Delivering a graphic design course online: simulating a real classroom situation and speculating what technologies can ideally offer in this virtual situation

This thesis examines a new way to simplify online education and to simulate a real classroom situation. It explores how a graphic design class can be conducted online where the students from different geographical locations and faculty can interact instantaneously with the aid of video, chat and whiteboard. For the most part, the potential for Macromedia Flash Communication Server to deliver chat, whiteboard and video functionality are assessed. It is speculated that video images are slightly jerky among Modem users whereas sharp video images are obtained with high-speed Internet connection. The survey findings among the design students and faculty at R.I.T reveal the following: 75% agreed that the project can be Functional; 68% esteem the Esthetic value of the web site and 48% are in favor of its Usability features. The whole project is executed in Flash MX 2004, making use of User Interface Components and Communication Components

Myasthenia Gravis: Clinical and Immunological Aspects

Autoimmune diseases such as myasthenia gravis (MG) result from an altered balance between the processes of activation and regulation of immune response. MG is the most common autoimmune disorder characterized by failure of transmission at the neuromuscular junction (NMJ). Autoantibodies in MG target the acetylcholine receptors (AChRs) as well as non-AChR components like muscle-specific tyrosine kinase (MuSK). Autoantibodies against AChRs are produced by B cells in the germinal centres (GCs), formed in the medulla of MG thymus and circulated to the post-synaptic side of the neuromuscular junction (NMJ) leading to complement-mediated destruction of the post-synaptic folds of NMJ and internalization of AChRs. The incidence and prevalence of MG have increased particularly in elderly, but clinical presentations vary substantially and recognition depends on classic disease phenotype. This chapter focuses on clinical and immunological aspects of MG and its subgroups based on its characterization of the antigenic targets

The effect of Visual Design Quality on Player Experience Components in Tablet Games

Research in the field of Human Computer Interaction Design indicates that there is a need to develop further methods, tools, and frameworks for the design and evaluation of digital game interfaces. This thesis aims to design, develop, and evaluate two different types of tablet games with varying visual design quality interfaces to examine users’ perceptions of hedonic quality, visual design, emotions, and game enjoyment in different channels of experience. The design-oriented approach was adopted to combine both creative practice and scientific inquiry in the game design process and empirical evaluation. Hypotheses were formulated to explore the significance of visual design quality in relation to the components of player experience. The study entailed two phases. In the first phase, participatory design methods were employed to design and develop the tablet games encompassing mind-mapping techniques, focus groups, iterative prototyping with multiple cycles of usability testing of user interfaces. In the second phase, survey instruments were applied to collect and analyze data from 111 participants using tablet games as stimuli in a controlled experimental condition. The main contribution of this research is creation of a player experience model, validated in the domain of tablet gaming, to serve as a new theory. This research will allow for game researchers and practitioners to obtain a deeper understanding of the significance of the player experience framework components to create optimal player experience in tablet games. The finding shows that highly attractive game user interfaces were perceived to have higher utility and ease of use. Participants exhibited higher levels of arousal and valence in the high visual design quality interfaces mediated by hedonic quality. Participants who were highly sensitive to visual design did not necessarily derive the highest level of game enjoyment. Participants derived a heightened level of engagement in the arousal channel of experience and the highest level of enjoyment in the flow state. The use of 2.5D graphics and analogous color schemes created a spatial illusion that captivated users' attention. Practitioners are encouraged to design game artifacts with feature sets and mechanics capable of transporting players into the state of flow, as this is the stage where they experience game control, excitement and relaxation in addition to game immersion in the state of arousal

Understanding and Measuring Psychological Stress using Social Media

A body of literature has demonstrated that users' mental health conditions, such as depression and anxiety, can be predicted from their social media language. There is still a gap in the scientific understanding of how psychological stress is expressed on social media. Stress is one of the primary underlying causes and correlates of chronic physical illnesses and mental health conditions. In this paper, we explore the language of psychological stress with a dataset of 601 social media users, who answered the Perceived Stress Scale questionnaire and also consented to share their Facebook and Twitter data. Firstly, we find that stressed users post about exhaustion, losing control, increased self-focus and physical pain as compared to posts about breakfast, family-time, and travel by users who are not stressed. Secondly, we find that Facebook language is more predictive of stress than Twitter language. Thirdly, we demonstrate how the language based models thus developed can be adapted and be scaled to measure county-level trends. Since county-level language is easily available on Twitter using the Streaming API, we explore multiple domain adaptation algorithms to adapt user-level Facebook models to Twitter language. We find that domain-adapted and scaled social media-based measurements of stress outperform sociodemographic variables (age, gender, race, education, and income), against ground-truth survey-based stress measurements, both at the user- and the county-level in the U.S. Twitter language that scores higher in stress is also predictive of poorer health, less access to facilities and lower socioeconomic status in counties. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of using social media as a new tool for monitoring stress levels of both individuals and counties.Comment: Accepted for publication in the proceedings of ICWSM 201

PSO Algorithm Based Resource Allocation for OFDM Cognitive Radio

With the development of remote correspondences, the issue of data transmission lack has turned out to be more conspicuous. Then again, to sense the presence of authorized clients, range detecting procedures are utilized. Vitality recognition, Matched channel identification and Cyclo-stationary component location are the three ordinary techniques utilized for range detecting. However there are a few downsides of these strategies. The execution of vitality indicator is helpless to instability in noise power. Coordinated channel range detecting strategies require a devoted collector for each essential client. Cyclo-stationary element Detection requires parcel of calculation exertion and long perception time. This proposition talks about the routine vitality location strategy and proposed enhanced vitality identification technique utilizing cubing operation. Additionally, cyclic prefix based range detecting is talked about in this theory. Scientific Description of vitality location and cyclic prefix based range detecting strategies is likewise delineated for fading channels

