Wavelet Menus: A Stacking Metaphor for Adapting Marking Menus to Mobile Devices

4 pagesInternational audienceExploration and navigation in multimedia data hierarchies (e.g., photos, music) are frequent tasks on mobile devices. However, visualization and interaction are impoverished due to the limited size of the screen and the lack of precise input devices. As a result, menus on mobile devices do not provide efficient navigation as compared to many innovative menu techniques proposed for Desktop platforms. In this paper, we present Wavelet, the adaptation of the Wave menu for the navigation in multimedia data on iPhone. Its layout, based on an inverted representation of the hierarchy, is particularly well adapted to mobile devices. Indeed, it guarantees that submenus are always displayed on the screen and it supports efficient navigation by providing previsualization of the submenus

Wavelet Menu : Adaptation des Marking Menus pour les Dispositifs Mobiles

National audienceL'exploration et la navigation dans les hiérarchies de données multimédia (photos, musiques, etc.) sont des tâches fréquentes sur dispositifs mobiles. Cependant, l'interaction peut s'en trouver dégradée du fait de la petite taille de l'écran et de l'absence de dispositifs d'entrée précis. Par conséquent, les techniques de menus innovantes conçues pour PC ne sont plus adaptées aux dispositifs mobiles pour naviguer efficacement. Dans cet article, nous présentons le Wavelet menu, l'adaptation du Wave menu pour la navigation dans des données multimédia sur iPhone. Grâce à une représentation inversée de la hiérarchie, il est particulièrement adapté aux dispositifs mobiles. En effet, il garantit que les sous-menus sont toujours affichés à l'écran et la prévisualisation des sous-menus permet une navigation efficace

Toward a Human-Centered Uml for Risk Analysis

Safety is now a major concern in many complex systems such as medical robots. A way to control the complexity of such systems is to manage risk. The first and important step of this activity is risk analysis. During risk analysis, two main studies concerning human factors must be integrated: task analysis and human error analysis. This multidisciplinary analysis often leads to a work sharing between several stakeholders who use their own languages and techniques. This often produces consistency errors and understanding difficulties between them. Hence, this paper proposes to treat the risk analysis on the common expression language UML (Unified Modeling Language) and to handle human factors concepts for task analysis and human error analysis based on the features of this language. The approach is applied to the development of a medical robot for teleechography

Wavelet Menus on Handheld Devices: Stacking Metaphor for Novice Mode and Eyes-Free Selection for Expert Mode

International audienceThis paper presents the design and evaluation of the Wavelet menu and its implementation on the iPhone. The Wavelet menu consists of a concentric hierarchical Marking menu using simple gestures. The novice mode, i.e. when the menu is displayed, is well adapted to the limited screen space of handheld devices because the representation of the menu hierarchy is inverted, the deeper submenu being always displayed at the center of the screen. The visual design is based on a stacking metaphor to reinforce the perception of the hierarchy and to help users to quickly understand how the technique works. The menu also supports submenu previsualization, a key property to navigate efficiently in a hierarchy of commands. The quantitative evaluation shows that the Wavelet menu provides an intuitive way for supporting efficient gesture-based navigation. The expert mode, i.e. gesture without waiting for the menu to pop-up, is another key property of the Wavelet menu: By providing stroke shortcuts, the Wavelet favors the selection of frequent commands in expert mode and makes eyes-free selection possible. A user experiment shows that participants are able to select commands, eyes-free, while walking

Genetic sex separation of the malaria vector, Anopheles arabiensis, by exposing eggs to dieldrin

BACKGROUND: The sterile insect technique (SIT) has been used with success for suppressing or eliminating important insect pests of agricultural or veterinary importance. In order to develop SIT for mosquitoes, female elimination prior to release is essential as they are the disease-transmitting sex. A genetic sexing strain (GSS) of Anopheles arabiensis was created based on resistance to dieldrin, and methods of sex separation at the egg stage were developed. The use of this strain for SIT will require sexually sterile males: useful radiation doses for this purpose were determined for pupae and adults. METHODS: For the creation of the sexing strain, dieldrin-resistant males were irradiated with 40 Gy using a (60)Co source and were subsequently crossed to homozygous susceptible virgin females. Individual families were screened for semi-sterility and for male resistance to dieldrin. For sex separation, eggs of a resulting GSS, ANO IPCL1, were exposed to varying concentrations of dieldrin for different durations. Percent hatch, larval survival, and male and female emergence were recorded. Radiation induced sterility was determined following adult and pupa exposure to gamma rays at 0–105 Gy. Mortality induced by dieldrin treatment, and levels of sterility post radiation were investigated. RESULTS: ANO IPCL1 contains a complex chromosome aberration that pseudo-links the male-determining Y chromosome and dieldrin resistance, conferring high natural semi-sterility. Exposure of eggs to 2, 3, and 4 ppm dieldrin solutions resulted in complete female elimination without a significant decrease of male emergence compared to the controls. A dose of 75 Gy reduced the fertility to 3.8 and 6.9% when males were irradiated as pupae or adults respectively, but the proportions of progeny of these males reaching adulthood were 0.6 and 1.5% respectively CONCLUSION: The GSS ANO IPCL1 was shown to be a suitable strain for further testing for SIT though high semi-sterility is a disadvantage for mass rearing

