Design of a Virtual Assistant to Improve Interaction Between the Audience and the Presenter

This article presents a novel design of a Virtual Assistant as part of a human-machine interaction system to improve communication between the presenter and the audience that can be used in education or general presentations for improving interaction during the presentations (e.g., auditoriums with 200 people). The main goal of the proposed model is the design of a framework of interaction to increase the level of attention of the public in key aspects of the presentation. In this manner, the collaboration between the presenter and Virtual Assistant could improve the level of learning among the public. The design of the Virtual Assistant relies on non-anthropomorphic forms with ‘live’ characteristics generating an intuitive and self-explainable interface. A set of intuitive and useful virtual interactions to support the presenter was designed. This design was validated from various types of the public with a psychological study based on a discrete emotions’ questionnaire confirming the adequacy of the proposed solution. The human-machine interaction system supporting the Virtual Assistant should automatically recognize the attention level of the audience from audiovisual resources and synchronize the Virtual Assistant with the presentation. The system involves a complex artificial intelligence architecture embracing perception of high-level features from audio and video, knowledge representation, and reasoning for pervasive and affective computing and reinforcement learning to teach the intelligent agent to decide on the best strategy to increase the level of attention of the audience

Erasmus+ K2 Project. European Union.

The purpose of the VLE teaching/learning and assessment method analysis report2 is to investigate the status of virtual learning environments (VLEs) and related areas at institutional, national, and international levels in order to develop the VLE teaching/learning and assessment methodology

Geoarchaeology and castlescapes: heritage management case studies in Spain and the eastern Baltic

This paper promotes the application of geoarchaeology—joint studies using historical, archaeological and heritage approaches—to the conservation and management practice of castles and landscapes in the context of ‘castlescapes’. Using case studies from recent research on medieval castles in frontier regions of the eastern Baltic and Spain, it demonstrates how geoarchaeology can create synergies between on-site and off-site environments and between cultural and natural heritage and draw valuable information from soils and sediments about the changing form and function of spaces within castles, and about the links between these spaces and activities in their hinterlands. Geoarchaeological approaches can also illuminate the diachronic biographies that hide from visitors in the buried archaeology of castles, which to most visitors would be blank cavasses, but which can provide snap-shots of castle life in the context of a wider landscape. Castles are commonly publicly recognised as being important historical monuments, but from a heritage perspective they are often presented in isolation from their associated historical territories, and often (especially in frontier regions) appropriated within modern politics, which has influenced both heritage management decisions and research frameworks

European Capitals of Culture: Success Strategies and Long Term Effects

The European City/Capital of Culture Programme was launched in 1985 and the ECoC title has been awarded to nearly 60 cities in 30 countries. The Programme has become a key platform for city positioning and a catalyst for economic and cultural regeneration. Immediate cultural, social and economic impacts are common and the capacity to secure long-term effects, though harder to evidence, has grown in key areas such as urban image change and tourism development. The latter is evidence of the stronger commitment towards sustainable legacy planning and ever more defined and locally sensitive vision statements. This report documents common approaches and success strategies, highlights the strongest claims of long-term effect and analyses recurrent challenges that limit the Programme’s ability to reach its full potential. Key recommendations are the establishment of a standardised evaluation framework, greater emphasis on comparative research and the creation of a formal knowledge transfer programme so that future hosts can better benefit from the wealth of experience developed in the last three decades

El trazado del icosakaidígono en el <em>Clypeus</em> Jupiter-Ammon de Tarragona (s. I) y la faz de Cristo del rosetón de la catedral de Orvieto (s. XIV)

The techniques of massive data capture, as the Terrestrial Laser Scanner and the digital photogrammetry, allow to accurately analyze close objects and others that are not accessible, by statistical methods. Its application has allowed assessing, from the geometric point of view, the sculptures of the figure Clypeus of Tarragona, Jupiter-Ammon (1st century) and the one of the Orvieto’s Cathedral rosette, with the face of Christ (14th century). The Clypeus of Tarragona and Orvieto’s rosette are divided in 22 parts, forming a polygonal shape known as icosakaidígono. This polygon does not appear in the Elementa of Euclides, neither in the Almagesto of Ptolomeo, nor in the rare Practica Geometriae of the time. These polygons can be built by means of angular division inherited from astrolabe and quadrant builders. This polygon can be defined also through the rotation of the square, since the repeated support of the catheti on the hypotenuse allows the rotation of the tool, or other indirect methods. The conclusion of the analysis of these figures is that, statistically, both sculptures have a geometric construction equal to the Reliquiario del Corporale del Miracolo di Bolsena (1337-1338) of Orvieto’s Cathedral