Conception rapide d'aides techniques pour personnes tétraplégiques

International audienceLes aides techniques permettent à de nombreuses personnes tétraplégiques d'accomplir des tâches qu'elles ne pourraient pas accomplir sans elles. Selon (Laffont, 2008), la possibilité de contrôler son environnement est d'ailleurs déterminante pour la qualité de la réinsertion sociale, familiale et professionnelle. En parallèle, nous pouvons constater qu'une grande proportion des aides techniques disponibles est peu ou pas utilisée. Ceci qui s'expliquer par de multiples raisons : manque d'écoute dans la sélection, difficulté d'obtention des aides techniques, des performances et du changement de besoins. Néanmoins, le développement récent de technologies à très bas coût, l'engouement du public pour le Do It Yourself et la diffusion des connaissances en interaction homme-machine permettent d'affirmer qu'il est possible de concevoir rapidement des aides techniques réellement adaptées. Nous illustrerons ces aspects au travers d'expériences menées de la conception à la réalisation de prototypes matériel et logiciels pour personnes tétraplégique

The Synchronization Power (Consensus Number) of Access-Control Objects: The Case of AllowList and DenyList

This article studies the synchronization power of AllowList and DenyList objects under the lens provided by Herlihy's consensus hierarchy. It specifies AllowList and DenyList as distributed objects and shows that while they can both be seen as specializations of a more general object type, they inherently have different synchronization properties. While the AllowList object does not require synchronization between participating processes, a DenyList object requires processes to reach consensus on a specific set of processes. These results are then applied to the analysis of anonymity-preserving systems that use AllowList and DenyList objects. First, a blind-signature-based e-voting is presented. Then DenyList and AllowList objects are used to determine the consensus number of a specific decentralized key management system. Finally, an anonymous money transfer protocol using the association of AllowList and DenyList objects is studied.Comment: 27 pages, 10 figures, conferenc

Fisheye keyboard : whole keyboard displayed on small device

In this article, we propose a soft keyboard with interaction inspired by research on visualisation information. Our goal is to find a compromise between readability and usability on a whole character layout for an Ultra mobile PC. The proposed interactions allow to display all keys on a small screen while making pointing easier for the user by expanding any given key as a function of its distance from the stylus

ABC random forests for Bayesian parameter inference

This preprint has been reviewed and recommended by Peer Community In Evolutionary Biology (http://dx.doi.org/10.24072/pci.evolbiol.100036). Approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) has grown into a standard methodology that manages Bayesian inference for models associated with intractable likelihood functions. Most ABC implementations require the preliminary selection of a vector of informative statistics summarizing raw data. Furthermore, in almost all existing implementations, the tolerance level that separates acceptance from rejection of simulated parameter values needs to be calibrated. We propose to conduct likelihood-free Bayesian inferences about parameters with no prior selection of the relevant components of the summary statistics and bypassing the derivation of the associated tolerance level. The approach relies on the random forest methodology of Breiman (2001) applied in a (non parametric) regression setting. We advocate the derivation of a new random forest for each component of the parameter vector of interest. When compared with earlier ABC solutions, this method offers significant gains in terms of robustness to the choice of the summary statistics, does not depend on any type of tolerance level, and is a good trade-off in term of quality of point estimator precision and credible interval estimations for a given computing time. We illustrate the performance of our methodological proposal and compare it with earlier ABC methods on a Normal toy example and a population genetics example dealing with human population evolution. All methods designed here have been incorporated in the R package abcrf (version 1.7) available on CRAN.Comment: Main text: 24 pages, 6 figures Supplementary Information: 14 pages, 5 figure

Le système KeyGlass

International audienceThis paper presents the KeyGlass system : a text entry system with dynamic addition of characters based on those previously entered. The prediction system that we use to optimize our system is based on the joint use of a lexicographic tree and a system using bigrams. We present in this article the different steps that led us to this prediction system. Finally we study, through two experiments (one theoretical and the other one with users), the usefulness and effectiveness of our system during a task of text copy. The results show a significant reduction in the distance covered by the pointer on the soft keyboard. However, users are slower to enter text

Ysilex : a Friendly reading Interface for Dyslexics

International audienceIn this paper, we describe an interface to display texts in a fashion adapted to dyslexic readers. In order to help the reading task, we designed several tools geared towards the specific difficulties of this population, e.g. a tendency to lose one's place within the text, a fluctuating attention or a difficulty to access the syllable level of the words, a process known to be used with new or infrequent words. Preliminary results show that a pared down display coupled with a choice of tools available on demand could cater to the heterogeneity of difficulties displayed by dyslexics. Stepwise increments in design coupled with ongoing validation of the reading tools will insure the usefulness of the interface