Optimization of mosquito egg production under mass rearing setting: effects of cage volume, blood meal source and adult population density for the malaria vector, Anopheles arabiensis

Background: Anopheles arabiensis is one of the major malaria vectors that put millions of people in endemic countries at risk. Mass-rearing of this mosquito is crucial for strategies that use sterile insect technique to suppress vector populations. The sterile insect technique (SIT) package for this mosquito species is being developed by the Insect Pest Control Subprogramme of the Joint FAO/IAEA Division of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture. To improve mass-rearing outcomes for An. arabiensis, the question of whether the egg production by females would be affected by the size of the adult holding cages, the source of the blood meal and the total number of pupae that could be loaded into the cages was addressed and finally the impact of adding additional pupae to the cage daily to maintain adult numbers on egg productivity assessed. Methods: Mass production cages of two different volumes, two different sources of blood meal (bovine and porcine) and two different population densities (cages originally loaded with either 15,000 or 20,000 pupae) were tested and evaluated on the basis of eggs produced/cage or per female. Males and females pupae with a ratio of 1:1 were added to the cages at day 1 and 2 of pupation. The emerging adults had constant access to 5% sugar solution and blood fed via the Hemotek membrane feeding system. Eggs were collected either twice a week or daily. A generalized linear model was used to identify factors which gave significantly higher egg production. Results: Neither cage volume nor blood meal source affected egg production per cage or per female. However, increasing population density to 20,000 pupae had a negative effect on eggs produced per cage and per female. Although high density negatively impacted egg production, adding 1000 daily additional pupae compensating for daily mortality resulted in a substantial increase in egg production. Moreover, in all tests the first and the third egg batches collected were significantly higher than others eggs batches. With the equipment and protocols described here and routinely used at the Insect Pest Control Laboratory (IPCL), it was possible to produce up to 120,000 eggs/cage/day. Conclusion: These results demonstrated that 15,000 is the optimal number of pupae to be loaded into the Anopheles Mass production cages. Under this condition, an average of 40 eggs per female was obtained for five gonotrophic cycles. However, an improvement in egg production can be achieved by daily addition, to the original 15,000 pupae

Efficiency of Three Diets for Larval Development in Mass Rearing Aedes albopictus (Diptera: Culicidae)

A fundamental step in establishing a mass production system is the development of a larval diet that promotes high adult performance at a reasonable cost. To identify a suitable larval diet for Aedes albopictus (Skuse), three diets were compared: a standard laboratory diet used at the Centro Agricoltura Ambiente, Italy (CAA) and two diets developed specifically for mosquito mass rearing at the FAO/IAEA Laboratory, Austria. The two IAEA diets, without affecting survival to the pupal stage, resulted in a shorter time to pupation and to emergence when compared with the CAA diet. At 24 h from pupation onset, 50 and 90% of the male pupae produced on the CAA and IAEA diets, respectively, had formed and could be collected. The diet received during the larval stage affected the longevity of adult males with access to water only, with best results observed when using the CAA larval diet. However, similar longevity among diet treatments was observed when males were supplied with sucrose solution. No differences were observed in the effects of larval diet on adult male size or female fecundity and fertility. Considering these results, along with the relative costs of the three diets, the IAEA 2 diet is found to be the preferred choice for mass rearing of Aedes albopictus, particularly if a sugar meal can be given to adult males before release, to ensure their teneral reserves are sufficient for survival, dispersal, and mating in the field

Evaluation of the potential of cobalamin derivatives bearing ru(ii) polypyridyl complexes as photosensitizers for photodynamic therapy

The current photosensitizers (PSs) for photodynamic therapy (PDT) lack selectivity for cancer cells. To tackle this drawback, in view of selective cancer delivery, we envisioned conjugating two ruthenium polypyridyl complexes to vitamin B12 (Cobalamin, Cbl) to take advantage of the solubility and active uptake of the latter. Ultimately, our results showed that the transcobalamin pathway is unlikely involved for the delivery of these ruthenium‐based PDT PSs, emphasizing the difficulty in successfully delivering metal complexes to cancer cells