2,937 research outputs found
Evaluation of human-like anthropomorphism in the context of online bidding and affordances
This paper presents a four condition experiment and the results concerning the wider area of investigating the effectiveness and user satisfaction of using anthropomorphic feedback at the user interface. The specific context used was online bidding. The four conditions used in the experiment were human video, human voice, human voice with anthropomorphic text and a control consisting of neutral text. The main results of the experiment showed significant differences in participants' perceptions regarding the 'humanity' of the feedback they used. As expected, the control condition consisting of neutral text incurred significantly lower ratings for the 'humanity' characteristics of the feedback. The human video condition also incurred significantly stronger perceptions regarding the appearance being human. The results were also analysed in light of the theory of affordances and the authors conclude that the four conditions used in the experiment were likely equivalent in their facilitating the affordances. Therefore the authors suggest that facilitating the affordances may be more crucial to a user interface and the users than the actual anthropomorphic characteristic of the feedback used
Reasoning about Knowledge and Strategies under Hierarchical Information
Two distinct semantics have been considered for knowledge in the context of
strategic reasoning, depending on whether players know each other's strategy or
not. The problem of distributed synthesis for epistemic temporal specifications
is known to be undecidable for the latter semantics, already on systems with
hierarchical information. However, for the other, uninformed semantics, the
problem is decidable on such systems. In this work we generalise this result by
introducing an epistemic extension of Strategy Logic with imperfect
information. The semantics of knowledge operators is uninformed, and captures
agents that can change observation power when they change strategies. We solve
the model-checking problem on a class of "hierarchical instances", which
provides a solution to a vast class of strategic problems with epistemic
temporal specifications on hierarchical systems, such as distributed synthesis
or rational synthesis
Usefulness of VRML building models in a direction finding context
This paper describes an experiment which aims to examine the effectiveness and efficiency of a Virtual Reality Modelling Language (VRML) building model compared with equivalent architectural plans, for direction finding purposes. The effectiveness and efficiency issues being primarily investigated were number of tasks completed overall and task completion times. The experiment involved a series of tasks where participants had to find a number of locations/objects in a building unknown to them at the outset of the experiment. Statistically significant results are presented for the benefit of the research community, law enforcement officers and fire fighters where it is clear that in this context, the VRML model led to better task completions than the equivalent architectural plans. Regarding the task completion times,
no statistical significance was found. Given the current climate of security issues and terrorist threats, it is important that law enforcement officers have at their disposal the best information possible regarding the layout of a building, whilst keeping costs down. This also applies to fire fighters when rescuing victims. This experiment has shown that a VRML model leads to better
task completions in direction finding
Evaluation of anthropomorphic feedback for an online auction and affordances
This paper describes an experiment investigating the
effectiveness and user satisfaction of using anthropomorphic
feedback at the user interface. The context chosen was online
bidding due to this kind of activity being very much used in
current times by general users. The main results of the
experiment were that there was a statistically significant effect
observed for the time taken to place a bid in the anthropomorphic
text condition. However there were no other significant effects
for effectiveness issues and user satisfaction indicators. The
results were also analysed in terms of the affordances and the
main findings were that each of the four conditions tested in the
experiment were probably equivalent in terms of their facilitating
the affordances. Overall it may be more important to facilitate
the affordances rather than a type of feedback being
anthropomorphic in nature or not
Anthropomorphic user interface feedback in a sewing context and affordances
The aim of the authors' research is to gain better insights into the effectiveness and user satisfaction of anthropomorphism at the user interface. Therefore, this paper presents a between users experiment and the results in the context of anthropomorphism at the user interface and the giving of instruction for learning sewing stitches. Two experimental conditions were used, where the information for learning sewing stitches was the same. However the manner of presentation was varied. Therefore one condition was anthropomorphic and the other was non-anthropomorphic. Also the work is closely linked with Hartson's theory of affordances applied to user interfaces. The results suggest that facilitation of the affordances in an anthropomorphic user interface lead to statistically significant results in terms of effectiveness and user satisfaction in the sewing context. Further some violation of the affordances leads to an interface being less usable in terms of effectiveness and user satisfaction
On the Complexity of ATL and ATL* Module Checking
Module checking has been introduced in late 1990s to verify open systems,
i.e., systems whose behavior depends on the continuous interaction with the
environment. Classically, module checking has been investigated with respect to
specifications given as CTL and CTL* formulas. Recently, it has been shown that
CTL (resp., CTL*) module checking offers a distinctly different perspective
from the better-known problem of ATL (resp., ATL*) model checking. In
particular, ATL (resp., ATL*) module checking strictly enhances the
expressiveness of both CTL (resp., CTL*) module checking and ATL (resp. ATL*)
model checking. In this paper, we provide asymptotically optimal bounds on the
computational cost of module checking against ATL and ATL*, whose upper bounds
are based on an automata-theoretic approach. We show that module-checking for
ATL is EXPTIME-complete, which is the same complexity of module checking
against CTL. On the other hand, ATL* module checking turns out to be
3EXPTIME-complete, hence exponentially harder than CTL* module checking.Comment: In Proceedings GandALF 2017, arXiv:1709.0176
FOOD SAFETY IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
The past decade has taught us that pathogenic microorganisms are adapting themselves to processing treatments and environmental conditions once thought to be effective in controlling their proliferation. Genetic exchange is sprouting new varieties of bacterial strains with increased abilities to cause disease. The scientific community must adopt a proactive approach, including an aggressive research agenda that seeks to determine the ecology of the food production and processing environments, as well as the basic biology of pathogenic organisms. In addition, it is crucial that we develop a well-integrated educational strategy that seeks to educate industry and consumers.Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,
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