A Framework for Designing Fair Ubiquitous Computing Systems

Over the past few decades, ubiquitous sensors and systems have been an integral part of humans' everyday life. They augment human capabilities and provide personalized experiences across diverse contexts such as healthcare, education, and transportation. However, the widespread adoption of ubiquitous computing has also brought forth concerns regarding fairness and equitable treatment. As these systems can make automated decisions that impact individuals, it is essential to ensure that they do not perpetuate biases or discriminate against specific groups. While fairness in ubiquitous computing has been an acknowledged concern since the 1990s, it remains understudied within the field. To bridge this gap, we propose a framework that incorporates fairness considerations into system design, including prioritizing stakeholder perspectives, inclusive data collection, fairness-aware algorithms, appropriate evaluation criteria, enhancing human engagement while addressing privacy concerns, and interactive improvement and regular monitoring. Our framework aims to guide the development of fair and unbiased ubiquitous computing systems, ensuring equal treatment and positive societal impact.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figure, published in 2023 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing & the 2023 ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computin

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data

The complete chloroplast genome of Viburnum dilatatum (Adoxaceae)

Viburnum dilatatum Thunb. is a large deciduous tree of Adoxaceae. In this study, the chloroplast genome sequence of V. dilatatum is 158,392 bp, consisting of a large single-copy (LSC) region with 87,070 bp, a small single-copy (SSC) region with 18,242 bp , and two inverted repeat (IR) regions with 26,540 bp. The GC content in the chloroplast genome of C. julianae is 38.1%. The chloroplast genome of V. dilatatum contains 126 genes, including 83 protein-coding genes, 39 tRNA genes, and 4 rRNA genes. Phylogenetic tree showed that V. dilatatum was clustered with V. utile