DUCK : a deDUCtive Keyboard

MOBACC 2013 @ CHI 2013 : SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing SystemsInternational audienceThis paper presents the deDUCtive Keyboard (DUCK), aiming to improve text entry for visually impaired users on AZERTY/QWERTY based layout on software keyboards. Relying on a predictive system, DUCK allows rapid text entry without any precision on keyboard hits. A preliminary study with a visually impaired user indicated that usability is improved when compared to a regular virtual keyboard with a vocal feedback

Whole-genome sequencing of Aspergillus tubingensis G131 and overview of its secondary metabolism potential

Background : Black Aspergilli represent one of the most important fungal resources of primary and secondary metabolites for biotechnological industry. Having several black Aspergilli sequenced genomes should allow targeting the production of certain metabolites with bioactive properties. In this study, we report the draft genome of a black Aspergilli, A. tubingensis G131, isolated from a French Mediterranean vineyard. This 35 Mb genome includes 10,994 predicted genes. A genomic-based discovery identifies 80 secondary metabolites biosynthetic gene clusters. Genomic sequences of these clusters were blasted on 3 chosen black Aspergilli genomes: A. tubingensis CBS 134.48, A. niger CBS 513.88 and A. kawachii IFO 4308. This comparison highlights different levels of clusters conservation between the four strains. It also allows identifying seven unique clusters in A. tubingensis G131. Moreover, the putative secondary metabolites clusters for asperazine and naphtho-gamma-pyrones production were proposed based on this genomic analysis. Key biosynthetic genes required for the production of 2 mycotoxins, ochratoxin A and fumonisin, are absent from this draft genome. Even if intergenic sequences of these mycotoxins biosynthetic pathways are present, this could not lead to the production of those mycotoxins by A. tubingensis G131

Context Adaptive Cooperation

Reliable broadcast and consensus are the two pillars that support a lot of non-trivial fault-tolerant distributed middleware and fault-tolerant distributed systems. While they have close definitions, they strongly differ in the underlying assumptions needed to implement each of them. Reliable broadcast can be implemented in asynchronous systems in the presence of crash or Byzantine failures while Consensus cannot. This key difference stems from the fact that consensus involves synchronization between multiple processes that concurrently propose values, while reliable broadcast simply involves delivering a message from a predefined sender. This paper strikes a balance between these two agreement abstractions in the presence of Byzantine failures. It proposes CAC, a novel agreement abstraction that enables multiple processes to broadcast messages simultaneously, while guaranteeing that (despite potential conflicts, asynchrony, and Byzantine behaviors) the non-faulty processes will agree on messages deliveries. We show that this novel abstraction can enable more efficient algorithms for a variety of applications (such as money transfer where several people can share a same account). This is obtained by focusing the need for synchronization only on the processes that actually need to synchronize

Conception d’un Dispositif pour Interagir avec des Données Multidimensionnelles : Disco

National audienceThis paper presents the design of a new device, DISCO. In addition to the traditionnal mouse capabilities, DISCO offers multiple degrees of freedom suitable for multidimensioannl data manipulation. We present various usage scenarios and explore the handling of this device through two studies. First we observe the user’s hand posture on three versions of Disco with different form factors. Then we study the capabilities and limitations related to physical translations, rotations (yaw) and tilt (pitch, roll) on two versions of Disco according to three hand postures. Based on the results, we propose design guidelines to create interaction techniques that take benefit of the degrees of freedom of the device to interact with multidimensional data.En s’inspirant de travaux fondateurs proposant des souris à multiples degrés de liberté, cet article présente la conception d’un nouveau dispositif d’interaction basé sur le principe du culbuto : Disco. Nous présentons divers scénarii d’usage et explorons la manipulation de ce dispositif au travers de deux études. D’abord nous observons la prise en main de trois versions de Disco avec différents facteurs de forme. Ensuite nous étudions les capacités et limites liées à la translation, rotation (yaw) ou inclinaison (pitch, roll) physique de deux versions de Disco selon trois prises en main différentes. A partir des résultats nous proposons des guides de conception afin de créer des techniques d’interaction qui exploitent au mieux les différents degrés de liberté du dispositif pour interagir avec des données multidimensionnelles