bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Herpes simplex virus keratitis mimicking Acanthamoeba keratitis: a clinicopathological correlation
Authors: Singh Rohan Bir , Batta Priti
Published: September 2018

A 36-year-old male, soft contact lens wearer was referred by his primary ophthalmologist for corneal ulcer of the right eye (OD), which was persistent despite topical fluoroquinolone therapy for 1 month. A ring-shaped infiltrate typically seen in Acanthamoeba infection was noted, and topical therapy with chlorhexidine and polyhexamethylene biguanide was initiated. However, the patient’s condition deteriorated over the next several weeks; thus, diagnostic and therapeutic penetrating keratoplasty was performed. The postoperative immunohistochemical analysis suggested a diagnosis of herpes simplex virus (HSV) keratitis. The patient ultimately improved after initiation of oral valacyclovir following penetrating keratoplasty. We report a case of a commonly encountered clinical entity, HSV keratitis, with an atypical clinical presentation, masquerading as Acanthamoeba keratitis.
Study of Optimal Perimetric Testing in Children (OPTIC): evaluation of kinetic approaches in childhood neuro-ophthalmic disease
Authors: Patel Dipesh E , Cumberland Phillippa M , Walters Bronwen C , Cortina-Borja Mario , Rahi Jugnoo S
Published: September 2018

Aims

We compared feasibility, quality and outcomes of visual field (VF) testing in children with neuro-ophthalmic disease between the discontinued ‘gold-standard’ Goldmann and Octopus perimeters.

Methods

Children with neuro-ophthalmic disease, attending Great Ormond Street Hospital, London, were assessed using standardised protocols by one examiner in a single sitting, using Goldmann and Octopus kinetic perimetry. Outputs were classified to compare severity of loss and defect type. Test quality was assessed using both qualitative and quantitative methods.

Results

Thirty children (40% female) aged 5–15 years participated. Goldmann perimetry was completed in full by 90.0% vs 72.4% for Octopus. Inability to plot the blind spot was the most common reason for not completing testing. Over 75% completed a test in ≤20 min. Duration was similar between perimeters (paired t-test, mean difference: 0.48min (−1.2, 2.2), p=0.559). The lowest quality tests were for Octopus perimetry in children <8 years, without significant differences between perimeters in older children (McNemar’s test, χ2=1.0, p=0.317). There was broad agreement between Goldmann and Octopus outputs (good quality, n=21, Bland-Altman, mean difference for isopters I4e (−514.3 deg2(−817.4, –211.2), p=0.814), I2e (−575.5 deg2(−900.1, –250.9), p=0.450) and blind spot (20.8 deg2(5.7, 35.8), p=0.451)). However, VF severity grades and defect type matched in only 57% and 69% of tests, respectively. Octopus perimetry underestimated severe VF defects.

Conclusions

Informative perimetry is feasible in children ≥8 years with neuro-ophthalmic conditions, with either Goldmann or Octopus perimeters. However, meaningful differences exist between the two approaches with implications for consistency in longitudinal assessments.
Association between maternal gluten intake and type 1 diabetes in offspring: national prospective cohort study in Denmark
Authors: Antvorskov Julie C , Halldorsson Thorhallur I , Josefsen Knud , Svensson Jannet , Granström Charlotta , Roep Bart O , Olesen Trine H , Hrolfsdottir Laufey , Buschard Karsten , Olsen Sjudur F
Published: September 2018

Objective

To examine the association between prenatal gluten exposure and offspring risk of type 1 diabetes in humans.

Design

National prospective cohort study.

Setting

National health information registries in Denmark.

Participants

Pregnant Danish women enrolled into the Danish National Birth Cohort, between January 1996 and October 2002,

Main outcome measures

Maternal gluten intake, based on maternal consumption of gluten containing foods, was reported in a 360 item food frequency questionnaire at week 25 of pregnancy. Information on type 1 diabetes occurrence in the participants’ children, from 1 January 1996 to 31 May 2016, were obtained through registry linkage to the Danish Registry of Childhood and Adolescent Diabetes.

Results

The study comprised 101 042 pregnancies in 91 745 women, of whom 70 188 filled out the food frequency questionnaire. After correcting for multiple pregnancies, pregnancies ending in abortions, stillbirths, lack of information regarding the pregnancy, and pregnancies with implausibly high or low energy intake, 67 565 pregnancies (63 529 women) were included. The average gluten intake was 13.0 g/day, ranging from less than 7 g/day to more than 20 g/day. The incidence of type 1 diabetes among children in the cohort was 0.37% (n=247) with a mean follow-up period of 15.6 years (standard deviation 1.4). Risk of type 1 diabetes in offspring increased proportionally with maternal gluten intake during pregnancy (adjusted hazard ratio 1.31 (95% confidence interval 1.001 to 1.72) per 10 g/day increase of gluten). Women with the highest gluten intake versus those with the lowest gluten intake (≥20
v
<7 g/day) had double the risk of type 1 diabetes development in their offspring (adjusted hazard ratio 2.00 (95% confidence interval 1.02 to 4.00)).

