cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Structure and Star Formation in NGC 925

We present the results from an optical study of the stellar and star formation properties of NGC 925 using the WIYN 3.5 m telescope. Images in B, V, R, and Hα reveal a galaxy that is fraught with asymmetries. From isophote fits we discover that the bar center is not coincident with the center of the outer isophotes or with the dynamical center (from Paper I in this series). Cuts across the spiral arms reveal that the northern arms are distinctly different from the southern arm. The southern arm not only appears more coherent, but the peaks in stellar and Hα emission are found to be coincident with those of the H I distribution, while no such consistency is present in the northern disk. We also examine the gas surface density criterion for massive star formation in NGC 925, and we find that its behavior is more consistent with that for irregular galaxies than with late-type spirals. In particular, star formation persists beyond the radius at which the gas surface density falls below the predicted critical value for star formation for late-type spirals. Such properties are characteristic of Magellanic spirals but are present at a less dramatic level in NGC 925, a late-type spiral.
The asymptotic behavior of least pseudo-Anosov dilatations

For a surface S with n marked points and fixed genus g 2, we prove that the logarithm of the minimal dilatation of a pseudo-Anosov homeomorphism of S is on the order of .logn/=n. This is in contrast with the cases of genus zero or one where the order is 1=n. 37E30; 57M99, 30F60
Nonlinear modeling and characterization of ultrasoft silicone elastomers

We introduce a strain-energy based nonlinear hyper-elastic formulation to model the material properties of ultrasoft dielectric elastomers over a wide range of elastic properties, prestretch, and thicknesses. We build on the uniaxial Gent formulation and, under the conditions of equi-biaxial strain, derive an expression for bulge deformation vs pressure. A circular bulge test methodology is developed to experimentally measure the mechanical response of the silicone membranes. The Gent model captures both neo-Hookean and strain-stiffening behaviors and gives predictions that are in agreement with experimental measurements. Membranes with different thinner fractions are characterized over nearly one order of magnitude variation in shear modulus. Stiffer membranes are observed to harden at lower stretch ratios due to the increased fraction of polymer chains in them. The present approach offers a simple and cost-effective procedure for characterizing soft membranes under commonly encountered biaxial deformation conditions.
On the atomic structure of Puiseux monoids

In this paper, we study the atomic structure of the family of Puiseux monoids, i.e. the additive submonoids of ℚ≥0. Puiseux monoids are a natural generalization of numerical semigroups, which have been actively studied since mid-19th century. Unlike numerical semigroups, the family of Puiseux monoids contains non-finitely generated representatives. Even more interesting is that there are many Puiseux monoids which are not even atomic. We delve into these situations, describing, in particular, a vast collection of commutative cancellative monoids containing no atoms. On the other hand, we find several characterization criteria which force Puiseux monoids to be atomic. Finally, we classify the atomic subfamily of strongly bounded Puiseux monoids over a finite set of primes.
Stabilization of Heegaard splittings

A genus‐g Heegaard splitting of a 3‐manifold M is a decomposition of M into two genus‐g handlebodies with a common boundary. It is described by an ordered triple .H1;H2;S/ where each of H1;H2 is a handlebody and the two handlebodies intersect along their common boundary S , called a Heegaard surface. An orientation on S is determined by @H1 , and an equivalent definition of a Heegaard splitting is given by an oriented surface S in M whose complement consists of two handlebodies. Two Heegaard splittings .H1;H2;S/ and .H 0 1 ;H 0 2 ;S 0 / of M are said to be equivalent
C+ detection of warm dark gas in diffuse clouds

