Someone to talk to: Using automated characters to support simulated learning activities

The University of the West of England (UWE) has a large number of students who will pursue subsequent careers in a wide range of professional fields such as engineering, law, business, nursing, teaching, psychology, criminology and design. An important part of that education is the ability to relate theory to practice (Barrett 2011), and developments in technology over the past years have now created opportunities to enable students to experience simulations of events and situations that are difficult, unethical or impossible to organise in the real world, before they put their skills into practice in the real world (Newland 2008). Virtual worlds are proving to be popular and effective environments at UWE for simulations of a range of experiences, such as accident investigations, risk assessments, business ethics cases, psychotherapy practice and sociological experiments. However, as the number of students undertaking these simulations increases, so the call on tutor time will significantly increase. These simulations require to be scalable, to enable their potential for study by large cohorts of students. This year we have experimented with automated non-player characters, also known as “bots,” to enable students to undertake some dialogue during the simulated scenarios without the need for a number of tutors to be available to take particular roles. The bots are currently unsophisticated keyword recognition systems, but even these have proven to have some value in two of the simulations; the accident investigation and the risk assessment, where students were able to gather information from characters they could “talk” to, making more realistic the experience of exploring the environment where the simulations were taking place. This paper discusses the results of student feedback, evaluations of these simulations and prototype development for the next generation bots that we want to implement in future learning simulations based on the findings of the evaluations

Country knowledge and familiarity effects on consumer perceived risk and rejection of foreign-made products

Las preocupaciones de los consumidores por los productos fabricados en el extranjero plantean interrogantes sobre lo que éstos conocen acerca del país de origen y la medida en que ese conocimiento se traduce en su rechazo de los productos extranjeros. El presente estudio examina tres tipos de variables de conocimiento acerca del país de origen que, junto con la experiencia de uso/familiaridad, actúan como antecedentes potenciales del riesgo percibido y, a su vez, de la reticencia de los consumidores españoles a comprar y de la (no) posesión de productos chinos. Los resultados revelan que el conocimiento medioambiental del país genera riesgo de auto-imagen/social, mientras que la experiencia de uso/familiaridad reduce tanto el riesgo de auto-imagen/social como el riesgo de rendimiento. Ambos tipos de riesgo afectan significativamente (positivamente) a la reticencia de los consumidores a comprar y (negativamente) a la posesión de productos extranjeros. Se discuten las implicaciones teóricas.Consumer concerns about foreign-made products raise questions about what consumers know about the COO and the extent to which such knowledge translates into their rejection of foreign products. The present examines three types country knowledge variables, along with familitarity/usage experience, as potential antecedents of perceived risk and, in turn, of Spanish consumers’ reluctance to buy and (non-)ownership of Chinese apparel products. The findings reveal that environmental country knowledge can engender self-image/social risk, whereas familiarity/usage experience reduces both self-image/social and performance risks. As expected, the two distinct risk types considered here significantly contributed to consumers’ reluctance to buy (positively) and product ownership (negatively). Theoretical implications are discussed

A Rate Control Algorthm for Low-Delay H.264 Video Coding with Stored-B Pictures

A rate control (RC) algorithm for H.264 video coding with stored-B (SB) pictures is proposed for low-delay applications. Different models for P and SB pictures are defined for a better QP and MAD estimation. Furthermore, a novel saw-tooth shaped model of target buffer level has also been introduced for a proper bit allocation in GOP structures with SB pictures. Our experimental results show that this proposal outperforms the reference software RC in terms of buffer occupancy and target bit rate adjustment at the expense of slight quality reduction.Publicad

Adaptive Multi-Pattern Fast Block-Matching Algorithm Based on Motion Classification Techniques

Motion estimation is the most time-consuming subsystem in a video codec. Thus, more efficient methods of motion estimation should be investigated. Real video sequences usually exhibit a wide-range of motion content as well as different degrees of detail, which become particularly difficult to manage by typical block-matching algorithms. Recent developments in the area of motion estimation have focused on the adaptation to video contents. Adaptive thresholds and multi-pattern search algorithms have shown to achieve good performance when they success to adjust to motion characteristics. This paper proposes an adaptive algorithm, called MCS, that makes use of an especially tailored classifier that detects some motion cues and chooses the search pattern that best fits to them. Specifically, a hierarchical structure of binary linear classifiers is proposed. Our experimental results show that MCS notably reduces the computational cost with respect to an state-of-the-art method while maintaining the qualityPublicad

How Do Methyl Groups Enhance the Triplet Chemiexcitation Yield of Dioxetane?

Chemiluminescence is the emission of light as a result of a nonadiabatic chemical reaction. The present work is concerned with understanding the yield of chemiluminescence, in particular how it dramatically increases upon methylation of 1,2-dioxetane. Both ground-state and nonadiabatic dynamics (including singlet excited states) of the decomposition reaction of various methyl-substituted dioxetanes have been simulated. Methyl-substitution leads to a significant increase in the dissociation time scale. The rotation around the O-C-C-O dihedral angle is slowed; thus, the molecular system stays longer in the "entropic trap" region. A simple kinetic model is proposed to explain how this leads to a higher chemiluminescence yield. These results have important implications for the design of efficient chemiluminescent systems in medical, environmental, and industrial applications

Evaluation of Presence in Virtual Environments: Haptic Vest and User's Haptic Skills

This paper presents the integration of a haptic vest with a multimodal virtual environment, consisting of video, audio, and haptic feedback, with the main objective of determining how users, who interact with the virtual environment, benefit from tactile and thermal stimuli provided by the haptic vest. Some experiments are performed using a game application of a train station after an explosion. The participants of this experiment have to move inside the environment, while receiving several stimuli to check if any improvement in presence or realism in that environment is reflected on the vest. This is done by comparing the experimental results with those similar scenarios, obtained without haptic feedback. These experiments are carried out by three groups of participants who are classified on the basis of their experience in haptics and virtual reality devices. Some differences among the groups have been found, which can be related to the levels of realism and synchronization of all the elements in the multimodal environment that fulfill the expectations and maximum satisfaction level. According to the participants in the experiment, two different levels of requirements are to be defined by the system to comply with the expectations of professional and conventional users

A new species of Liropus (Crustacea, Amphipoda, Caprellidae) from Le Danois bank (southern Bay of Biscay)

AbstractA new species of the genus Liropus (Crustacea, Amphipoda, Caprellidae) is described based on specimens collected from Le Danois bank (‘El Cachucho’ fishing grounds), Bay of Biscay. Liropus cachuchoensis n. sp. can be distinguished from all its congeners mainly by the absence of eyes and by the presence of a dorsal projection proximally on pereonites 3, 4 and 5 in males, on 3 and 5 in females. The new species has been found living on muddy bottoms on the southern flank of the bank and adjacent continental slope, between 619 and 1062m depth, with a maximum abundance (56.1ind./100m2) recorded at 1044–1062m. Morphological comparisons among the world's members of Liropus, a key to species, and data on their distribution are presented