Survey of contributions for a pipeline of emotion recognition and awareness - context variables, instruments & sensors, pre-processing techniques and extracted properties for automatic recognition of emotions

A avaliação emocional tem sido uma área de investigação, desde há muitos anos, na área da saúde e na área psicossocial. Foi a partir da década de 90 que o reconhecimento de emoções ganhou mais atenção por parte dos investigadores, tornando-se num importante tópico de investigação até aos dias de hoje (Basu, Bag, Mahadevappa, Mukherjee, & Guha, 2016). Segundo Picard, o estudo das emoções moveu-se da psicologia para a área da computação, criando um novo campo de investigação chamado de Affective Computing (AC). Aliás, no seu livro “Affective Computing”, indica as bases para a criação de um sistema inteligente para deteção emocional de forma automática (R. W. Picard, 1995). Nos últimos anos, tem-se presenciado a um aumento deste tipo de investigações, talvez pela necessidade de transformar a relação entre as coisas (e.g. hardware, software e produtos em geral) e as pessoas, numa interação mais inteligente e natural (R. Picard & Klein, 2002), transformando assim o AC num tópico importante de investigação (Bos, 2010). Vários autores consideram que a deteção automática de emoções poderá ter um impacto positivo na vida das pessoas. Por exemplo, a área da psicologia poderá beneficiar, com menos subjetividade, de dados contínuos e menos diferidos no tempo; a saúde poderá ser avaliada com informação complementar à fisiológica; poderá ser mais fácil detetar delitos como atos de delinquência e atentados terroristas; e será mais fácil desenhar produtos especializados em provocar ou transmitir emoções no mundo virtual (Murad & Malkawi, 2012). Poderá também ser possível criar sistemas inteligentes do ponto de vista afetivo, conscientes ao nível emocional, capazes de percecionar e reagir às emoções dos utilizadores. Apesar de existirem já vários estudos com o objetivo de detetar automaticamente emoções, os autores acreditam que a correlação de variáveis sociais, culturais e religiosas, com as fisiológicas, poderá contribuir de forma positiva para a qualidade dos resultados obtidos. Neste contexto, está-se a preparar uma experiência para detetar automaticamente o bem-estar nos trabalhadores de escritório. Pretende-se recolher variáveis de contexto de várias modalidades e, depois do respetivo pré-processamento, usar esses dados como input de algoritmos de Machine Learning (ML) para a respetiva classificação. O objetivo é verificar a possibilidade de criar sistemas inteligentes do ponto de vista afetivo, conscientes ao nível emocional, capazes de percecionar e reagir às emoções dos funcionários de escritório. Este relatório resume as obras estudadas pelos autores na área do AC na revisão bibliográfica sobre o tema. Sugere-se um sistema de tokens para melhor categorização da informação, e propõe-se também uma sistematização da informação através da organização desses tokens em quadros resumo, para permitir uma análise agregada das investigações. Na secção seguinte são resumidas as variáveis de contexto e propriedades de domínio utilizadas pelos autores. Depois são apresentados os instrumentos & sensores utilizados na recolha das variáveis de contexto. Posteriormente são resumidas as técnicas de pré-processamento utilizadas. Conclui-se com uma enumeração das propriedades extraídas mais utilizadas nas obras estudadas.Emotional assessment has been a research area of health and psychosocial field, since many years. It was from 90’s that the recognition of emotions gained more attention from the researchers, becoming an importante topic of research up to today (Basu, Bag, Mahadevappa, Mukherjee, & Guha, 2016). According to Picard, the study of emotions moved from psychology to the area of computing, creating a new research field called Affective Computing (AC). In fact, in her book “Affective Computing”, she indicates the basis for creating na intelligent system for automatic emotional detection (R. W. Picard, 1995). In recent years, there has been an increase in this kind of research, perhaps due the need to transform the interaction between things (e.g. hardware, software and products in general) and people more natural and intelligent (R. Picard & Klein, 2002). This transformed the AC in an important research topic (Bos, 2010). Several authors believe that the automatic emotional detection can have positive impacto on people’s lives. As an exemple, the area of psychology may benefit with less subjectivity, continuous and less deferred data in time; health can be assessed with additional info besides physiological data; it may be easier to detect crimes such as acts of delinquency and terrorist attacks; and it will be easier to design products specialized in provoking or transmitting emotions in the virtual world (Murad & Malkawi, 2012). It may also be possible to create intelligent affective systems. Emotion-aware systems that can understanding and react to people emotions. Although there are already several studies with the objective of automatically detecting emotions, the authors believe that the correlation of social, cultural and religious variables with physiological ones, may contribute positively to the quality of the results obtained. In this context, an experiment is being prepared to automatically detect the well-being of office workers. It is intended to collect context variables of several modalities and, after the pre- processing phase, use that data as input to Machine Learning (ML) classification algorithms. The goal is to verify the possibility of creating intelligent systems from an affective point of view, conscious at the emotional level, capable of perceiving and reacting to the emotions of office workers. This technical report summarizes the studied researchs by the authors during the bibliographic review on the AC topic. A token system is suggested for better categorization of information, and a systematization of information is also proposed through the organization of these tokens in summary tables, to allow an aggregated analysis of the investigations. The following section summarizes the context variables and domain properties used by the authors. Then, the instruments & sensors used to collect the context variables are presented. Subsequently, the pre-processing techniques used are summarized. It concludes with an enumeration of the extracted properties most used in the studied works.info:eu-repo/semantics/draf