We present the first results of the Herschel open time key program, Galactic Observations of Terahertz C + (GOT C+) survey of the [CII] 2 P3/2‐ 2 P1/2 fine-structure line at 1.9 THz (158 μm) using the HIFI instrument on Herschel. We detected 146 interstellar clouds along sixteen lines-of-sight towards the inner Galaxy. We also acquired HI and CO isotopologue data along each line-of-sight for analysis of the physical conditions in these clouds. Here we analyze 29 diffuse clouds (AV < 1.3 mag) in this sample characterized by having [CII] and HI emission, but no detectable CO. We find that [CII] emission is generally stronger than expected for diffuse atomic clouds, and in a number of sources is much stronger than anticipated based on their HI column density. We show that excess [CII] emission in these clouds is best explained by the presence of a significant diffuse warm H2, dark gas, component. This first [CII] 158 μm detection of warm dark gas demonstrates the value of this tracer for mapping this gas throughout the Milky Way and in galaxies.
Identification of control targets in Boolean molecular network models via computational algebra

Many problems in biomedicine and other areas of the life sciences can be characterized as control problems, with the goal of finding strategies to change a disease or otherwise undesirable state of a biological system into another, more desirable, state through an intervention, such as a drug or other therapeutic treatment. The identification of such strategies is typically based on a mathematical model of the process to be altered through targeted control inputs. This paper focuses on processes at the molecular level that determine the state of an individual cell, involving signaling or gene regulation. The mathematical model type considered is that of Boolean networks. The potential control targets can be represented by a set of nodes and edges that can be manipulated to produce a desired effect on the system. This paper presents a method for the identification of potential intervention targets in Boolean molecular network models using algebraic techniques. The approach exploits an algebraic representation of Boolean networks to encode the control candidates in the network wiring diagram as the solutions of a system of polynomials equations, and then uses computational algebra techniques to find such controllers. The control methods in this paper are validated through the identification of combinatorial interventions in the signaling pathways of previously reported control targets in two well studied systems, a p53-mdm2 network and a blood T cell lymphocyte granular leukemia survival signaling network. Supplementary data is available online and our code in Macaulay2 and Matlab are available via http://www.ms.uky.edu/~dmu228/ControlAlg . This paper presents a novel method for the identification of intervention targets in Boolean network models. The results in this paper show that the proposed methods are useful and efficient for moderately large networks.
Attosecond synchronization of extreme ultraviolet high harmonics from crystals

The interaction of strong near-infrared (NIR) laser pulses with wide-bandgap dielectrics produces high harmonics in the extreme ultraviolet (XUV) wavelength range. These observations have opened up the possibility of attosecond metrology in solids, which would benefit from a precise measurement of the emission times of individual harmonics with respect to the NIR laser field. Here we show that, when high-harmonics are detected from the input surface of a magnesium oxide crystal, a bichromatic probing of the XUV emission shows a clear synchronization largely consistent with a semiclassical model of electron–hole recollisions in bulk solids. On the other hand, the bichromatic spectrogram of harmonics originating from the exit surface of the 200 μm-thick crystal is strongly modified, indicating the influence of laser field distortions during propagation. Our tracking of sub-cycle electron and hole re-collisions at XUV energies is relevant to the development of solid-state sources of attosecond pulses.
Learning When to Trust a Dynamics Model for Planning in Reduced State Spaces

When the dynamics of a system are difficult to model and/or time-consuming to evaluate, such as in deformable object manipulation tasks, motion planning algorithms struggle to find feasible plans efficiently. Such problems are often reduced to state spaces where the dynamics are straightforward to model and evaluate. However, such reductions usually discard information about the system for the benefit of computational efficiency, leading to cases where the true and reduced dynamics disagree on the result of an action. This letter presents a formulation for planning in reduced state spaces that uses a classifier to bias the planner away from state-action pairs that are not reliably feasible under the true dynamics. We present a method to generate and label data to train such a classifier, as well as an application of our framework to rope manipulation, where we use a Virtual Elastic Band (VEB) approximation to the true dynamics. Our experiments with rope manipulation demonstrate that the classifier significantly improves the success rate of our RRT-based planner in several difficult scenarios which are designed to cause the VEB to produce incorrect predictions in key parts of the environment.
Rapid Flaring in the Galactic-plane Gamma-Ray Transient Fermi J0035+6131

