水面を利用したディスプレイの情報提示および認識手法

スマートフォンやタブレットなどの小型コンピュータは現在多くの人が保持し，常に持ち歩いている状況である．近年では，入浴時でもこれらの電子機器を持ち込み，動画や音楽鑑賞，ウェブページ閲覧，メールチェックなどを行う人が増えている．しかし，電子機器と水場である浴室は機器の故障を誘発させる危険性が高く相性が悪い．そのため，浴室環境でも安心して情報閲覧および操作を行えるシステムが必要であると考えられる．浴室環境を考慮したインタラクティブシステムとしてAquaTop Displayが挙げられる．このシステムは水面を入浴時の身体動作を利用してマルチユーザーかつマルチタッチ可能なウォーターサーフェスシステムである．このシステムで用いられるジェスチャは水特性を上手く利用しているが，ジェスチャ認識精度や情報提示手法に問題がある．そこで，これらの問題を解決し，より安定したジェスチャ認識精度，より入浴時に適した情報提示が可能なシステムを実装し評価することが我々の目的である．我々は先ず，これらの問題点の原因を調査した．その後，ジェスチャ認識の解決案として，水面を認識することに特化したビジョンベースのライブラリ群であるAquaTop Core Vision Frameworkを実装し，フレームワークの有効性を検証した．また，浴室環境に適した情報提示の解決案として，浴槽内で動画および音楽鑑賞，ウェブページ閲覧，メール送信など従来のスマートフォンやタブレットで行っていることを水面上で可能にするAquaTop Multi Viewerを提案し実装した．さらに，認識精度を低下させる最大の原因である水面への操作によって発生する波ノイズの対処方法を提案し検証した．今後は提案したシステムを実際の浴室環境で利用し，実装したジェスチャ操作の有効性を検証したい．電気通信大学201

Challenges for Smart Environments in Bathroom Contexts

Leichsenring C, Yang J, Hammerschmidt J, Hermann T. Challenges for Smart Environments in Bathroom Contexts. Presented at the ICMI 2016 Workshop on Embodied Interaction with Smart Environments, Tokyo, Japan.Smart homes have been mostly treated as homogeneous environments where each room is distinguished by the activities performed there but not by any fundamentally different basic parameters for systems to operate in. We argue that at least for bathroom environments, things like the extensive presence of liquid water and humidity and special privacy considerations challenge these assumptions. We discuss typical and unique challenges for ubiquitous computing interfaces in bathroom environments and we look at how actual and conceptual systems confront these challenges. We review bathroom systems in the literature and present two systems of our own to exemplify the unique challenges to smart environments the bathroom provides

Disease Diagnostics and Potential Coinfections by Vibrio coralliilyticus During an Ongoing Coral Disease Outbreak in Florida

A deadly coral disease outbreak has been devastating the Florida Reef Tract since 2014. This disease, stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD), affects at least 22 coral species causing the progressive destruction of tissue. The etiological agents responsible for SCTLD are unidentified, but pathogenic bacteria are suspected. Virulence screens of 400 isolates identified four potentially pathogenic strains of Vibrio spp. subsequently identified as V. coralliilyticus. Strains of this species are known coral pathogens; however, cultures were unable to consistently elicit tissue loss, suggesting an opportunistic role. Using an improved immunoassay, the VcpA RapidTest, a toxic zinc-metalloprotease produced by V. coralliilyticus was detected on 22.3% of diseased Montastraea cavernosa (n = 67) and 23.5% of diseased Orbicella faveolata (n = 24). VcpA+ corals had significantly higher mortality rates and faster disease progression. For VcpA– fragments, 21.6% and 33.3% of M. cavernosa and O. faveolata, respectively, died within 21 d of observation, while 100% of similarly sized VcpA+ fragments of both species died during the same period. Further physiological and genomic analysis found no apparent differences between the Atlantic V. coralliilyticus strains cultured here and pathogens from the Indo-Pacific but highlighted the diversity among strains and their immense genetic potential. In all, V. coralliilyticus may be causing coinfections that exacerbate existing SCTLD lesions, which could contribute to the intraspecific differences observed between colonies. This study describes potential coinfections contributing to SCTLD virulence as well as diagnostic tools capable of tracking the pathogen involved, which are important contributions to the management and understanding of SCTLD

Ontic Communities: Speculative Fiction, Ontology, and the Digital Design Community

This dissertation is about the digital design community, those who build cultural and artistic works primarily using digital media. This dissertation, however, is also centered around a larger argument, of which the digital arts and design community serves as a case study. In short, the larger argument is a call to examine more closely the social relationships of material objects (including, but not limited to, humans and things) and idea objects (including, but not limited to, broad cultural and social forces) that constitute the world. This dissertation forwards three major arguments: 1.) That it is often the case, particularly in the social sciences, that scholars look not at non-human objects, but instead at the ways those objects are perceived and labeled by humans/society. Scholars of materiality, then, often miss the mark, and study the conceptualizations of objects at the expense of the objects in of themselves. 2.) That it is theoretically and empirically possible to examine objects in of themselves, and that it is important to do so, as both material and non-material objects contain causal powers that impact history and society independent of the human recognition or conceptualization of these powers. 3.) That objects are also subjects, and engage in intersubjective meaning-making both with humans and other objects. Objects, then, should not be theorized as having various mechanical impacts upon human communities that they interact with, but should instead be theorized as members of the community in of themselves. Non-human entities, in other words, are themselves social beings.Ph.D., Communication, Culture, and Media -- Drexel University, 201

Investigating population dynamics and demographics for conservation and management using genomics, eRNA, and eDNA

