Imagining Artificial Intelligence Applications with People with Visual Disabilities Using Tactile Ideation

There has been a surge in artificial intelligence (AI) technologies co-opted by or designed for people with visual disabilities. Researchers and engineers have pushed technical boundaries in areas such as computer vision, natural language processing, location inference, and wearable computing. But what do people with visual disabilities imagine as their own technological future? To explore this question, we developed and carried out tactile ideation workshops with participants in the UK and India. Our participants generated a large and diverse set of ideas, most focusing on ways to meet needs related to social interaction. In some cases, this was a matter of recognizing people. In other cases, they wanted to be able to participate in social situations without foregrounding their disability. It was striking that this finding was consistent across UK and India despite substantial cultural and infrastructural differences. In this paper, we describe a new technique for working with people with visual disabilities to imagine new technologies that are tuned to their needs and aspirations. Based on our experience with these workshops, we provide a set of social dimensions to consider in the design of new AI technologies: social participation, social navigation, social maintenance, and social independence. We offer these social dimensions as a starting point to forefront users' social needs and desires as a more deliberate consideration for assistive technology design

Cytochrome P450-mediated metabolism of N-(2-methoxyphenyl)-hydroxylamine, a human metabolite of the environmental pollutants and carcinogens o-anisidine and o-nitroanisole

N-(2-methoxyphenyl)hydroxylamine is a human metabolite of the industrial and environmental pollutants and bladder carcinogens 2-methoxyaniline (o-anisidine) and 2-methoxynitrobenzene (o-nitroanisole). Here, we investigated the ability of hepatic microsomes from rat and rabbit to metabolize this reactive compound. We found that N-(2-methoxyphenyl)hydroxylamine is metabolized by microsomes of both species mainly to o-aminophenol and a parent carcinogen, o-anisidine, whereas 2-methoxynitrosobenzene (o-nitrosoanisole) is formed as a minor metabolite. Another N-(2-methoxyphenyl)hydroxylamine metabolite, the exact structure of which has not been identified as yet, was generated by hepatic microsomes of rabbits, but its formation by those of rats was negligible. To evaluate the role of rat hepatic microsomal cytochromes P450 (CYP) in N-(2-methoxyphenyl)hydroxylamine metabolism, we investigated the modulation of its metabolism by specific inducers of these enzymes. The results of this study show that rat hepatic CYPs of a 1A subfamily and, to a lesser extent those of a 2B subfamily, catalyze N-(2-methoxyphenyl)hydroxylamine conversion to form both its reductive metabolite, o-anisidine, and o-aminophenol. CYP2E1 is the most efficient enzyme catalyzing conversion of N-(2-methoxyphenyl)hydroxylamine to o-aminophenol

Identifying an indoor air exposure limit for formaldehyde considering both irritation and cancer hazards

Formaldehyde is a well-studied chemical and effects from inhalation exposures have been extensively characterized in numerous controlled studies with human volunteers, including asthmatics and other sensitive individuals, which provide a rich database on exposure concentrations that can reliably produce the symptoms of sensory irritation. Although individuals can differ in their sensitivity to odor and eye irritation, the majority of authoritative reviews of the formaldehyde literature have concluded that an air concentration of 0.3 ppm will provide protection from eye irritation for virtually everyone. A weight of evidence-based formaldehyde exposure limit of 0.1 ppm (100 ppb) is recommended as an indoor air level for all individuals for odor detection and sensory irritation. It has recently been suggested by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the National Toxicology Program (NTP), and the US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) that formaldehyde is causally associated with nasopharyngeal cancer (NPC) and leukemia. This has led US EPA to conclude that irritation is not the most sensitive toxic endpoint and that carcinogenicity should dictate how to establish exposure limits for formaldehyde. In this review, a number of lines of reasoning and substantial scientific evidence are described and discussed, which leads to a conclusion that neither point of contact nor systemic effects of any type, including NPC or leukemia, are causally associated with exposure to formaldehyde. This conclusion supports the view that the equivocal epidemiology studies that suggest otherwise are almost certainly flawed by identified or yet to be unidentified confounding variables. Thus, this assessment concludes that a formaldehyde indoor air limit of 0.1 ppm should protect even particularly susceptible individuals from both irritation effects and any potential cancer hazard

A plasma shutter to generate a synchronized subnanosecond pulse for optical probing of laser-produced plasmas

A simple and reliable technique to temporally shorten a multinanosecond Nd:glass laser pulse to less than nanosecond duration at the second harmonic wavelength is described in this article. Using this technique a short probe pulse synchronized with the main laser was generated for optical probing of laser-produced plasmas. Experiments reported were conducted with a Nd:glass laser of wavelength 1.06 μm and of 20 ns duration to yield a temporally shortened pulse of duration less than a nanosecond at a wavelength of 0.53 μm. This technique would be particularly useful and give better results for shorter wavelength lasers (UV and VUV) for which the conventional techniques of pulse slicing are sophisticated as well as add to the expense and complexity of the laser system