We investigate the gamma-ray and X-ray emission from the transient gamma-ray source Fermi J0035+6131, which was discovered with the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) near the Galactic plane at b?=?13, and we discuss potential multi-wavelength counterparts of the gamma-ray source. Our analysis of over 9 years of Fermi LAT data revealed two flaring events lasting 10?30 hr during which the gamma-ray flux increased by a factor of >300 compared to the long-term average. We also analyzed X-ray data obtained with XMM-Newton and Swift and identified several sources with a hard X-ray spectrum inside the Fermi LAT confidence region. The two brightest X-ray sources have known counterparts at other wavelengths and are associated with the compact radio source VCS4 J0035+6130 and the B1 IV:nn star HD 3191, respectively. VCS4 J0035+6130, which is also detected in the near infrared, is likely an active galaxy serendipitously located behind the Galactic disk and is the most compelling candidate for the counterpart of the gamma-ray source. HD 3191 appears to be part of an X-ray binary with a compact companion and is unlikely to be associated with Fermi J0035+6131.
Giant gravitons and a correspondence principle

Abstract We propose a correspondence between the physics of certain small charge black holes in AdS k ×S l and large charge black holes in AdS l ×S k . The curvature singularities of these solutions arise, following Myers and Tafjord, from a condensate of giant gravitons. When the number of condensed giants N g is much greater than the number of background branes N , we propose that the system has an equivalent description in terms of N giant gravitons condensed in a background created by N g branes. Our primary evidence is an exact correspondence between gravitational entropy formulae of small and large charge solutions in different dimensions.
Effect of Super Resolution on High Dimensional Features for Unsupervised Face Recognition in the Wild

Majority of the face recognition algorithms use query faces captured from uncontrolled, in the wild, environment. Because of cameras' limited capabilities, it is common for these captured facial images to be blurred or low resolution. Super resolution algorithms are therefore crucial in improving the resolution of such images especially when the image size is small and enlargement is required. This paper aims to demonstrate the effect of one of the state-of-the-art algorithms in the field of image super resolution. To demonstrate the functionality of the algorithm, various before and after 3D face alignment cases are provided using the images from the Labeled Faces in the Wild (lfw) dataset. Resulting images are subject to test on a closed set recognition protocol using unsupervised algorithms with high dimensional extracted features. The inclusion of super resolution algorithm resulted in significant improvement in recognition rate over recently reported results obtained from unsupervised algorithms on the same dataset.
A novel mechanism for the distance-redshift relation

We consider a novel mechanism to account for the observed distance-redshift relation. This is done by presenting a toy model for the large-scale matter distribution in a static Universe. Our model mainly concerns particles with masses far below those in the Standard Model of Particle Physics. The model is founded on three main assumptions: (1) a mass spectrum / (where α and β are both positive constants) for low-mass particles with eV M P, where M P is the Planck mass; (2) a particle mass-wavelength relation of the form /c, where and η and γ are both constants; and (3) for such low-mass particles, locality can only be defined on large spatial scales, comparable to or exceeding the particle wavelengths. We use our model to derive the cosmological redshift characteristic of the Standard Model of Cosmology, which becomes a gravitational redshift in our model. We compare the results of our model to empirical data and show that, in order to reproduce the sub-linear form of the observed distance-redshift relation, our model requires . We further place our toy model in the context of the Friedmann Universe via a superposition of Einstein Universes, each with its own scale factor a i . Given the overwhelming evidence supporting an expanding Universe, we then address possible modifications to our base model that would be required to account for the available empirical constraints, including the addition of some initial expansion. Finally, we consider potentially observable distinctions between the cosmological redshift and our proposed mechanism to account for the observed distance-redshift relation.
Examining the time dependence of DAMA’s modulation amplitude