Conclusions

High gluten intake by mothers during pregnancy could increase the risk of their children developing type 1 diabetes. However, confirmation of these findings are warranted, preferably in an intervention setting.
Description of digital fluoroscopic excretory urography in healthy New Zealand rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus)
Authors: Altuzarra Raul , Vilalta Laura , Martorell Jaume , Novellas Rosa , Espada Yvonne
Published: September 2018

Disorders of the kidneys and urinary tract are relatively common in rabbits. Survey radiographs and abdominal ultrasound have inherent limitations in the evaluation of the urinary tract in this species; because of that, contrast study modalities are a valuable diagnostic tool in rabbits with urinary disorders. The aims of this study were to describe digital fluoroscopic excretory urography (DFEU) and to determine the urogram phases in healthy New Zealand rabbits. The median time of beginning of the nephrographic and pyelographic phases was 10 seconds (IQR: 10–12 seconds) and 1.39 minutes (IQR: 1.27–1.60 minutes). The median time in which the contrast medium was visible in the urinary bladder was 1.58 minutes (IQR: 1.44–1.72 minutes). Results of this study indicate that DFEU provides a good degree of opacification of the kidneys as well as the ureters, and allows the evaluation of the urogram phases. Text not justifed in the proof version
Applications of the United States Forest Inventory and Analysis dataset: a review and future directions
Authors: Tinkham Wade T. , Mahoney Patrick R. , Hudak Andrew T. , Domke Grant M. , Falkowski Mike J. , Woodall Chris W. , Smith Alistair M.S.
Published: September 2018

The United States Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program has been monitoring national forest resources in the United States for over 80 years; presented here is a synthesis of research applications for FIA data. A review of over 180 publications that directly utilize FIA data is broken down into broad categories of application and further organized by methodologies and niche research areas. The FIA program provides the most comprehensive forest database currently available, with permanent plots distributed across all forested lands and ownerships in the United States and plot histories dating back to the early 1930s. While the data can be incredibly powerful, users need to understand the spatial resolution of ground-based plots and the nature of the FIA plot coordinate system must be applied correctly. As the need for accurate assessments of national forest resources continues to be a global priority, particularly related to carbon dynamics and climate impacts, such national forest inventories will continue to be an important source of information on the status of and trends in these ecosystems. The advantages and limitations of FIA’s national forest inventory data are highlighted, and suggestions for further expansion of the FIA program are provided.
Homotopy type of manifolds with partially horoconvex boundary
Authors: Xiong Changwei
Published: September 2018

Let [Formula: see text] be an [Formula: see text]-dimensional compact connected manifold with boundary, [Formula: see text] a constant and [Formula: see text] an integer. We prove that [Formula: see text] supports a Riemannian metric with the interior [Formula: see text]-curvature [Formula: see text] and the boundary [Formula: see text]-curvature [Formula: see text], if and only if [Formula: see text] has the homotopy type of a CW complex with a finite number of cells with dimension [Formula: see text]. Moreover, any Riemannian manifold [Formula: see text] with sectional curvature [Formula: see text] and boundary principal curvature [Formula: see text] is diffeomorphic to the standard closed [Formula: see text]-ball.
Projective Ricci flat spherically symmetric Finsler metrics
Authors: Zhu Hongmei , Zhang Haixia
Published: September 2018

In Finsler geometry, the projective Ricci curvature is an important projective invariant. In this paper, we characterize projective Ricci flat spherically symmetric Finsler metrics. Under a certain condition, we prove that a projective Ricci flat spherically symmetric Finsler metric must be a Douglas metric. Moreover, we construct a class of new nontrivial examples on projective Ricci flat Finsler metrics.
Self-sustained oscillations in excitable tree networks
Authors: Zhang Li-Sheng , Cui Nai-Yi , Zhang Jin-Zhi , Zhang Zhi-Yong , Hu Gang
Published: September 2018

Many practical systems, such as heart and neural systems, are described by excitable media or networks. Various oscillations of coupled excitable units are typical system states, determining some important functions in realistic processes. Excitable units do not oscillate individually, while oscillations of coupled excitable cells can appear after the self-organizations of collective motions via mutual interactions. Therefore, different mechanisms underlying oscillations turn to be very crucial issues under investigation. So far, all mechanisms of the oscillations of excitable networks rely, with no exception, on the existence of the oscillation sources formed by successive excited units on loops. Here, we explore a novel oscillation mechanism in diffusively coupled excitable networks where loop existence is no longer required, and oscillations can be sustained due to the excitation propagations between two hubs linked by a chain of low-degree nodes. Some necessary conditions for the sustained oscillations on hub size, chain length and coupling strength are analyzed in detail. And the possible application and significance of the explored mechanism for realistic oscillations of practical excitable networks are briefly discussed.
Construction of Higher-Dimensional Hyperchaotic Systems with a Maximum Number of Positive Lyapunov Exponents under Average Eigenvalue Criteria
Authors: He Jianbin , Yu Simin
Published: September 2018