Populations are central units in ecology and evolution, as they are the level at which ecological and evolutionary processes act. Populations are also central units in conservation and management as the long-term persistence of species requires many viable populations. In order to make effective conservation and management decisions, a comprehensive understanding of focal populations is required, but can be difficult to obtain for rare or cryptic species. However, for difficult to study species, genomic techniques can fill in gaps of knowledge and lead to more informed decision-making. The three chapters in this dissertation explore the dynamics and demographics of populations to aid in the conservation of imperiled species using genomic data and environmental nucleic acids. Chapter one describes the efficacy of environmental RNA to distinguish life stages in amphibian populations using gene-specific assays developed and tested in multiple taxa. Chapter two investigates the relationship between environmental DNA concentrations and population size at varying environmental and conditions, providing important implications for the precision of these population estimates. Finally, chapter three explores the dynamics of natural and anthropogenic hybridization in an endangered amphibian taxon using adaptive genomic variation. This dissertation highlights our ability to further understand population dynamics and demographics in threatened taxa using genomic techniques and apply those to conservation and management situations.

Toolkit support for interactive projected displays

Interactive projected displays are an emerging class of computer interface with the potential to transform interactions with surfaces in physical environments. They distinguish themselves from other visual output technologies, for instance LCD screens, by overlaying content onto the physical world. They can appear, disappear, and reconfigure themselves to suit a range of application scenarios, physical settings, and user needs. These properties have attracted significant academic research interest, yet the surrounding technical challenges and lack of application developer tools limit adoption to those with advanced technical skills. These barriers prevent people with different expertise from engaging, iteratively evaluating deployments, and thus building a strong community understanding of the technology in context. We argue that creating and deploying interactive projected displays should take hours, not weeks. This thesis addresses these difficulties through the construction of a toolkit that effectively facilitates user innovation with interactive projected displays. The toolkit’s design is informed by a review of related work and a series of in-depth research probes that study different application scenarios. These findings result in toolkit requirements that are then integrated into a cohesive design and implementation. This implementation is evaluated to determine its strengths, limitations, and effectiveness at facilitating the development of applied interactive projected displays. The toolkit is released to support users in the real-world and its adoption studied. The findings describe a range of real application scenarios, case studies, and increase academic understanding of applied interactive projected display toolkits. By significantly lowering the complexity, time, and skills required to develop and deploy interactive projected displays, a diverse community of over 2,000 individual users have applied the toolkit to their own projects. Widespread adoption beyond the computer-science academic community will continue to stimulate an exciting new wave of interactive projected display applications that transfer computing functionality into physical spaces

Effects of multigenerational exposure and phenotypic variation on a freshwater fish species exposed to elevated carbon dioxide (CO2)

The amount of dissolved carbon dioxide (CO2) and the acidity of aquatic ecosystems is increasing as atmospheric CO2 concentrations increase due to human activities. Changes in pH and dissolved CO2 can have considerable aversive effects on fish physiology and behaviour, which can result in negative effects on fish populations. Multigenerational studies have found that the conditions experienced by parents can have significant effects on the performance of their offspring and understanding these effects can help to predict how fish populations will cope in future conditions. Additionally, repeatable behavioural phenotypes are good predictors of trends in behaviour, can be useful predictors of other physiological and life history traits, and can be subject to selection pressures. Unfortunately, the effects of elevated CO2 on freshwater fishes over multiple generations, and the effects of behavioural phenotypes, are poorly understood. In my thesis, freshwater Japanese Medaka (Oryzias latipes) were used to investigate the influence of phenotypic variation and differences in time of exposure (generational) on biological responses to elevated CO2. Lab-reared medaka were divided into ‘responsive’ and ‘non-responsive’ groups based on behavioural differences from the population mean during acute exposure to high CO2 in a common shuttling and novel tank behavioural assay. Responsive and non-responsive fish in parental generation (P) were subdivided and exposed to either control (~480 ppm) or high CO2 (~1250 ppm) conditions over a 6-week period. Following this time, eggs from this generation were collected and randomly selected into either high or control conditions, where they were hatched and reared until maturation (filial generation one (F1), 18 weeks). Eggs from F1 were collected and hatched and reared in the same conditions as their parents until adulthood (filial generation two (F2), 24 weeks). Body condition (size, weight and length), behaviour (total distance moved, time spent in the outer zone of the behavioural arena, and swimming direction), reproductive (number of eggs, size of eggs, and survival to hatch) performance, and the relative abundance of various mRNA transcripts in whole brain tissue of fish was measured across these three generations. Behavioural phenotypes influenced reproduction for P and F2 generation fish, and growth for F1 and F2 fish; suggesting that intraspecific variation in behavioural phenotypes may influence how medaka respond to elevated CO2. However, behavioural phenotypes did not have a significant effect on mRNA abundance on genes targeted in my study. Multigenerational exposure to elevated CO2 were shown to improve the performance of offspring in some measures and resulted in changes of mRNA abundance of several genes. Transgenerational exposure, where a parent or grandparent was exposed to elevated CO2 but the offspring were not exposed to elevated CO2, resulted in some deleterious effects suggesting that, generally, exposure to environmental conditions that differ from that of their parents may put fish especially at risk. In my thesis, current CO2 exposure appeared to be the best predictor of overall condition, where fish exposed to elevated CO2 were worse off than fish exposed to control CO2 conditions. The results of this research contribute to filling a current gap of knowledge in understanding how freshwater fish will respond to future conditions over an ecologically-relevant time scale. Importantly, this information will contribute to generating more informed decisions on freshwater ecosystem management and future research directions. Marine and freshwater environments offer food and water security and are of high importance to the economy and the health of our planet, making my research relevant to our broader society."This research was funded by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) NSERC Discovery Grant, and a Research Manitoba Early Career Researcher Grant held by C. T. Hasler, and I was supported by an NSERC Canada Graduate Scholarship."Master of Bioscience, Technology, and Public Polic