Specific facial signals associate with categories of social actions conveyed through questions

The early recognition of fundamental social actions, like questions, is crucial for understanding the speaker’s intended message and planning a timely response in conversation. Questions themselves may express more than one social action category (e.g., an information request “What time is it?”, an invitation “Will you come to my party?” or a criticism “Are you crazy?”). Although human language use occurs predominantly in a multimodal context, prior research on social actions has mainly focused on the verbal modality. This study breaks new ground by investigating how conversational facial signals may map onto the expression of different types of social actions conveyed through questions. The distribution, timing, and temporal organization of facial signals across social actions was analysed in a rich corpus of naturalistic, dyadic face-to-face Dutch conversations. These social actions were: Information Requests, Understanding Checks, Self-Directed questions, Stance or Sentiment questions, Other-Initiated Repairs, Active Participation questions, questions for Structuring, Initiating or Maintaining Conversation, and Plans and Actions questions. This is the first study to reveal differences in distribution and timing of facial signals across different types of social actions. The findings raise the possibility that facial signals may facilitate social action recognition during language processing in multimodal face-to-face interaction

Conversational eyebrow frowns facilitate question identification: An online VR study

Conversation is a time-pressured environment. Recognising a social action (the ‘speech act’, such as a question requesting information) early is crucial in conversation to quickly understand the intended message and plan a timely response. Fast turns between interlocutors are especially relevant for responses to questions, since a long gap may be meaningful by itself. Human language is multimodal, involving speech as well as visual signals from the body, including the face. But little is known about how conversational facial signals contribute to the communication of social actions. Some of the most prominent facial signals in conversation are eyebrow movements. Previous studies found links between eyebrow movements and questions, suggesting that these facial signals could contribute to the rapid recognition of questions. Therefore, we aimed to investigate whether early eyebrow movements (eyebrow frown or raise vs. no eyebrow movement) facilitate question identification. Participants were instructed to view videos of avatars where the presence of eyebrow movements accompanying questions was manipulated. Their task was to indicate whether the utterance was a question or a statement as accurately and quickly as possible. Data was collected using the online testing platform Gorilla. Results showed higher accuracies and faster response times for questions with eyebrow frowns, suggesting a facilitative role of eyebrow frowns for question identification. This means that facial signals can critically contribute to the communication of social actions in conversation by signaling social action-specific visual information, and provide visual cues to speakers’ intentions

Facial signals and social actions in multimodal face-to-face interaction

In a conversation, recognising the speaker’s social action (e.g., a request) early may help the potential following speakers understand the intended message quickly, and plan a timely response. Human language is multimodal, and several studies have demonstrated the contribution of the body to communication. However, comparatively few studies have investigated (non-emotional) conversational facial signals and very little is known about how they contribute to the communication of social actions. Therefore, we investigated how facial signals map onto the expressions of two fundamental social actions in conversations: asking questions and providing responses. We studied the distribution and timing of 12 facial signals across 6778 questions and 4553 responses, annotated holistically in a corpus of 34 dyadic face-to-face Dutch conversations. Moreover, we analysed facial signal clustering to find out whether there are specific combinations of facial signals within questions or responses. Results showed a high proportion of facial signals, with a qualitatively different distribution in questions versus responses. Additionally, clusters of facial signals were identified. Most facial signals occurred early in the utterance, and had earlier onsets in questions. Thus, facial signals may critically contribute to the communication of social actions in conversation by providing social action-specific visual information

Factors contributing to defaulting scheduled therapy sessions by caregivers of children with congenital disabilities

Background: Defaulting scheduled rehabilitation therapy may result in increased adverse outcomes such as permanent disability and increased healthcare costs. Concomitantly, there is evidence to suggest that early and continued rehabilitation of children with congenital disabilities can improve outcomes significantly. This study was conducted to determine factors contributing to caregivers’ defaulting scheduled rehabilitation  therapy sessions.Methods: A descriptive cross sectional study was carried out at Chitungwiza Central Hospital, a tertiary facility offering in and outpatient rehabilitation services in Zimbabwe. Caregivers of children who had congenital disabilities (N=40) and who had a history of defaulting treatment but were available during the data collection period responded to an interviewer administered questionnaire. Data were analysed for means and frequencies using STATA 13.Results: Factors that contributed to caregivers defaulting scheduled therapy included economic constraints (52%), child related factors (43%), caregiver related factors (42%), service centred factors (30%) and psychosocial factors(58%). Majority of the caregivers (98%) were motivated to attend therapy by observable improvements in their children. Other motivators were incentives given in the rehabilitation department (45%), availability of rehabilitation personnel to provide the required services (48%) and psychosocial support from fellow caregivers, families and the rehabilitation staff (68%). Although all the caregivers could not distinguish occupational therapy from physiotherapy services they all reported that therapy was important.Conclusions: A combination of psychosocial, economic, child centred and service centred factors contributed to caregivers defaulting scheduled therapy. Interventions that may potentially improve caregiver attendance to scheduled therapy include community outreach services, efficient rehabilitation service provision at the hospitals, and facilitation of income generating programmes for caregivers

Pembangunan Aplikasi Perhitungan Honor Dan Pengukuran Kinerja Asisten Praktikum Berbasis SaaS