If dark matter is composed of weakly interacting particles, Earth’s orbital motion may induce a small annual variation in the rate at which these particles interact in a terrestrial detector. The DAMA collaboration has identified at a $$9.3\sigma $$ confidence level such an annual modulation in their event rate over two detector iterations, DAMA/NaI and DAMA/LIBRA, each with $$\sim 7$$ years of observations. This data is well fit by a constant modulation amplitude for the two iterations of the experiment. We statistically examine the time dependence of the modulation amplitudes, which “by eye” appear to be decreasing with time in certain energy ranges. We perform a chi-squared goodness of fit test of the average modulation amplitudes measured by the two detector iterations which rejects the hypothesis of a consistent modulation amplitude at greater than 80, 96, and 99.6% for the 2–4, 2–5 and 2–6 keVee energy ranges, respectively. We also find that among the 14 annual cycles there are three $$\gtrsim 3\sigma $$ departures from the average in our estimated data in the 5–6 keVee energy range. In addition, we examined several phenomenological models for the time dependence of the modulation amplitude. Using a maximum likelihood test, we find that descriptions of the modulation amplitude as decreasing with time are preferred over a constant modulation amplitude at anywhere between $$1\sigma $$ and $$3\sigma $$ , depending on the phenomenological model for the time dependence and the signal energy range considered. A time dependent modulation amplitude is not expected for a dark matter signal, at least for dark matter halo morphologies consistent with the DAMA signal. New data from DAMA/LIBRA–phase2 will certainly aid in determining whether any apparent time dependence is a real effect or a statistical fluctuation.
Neglecting model structural uncertainty underestimates upper tails of flood hazard

Coastal flooding drives considerable risks to many communities, but projections of future flood risks are deeply uncertain. The paucity of observations of extreme events often motivates the use of statistical approaches to model the distribution of extreme storm surge events. A key deep uncertainty that is often overlooked is model structural uncertainty. There is currently no strong consensus among experts regarding which class of statistical model to use as a best practice. Robust management of coastal flooding risks requires coastal managers to consider the distinct possibility of non-stationarity in storm surges. This increases the complexity of the potential models to use, which tends to increase the data required to constrain the model. Here, we use a Bayesian model averaging approach to analyze the balance between model complexity sufficient to capture decision-relevant risks and data availability to constrain complex model structures. We characterize deep model structural uncertainty through a set of calibration experiments. Specifically, we calibrate a set of models ranging in complexity using long-term tide gauge observations from the Netherlands and the United States. We find that in both cases, roughly half the model weight is associated with non-stationary models. Our approach provides a formal framework to integrate information across model structures, in light of the potentially sizable modeling uncertainties. By combining information from multiple models, our inference sharpens for the projected storm surge 100-year return levels, and estimated return levels increase by several centimeters. We assess the impacts of data availability through a set of experiments with temporal subsets and model comparison metrics. Our analysis suggests about 70 years of data are required to stabilize estimates of the 100-year return level, for the locations and methods considered here.
Stability of stationary inverse transport equation in diffusion scaling

We consider the inverse problem of reconstructing the optical parameters for stationary radiative transfer equation (RTE) from velocity-averaged measurement. The RTE often contains multiple scales characterized by the magnitude of a dimensionless parameter—the Knudsen number (Kn). In the diffusive scaling (Kn 1), the stationary RTE is well approximated by an elliptic equation in the forward setting. However, the inverse problem for the elliptic equation is acknowledged to be severely ill-posed as compared to the well-posedness of inverse transport equation, which raises the question of how uniqueness being lost as Kn approaches 0. We tackle this problem by examining the stability of inverse problem with varying Kn. We show that, the discrepancy in two measurements is amplified in the reconstructed parameters at the order of Kn^p (p = 1 or 2), and as a result lead to ill-posedness in the zero limit of Kn. Our results apply to both continuous and discrete settings. Some numerical tests are performed in the end to validate these theoretical findings.
A note on knot concordance

