Crossing Selma\u27s Bridge: Integrating Visual Discovery Strategy and Young Adult Literature to Promote Dialogue and Understanding

Urban communities, separated by race and class, experience a disproportionate number of gun deaths, police shootings, crime, violent and nonviolent protests, as well as disparities in housing, education, and employment. These discussions are visual and textual, appearing in both traditional and social media outlets. How do adolescents read and make sense of these images? We discuss integrating a Social Studies practice, Visual Discovery Strategy, with Young Adult Literature to provide students with the skills to both critique images from the events in their lives and produce responses through both traditional and digital methods

Say Hi to Eliza. An Embodied Conversational Agent on the Web

The creation and support of Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs) has been quite challenging, as features required might not be straight-forward to implement and to integrate in a single application. Furthermore, ECAs as desktop applications present drawbacks for both developers and users; the former have to develop for each device and operating system and the latter must install additional software, limiting their widespread use. In this paper we demonstrate how recent advances in web technologies show promising steps towards capable web-based ECAs, through some off-the-shelf technologies, in particular, the Web Speech API, Web Audio API, WebGL and Web Workers. We describe their integration into a simple fully functional web-based 3D ECA accessible from any modern device, with special attention to our novel work in the creation and support of the embodiment aspects.Comment: 4 Pages, 1 figure, 17th International Conference Intelligence Virtual Agents (IVA

HomeNL: Homecare Assistance in Natural Language. An Intelligent Conversational Agent for Hypertensive Patients Management.

International audienceThe prospective home-care management will probably of- fer intelligent conversational assistants for supporting patients at home through natural language interfaces. Homecare assistance in natural lan- guage, HomeNL, is a proof-of-concept dialogue system for the manage- ment of patients with hypertension. It follows up a conversation with a patient in which the patient is able to take the initiative. HomeNL pro- cesses natural language, makes an internal representation of the patients' contributions, interprets sentences by reasoning about their meaning on the basis of a medical-knowledge representation and responds appropri- ately. HomeNL's aim is to provide a laboratory for studying natural language processing (NLP) and intelligent dialogues in clinical domains

Desktop-to-Mobile Web Adaptation through Customizable Two-Dimensional Semantic Redesign

International audienceIn this paper we present a novel method for desktop-to-mobile adaptation. The solution also supports end-users in customizing multi-device ubiquitous user interfaces. In particular, we describe an algorithm and the corresponding tool support to perform desktop-to-mobile adaptation by exploiting logical user interface descriptions able to capture interaction semantic information indicating the purpose of the interface elements. We also compare our solution with existing tools for similar goals

Potential of imprecision: exploring vague language in agent instructors

As we find greater potential for agent instructors, we must be aware of how their language use can affect the user and interaction as a whole. This study investigates the use of intentionally imprecise or vague language as a communicative strategy to mitigate the impact of instructions. We look at the effects it has on improving the perception of agents and user performance. A series of assembly tasks were ran in which users constructed Lego models with the spoken instructions of vague and non-vague agents. Results show that though the non-vague agent was seen as more direct and authoritative, responses to other attributes and performance were much more varied. Findings suggest there is potential for vague language human-agent interaction, though there are several obstacles in agent design to overcome first

ERiSA: building emotionally realistic social game-agents companions

We propose an integrated framework for social and emotional game-agents to enhance their believability and quality of interaction, in particular by allowing an agent to forge social relations and make appropriate use of social signals. The framework is modular including sensing, interpretation, behaviour generation, and game components. We propose a generic formulation of action selection rules based on observed social and emotional signals, the agent’s personality, and the social relation between agent and player. The rules are formulated such that its variables can easily be obtained from real data. We illustrate and evaluate our framework using a simple social game called The Smile Game

Oncogene expression from extrachromosomal DNA is driven by copy number amplification and does not require spatial clustering in glioblastoma stem cells

Extrachromosomal DNA (ecDNA) are frequently observed in human cancers and are responsible for high levels of oncogene expression. In glioblastoma (GBM), ecDNA copy number correlates with poor prognosis. It is hypothesized that their copy number, size, and chromatin accessibility facilitate clustering of ecDNA and colocalization with transcriptional hubs, and that this underpins their elevated transcriptional activity. Here, we use super-resolution imaging and quantitative image analysis to evaluate GBM stem cells harbouring distinct ecDNA species (EGFR, CDK4, PDGFRA). We find no evidence that ecDNA routinely cluster with one another or closely interact with transcriptional hubs. Cells with EGFR-containing ecDNA have increased EGFR transcriptional output, but transcription per gene copy is similar in ecDNA compared to the endogenous chromosomal locus. These data suggest that it is the increased copy number of oncogene-harbouring ecDNA that primarily drives high levels of oncogene transcription, rather than specific interactions of ecDNA with each other or with high concentrations of the transcriptional machinery

Interphase chromosome positioning in in vitro porcine cells and ex vivo porcine tissues

Copyright @ 2012 The Authors. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and 85 reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. The article was made available through the Brunel University Open Access Publishing Fund.BACKGROUND: In interphase nuclei of a wide range of species chromosomes are organised into their own specific locations termed territories. These chromosome territories are non-randomly positioned in nuclei which is believed to be related to a spatial aspect of regulatory control over gene expression. In this study we have adopted the pig as a model in which to study interphase chromosome positioning and follows on from other studies from our group of using pig cells and tissues to study interphase genome re-positioning during differentiation. The pig is an important model organism both economically and as a closely related species to study human disease models. This is why great efforts have been made to accomplish the full genome sequence in the last decade. RESULTS: This study has positioned most of the porcine chromosomes in in vitro cultured adult and embryonic fibroblasts, early passage stromal derived mesenchymal stem cells and lymphocytes. The study is further expanded to position four chromosomes in ex vivo tissue derived from pig kidney, lung and brain. CONCLUSIONS: It was concluded that porcine chromosomes are also non-randomly positioned within interphase nuclei with few major differences in chromosome position in interphase nuclei between different cell and tissue types. There were also no differences between preferred nuclear location of chromosomes in in vitro cultured cells as compared to cells in tissue sections. Using a number of analyses to ascertain by what criteria porcine chromosomes were positioned in interphase nuclei; we found a correlation with DNA content.This study is partly supported by Sygen International PLC