Code Park: A New 3D Code Visualization Tool

We introduce Code Park, a novel tool for visualizing codebases in a 3D game-like environment. Code Park aims to improve a programmer's understanding of an existing codebase in a manner that is both engaging and intuitive, appealing to novice users such as students. It achieves these goals by laying out the codebase in a 3D park-like environment. Each class in the codebase is represented as a 3D room-like structure. Constituent parts of the class (variable, member functions, etc.) are laid out on the walls, resembling a syntax-aware "wallpaper". The users can interact with the codebase using an overview, and a first-person viewer mode. We conducted two user studies to evaluate Code Park's usability and suitability for organizing an existing project. Our results indicate that Code Park is easy to get familiar with and significantly helps in code understanding compared to a traditional IDE. Further, the users unanimously believed that Code Park was a fun tool to work with.Comment: Accepted for publication in 2017 IEEE Working Conference on Software Visualization (VISSOFT 2017); Supplementary video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUiy1M9hUK

Coincidencias y diferencias de opiniones y expectativas de los sectores empresarios de las ciudades de General Roca y Neuquén en el contexto de las respectivas economías regionales

La presente ponencia es el resultado de dos investigaciones sociológicas empíricas, efectuadas en dos contextos de economías regionales disímiles. Los empresarios de la ciudad de General Roca inmersos en un marco de producción frutícola y jugos concentrados, articulados al mercado internacional desde sus orígenes, actualmente en situación de crisis tanto por sus productividades como por efectos de los cambios iniciados en Argentina a partir de 1991. Los empresarios de la ciudad de Neuquén, cuyo origen fue como proveedores de un Estado que se fue constituyendo dependiendo de la regalías por extracción de petróleo y gas, acentuando las empresas extractivas a partir de 1991 la economía de tipo "enclave". A pesar de las diferencias de contexto se manifestaron en los resultados de la investigación ciertas coincidencias respecto a la espera y/o requerimiento hacia algún "otro" que modifique sus realidades en crisis. Y diferencias en lo que se espera y se requiere de ese "otro". No apareciendo con claridad en sus contenidos de conciencia posible ser hacedores sustantivos de la formación social capitalista de la cual son partícipes y como transformadores de la crisis de sus economías regionales.Fil: Taranta, Demetrio. Universidad Nacional del Comahue; Argentina.Fil: García, Ana Elena. Universidad Nacional del Comahue; Argentina

Automated Mini-Tubular Ceramic Production

Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory need a way to increase the rate of manufacturing of mini-tubular ceramics to be used in testing particulate air filters. This document outlines our process from researching and writing an initial scope of work all the way to fabricating and testing a final prototype. This journey takes us through the background research, ideation process and selection of a final design. We also detail the desired engineering specifications and our concept selection process. We dedicate a significant portion of this report to discussion of our final design. We delve into how it was manufactured as well as the tests we performed and its successes and failures. We also propose potential areas for further development and next steps for sponsors. Overall, this document provides the reader with a comprehensive understanding of our design process and results

The Dollar General: Continuous Custom Gesture Recognition Techniques At Everyday Low Prices

Humans use gestures to emphasize ideas and disseminate information. Their importance is apparent in how we continuously augment social interactions with motion—gesticulating in harmony with nearly every utterance to ensure observers understand that which we wish to communicate, and their relevance has not escaped the HCI community\u27s attention. For almost as long as computers have been able to sample human motion at the user interface boundary, software systems have been made to understand gestures as command metaphors. Customization, in particular, has great potential to improve user experience, whereby users map specific gestures to specific software functions. However, custom gesture recognition remains a challenging problem, especially when training data is limited, input is continuous, and designers who wish to use customization in their software are limited by mathematical attainment, machine learning experience, domain knowledge, or a combination thereof. Data collection, filtering, segmentation, pattern matching, synthesis, and rejection analysis are all non-trivial problems a gesture recognition system must solve. To address these issues, we introduce The Dollar General (TDG), a complete pipeline composed of several novel continuous custom gesture recognition techniques. Specifically, TDG comprises an automatic low-pass filter tuner that we use to improve signal quality, a segmenter for identifying gesture candidates in a continuous input stream, a classifier for discriminating gesture candidates from non-gesture motions, and a synthetic data generation module we use to train the classifier. Our system achieves high recognition accuracy with as little as one or two training samples per gesture class, is largely input device agnostic, and does not require advanced mathematical knowledge to understand and implement. In this dissertation, we motivate the importance of gestures and customization, describe each pipeline component in detail, and introduce strategies for data collection and prototype selection