It Takes Two to Negotiate: Modeling Social Exchange in Online Multiplayer Games

Online games are dynamic environments where players interact with each other, which offers a rich setting for understanding how players negotiate their way through the game to an ultimate victory. This work studies online player interactions during the turn-based strategy game, Diplomacy. We annotated a dataset of over 10,000 chat messages for different negotiation strategies and empirically examined their importance in predicting long- and short-term game outcomes. Although negotiation strategies can be predicted reasonably accurately through the linguistic modeling of the chat messages, more is needed for predicting short-term outcomes such as trustworthiness. On the other hand, they are essential in graph-aware reinforcement learning approaches to predict long-term outcomes, such as a player's success, based on their prior negotiation history. We close with a discussion of the implications and impact of our work. The dataset is available at https://github.com/kj2013/claff-diplomacy.Comment: 28 pages, 11 figures. Accepted to CSCW '24 and forthcoming the Proceedings of ACM HCI '2

LLMs and Finetuning: Benchmarking cross-domain performance for hate speech detection

This paper compares different pre-trained and fine-tuned large language models (LLMs) for hate speech detection. Our research underscores challenges in LLMs' cross-domain validity and overfitting risks. Through evaluations, we highlight the need for fine-tuned models that grasp the nuances of hate speech through greater label heterogeneity. We conclude with a vision for the future of hate speech detection, emphasizing cross-domain generalizability and appropriate benchmarking practices.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures, 4 table

Social Media and Electoral Predictions: A Meta-Analytic Review

Can social media data be used to make reasonably accurate estimates of electoral outcomes? We conducted a meta-analytic review to examine the predictive performance of different features of social media posts and different methods in predicting political elections: (1) content features; and (2) structural features. Across 45 published studies, we find significant variance in the quality of predictions, which on average still lag behind those in traditional survey research. More specifically, our findings that machine learning-based approaches generally outperform lexicon-based analyses, while combining structural and content features yields most accurate predictions

Characterization of autoreactive B cells and AChR autoantibodies in myasthenia gravis

This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonMyasthenia gravis (MG) is a B cell mediated autoimmune disease that is characterized by muscle weakness and fatigue and associated with autoantibodies directed against muscle acetylcholine receptor (AChR) at the neuromuscular junction. Detection of these antibodies has an important role in the diagnosis, treatment and management of the disease. The antibodies are partly produced by the autoreactive B cells in germinal centres formed in the medulla of the myasthenia thymus, where there are also thymic muscle-like cells that express fetal AChRs. The antibodies circulate to the neuromuscular junction leading to complement mediated lysis of the membrane and internalization of AChRs. The patients are successfully treated by corticosteroids, plasmapheresis and immunotherapies that reduce the levels of circulating antibodies. The AChR antibodies are disease specific and thought to be pathogenic but the mechanisms involved in the failure of tolerance is not well understood. In addition, the treatments are non-specific. Better treatments, targeted at acetylcholine receptor specific B cells, or the plasma cells that make the antibodies, would be preferred. The aim of the thesis was to try to characterize AChR autoantibodies from B cells in the myasthenia gravis thymus gland. The first steps were to test sera, from patients whose thymic lymphocyte populations had been archived by Prof N Willcox, in order to identify cultures that contained cells synthesizing AChR antibodies. Radioimmunoprecipitation and cell-based assays using human embryonic kidney (HEK293T) cells transfected with adult or fetal AChR with additional rapsyn-EGFP (enhanced green fluorescent protein), were used to measure the antibodies. Thymic cultures were tested from selected patients to identify AChR synthesis. The next step was to identify the AChR-antibody specific B cells; a novel approach was to use extracellular membrane vesicles prepared from the transfected cells expressing the AChRs clustered with the intracellular protein rapsyn. Finally, the peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) and thymic lymphocytes were characterized by fluorescence activation cell sorting (FACS), and the binding of AChR vesicles to CD19 positive B cells examined. The radioimmunoprecipitation assay was able to detect serum AChR antibodies in MG patients’ sera and to a lesser extent in thymic cell cultures. The cell-based assay also detected clustered AChR antibodies in sera of the majority but not all MG patients. Because the thymus gland contains fetal AChR rather than the adult form, fetal AChR antibodies were tested and found to be more highly represented in the patients than the antibodies to the adult form. Extracellular membrane vesicles expressed AChRs as shown by immunostaining and western blotting. FACS analysis of the AChR/rapsyn- EGFP membrane vesicle preparation showed that they could be detected by this method. To develop the methods for detecting the AChR antibody producing specific B cells, FACS analysis of lymphocyte populations was established in Raji cells and peripheral blood lymphocytes, and finally in the thymic cultures of two myasthenia patients. Analysis of CD19+ B lymphocytes from one selected thymic culture was incubated with AChR expressing vesicles which demonstrated binding of the vesicles to a population of B cells. The work done in this thesis partially achieved the aims of developing the methods for identifying AChR-specific B cells by use of AChR-expressing membrane vesicles and has provided the basis for further work. For this confirmation of the results, fresh thymic preparations from patients would clearly be desirable rather than the archived preparations available at the time of this work