Over the last 40 years, the design of [Formula: see text]-dimensional hyperchaotic systems with a maximum number ([Formula: see text]) of positive Lyapunov exponents has been an open problem for research. Nowadays it is not difficult to design [Formula: see text]-dimensional hyperchaotic systems with less than ([Formula: see text]) positive Lyapunov exponents, but it is still extremely difficult to design an [Formula: see text]-dimensional hyperchaotic system with the maximum number ([Formula: see text]) of positive Lyapunov exponents. This paper aims to resolve this challenging problem by developing a chaotification approach using average eigenvalue criteria. The approach consists of four steps: (i) a globally bounded controlled system is designed based on an asymptotically stable nominal system with a uniformly bounded controller; (ii) a closed-loop pole assignment technique is utilized to ensure that the numbers of eigenvalues with positive real parts of the controlled system be equal to ([Formula: see text]) and ([Formula: see text]), respectively, at two saddle-focus equilibrium points; (iii) the number of average eigenvalues with positive real parts is ensured to be equal to ([Formula: see text]) for the controlled system over a given control period; (iv) the smallest value of the positive real parts of the average eigenvalues is ensured to be greater than a given threshold value. Finally, the paper is closed with some typical examples which illustrate the feasibility and performance of the proposed design methodology.
Diagnostics for generalized power-law torsion–matter coupling f(T) model
Authors: Lin Rui-Hui , Wen Qiang , Zhai Xiang-Hua , Li Xin-Zhou
Published: September 2018

The currently accelerated expansion of our universe is unarguably one of the most intriguing problems in today’s physics research. Two realistic nonminimal torsion–matter coupling [Formula: see text] models have been established and studied in our previous papers [C. J. Feng, F. F. Ge, X. Z. Li, R. H. Lin and X. H. Zhai, Phys. Rev. D 92 (2015) 104038; R. H. Lin, X. H. Zhai and X. Z. Li, Eur. Phys. J. C 77 (2017) 504] aiming to explain this “dark energy” problem. In this paper, we study the generalized power-law torsion–matter coupling [Formula: see text] model. Dynamical system analysis shows that the three expansion phases of the universe, i.e. the radiation-dominated era, the matter-dominated era and the dark energy-dominated era, can all be reproduced in this generalized model. By using the statefinder and [Formula: see text] diagnostics, we find that the different cases of the model can be distinguished from each other and from other dark energy models such as the two models in our previous papers, [Formula: see text]CDM, quintessence and Chaplygin gas. Furthermore, the analyses also show that all kinds of generalized power-law torsion–matter coupling model are able to cross the [Formula: see text] divide from below to above, which is a realization of quintom scenario. The decrease of the energy density resulting from the crossing of [Formula: see text] will make the catastrophic fate of the universe avoided and a de Sitter expansion fate in the future will be approached.
Existence of ground states for aggregation-diffusion equations
Authors: Carrillo J. A. , Delgadino M. G. , Patacchini F. S.
Published: September 2018

We analyze free energy functionals for macroscopic models of multi-agent systems interacting via pairwise attractive forces and localized repulsion. The repulsion at the level of the continuous description is modeled by pressure-related terms in the functional making it energetically favorable to spread, while the attraction is modeled through nonlocal forces. We give conditions on general entropies and interaction potentials for which neither ground states nor local minimizers exist. We show that these results are sharp for homogeneous functionals with entropies leading to degenerate diffusions while they are not sharp for fast diffusions. The particular relevant case of linear diffusion is totally clarified giving a sharp condition on the interaction potential under which the corresponding free energy functional has ground states or not.
Radiation Effects in Heat Transfer Mechanisms by Dispersive Materials: Numerical Analysis in Diffusive Enclosure Model of Thermal Insulation
Authors: Che Seliman Muhd Azi Bin , Hirasawa Yoshio
Published: September 2018

The current development of global warming and CO2 emission problems cannot be overlooked. Thus, global scale measures of efforts are becoming crucial. Thermal properties of insulation materials need to be considered as high performance thermal insulation systems are crucial for efficient energy saving. The most important parameter as indicator of a thermal insulation material is the effective thermal conductivity, but elements that affect the thermal insulation performance are rather complicated. Generally, conduction and radiation heat transfer are needed to be separately considered in precisely evaluating the thermal insulation performance as they coexist in the heat transfer process inside a multilayer insulation system. In this paper, numerical analysis of a complete diffusive enclosure model as a thermal insulation is observed to investigate the radiation effects by its dispersive heat transfer mechanisms. View factor of each relatively large dispersed material is derived in the enclosure model, where it is applicable to various shapes and any particular arrangements of dispersed materials. As this paper is the first part of a three-part working research paper, numerical analysis in this paper is carried out by assuming that the medium within the space inside the insulation system is taken to be nonparticipating, therefore conduction and convection effects during the heat exchange are negligible. This paper will be continued with application of the numerical analysis in observing radiation heating effects by wall-ceiling integration towards indoor environment and radiation–conduction heat transfer mechanisms in one-dimensional multilayer insulation system.
Are Socio-Econo-Physical Models Better to Explain Biases in Societies?
Authors: Biswas Soumyajyoti , Lima F. W. S. , Flomenbom Ophir
Published: September 2018

