Handwashing Action Detection System for an Autonomous Social Robot

Young children are at an increased risk of contracting contagious diseases such as COVID-19 due to improper hand hygiene. An autonomous social agent that observes children while handwashing and encourages good hand washing practices could provide an opportunity for handwashing behavior to become a habit. In this article, we present a human action recognition system, which is part of the vision system of a social robot platform, to assist children in developing a correct handwashing technique. A modified convolution neural network (CNN) architecture with Channel Spatial Attention Bilinear Pooling (CSAB) frame, with a VGG-16 architecture as the backbone is trained and validated on an augmented dataset. The modified architecture generalizes well with an accuracy of 90% for the WHO-prescribed handwashing steps even in an unseen environment. Our findings indicate that the approach can recognize even subtle hand movements in the video and can be used for gesture detection and classification in social robotics

Designing Empathy Game: Case on Participatory Design Session with children within the Indian context

Empathy games are a promising yet new research avenue that explores how to design empathic game experiences that would help children to understand and address the emotions of other people. Research in this field was primarily done in the USA and there is a research gap in understanding how empathy game design can apply and differ from the contexts of other countries. Our study replicated a study earlier conducted in the USA, aiming to explore the dynamic of the PD process, and identify specifics and challenges for PD methodology related to empathy and game design in the Indian context. We conducted a series of participatory design (PD) sessions with 18 Indian children between 7 and 11 years old. This paper reports our preliminary findings, including the following: (1) it might be challenging for Indian children to discuss and design for empathy and emotions-related topics, (2) using the English language can be a barrier while working with Indian children of 8 years old and younger, (3) cultural context affects roles children play in the design process. This paper contributes insights on identifying areas for further methodological work in PD for the Indian context.Comment: 5 pages, IDC 202

A Pillar/Perfusion Plate Enhances Cell Growth, Reproducibility, Throughput, and User Friendliness in Dynamic 3D Cell Culture

Static three-dimensional (3D) cell culture has been demonstrated in ultralow attachment well plates, hanging droplet plates, and microtiter well plates with hydrogels or magnetic nanoparticles. Although it is simple, reproducible, and relatively inexpensive, thus potentially used for high-throughput screening, statically cultured 3D cells often suffer from a necrotic core due to limited nutrient and oxygen diffusion and waste removal and have a limited in vivo-like tissue structure. Here, we overcome these challenges by developing a pillar/perfusion plate platform and demonstrating high-throughput, dynamic 3D cell culture. Cell spheroids were loaded on the pillar plate with hydrogel by simple sandwiching and encapsulation and cultured dynamically in the perfusion plate on a digital rocker. Unlike traditional microfluidic devices, fast flow velocity was maintained within perfusion wells and the pillar plate was separated from the perfusion plate for cell-based assays. It was compatible with common lab equipment and allowed cell culture, testing, staining, and imaging in situ. The pillar/perfusion plate enhanced cell growth by rapid diffusion, reproducibility, assay throughput, and user friendliness in a dynamic 3D cell culture

Obesity-associated microbiomes instigate visceral adipose tissue inflammation by recruitment of distinct neutrophils

Abstract Neutrophils are increasingly implicated in chronic inflammation and metabolic disorders. Here, we show that visceral adipose tissue (VAT) from individuals with obesity contains more neutrophils than in those without obesity and is associated with a distinct bacterial community. Exploring the mechanism, we gavaged microbiome-depleted mice with stool from patients with and without obesity during high-fat or normal diet administration. Only mice receiving high-fat diet and stool from subjects with obesity show enrichment of VAT neutrophils, suggesting donor microbiome and recipient diet determine VAT neutrophilia. A rise in pro-inflammatory CD4+ Th1 cells and a drop in immunoregulatory T cells in VAT only follows if there is a transient spike in neutrophils. Human VAT neutrophils exhibit a distinct gene expression pattern that is found in different human tissues, including tumors. VAT neutrophils and bacteria may be a novel therapeutic target for treating inflammatory-driven complications of obesity, including insulin resistance and colon cancer