Bagi suatu perguruan tinggi, kegiatan praktikum sangat penting untuk mendukung pembelajaran di kelas. Beberapa masalah yang muncul dalam pengelolaan kegiatan praktikum seperti keterlambatan pengumpulan berita acara praktikum (BAP) sehingga memperlambat perhitungan, pembayaran dan pelaporan honor asprak. Dibutuhkan waktu sekitar dua minggu untuk rekapitulasi dan validasi ratusan lembar BAP yang telah terkumpul setiap bulannya. Dibutuhkan pengolahan data lebih lanjut untuk menilai kinerja asprak berdasarkan data BAP. Untuk mengatasi permasalahan di atas maka dibangun aplikasi perhitungan honor dan kinerja asprak. Aplikasi ini digunakan untuk mengelola data BAP, perhitungan dan pelaporan honor, perhitungan nilai transkrip aktivitas kemahasiswaan (TAK) dan pencetakan sertifikat asprak. Keterbatasan SDM atau biaya menyebabkan tidak semua perguruan tinggi dapat langsung membuat aplikasi yang dibutuhkan. Oleh karena itu aplikasi ini dibangun berbasis Software as A Service (SaaS). Aplikasi ini dikembangkan dengan metode analisis perancangan terstruktur dengan model waterfall. Pengumpulan data kebutuhan aplikasi dilakukan dengan survey ke fakultas-fakultas di Universitas Telkom. Hasilnya dianalisis dan dikembangkan menjadi rancangan aplikasi. Aplikasi diimplementasikan pada pemrograman PHP. Pengujian dilakukan dengan metode black box testing. Hasilnya berupa aplikasi SaaS untuk perhitungan honor dan pengukuran kinerja asisten praktikum. Perguruan tinggi pengguna aplikasi SaaS ini dapat melakukan kostumisasi terhadap fitur yang ada sesuai dengan kebutuhan

Complement Activation Determines the Therapeutic Activity of Rituximab In Vivo

Rituximab is an anti-CD20 chimeric mAb effective for the treatment of B-NHL. It can lyse lymphoma cells in vitro through both C- and Ab-dependent cellular cytotoxicity. The mechanism of action of rituximab in vivo is however still unclear. We have set up a new in vivo model in nonimmunodeficient mice by stable transduction of the human CD20 cDNA in the murine lymphoma line EL4. Animals injected i.v. with the EL4-CD20+ lymphoma cells died within 30 days with evident liver, spleen, and bone marrow involvement, confirmed by immunohistochemistry and PCR analysis. A single injection of rituximab or the murine anti-CD20 Ab 1F5, given i.p. 1 day after the tumor, cured 100% of the animals. Indeed, at week 4 after tumor cell inoculation, CD20+ cells were undetectable in all organs analyzed in rituximab-treated animals, as determined by immunohistochemistry and PCR. Rituximab had no direct effect on tumor growth in vitro. Depletion of either NK cells or neutrophils or both in tumor-injected animals did not affect the therapeutic activity of the drug. Similarly, rituximab was able to eradicate tumor cells in athymic nude mice, suggesting that its activity is T cell independent. In contrast, the protective activity of rituximab or the 1F5 Ab was completely abolished in syngeneic knockout animals lacking C1q, the first component of the classical pathway of C (C1qa−/−). These data demonstrate that C activation is fundamental for rituximab therapeutic activity in vivo

Time-domain Study of the Young Massive Cluster Westerlund 2 with the Hubble Space Telescope. I

Time-domain studies of pre-main-sequence (PMS) stars have long been used to investigate star properties during their early evolutionary phases and to trace the evolution of circumstellar environments. Historically these studies have been confined to the nearest, low-density, star-forming regions. We used the Wide Field Camera 3 on board the Hubble Space Telescope to extend, for the first time, the study of PMS variability to one of the few young massive clusters in the Milky Way, Westerlund 2. Our analysis reveals that at least one-third of the intermediate- and low-mass PMS stars in Westerlund 2 are variable. Based on the characteristics of their light curves, we classified ~11% of the variable stars as weak-line T Tauri candidates, ~52% as classical T Tauri candidates, ~5% as dippers, and ~26% as bursters. In addition, we found that 2% of the stars below 6 M ⊙ (~6% of the variables) are eclipsing binaries, with orbital periods shorter than 80 days. The spatial distribution of the different populations of variable PMS stars suggests that stellar feedback and UV radiation from massive stars play an important role in the evolution of circumstellar and planetary disks

MN112: a new Galactic candidate Luminous Blue Variable

We report the discovery of a new Galactic candidate Luminous Blue Variable (cLBV) via detection of an infrared circular nebula and follow-up spectroscopy of its central star. The nebula, MN112, is one of many dozens of circular nebulae detected at $24 \mu$m in the {\it Spitzer Space Telescope} archival data, whose morphology is similar to that of nebulae associated with known (c)LBVs and related evolved massive stars. Specifically, the core-halo morphology of MN112 bears a striking resemblance to the circumstellar nebula associated with the Galactic cLBV GAL 079.29+00.46, which suggests that both nebulae might have a similar origin and that the central star of MN112 is a LBV. The spectroscopy of the central star showed that its spectrum is almost identical to that of the bona fide LBV P Cygni, which also supports the LBV classification of the object. To further constrain the nature of MN112, we searched for signatures of possible high-amplitude (\ga 1 mag) photometric variability of the central star using archival and newly obtained photometric data covering a 45 year period. We found that the B magnitude of the star was constant ($\simeq$ 17.1$\pm$0.3 mag) over this period, while in the I band the star brightened by $\simeq 0.4$ mag during the last 17 years. Although the non-detection of large photometric variability leads us to use the prefix `candidate' in the classification of MN112, we remind that the long-term photometric stability is not unusual for genuine LBVs and that the brightness of P Cygni remains relatively stable during the last three centuries.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, accepted to MNRA