In this work, we review various dynamical models in socio-econo-physics, and discuss their roles in understanding socio-economic biases. We deal with fairness in nations, wealth distributions in nations, elections’ dynamics and tax evasion models. We claim that these models can better explain biases in societies than traditional models of economics from 1700s that are based on various assumptions such as the “invisible hand concept” that justifies interventions from social beneficiaries.
Comparison of Unobtrusive Visual Guidance Methods in an Immersive Dome Environment
Authors: Grogorick Steve , Albuquerque Georgia , Tauscher Jan-Philipp , Magnor Marcus
Published: September 2018

In this article, we evaluate various image-space modulation techniques that aim to unobtrusively guide viewers’ attention. While previous evaluations mainly target desktop settings, we examine their applicability to ultrawide field of view immersive environments, featuring technical characteristics expected for future-generation head-mounted displays. A custom-built, high-resolution immersive dome environment with high-precision eye tracking is used in our experiments. We investigate gaze guidance success rates and unobtrusiveness of five different techniques. Our results show promising guiding performance for four of the tested methods. With regard to unobtrusiveness we find that—while no method remains completely unnoticed—many participants do not report any distractions. The evaluated methods show promise to guide users’ attention also in a wide field of virtual environment applications, e.g., virtually guided tours or field operation training.
Up to a Limit?
Authors: Ahmed Tousif , Kapadia Apu , Potluri Venkatesh , Swaminathan Manohar
Published: September 2018

The emergence of augmented reality and computer vision based tools offer new opportunities to visually impaired persons (VIPs). Solutions that help VIPs in social interactions by providing information (age, gender, attire, expressions etc.) about people in the vicinity are becoming available. Although such assistive technologies are already collecting and sharing such information with VIPs, the views, perceptions, and preferences of sighted bystanders about such information sharing remain unexplored. Although bystanders may be willing to share more information for assistive uses it remains to be explored to what degree bystanders are willing to share various kinds of information and what might encourage additional sharing of information based on the contextual needs of VIPs. In this paper we describe the first empirical study of information sharing preferences of sighted bystanders of assistive devices. We conducted a survey based study using a contextual method of inquiry with 62 participants followed by nine semi-structured interviews to shed more insight on our key quantitative findings. We find that bystanders are more willing to share some kinds of personal information with VIPs and are willing to share additional information if higher security assurances can be made by improving their control over how their information is shared.
I Can't Be Myself
Authors: Alharbi Rawan , Stump Tammy , Vafaie Nilofar , Pfammatter Angela , Spring Bonnie , Alshurafa Nabil
Published: September 2018

Wearable sensors can provide reliable, automated measures of health behaviors in free-living populations. However, validation of these measures is impossible without observable confirmation of behaviors. Participants have expressed discomfort during the use of ego-centric wearable cameras with first-person view. We argue that mounting the camera on different body locations with a different lens orientation, gives a device recording affordance that has the effect of reducing surveillance and social discomfort compared to ego-centric cameras. We call these types of cameras "activity-oriented" because they are designed to capture a particular activity, rather than the field of view of the wearer. We conducted an experiment of three camera designs with 24 participants, collecting qualitative data on participants' experience while wearing these devices in the wild. We provide a model explaining factors that lead to an increase in social presence and social stigma, which, therefore, create social and surveillance discomfort for the wearer. Wearers' attempts to reduce this discomfort by modifying their behavior or abandoning the device threatens the validity of observations of authentic behaviors. We discuss design implications and provide recommendations to help reduce social presence and stigma in order to improve the validity of observations with cameras in the wild.
Auracle
Authors: Bi Shengjie , Wang Tao , Tobias Nicole , Nordrum Josephine , Wang Shang , Halvorsen George , Sen Sougata , Peterson Ronald , Odame Kofi , Caine Kelly , Halter Ryan , Sorber Jacob , Kotz David
Published: September 2018

In this paper, we propose Auracle, a wearable earpiece that can automatically recognize eating behavior. More specifically, in free-living conditions, we can recognize when and for how long a person is eating. Using an off-the-shelf contact microphone placed behind the ear, Auracle captures the sound of a person chewing as it passes through the bone and tissue of the head. This audio data is then processed by a custom analog/digital circuit board. To ensure reliable (yet comfortable) contact between microphone and skin, all hardware components are incorporated into a 3D-printed behind-the-head framework. We collected field data with 14 participants for 32 hours in free-living conditions and additional eating data with 10 participants for 2 hours in a laboratory setting. We achieved accuracy exceeding 92.8% and F1 score exceeding 77.5% for eating detection. Moreover, Auracle successfully detected 20-24 eating episodes (depending on the metrics) out of 26 in free-living conditions. We demonstrate that our custom device could sense, process, and classify audio data in real time. Additionally, we estimate Auracle can last 28.1 hours with a 110 mAh battery while communicating its observations of eating behavior to a smartphone over Bluetooth.
Naptics
Authors: Carek Andrew , Holz Christian
Published: September 2018