We use classical techniques to answer some questions raised by Daniele Celoria about almost-concordance of knots in arbitrary closed 3 –manifolds. We first prove that, given Y 3 ≠ S 3 , for any nontrivial element g ∈ π 1 ( Y ) there are infinitely many distinct smooth almost-concordance classes in the free homotopy class of the unknot. In particular we consider these distinct smooth almost-concordance classes on the boundary of a Mazur manifold and we show none of these distinct classes bounds a PL–disk in the Mazur manifold, but all the representatives we construct are topologically slice. We also prove that all knots in the free homotopy class of S 1 × pt in S 1 × S 2 are smoothly concordant.
Volumes of Montesinos links

We show that the volume of any Montesinos link can be bounded above and below in terms of the combinatorics of its diagram. This was known for Montesinos links with at most two tangles and those with at least five tangles. We complete the result for the remaining cases.
Homology of FI-modules

We prove an explicit and sharp upper bound for the Castelnuovo–Mumford regularity of an FI-module in terms of the degrees of its generators and relations. We use this to refine a result of Putman on the stability of homology of congruence subgroups, extending his theorem to previously excluded small characteristics and to integral homology while maintaining explicit bounds for the stable range. An equivalent version of this paper can be found on arXiv.
A Low-Power Dual-Factor Authentication Unit for Secure Implantable Devices

This paper presents a dual-factor authentication protocol and its low-power implementation for security of implantable medical devices (IMDs). The protocol incorporates traditional cryptographic first-factor authentication using Datagram Transport Layer Security - Pre-Shared Key (DTLS-PSK) followed by the user's touch-based voluntary second-factor authentication for enhanced security. With a low-power compact always-on wake-up timer and touch-based wake-up circuitry, our test chip consumes only 735 pW idle state power at 20.15 Hz and 2.5 V. The hardware accelerated dual-factor authentication unit consumes 8 µW at 660 kHz and 0.87 V. Our test chip was coupled with commercial Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) transceiver, DC-DC converter, touch sensor and coin cell battery to demonstrate standalone implantable operation and also tested using in-vitro measurement setup.
Convex cones of generalized multiply monotone functions and the dual cones

Let n and k be nonnegative integers such that 1≤k≤n+1. The convex cone F+k:n of all functions f on an arbitrary interval I⊆R whose derivatives f(j) of orders j=k−1,…,n are nondecreasing is characterized. A simple description of the convex cone dual to F+k:n is given. In particular, these results are useful in, and were motivated by, applications in probability. In fact, the results are obtained in a more general setting with certain generalized derivatives of f of the jth order in place of f(j). Somewhat similar results were previously obtained, in terms of Tchebycheff–Markov systems, in the case when the left endpoint of the interval I is finite, with certain additional integrability conditions; such conditions fail to hold in the mentioned applications. Development of substantially new methods was needed to overcome the difficulties.
A New Phase of Matter: Quark-Gluon Plasma Beyond the Hagedorn Critical Temperature

I retrace the developments from Hagedorn’s concept of a limiting temperature for hadronic matter to the discovery and characterization of the quark-gluon plasma as a new state of matter. My recollections begin with the transformation more than 30 years ago of Hagedorn’s original concept into its modern interpretation as the “critical” temperature separating the hadron gas and quark-gluon plasma phases of strongly interacting matter. This was followed by the realization that the QCD phase transformation could be studied experimentally in high-energy nuclear collisions. I describe here my personal effort to help develop the strangeness experimental signatures of quark and gluon deconfinement and recall how the experimental program proceeded soon to investigate this idea, at first at the SPS, then at RHIC, and finally at LHC. As is often the case, the experiment finds more than theory predicts, and I highlight the discovery of the “perfectly” liquid quark-gluon plasma at RHIC. I conclude with an outline of future opportunities, especially the search for a critical point in the QCD phase diagram.
Visualizing Deep Networks by Optimizing with Integrated Gradients.

