Application-level Communication Services for Development of Social Networking Systems

In this paper, we present our communication middleware (CM), which is designed to reduce the effort of developing common communication functionalities for social networking services (SNSs) in the client-server model. SNS developers can apply the application-level communication services of CM both to an SNS server and to client applications simply by calling application programming interfaces (APIs) and configuring various options related to communication services. CM was developed to enable SNS developers to easily build fundamental services such as transmission of a user-defined event, user membership and authentication management, friend management, content upload and download with different numbers of attachments, chat management, and direct file transfer. All of the communication services also provide options that a developer can customize according to his or her SNS requirements

A virtual 3D mobile guide in the INTERMEDIA project

In this paper, we introduce a European research project, interactive media with personal networked devices (INTERMEDIA) in which we seek to progress beyond home and device-centric convergence toward truly user-centric convergence of multimedia. Our vision is to make the user the multimedia center: the user as the point at which multimedia services and the means for interacting with them converge. This paper proposes the main research goals in providing users with a personalized interface and content independent of physical networked devices, and space and time. As a case study, we describe an indoors, mobile mixed reality guide system: Chloe@University. With a see-through head-mounted display (HMD) connected to a small wearable computing device, Chloe@University provides users with an efficient way to guide someone in a building. A 3D virtual character in front of the user guides him/her to the required destinatio

A virtual 3D mobile guide in the INTERMEDIA project

In this paper, we introduce a European research project, interactive media with personal networked devices (INTERMEDIA) in which we seek to progress beyond home and device-centric convergence toward truly user-centric convergence of multimedia. Our vision is to make the user the multimedia center: the user as the point at which multimedia services and the means for interacting with them converge. This paper proposes the main research goals in providing users with a personalized interface and content independent of physical networked devices, and space and time. As a case study, we describe an indoors, mobile mixed reality guide system: Chloe@University. With a see-through head-mounted display (HMD) connected to a small wearable computing device, Chloe@University provides users with an efficient way to guide someone in a building. A 3D virtual character in front of the user guides him/her to the required destination

Contextual Bookmarks

The role of digital information in everyday life divides out activities in interacting with the physical and the digital world. There is no connection between these worlds that is easily accessible, even though physical objects, persons, and real world events often have digital counterparts. The physical reality is actually overlaid by an additional virtual or digital layer. As we are acting in the physical and the digital world it is desirable that we can use links that bridge the gap between both worlds. In this paper we describe our approach to narrow this gap. Starting from a scenario that shows the demand for such connections, we present an architecture that allows users to bookmark specific situations. Based on these contextual bookmarks the user can request additional digital information. Our first prototype enables the user to bookmark content shown on public displays by taking photos of the display using a mobile phone. Our system combines content analysis of the photo with context information such as position, creation time, etc. in order to form the basis to establish a link to the digital world. The presented architecture will serve as a flexible solution to find and integrate further connections between the physical and the digital world

Chloe@University: An indoor, HMD-based mobile mixed reality guide

This paper describes an indoors, mobile mixed reality guide system: Chloe@University. With a see-through head-mounted display (HMD) connected to a hidden small computing device, Chloe@University provides users with an efficient way of guiding in a building. Augmented 3D virtual character in front of a user guides him/her to destination so that he/she can just follow the virtual guide after the user gives a voice command with desired destination to it. The most suitable virtual character is selected depending on a user’s preference for personalized service. For adapting to different indoor environments, the proposed system integrates various localization approaches. In addition, it supports different access right to a building map based on user profiles and security level

MicroRNA-target pairs in human renal epithelial cells treated with transforming growth factor β1: a novel role of miR-382

We reported previously an approach for identifying microRNA (miRNA)-target pairs by combining miRNA and proteomic analyses. The approach was applied in the present study to examine human renal epithelial cells treated with transforming growth factor β1 (TGFβ1), a model of epithelial–mesenchymal transition important for the development of renal interstitial fibrosis. Treatment of human renal epithelial cells with TGFβ1 resulted in upregulation of 16 miRNAs and 18 proteins and downregulation of 17 miRNAs and 16 proteins. Of the miRNAs and proteins that exhibited reciprocal changes in expression, 77 pairs met the sequence criteria for miRNA–target interactions. Knockdown of miR-382, which was up-regulated by TGFβ1, attenuated TGFβ1-induced loss of the epithelial marker E-cadherin. miR-382 was confirmed by 3′-untranslated region reporter assay to target five genes that were downregulated at the protein level by TGFβ1, including superoxide dismutase 2 (SOD2). Knockdown of miR-382 attenuated TGFβ1-induced downregulation of SOD2. Overexpression of SOD2 ameliorated TGFβ1-induced loss of the epithelial marker. The study provided experimental evidence in the form of reciprocal expression at the protein level for a large number of predicted miRNA-target pairs and discovered a novel role of miR-382 and SOD2 in the loss of epithelial characteristics induced by TGFβ1

Open X-Embodiment:Robotic learning datasets and RT-X models

Large, high-capacity models trained on diverse datasets have shown remarkable successes on efficiently tackling downstream applications. In domains from NLP to Computer Vision, this has led to a consolidation of pretrained models, with general pretrained backbones serving as a starting point for many applications. Can such a consolidation happen in robotics? Conventionally, robotic learning methods train a separate model for every application, every robot, and even every environment. Can we instead train "generalist" X-robot policy that can be adapted efficiently to new robots, tasks, and environments? In this paper, we provide datasets in standardized data formats and models to make it possible to explore this possibility in the context of robotic manipulation, alongside experimental results that provide an example of effective X-robot policies. We assemble a dataset from 22 different robots collected through a collaboration between 21 institutions, demonstrating 527 skills (160266 tasks). We show that a high-capacity model trained on this data, which we call RT-X, exhibits positive transfer and improves the capabilities of multiple robots by leveraging experience from other platforms. The project website is robotics-transformer-x.github.io

Contextual Bookmarks

The role of digital information in everyday life divides out activities in interacting with the physical and the digital world. There is no connection between these worlds that is easily accessible, even though physical objects, persons, and real world events often have digital counterparts. The physical reality is actually overlaid by an additional virtual or digital layer. As we are acting in the physical and the digital world it is desirable that we can use links that bridge the gap between both worlds. In this paper we describe our approach to narrow this gap. Starting from a scenario that shows the demand for such connections, we present an architecture that allows users to bookmark specific situations. Based on these contextual bookmarks the user can request additional digital information. Our first prototype enables the user to bookmark content shown on public displays by taking photos of the display using a mobile phone. Our system combines content analysis of the photo with context information such as position, creation time, etc. in order to form the basis to establish a link to the digital world. The presented architecture will serve as a flexible solution to find and integrate further connections between the physical and the digital world