Normal circadian rhythm mediates blood pressure during sleep, decreasing in value in healthy subjects. Current methods to monitor nocturnal blood pressure use an active blood pressure cuff that repeatedly auto-inflates while the subject sleeps. Since these inflations happen in intervals of thirty minutes to one hour, they cause considerable sleep disturbances that lead to false measurements and impact the person's quality of sleep. These blood pressure samples are also just spot checks and rarely exceed 10-15 values per night.

We present Naptics, a wearable device woven into shorts. Naptics passively monitors the wearer's blood pressure throughout the night---continuously and unobtrusively---without disturbing the user during sleep. Naptics detects the micro-vibrations of the wearer's body that stem from the heartbeat and senses the optical reflections from the pulse wave as it propagates down the wearer's leg. From the timing between these two events, Naptics computes the pulse transit time, which correlates strongly with the user's blood pressure.

Naptics' key novelty is its unobtrusive approach in tracking blood pressure during the night. Our controlled evaluation of six subjects showed a high correlation (r = 0.89) between Naptics' calibrated mean arterial pressure and cuff-based blood pressure. Our in-the-wild evaluation validates Naptics in tracking five participants' blood pressure patterns throughout four nights and compares them to before and after cuff measurements. In a majority of the nights, Naptics correctly followed the trend of the cuff measurements while providing insights into the behavior and the patterns of participants' nocturnal blood pressure. Participants reported high sleep quality in sleep diaries after each night, validating Naptics as a convenient monitoring apparatus.
Investigating the Effectiveness of Cohort-Based Sleep Recommendations
Authors: Daskalova Nediyana , Lee Bongshin , Huang Jeff , Ni Chester , Lundin Jessica
Published: September 2018

Existing sleep-tracking apps and devices provide simple descriptive statistics or generic recommendations for everyone. In this work, we aim to leverage cohort-based sleep data to provide recommendations to improve an individual's sleep. We report a 4-week study (N = 39) conducted to compare three alternatives: 1) no recommendation, 2) general recommendation, and 3) cohort-based recommendation, using six sleep quality metrics. For the cohort-based recommendation, recommendations were generated based on "similar users" using about 40 million sleep events from Microsoft Band users. Our results indicate that cohort-based systems for health recommendations can prompt a desire for behavior change inspired by social comparison and increased awareness about sleep habits. However, in order to be effective, such systems need to establish their credibility and to be able to generate cohorts based on features that are important to users. Finally, we provide further suggestions and design implications for future cohort-based recommendation systems for healthy sleep.
Epidermal Robots
Authors: Dementyev Artem , Hernandez Javier , Choi Inrak , Follmer Sean , Paradiso Joseph
Published: September 2018

Epidermal sensing has enabled significant advancements towards the measurement and understanding of health. Most of the existing medical instruments require direct expert manipulation of a doctor, measure a single parameter, and/or have limited sensing coverage. In contrast, this work demonstrates the first epidermal robot with the ability to move over the surface of the skin and capture a large range of body parameters. In particular, we developed SkinBot, a 2x4x2 centimeter-size robot that moves over the skin surface with a two-legged suction-based locomotion. We demonstrate three of the potential medical sensing applications which include the measurement of body biopotentials (e.g., electrodermal activity, electrocardiography) through modified suction cups that serve as electrodes, skin imaging through a skin-facing camera that can capture skin anomalies, and inertial body motions through a 6-axis accelerometer and gyroscope that can capture changes of body posture and subtle cardiorespiratory vibrations.
Unobtrusive Assessment of Students' Emotional Engagement during Lectures Using Electrodermal Activity Sensors
Authors: Di Lascio Elena , Gashi Shkurta , Santini Silvia
Published: September 2018

Modern wearable devices enable the continuous and unobtrusive monitoring of human physiological parameters, including heart rate and electrodermal activity. Through the definition of adequate models these parameters allow to infer the wellbeing, empathy, or engagement of humans in different contexts. In this paper, we show that off-the-shelf wearable devices can be used to unobtrusively monitor the emotional engagement of students during lectures. We propose the use of several novel features to capture students' momentary engagement and use existing methods to characterize the general arousal of students and their physiological synchrony with the teacher. To evaluate our method we collect a data set that -- after data cleaning -- contains data from 24 students, 9 teachers, and 41 lectures. Our results show that non-engaged students can be identified with high reliability. Using a Support Vector Machine, for instance, we achieve a recall of 81% -- which is a 25 percentage points improvement with respect to a Biased Random classifier. Overall, our findings may inform the design of systems that allow students to self-monitor their engagement and act upon the obtained feedback. Teachers could profit of information about non-engaged students too to perform self-reflection and to devise and evaluate methods to (re-)engage students.
Watching and Safeguarding Your 3D Printer
Authors: Gao Yang , Li Borui , Wang Wei , Xu Wenyao , Zhou Chi , Jin Zhanpeng
Published: September 2018

