170 research outputs found
Who's Watching Me?: Exploring the Impact of Audience Familiarity on Player Performance, Experience, and Exertion in Virtual Reality Exergames
Familiarity with audiences plays a significant role in shaping individual
performance and experience across various activities in everyday life. This
study delves into the impact of familiarity with non-playable character (NPC)
audiences on player performance and experience in virtual reality (VR)
exergames. By manipulating of NPC appearance (face and body shape) and voice
familiarity, we explored their effect on game performance, experience, and
exertion. The findings reveal that familiar NPC audiences have a positive
impact on performance, creating a more enjoyable gaming experience, and leading
players to perceive less exertion. Moreover, individuals with higher levels of
self-consciousness exhibit heightened sensitivity to the familiarity with NPC
audiences. Our results shed light on the role of familiar NPC audiences in
enhancing player experiences and provide insights for designing more engaging
and personalized VR exergame environments.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and
Augmented Reality (ISMAR) 202
Pharmacokinetics, clearance, and biosafety of polyethylene glycol-coated hollow gold nanospheres
OBJECTIVE: Gold nanoparticles have attracted enormous interest as potential theranostic agents. However, little is known about the long-term elimination and systemic toxicity of gold nanoparticles in the literature. Hollow gold nanospheres (HAuNS) is a class of photothermal conducting agent that have shown promises in photoacoustic imaging, photothermal ablation therapy, and drug delivery. It’s very necessary to make clear the biosafety of HAuNS for its further application. METHODS: We investigated the cytotoxicity, complement activation, and platelet aggregation of polyethylene glycol (PEG)-coated HAuNS (PEG-HAuNS, average diameter of 63 nm) in vitro and their pharmacokinetics, biodistribution, organ elimination, hematology, clinical chemistry, acute toxicity, and chronic toxicity in mice. RESULTS: PEG-HAuNS did not induce detectable activation of the complement system and did not induce detectable platelet aggregation. The blood half-life of PEG-HAuNS in mice was 8.19 ± 1.4 hr. The single effective dose of PEG-HAuNS in photothermal ablation therapy was determined to be 12.5 mg/kg. PEG-HAuNS caused no adverse effects after 10 daily intravenous injections over a 2-week period at a dose of 12.5 mg/kg per injection (accumulated dose: 125 mg/kg). Quantitative analysis of the muscle, liver, spleen, and kidney revealed that the levels of Au decreased 45.2%, 28.6%, 41.7%, and 40.8%, respectively, from day 14 to day 90 after the first intravenous injection, indicating that PEG-HAuNS was slowly cleared from these organs in mice. CONCLUSION: Our data support the use of PEG-HAuNS as a promising photothermal conducting agent
TIMS: A Tactile Internet-Based Micromanipulation System with Haptic Guidance for Surgical Training
Microsurgery involves the dexterous manipulation of delicate tissue or
fragile structures such as small blood vessels, nerves, etc., under a
microscope. To address the limitation of imprecise manipulation of human hands,
robotic systems have been developed to assist surgeons in performing complex
microsurgical tasks with greater precision and safety. However, the steep
learning curve for robot-assisted microsurgery (RAMS) and the shortage of
well-trained surgeons pose significant challenges to the widespread adoption of
RAMS. Therefore, the development of a versatile training system for RAMS is
necessary, which can bring tangible benefits to both surgeons and patients.
In this paper, we present a Tactile Internet-Based Micromanipulation System
(TIMS) based on a ROS-Django web-based architecture for microsurgical training.
This system can provide tactile feedback to operators via a wearable tactile
display (WTD), while real-time data is transmitted through the internet via a
ROS-Django framework. In addition, TIMS integrates haptic guidance to `guide'
the trainees to follow a desired trajectory provided by expert surgeons.
