Emotional virtual agents: How do young people decode synthetic facial expressions?

Given the need of remote learning and the growing presence of virtual agents within online learning environments, the present research aims at investigating young people’ ability to decode emotional expressions conveyed by virtual agents. The study, involves 50 healthy participants aged between 22 and 35 years (mean age=27.86; SD= ±2.75; 30 females) which were required to label pictures and video clips depicting female and male virtual agents of different ages (young, middle-aged and old) displaying static and dynamic expressions of disgust, anger, sadness, fear, happiness, surprise and neutrality. Depending on the emotional category, significant effects were observed for the agents’ age, gender, and type of administered (static vs dynamic) stimuli on the young people’ decoding accuracy of the virtual agents’ emotional faces. Anger was significantly more accurately decoded in male rather than female faces while the opposite result was observed for happy, fearful, surprised, and disgusted faces. Middle aged faces were generally more accurately decoded than young and old emotional faces except for sadness and disgust. Significantly greater accuracy was observed for dynamic vs static faces of disgust, sadness, and fear, in contrast to static vs dynamic neutral and surprised faces

How Human Likeness, Gender and Ethnicity affect Elders'Acceptance of Assistive Robots

The present study investigates the extent to which robots' 1) degree of human likeness, 2) gender and 3) ethnicity affect elders' attitude towards using robots as healthcare assistants. To this aim 2 groups of 45 seniors, aged 65 + years, were asked to watch video clips showing three speaking female and male robots, respectively. Each set of stimuli consisted in 2 androids, one with Caucasian and one with Asian aspect, and 1 humanoid robot. After each video clip elders were asked to assess, through the Robot Acceptance Questionnaire (RAQ) their willingness to interact with them, as well as robots' Pragmatic, Hedonic and Attractive qualities. Through this investigation it was found that male seniors were more proactive than female ones in their attitude toward robots showing more willingness to interact with them and attributing more positive scores to robots' qualities. It was also observed that androids were clearly more preferred than humanoid robots no matter their gender. Finally, seniors' preferences were for female android robots with Asian traits and male android with Caucasian traits suggesting that both gender and ethnical features are intermingled in defining robot's appearance that generate seniors' acceptance

Humanoid and android robots in the imaginary of adolescents, young adults and seniors

This paper investigates effects of participants’ gender and age (adolescents, young adults, and seniors), robots’ gender (male and female robots) and appearance (humanoid vs android) on robots’ acceptance dimensions. The study involved 6 differently aged groups of participants (two adolescents, two young adults and two seniors’ groups, for a total of 240 participants) requested to express their willingness to interact and their perception of robots’ usefulness, pleasantness, appeal, and engagement for two different sets of females (Pepper, Erica, and Sophia) and male (Romeo, Albert, and Yuri) humanoid and android robots. Participants were also requested to express their preferred and attributed age ranges and occupations they entrusted to robots among healthcare, housework, protection and security and front office. Results show that neither the age nor participants and robots’ gender, nor robots’ human likeness univocally affected robots’ acceptance by these differently aged users. Robots’ acceptance appeared to be a nonlinear combination of all these factors

Uptake and distribution of lead in tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum L.)

Six Nicotiana tabacum varieties were in vitro cultured and experimentally exposed to lead in order to estimate lead uptake and distribution in tobacco plantlets and to observe possible differences depending on variety. Fifty-day-old plantlets were exposed to four Pb rates ranging from 0 to 200 mg dm-3. No statistically significant effect of lead on dry matter weight was observed for any variety or plant part. Tissue lead concentration was determined on upper leaves, lower leaves, stems and roots. Lead accumulation in the plant positively correlated with lead exposure level. Lead concentration in the different plant parts decreased as follows: root, lower leaves, stem and upper leaves. All tobacco varieties showed similar behaviour with respect to lead treatment level and revealed the same distribution pattern of lead concentration in the different plant part. The highest values of tissue lead concentration were found in tobacco variety Pr61, while the lowest in G94-2

Yield, quality, antioxidant, and sensorial properties of diced tomato as affected by genotype and industrial processing in Southern Italy

Research was carried out on processing tomato in Southern Italy in order to compare four round-prismatic type hybrids oriented to diced produce (4420, Miceno, Nemabrix, Impact as a control). The hybrid Nemabrix attained the highest marketable yield (180.9 t ha–1, due to both the highest number of fruit per plant and their mean weight (103.7 and 70 g, respectively), and it was not significantly different from the other genotypes in terms of processing efficiency both as a total and along dicing chain (67.8% and 65.6%, respectively). Lycopene attained the highest concentration in Nemabrix (155 mg kg–1), and β–carotene was most concentrated in 4420 and Miceno (2.8 mg kg–1). Significant differences arose between the genotypes with regard to the sensorial variables aspect, colour, taste, firmness, and fresh taste

Yield, quality and antioxidants of peeled tomato as affected by genotype and industrial processing in southern Italy

Research was carried out on processing tomato in San Severo (Tavoliere delle Puglie, Foggia, Italy) in order to compare four long-type fruit hybrids oriented to peeled produce (Abbundo, Umex, Superpeel, Taylor), using a randomized complete block design with three replicates. The hybrid Superpeel reached the highest marketable yield due to the highest fruit number and mean weight; along the peeling chain, Umex and Taylor showed the highest processing efficiency. Titratable acidity and sodium were highest in Taylor fruits, whereas the highest fiber content was detected in Abbundo fruits. Compared to pre-processing fruits, peeled tomatoes showed increased values of total and soluble solids as well as reducing sugars, but decreased sugar ratio and colour. The highest concentrations of antioxidants in processed fruits were recorded in Umex for lycopene and in Superpeel for β-carotene. Compared to pre-processing fruits, in peeled tomatoes lycopene and β-carotene concentrations remained stable and polyphenols increased referring to fresh weight. The hybrids examined did not show univocal trends in terms of sensorial features