The increasing adoption of 3D printing in many safety and mission critical applications exposes 3D printers to a variety of cyber attacks that may result in catastrophic consequences if the printing process is compromised. For example, the mechanical properties (e.g., physical strength, thermal resistance, dimensional stability) of 3D printed objects could be significantly affected and degraded if a simple printing setting is maliciously changed. To address this challenge, this study proposes a model-free real-time online process monitoring approach that is capable of detecting and defending against the cyber-physical attacks on the firmwares of 3D printers. Specifically, we explore the potential attacks and consequences of four key printing attributes (including infill path, printing speed, layer thickness, and fan speed) and then formulate the attack models. Based on the intrinsic relation between the printing attributes and the physical observations, our defense model is established by systematically analyzing the multi-faceted, real-time measurement collected from the accelerometer, magnetometer and camera. The Kalman filter and Canny filter are used to map and estimate three aforementioned critical toolpath information that might affect the printing quality. Mel-frequency Cepstrum Coefficients are used to extract features for fan speed estimation. Experimental results show that, for a complex 3D printed design, our method can achieve 4% Hausdorff distance compared with the model dimension for infill path estimate, 6.07% Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) for speed estimate, 9.57% MAPE for layer thickness estimate, and 96.8% accuracy for fan speed identification. Our study demonstrates that, this new approach can effectively defend against the cyber-physical attacks on 3D printers and 3D printing process.
FootNotes
Authors: Gleason Cole , Fiannaca Alexander J. , Kneisel Melanie , Cutrell Edward , Morris Meredith Ringel
Published: September 2018

The majority of information in the physical environment is conveyed visually, meaning that people with vision impairments often lack access to the shared cultural, historical, and practical features that define a city. How can someone who is blind find out about the sleek skyscrapers that dot a modern city's skyline, historic cannons that have been remade into traffic pillars, or ancient trees that uproot a neighborhood's sidewalks? We present FootNotes, a system that embeds rich textual descriptions of objects and locations in OpenStreetMap, a popular geowiki. Both sighted and blind users can annotate the physical environment with functional, visual, historical, and social descriptions. We report on the experience of ten participants with vision impairments who used a spatialized audio application to interact with these annotations while exploring a city. By sharing rich annotations of physical objects and areas, FootNotes helps people thoroughly explore a new location or serendipitously discover previously unknown features of familiar environments.
FluidMeter
Authors: Hamatani Takashi , Elhamshary Moustafa , Uchiyama Akira , Higashino Teruo
Published: September 2018

Water is the most vital nutrient in the human body accounting for about 60% of the body weight. To maintain optimal health, it is important for humans to consume a sufficient amount of fluids daily. Therefore, tracking the amount of human daily fluid intake has a myriad of health applications like dehydration prevention.

In this paper, we present FluidMeter: a ubiquitous and unobtrusive system to track the amount of fluid intake leveraging the inertial sensors embedded in smartwatches. To achieve this, FluidMeter first separates the drinking activities from other human activities (playing, running, eating, etc.). Thereafter, it analyzes the sampled sensors data during the extracted drinking episodes to recognize the sequence of micro-activities (lift the bottle, sip, release the bottle) that constitute the drinking activity. Finally, it applies some machine learning algorithms on some features extracted from sampled sensor data during the sipping period to gauge the amount of fluid intake in the designated drinking episode.

FluidMeter is evaluated by collecting more than 260 hours of different human activities by 70 different participants using different smartwatch models. The results show that FluidMeter can recognize the drinking activity and its micro-activities accurately which is comparable to that achieved by the state-of-the-art techniques. Finally, FluidMeter can estimate the overall amount of fluid intake in grams accurately with a estimation error limited to 15%, highlighting its promise as a ubiquitous health service.
On Being Told How We Feel
Authors: Hollis Victoria , Pekurovsky Alon , Wu Eunika , Whittaker Steve
Published: September 2018

Algorithms and sensors are increasingly deployed for highly personal aspects of our everyday lives. Recent work suggests people have imperfect understanding of system outputs, often assuming sophisticated capabilities and deferring to feedback. We explore how people construe algorithmic interpretations of emotional data in personal informatics systems. A survey (n=188) showed strong interest in automatic stress and emotion tracking, but many respondents expected these systems to provide objective measurements for their emotional experiences. A second study examined how algorithmic sensor feedback influences emotional self-judgments, by comparing three system framings of physiological ElectroDermal Activity data (EDA): Positive ("alert and engaged"), Negative ("stressed"), and Control (no frame) in a mixed-methods study with 64 participants. Despite users reporting strategies to test system outputs, users still deferred to feedback and their perceived emotions were significantly influenced by feedback frames. Some users overrode personal judgments, believing the system had access to privileged information about their emotions. Based on these findings, we explore design implications for personal informatics including risks of users trusting systems that seemingly "unlock" hidden aspects of the self. We propose design approaches that provide opportunities for future emotion-monitoring systems to exploit these framing effects, and for users to more actively construe emotional states.
SkinWire
Authors: Kao Hsin-Liu Cindy , Bedri Abdelkareem , Lyons Kent
Published: September 2018