Understanding and interpreting the decisions made by deep learning models is valuable in many domains. In computer vision, computing heatmaps from a deep network is a popular approach for visualizing and understanding deep networks. However, heatmaps that do not correlate with the network may mislead human, hence the performance of heatmaps in providing a faithful explanation to the underlying deep network is crucial. In this paper, we propose I-GOS, which optimizes for a heatmap so that the classification scores on the masked image would maximally decrease. The main novelty of the approach is to compute descent directions based on the integrated gradients instead of the normal gradient, which avoids local optima and speeds up convergence. Compared with previous approaches, our method can flexibly compute heatmaps at any resolution for different user needs. Extensive experiments on several benchmark datasets show that the heatmaps produced by our approach are more correlated with the decision of the underlying deep network, in comparison with other state-of-the-art approaches.
Predicting cryptic ligand binding sites based on normal modes guided conformational sampling

To greatly expand the druggable genome, fast and accurate predictions of cryptic sites for small molecules binding in target proteins are in high demand. In this study, we have developed a fast and simple conformational sampling scheme guided by normal modes solved from the coarse-grained elastic models followed by atomistic backbone refinement and sidechain repacking. Despite the observations of complex and diverse conformational changes associated with ligand binding, we found that simply sampling along each of the lowest 30 modes is near optimal for adequately restructuring cryptic sites so they can be detected by existing pocket finding programs like fpocket and concavity. We further trained machine-learning protocols to optimize the combination of the sampling-enhanced pocket scores with other dynamic and conservation scores, which only slightly improved the performance. As assessed based on a training set of 84 known cryptic sites and a test set of 14 proteins, our method achieved high accuracy of prediction (with area under the receiver operating characteristic curve > 0.8) comparable to the CryptoSite server. Compared with CryptoSite and other methods based on extensive molecular dynamics simulation, our method is much faster (1-2 hours for an average-size protein) and simpler (using only pocket scores), so it is suitable for high-throughput processing of large datasets of protein structures at the genome scale. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Anomalous Lorenz number in massive and tilted Dirac systems

We analytically calculate the anomalous transverse electric and thermal currents in massive and tilted Dirac systems, using β-borophene as a representative material, and report on conditions under which the corresponding Lorenz number ( L a n ) deviates from its classically accepted value ( L 0 ). The deviations in the high-temperature regime are shown to be an outcome of the quantitative difference in the respective kinetic transport expressions for electric ( σ ) and thermal ( κ ) conductivity and are further weighted through a convolution integral with a non-linearly energy-dependent Berry curvature that naturally arises in a Dirac material. In addition, the tilt and anisotropy of the Dirac system that are amenable to change via an external stimulus are found to quantitatively influence L a n. The reported deviations from L 0 hold practical utility inasmuch as they allow an independent tuning of σ and κ, useful in optimizing the output of thermoelectric devices.
iWash: A smartwatch handwashing quality assessment and reminder system with real-time feedback in the context of infectious disease.

Abstract Washing hands properly and frequently is the simplest and most cost-effective interventions to prevent the spread of infectious diseases. People are often ignorant about proper handwashing in different situations and do not know if they wash hands properly. Smartwatches are found to be effective for assessing the quality of handwashing. However, the existing smartwatch based systems are not comprehensive enough in terms of achieving accuracy as well as reminding people to handwash and providing feedback to the user about the quality of handwashing. On-device processing is often required to provide real-time feedback to the user, and so it is important to develop a system that runs efficiently on low-resource devices like smartwatches. However, none of the existing systems for handwashing quality assessment are optimized for on-device processing. We present iWash, a comprehensive system for quality assessment and context-aware reminders for handwashing with real-time feedback using smartwatches. iWash is a hybrid deep neural network based system that is optimized for on-device processing to ensure high accuracy with minimal processing time and battery usage. Additionally, it is a context-aware system that detects when the user is entering home using a Bluetooth beacon and provides reminders to wash hands. iWash also offers touch-free interaction between the user and the smartwatch that minimizes the risk of germ transmission. We collected a real-life dataset and conducted extensive evaluations to demonstrate the performance of iWash. Compared to existing handwashing quality assessment systems, we achieve around 12% higher accuracy for quality assessment, as well as we reduce the processing time and battery usage by around 37% and 10%, respectively.
Design and performance of the PALM-3000 3.5 kHz upgrade

