. These aspects are discussed with respect to how it may impact people's awareness of their turn taking dynamics as well as provide an additional channel for expression. Potential enhancements for future iterations in its design are then outlined based on these findings.
Understanding Abusive Behaviour Between Online and Offline Group Discussions

Online discussion platforms can face multiple challenges of abusive behaviour. In order to understand the reasons for persisting such behaviour, we need to understand how users behave inside and outside a community. In this paper, we propose a novel methodology to generate a dataset from offline and online group discussion conversations. We advocate an empirical-based approach to explore the space of abusive behaviour. We conducted a user-study (N = 15) to understand what factors facilitate or amplify forms of behaviour in cases of online conversation that are less likely to be tolerated in face-to-face. The preliminary analysis validates our approach to analyse large-scale conversation dataset.