Current wearable form factors often house electronics using an enclosure that is attached to the body. This form factor, while wearable, tends to protrude from the body and therefore can limit wearability. While emerging research in on-skin interfaces from the HCI and wearable communities have generated form factors with lower profiles, they often still require support by conventional electronics and associated form factors for the microprocessor, wireless communication, and battery units. In this work, we introduce SkinWire, a fabrication approach that extends the early work in on-skin interfaces to shift wearable devices from their traditional box-like forms to a fully self-contained on-skin form factor.

The Skin Wire approach starts with the placement of electronic components into individual PCB islands, which are then distributed over the body surface. The islands are connected through a novel skin-wiring approach that deposits conformal multi-stranded metallic wires on thin silicon substrates through a sewing-based technique. The process affords on-skin interfaces with the needed wiring in limited surface areas. We exemplify the capacity of this approach by shifting an IMU-based hand gesture system - which traditionally come in bulky glove-based form factors - directly onto the skin. Inspired by the emerging body art trend of body wiring, the Skin Wire approach uses readily accessible materials and affords aesthetic customization. We evaluate fabrication parameters, and conduct a user study to uncover wearability concerns.
Managing In-home Environments through Sensing, Annotating, and Visualizing Air Quality Data
Authors: Moore Jimmy , Goffin Pascal , Meyer Miriah , Lundrigan Philip , Patwari Neal , Sward Katherine , Wiese Jason
Published: September 2018

Air quality is important, varies across time and space, and is largely invisible. Pioneering past work deploying air quality monitors in residential environments found that study participants improved their awareness of and engagement with air quality. However, these systems fielded a single monitor and did not support user-specified annotations, inhibiting their utility. We developed MAAV -- a system to Measure Air quality, Annotate data streams, and Visualize real-time PM2.5 levels -- to explore how participants engage with an air quality system addressing these challenges. MAAV supports collecting data from multiple air quality monitors, annotating that data through multiple modalities, and sending text message prompts when it detects a PM2.5 spike. MAAV also features an interactive tablet interface for displaying measurement data and annotations. Through six long-term field deployments (20-47 weeks, mean 37.7 weeks), participants found these system features important for understanding the air quality in and around their homes. Participants gained new insights from between-monitor comparisons, reflected on past PM2.5 spikes with the help of their annotations, and adapted their system usage as they familiarized themselves with their air quality data and MAAV. These results yield important insights for designing residential sensing systems that integrate into users' everyday lives.
Heed
Authors: Paruthi Gaurav , Raj Shriti , Baek Seungjoo , Wang Chuyao , Huang Chuan-che , Chang Yung-Ju , Newman Mark W.
Published: September 2018

In-situ self-reporting is a widely used data collection technique for understanding people's behavior in context. Characteristics of smartphones such as their high proliferation, close proximity to their users, and heavy use have made them a popular choice for applications that require frequent self-reporting. Newer device categories such as wearables and voice assistants offer their own advantages, providing an opportunity to explore a wider range of self-reporting approaches. In this paper, we focus on exploring the design space of Situated Self-Reporting (SSR) devices. We present the Heed system, consisting of simple, low-cost, and low-power SSR devices that are distributed in the environment of the user and can be appropriated for reporting measures such as stress, sleepiness, and activities. In two real-world studies with 10 and 7 users, we compared and analyzed the use of smartphone and Heed devices to uncover differences in their use due to the influence of factors such as situational and social context, notification types, and physical design. Our findings show that Heed devices complemented smartphones in the coverage of activities, locations and interaction preferences. While the advantage of Heed was its single-purpose and dedicated location, smartphones provided mobility and flexibility of use.
Your Apps Give You Away
Authors: Tu Zhen , Li Runtong , Li Yong , Wang Gang , Wu Di , Hui Pan , Su Li , Jin Depeng
Published: September 2018

Understanding mobile app usage has become instrumental to service providers to optimize their online services. Meanwhile, there is a growing privacy concern that users' app usage may uniquely reveal who they are. In this paper, we seek to understand how likely a user can be uniquely re-identified in the crowd by the apps she uses. We systematically quantify the uniqueness of app usage via large-scale empirical measurements. By collaborating with a major cellular network provider, we obtained a city-scale anonymized dataset on mobile app traffic (1.37 million users, 2000 apps, 9.4 billion network connection records). Through extensive analysis, we show that the set of apps that a user has installed is already highly unique. For users with more than 10 apps, 88% of them can be uniquely re-identified by 4 random apps. The uniqueness level is even higher if we consider when and where the apps are used. We also observe that user attributes (e.g., gender, social activity, and mobility patterns) all have an impact on the uniqueness of app usage. Our work takes the first step towards understanding the unique app usage patterns for a large user population, paving the way for further research to develop privacy-protection techniques and building personalized online services.
FreeSense
Authors: Xin Tong , Guo Bin , Wang Zhu , Wang Pei , Lam Jacqueline Chi Kei , Li Victor , Yu Zhiwen
Published: September 2018