Therapeutic Efficacy of Cintredekin Besudotox (IL13-PE38QQR) in Murine Lung Fibrosis Is Unaffected by Immunity to Pseudomonas aeruginosa Exotoxin A

Background: We have previously explored a therapeutic strategy for specifically targeting the profibrotic activity of IL-13 during experimental pulmonary fibrosis using a fusion protein comprised of human IL-13 and a mutated form of Pseudomonas aeruginosa exotoxin A (IL13-PE) and observed that the intranasal delivery of IL13-PE reduced bleomycin-induced pulmonary fibrosis through its elimination of IL-13-responsive cells in the lung. The aim of the present study was to determine whether the presence of an immune response to P. aeruginosa and/or its exotoxin A (PE) would diminish the anti-fibrotic properties of IL13-PE. Methodology/Principal Findings: Fourteen days after P. aeruginosa infection, C57BL/6 mice were injected with bleomycin via the intratracheal route. Other groups of mice received 4 doses of saline or IL13-PE by either intranasal or intraperitoneal application, and were challenged i.t. with bleomycin 28 days later. At day 21 after bleomycin, all mice received either saline vehicle or IL13-PE by the intranasal route and histopatological analyses of whole lung samples were performed at day 28 after bleomycin. Intrapulmonary P. aeruginosa infection promoted a neutralizing IgG2A and IgA antibody response in BALF and serum. Surprisingly, histological analysis showed that a prior P. aeruginosa infection attenuated the development of bleomycin-induced pulmonary fibrosis, which was modestly further attenuated by the intranasal administration of IL13-PE. Although prior intranasal administration of IL13-PE failed to elicit an antibody response, the systemic administration of IL13-PE induced a strong neutralizing antibody response. However, the prior systemic sensitization of mice with IL13-PE did not inhibit the anti-fibrotic effect of IL13-PE in fibrotic mice. Conclusions: Thus, IL13-PE therapy in pulmonary fibrosis works regardless of the presence of a humoral immune response to Pseudomonas exotoxin A. Interestingly, a prior infection with P. aeruginosa markedly attenuated the pulmonary fibrotic response suggesting that the immune elicitation by this pathogen exerts anti-fibrotic effects.National Institutes of Health (NIH)Fundacao de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de Sao Paulo (FAPESP)NeoPharm, In

Photography-based taxonomy is inadequate, unnecessary, and potentially harmful for biological sciences

The question whether taxonomic descriptions naming new animal species without type specimen(s) deposited in collections should be accepted for publication by scientific journals and allowed by the Code has already been discussed in Zootaxa (Dubois & Nemésio 2007; Donegan 2008, 2009; Nemésio 2009a–b; Dubois 2009; Gentile & Snell 2009; Minelli 2009; Cianferoni & Bartolozzi 2016; Amorim et al. 2016). This question was again raised in a letter supported by 35 signatories published in the journal Nature (Pape et al. 2016) on 15 September 2016. On 25 September 2016, the following rebuttal (strictly limited to 300 words as per the editorial rules of Nature) was submitted to Nature, which on 18 October 2016 refused to publish it. As we think this problem is a very important one for zoological taxonomy, this text is published here exactly as submitted to Nature, followed by the list of the 493 taxonomists and collection-based researchers who signed it in the short time span from 20 September to 6 October 2016

Catálogo Taxonômico da Fauna do Brasil: setting the baseline knowledge on the animal diversity in Brazil

The limited temporal completeness and taxonomic accuracy of species lists, made available in a traditional manner in scientific publications, has always represented a problem. These lists are invariably limited to a few taxonomic groups and do not represent up-to-date knowledge of all species and classifications. In this context, the Brazilian megadiverse fauna is no exception, and the Catálogo Taxonômico da Fauna do Brasil (CTFB) (http://fauna.jbrj.gov.br/), made public in 2015, represents a database on biodiversity anchored on a list of valid and expertly recognized scientific names of animals in Brazil. The CTFB is updated in near real time by a team of more than 800 specialists. By January 1, 2024, the CTFB compiled 133,691 nominal species, with 125,138 that were considered valid. Most of the valid species were arthropods (82.3%, with more than 102,000 species) and chordates (7.69%, with over 11,000 species). These taxa were followed by a cluster composed of Mollusca (3,567 species), Platyhelminthes (2,292 species), Annelida (1,833 species), and Nematoda (1,447 species). All remaining groups had less than 1,000 species reported in Brazil, with Cnidaria (831 species), Porifera (628 species), Rotifera (606 species), and Bryozoa (520 species) representing those with more than 500 species. Analysis of the CTFB database can facilitate and direct efforts towards the discovery of new species in Brazil, but it is also fundamental in providing the best available list of valid nominal species to users, including those in science, health, conservation efforts, and any initiative involving animals. The importance of the CTFB is evidenced by the elevated number of citations in the scientific literature in diverse areas of biology, law, anthropology, education, forensic science, and veterinary science, among others