Learning from demonstration based on Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) was used
to generate the desired trajectory. User studies were also conducted to verify
the effectiveness of our proposed TIMS, comparing users' performance with and
without tactile feedback and/or haptic guidance.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures. For more details of this project, please view our
website: https://sites.google.com/view/viewtims/hom
On the Use of Large Interactive Displays to Support Collaborative Engagement and Visual Exploratory Tasks
Large interactive displays can provide suitable workspaces for learners to conduct collaborative learning tasks with visual information in co-located settings. In this research, we explored the use of these displays to support collaborative engagement and exploratory tasks with visual representations. Our investigation looked at the effect of four factors (number of virtual workspaces within the display, number of displays, position arrangement of the collaborators, and collaborative modes of interaction) on learners' knowledge acquisition, engagement level, and task performance. To this end, a user study was conducted with 72 participants divided into 6 groups using an interactive tool developed to support the collaborative exploration of 3D visual structures. The results of this study showed that learners with one shared workspace and one single display can achieve better user performance and engagement levels. In addition, the back-to-back position with learners sharing their view and control of the workspaces was the most favorable. It also led to improved learning outcomes and engagement levels during the collaboration process
Monoscopic vs. Stereoscopic Views and Display Types in the Teleoperation of Unmanned Ground Vehicles for Object Avoidance
Virtual reality (VR) head-mounted displays (HMD) have recently been used to
provide an immersive, first-person vision/view in real-time for manipulating
remotely-controlled unmanned ground vehicles (UGV). The teleoperation of UGV
can be challenging for operators when it is done in real time. One big
challenge is for operators to perceive quickly and rapidly the distance of
objects that are around the UGV while it is moving. In this research, we
explore the use of monoscopic and stereoscopic views and display types
(immersive and non-immersive VR) for operating vehicles remotely. We conducted
two user studies to explore their feasibility and advantages. Results show a
significantly better performance when using an immersive display with
stereoscopic view for dynamic, real-time navigation tasks that require avoiding
both moving and static obstacles. The use of stereoscopic view in an immersive
display in particular improved user performance and led to better usability
Non-Intrusive Adaptation: Input-Centric Parameter-efficient Fine-Tuning for Versatile Multimodal Modeling
Large language models (LLMs) and vision language models (VLMs) demonstrate
excellent performance on a wide range of tasks by scaling up parameter counts
from O(10^9) to O(10^{12}) levels and further beyond. These large scales make
it impossible to adapt and deploy fully specialized models given a task of
interest. Parameter-efficient fine-tuning (PEFT) emerges as a promising
direction to tackle the adaptation and serving challenges for such large
models. We categorize PEFT techniques into two types: intrusive and
non-intrusive. Intrusive PEFT techniques directly change a model's internal
architecture. Though more flexible, they introduce significant complexities for
training and serving. Non-intrusive PEFT techniques leave the internal
architecture unchanged and only adapt model-external parameters, such as
embeddings for input. In this work, we describe AdaLink as a non-intrusive PEFT
technique that achieves competitive performance compared to SoTA intrusive PEFT
(LoRA) and full model fine-tuning (FT) on various tasks. We evaluate using both
text-only and multimodal tasks, with experiments that account for both
parameter-count scaling and training regime (with and without instruction
tuning)
Long Non-Coding RNA RP11-789C1.1 Suppresses Epithelial to Mesenchymal Transition in Gastric Cancer Through the RP11-789C1.1/MiR-5003/E-Cadherin Axis
Background/Aims: Gastric cancer (GC) is a common malignancy with a global incidence that ranks fourth among all tumor types. Epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is a tumor biological process with a role in GC cell metastasis. Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) and microRNAs possess important regulatory functions at the cellular level and in diverse pathophysiological processes. This study was conducted to investigate whether lncRNA RP11-789C1.1 regulates EMT in GC by mediating the miR-5003/E-cadherin pathway. Methods: RP11-789C1.1 and miR-5003 expression was detected in GC specimens and cell lines by quantitative real-time PCR. Western blotting and immunohistochemistry were performed to detect EMT markers in GC. Cell Counting Kit 8 assays were carried out to explore cell proliferation. Wound healing and Transwell assays were conducted to determine the migration and invasion of GC cells. To clarify the correlation between RP11-789C1.1, miR-5003, and E-cadherin, dual-luciferase reporter assays were applied. Results: LncRNA RP11-789C1.1 was significantly down-regulated in GC patients and cell lines, along with the concomitant up-regulation of miR-5003. Silencing RP11-789C1.1 and over-expressing miR-5003 significantly promoted the tumor behavior of GC cells. Dual-luciferase reporter assays confirmed that miR-5003 was the target of both RP11-789C1.1 and E-cadherin. Furthermore, at both the mRNA and protein level, silencing RP11-789C1.1 remarkably reduced the expression of E-cadherin and promoted EMT, which were reversed by knocking down miR-5003. Conclusions: LncRNA RP11-789C1.1 inhibited EMT in GC through the RP11-789C1.1/miR-5003/E-cadherin axis, which could be a promising therapeutic target for GC
Methamphetamine Increases LPS-Mediated Expression of IL-8, TNF-α and IL-1β in Human Macrophages through Common Signaling Pathways
The use of methamphetamine (MA) has increased in recent years, and is a major health concern throughout the world. The use of MA has been associated with an increased risk of acquiring HIV-1, along with an increased probability of the acquisition of various sexually transmitted infections. In order to determine the potential effects of MA exposure in the context of an infectious agent, U937 macrophages were exposed to various combinations of MA and bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS). Treatment with MA alone caused significant increases in the levels of TNF-α, while treatment with both MA and LPS resulted in significant increases in TNF-α, IL-1β and the chemokine IL-8. The increases in cytokine or chemokine levels seen when cells were treated with both LPS and MA were generally greater than those increases observed when cells were treated with only LPS. Treatment with chemical inhibitors demonstrated that the signal transduction pathways including NF-kB, MAPK, and PI3-Akt were involved in mediating the increased inflammatory response. As discussed in the paper, these pathways appear to be utilized by both MA and LPS, in the induction of these inflammatory mediators. Since these pathways are involved in the induction of inflammation in response to other pathogens, this suggests that MA-exacerbated inflammation may be a common feature of infectious disease in MA abusers
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