Human detection aims to monitor how people are moving in an area of interest. There are many potential applications such as asset security monitoring, emergency management, and elderly care, etc. With the development of wireless sensing technique, Wi-Fi-based human detection method carries great potential due to advantages of pervasive accessibility and coverage flexibility. Previous studies have investigated the detection of human movements via signal variations. However, affected by noises, such as multi-path effect and device difference, existing approaches cannot achieve high accuracy and low false alarm rate at the same time. In this paper, we propose FreeSense, a novel Wi-Fi-based approach for human detection. Different from previous studies that characterize the variation of temporal wireless signals or calculate the deviation of Channel State Information (CSIs) from a normal profile, we will detect human movements by identifying whether there is any phase difference between the amplitude waveforms of multiple receiving antennas. In addition, we also model the sensing coverage for movements of different granularities in open space and propose a method to estimate the coverage range. Extensive experiments demonstrate that FreeSense can achieve an average false positive rate (FP) of 0.53% and an average false negative rate (FN) of 1.40%. The coverage range estimation method can achieve an average accuracy of 1.36 m, sufficient to guide the deployment of devices for human detection indoors.
FullBreathe
Authors: Zeng Youwei , Wu Dan , Gao Ruiyang , Gu Tao , Zhang Daqing
Published: September 2018

Human respiration detection based on Wi-Fi signals does not require users to carry any device, hence it has drawn a lot of attention due to better user acceptance and great potential for real-world deployment. However, recent studies show that respiration sensing performance varies in different locations due to the nature of Wi-Fi radio wave propagation in indoor environments, i.e., respiration detection may experience poor performance at certain locations which we call "blind spots". In this paper, we aim to address the blind spot problem to ensure full coverage of respiration detection. Basically, the amplitude and phase of Wi-Fi channel state information (CSI) are orthogonal and complementary to each other, so they can be combined to eliminate the blind spots. However, accurate CSI phase cannot be obtained from commodity Wi-Fi due to the clock-unsynchronized transceivers. Thus, we apply conjugate multiplication (CM) of CSI between two antennas to remove the phase offset and construct two orthogonal signals--new "amplitude and phase" which are still complementary to each other. In this way, we can ensure full human respiration detection. Based on these ideas, We design and implement a real-time respiration detection system with commodity Wi-Fi devices. We conduct extensive experiments to validate our model and design. The results show that, with only one transceiver pair and without leveraging multiple sub-carriers, our system enables full location coverage with no blind spot, showing great potential for real deployment.
The Pluto System After New Horizons
Authors: Stern S. Alan , Grundy William M. , McKinnon William B. , Weaver Harold A. , Young Leslie A.
Published: September 2018

The New Horizons (NH) flyby of the Pluto–Charon binary planet and its system of four small surrounding satellites in mid-2015 revolutionized our knowledge of this distant planet and its moons. Beyond providing rich geo-logical, compositional, and atmospheric data sets, NH demonstrated that Pluto has been surprisingly geologically and climatologically active throughout the past 4+ Gyr and that the planet exhibits a remarkably complex range of atmospheric phenomenology and geological expressions that rival Mars in their richness. In contrast, Pluto's large, planet-sized satellite Charon, though also geologically complex, has no detected active surface volatiles, has no detectable atmosphere, has much more muted colors, has lower albedo, and exhibits only ancient terrains. Pluto's system of four small satellites orbiting outside of Charon is itself dynamically complex and geologically interesting. Here, we review both what was known about the Pluto system before NH and what it has taught us about the Pluto system specifically and, by inference, other small planets in the Kuiper Belt. We go on to examine the natural next steps in Kuiper Belt exploration.
Recent Research on Banks’ Financial Reporting and Financial Stability
Authors: Ryan Stephen G.
Published: September 2018

Banks’ financial reporting requirements and discretionary choices may affect financial stability by altering one or more of the likelihood that banks violate regulatory capital requirements, banks’ internal discipline over risk management and financial reporting, and external market and regulatory discipline over banks. In this article, I discuss five recent empirical papers that examine these channels linking banks’ financial reporting to financial stability. I explain how these papers identify economic contexts and associated financial reporting constructs that enable powerful examinations of these channels, and how they employ research designs that meaningfully address the issues regarding valid causal inference raised by Acharya & Ryan (2016) . I conclude that, while each study examines a specific channel or two in a specific setting, collectively the literature is making steady progress in enhancing our understanding of the causal forces at play in the channels linking banks’ financial reporting and financial stability, the goal set forth by Acharya & Ryan (2016) . I also identify open questions that these papers suggest for future research on the effects of banks’ financial reporting on financial stability.