FIRST - Flexible interactive retrieval SysTem for visual lifelog exploration at LSC 2020

Lifelog can provide useful insights of our daily activities. It is essential to provide a flexible way for users to retrieve certain events or moments of interest, corresponding to a wide variation of query types. This motivates us to develop FIRST, a Flexible Interactive Retrieval SysTem, to help users to combine or integrate various query components in a flexible manner to handle different query scenarios, such as visual clustering data based on color histogram, visual similarity, GPS location, or scene attributes. We also employ personalized concept detection and image captioning to enhance image understanding from visual lifelog data, and develop an autoencoderlike approach for query text and image feature mapping. Furthermore, we refine the user interface of the retrieval system to better assist users in query expansion and verifying sequential events in a flexible temporal resolution to control the navigation speed through sequences of images

Human-Computer Interaction

In this book the reader will find a collection of 31 papers presenting different facets of Human Computer Interaction, the result of research projects and experiments as well as new approaches to design user interfaces. The book is organized according to the following main topics in a sequential order: new interaction paradigms, multimodality, usability studies on several interaction mechanisms, human factors, universal design and development methodologies and tools

The perception and fears of sharing personal digital data in digital public space

This thesis provides a critical and practice based investigation of personal fears of sharing personal digital data. In it, I explore the fears and growing tensions between the requirements to share personal information while maintaining the need to control and protect personal privacy. The emphasis of this study was to develop research through a series of multi-disciplinary, practice-based projects alongside external industry partners. I begin by exploring the rise in surveillance methods, from the Panopticon to the rise of social network sites and examine the consequences of sharing personal information online. Data sharing has been made easier through the proliferation of internet connected, mobile devices and wearable technologies that has led to a growing reciprocal trade in personal information in return for online services. In a world of ‘digital narcissism’ and perpetual life-logging brought about by the volume of shared data, modern surveillance is an increasingly manifestation of consumer activity. However, since the Snowden revelations in 2013 which revealed the National Security Agency (NSA) was spying on US citizens, the consequence of sharing personal information has led to a proliferation of leaks, thefts, and growing anxieties amongst the public, resulting in a greater awareness of privacy concerns and wariness about divulging personal information. My research focused upon those that obstruct, withhold information, and avoid contributing to sharing personal data. Therefore, my research was designed to identify the strategies available to designers working with shared data to combat fears of data surveillance and exploitation. The outcome of my research has shown, through a series of case studies, how individuals perceive the physical environment and the proximity to their data, and how data will be shared. My research was part of the innovative Creative Exchange programme, one of four Doctoral Training Centre knowledge exchange hubs funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The aim was to develop research using multidisciplinary, practice based research projects alongside external industry partners, utilising a variety of research methods and co-design approaches to investigate concepts around the emergent subject of digital public space

Gaze-Based Human-Robot Interaction by the Brunswick Model

We present a new paradigm for human-robot interaction based on social signal processing, and in particular on the Brunswick model. Originally, the Brunswick model copes with face-to-face dyadic interaction, assuming that the interactants are communicating through a continuous exchange of non verbal social signals, in addition to the spoken messages. Social signals have to be interpreted, thanks to a proper recognition phase that considers visual and audio information. The Brunswick model allows to quantitatively evaluate the quality of the interaction using statistical tools which measure how effective is the recognition phase. In this paper we cast this theory when one of the interactants is a robot; in this case, the recognition phase performed by the robot and the human have to be revised w.r.t. the original model. The model is applied to Berrick, a recent open-source low-cost robotic head platform, where the gazing is the social signal to be considered

ATHENA Research Book, Volume 2

ATHENA European University is an association of nine higher education institutions with the mission of promoting excellence in research and innovation by enabling international cooperation. The acronym ATHENA stands for Association of Advanced Technologies in Higher Education. Partner institutions are from France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Portugal and Slovenia: University of Orléans, University of Siegen, Hellenic Mediterranean University, Niccolò Cusano University, Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, Polytechnic Institute of Porto and University of Maribor. In 2022, two institutions joined the alliance: the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University from Poland and the University of Vigo from Spain. Also in 2022, an institution from Austria joined the alliance as an associate member: Carinthia University of Applied Sciences. This research book presents a selection of the research activities of ATHENA University's partners. It contains an overview of the research activities of individual members, a selection of the most important bibliographic works of members, peer-reviewed student theses, a descriptive list of ATHENA lectures and reports from individual working sections of the ATHENA project. The ATHENA Research Book provides a platform that encourages collaborative and interdisciplinary research projects by advanced and early career researchers

Practical English Course for Digital Economy

Пособие включает шесть тематических разделов: Economics Concepts (Основы экономики), Technology in Market Economy (Технологии в рыночной экономике), E-Business (Электронный бизнес), Digital Marketing (Цифровой маркетинг), Digital Business (Цифровой бизнес), The Future of Business (Бизнес будущего), нацеленных на совершенствование у студентов иноязычной коммуникативной компетенции в сфере профессионального общения, использование ими специфических знаний иностранного языка с учетом профессионального отраслевого дискурса. Содержит систематизированный по блокам глоссарий, ссылки на используемые аудио- и видеоматериалы, список используемых источников

The Routledge Handbook of Refugee Narratives

This Handbook presents a transnational and interdisciplinary study of refugee narratives, broadly defined. Interrogating who can be considered a refugee and what constitutes a narrative, the thirty-eight chapters included in this collection encompass a range of forcibly displaced subjects, a mix of geographical and historical contexts, and a variety of storytelling modalities. Analyzing novels, poetry, memoirs, comics, films, photography, music, social media, data, graffiti, letters, reports, eco-design, video games, archival remnants, and ethnography, the individual chapters counter dominant representations of refugees as voiceless victims. Addressing key characteristics and thematics of refugee narratives, this Handbook examines how refugee cultural productions are shaped by and in turn shape socio-political landscapes. It will be of interest to researchers, teachers, students, and practitioners committed to engaging refugee narratives in the contemporary moment. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license

Designing personalised, authentic and collaborative learning with mobile devices: Confronting the challenges of remote teaching during a pandemic.

This article offers teachers a digital pedagogical framework, research-inspired and underpinned by socio-cultural theory, to guide the design of personalised, authentic and collaborative learning scenarios for students using mobile devices in remote learning settings during this pandemic. It provides a series of freely available online resources underpinned by our framework, including a mobile learning toolkit, a professional learning app, and robust, validated surveys for evaluating tasks. Finally, it presents a set of evidence-based principles for effective innovative teaching with mobile devices

Research-Informed Teaching in a Global Pandemic: "Opening up" Schools to Research

The teacher-research agenda has become a significant consideration for policy and professional development in a number of countries. Encouraging research-based teacher education programmes remains an important goal, where teachers are able to effectively utilize educational research as part of their work in school settings and to reflect on and enhance their professional development. In the last decade, teacher research has grown in importance across the three i’s of the teacher learning continuum: initial, induction and in-service teacher education. This has been brought into even starker relief with the global spread of COVID-19, and the enforced and emergency, wholesale move to digital education. Now, perhaps more than ever, teachers need the perspective and support of research-led practice, particularly in how to effectively use Internet technologies to mediate and enhance learning, teaching and assessment online, and new blended modalities for education that must be physically distant. The aim of this paper is to present a number of professional development open educational systems which exist or are currently being developed to support teachers internationally, to engage with, use and do research. Exemplification of the opening up of research to schools and teachers is provided in the chapter through reference to the European Union-funded Erasmus + project, BRIST: Building Research Infrastructures for School Teachers. BRIST is developing technology to coordinate and support teacher-research at a European level