PALM-3000 (P3K), the second-generation adaptive optics (AO) instrument for the 5.1 meter Hale telescope at Palomar Observatory, underwent a significant upgrade to its wavefront sensor (WFS) arm and real-time control (RTC) system in late 2019. Main features of this upgrade include an EMCCD WFS camera capable of 3.5 kHz framerates and advanced Digital Signal Processor (DSP) boards to replace the aging GPU based real-time control system. With this upgrade P3K is able to maintain a lock on natural guide stars fainter than mV=16. Here we present the design and on-sky re-commissioning results of the upgraded system.
Sensitivity Analysis via the Proportion of Unmeasured Confounding

In observational studies, identification of ATEs is generally achieved by assuming that the correct set of confounders has been measured and properly included in the relevant models. Because this a...
Liger for next-generation Keck AO: filter wheel and pupil design

Liger is a next-generation near-infrared imager and integral field spectrograph (IFS) for the W.M. Keck Obser- vatory designed to take advantage of the Keck All-Sky Precision Adaptive Optics (KAPA) upgrade. Liger will operate at spectral resolving powers between R~4,000 - 10,000 over a wavelength range of 0.8-2.4µm. Liger takes advantage of a sequential imager and spectrograph design that allows for simultaneous observations between the two channels using the same filter wheel and cold pupil stop. We present the design for the filter wheels and pupil mask and their location and tolerances in the optical design. The filter mechanism is a multi-wheel de- sign drawing from the heritage of the current Keck/OSIRIS imager single wheel design. The Liger multi-wheel configuration is designed to allow future upgrades to the number and range of filters throughout the life of the instrument. The pupil mechanism is designed to be similarly upgradeable with the option to add multiple pupil mask options. A smaller wheel mechanism allows the user to select the desired pupil mask with open slots being designed in for future upgrade capabilities. An ideal pupil would match the shape of the image formed of the primary and would track its rotation. For different pupil shapes without tracking we model the additional exposure time needed to achieve the same signal to noise of an ideal pupil and determine that a set of fixed masks of different shapes provides a mechanically simpler system with little compromise in performance.
Interface Design for HCI Classroom: From Learners’ Perspective

Having a good Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) design is challenging. Previous works have contributed significantly to fostering HCI, including design principle with report study from the instructor view. The questions of how and to what extent students perceive the design principles are still left open. To answer this question, this paper conducts a study of HCI adoption in the classroom. The studio-based learning method is adapted to teach 83 graduate and undergraduate students in 16 weeks long with four activities. A standalone presentation tool for instant online peer feedback during the presentation session is developed to help students justify and critique other’s work. Our tool provides a sandbox, which supports multiple application types, including Web-applications, Object Detection, Web-based Virtual Reality (VR), and Augmented Reality (AR). After presenting one assignment and two projects, our results shows that students acquired a better understanding of the Golden Rules principle over time, which is demonstrated by the development of visual interface design. The Wordcloud reveals the primary focus was on the user interface and sheds light on students’ interest in user experience. The inter-rater score indicates the agreement among students that they have the same level of understanding of the principles. The results show a high level of guideline compliance with HCI principles, in which we witness variations in visual cognitive styles. Regardless of diversity in visual preference, the students present high consistency and a similar perspective on adopting HCI design principles. The results also elicit suggestions into the development of the HCI curriculum in the future.