Newly Engineered Magnetic Erythrocytes for Sustained and Targeted Delivery of Anti-Cancer Therapeutic Compounds

Cytotoxic chemotherapy of cancer is limited by serious, sometimes life-threatening, side effects that arise from toxicities to sensitive normal cells because the therapies are not selective for malignant cells. So how can they be selectively improved? Alternative pharmaceutical formulations of anti-cancer agents have been investigated in order to improve conventional chemotherapy treatment. These formulations are associated with problems like severe toxic side effects on healthy organs, drug resistance and limited access of the drug to the tumor sites suggested the need to focus on site-specific controlled drug delivery systems. In response to these concerns, we have developed a new drug delivery system based on magnetic erythrocytes engineered with a viral spike fusion protein. This new erythrocyte-based drug delivery system has the potential for magnetic-controlled site-specific localization and highly efficient fusion capability with the targeted cells. Here we show that the erythro-magneto-HA virosomes drug delivery system is able to attach and fuse with the target cells and to efficiently release therapeutic compounds inside the cells. The efficacy of the anti-cancer drug employed is increased and the dose required is 10 time less than that needed with conventional therapy

Effects of Clutter on Egocentric Distance Perception in Virtual Reality

To assess the impact of clutter on egocentric distance perception, we performed a mixed-design study with 60 participants in four different virtual environments (VEs) with three levels of clutter. Additionally, we compared the indoor/outdoor VE characteristics and the HMD's FOV. The participants wore a backpack computer and a wide FOV head-mounted display (HMD) as they blind-walked towards three distinct targets at distances of 3m, 4.5m, and 6m. The HMD's field of view (FOV) was programmatically limited to 165{\deg}$\times$110{\deg}, 110{\deg}$\times$110{\deg}, or 45{\deg}$\times$35{\deg}. The results showed that increased clutter in the environment led to more precise distance judgment and less underestimation, independent of the FOV. In comparison to outdoor VEs, indoor VEs showed more accurate distance judgment. Additionally, participants made more accurate judgements while looking at the VEs through wider FOVs.Comment: This paper was not published yet in any venue or conference/journal, ACM conference format was used for the paper, authors were listed in order from first to last (advisor), 10 pages, 10 figure

Implementação de um sistema de gestão da qualidade baseada na gestão do risco

A introdução do conceito: “o pensamento baseado em risco” na versão recente da NP EN ISO 9001:2015 vem trazer uma nova abordagem nos sistemas de gestão da qualidade dos organismos que seguem esta norma como modelo de gestão. Esta nova abordagem consiste em prevenir resultados indesejados, quer de produtos ou serviços não conformes, quer de objetivos estabelecidos e não alcançados, de forma a priorizar os processos e a dirigir a melhoria. A certificação da NP ISO 31000:2013 não é exigida apenas é recomendada a sua utilização como linha de orientação da Gestão do Risco. Esta norma é muito útil pois contribuí para o aumento da rentabilidade e sustentabilidade das organizações. O objetivo principal deste projeto consiste na utilização da gestão do risco na implementação num sistema de gestão da qualidade. Porém, para realizar uma gestão do risco eficaz, foi necessário seguir o processo global da apreciação do risco que consistiu na identificação, análise e avaliação do risco. A metodologia utilizada permitiu estudar de uma forma mais aprofundada algumas técnicas de apreciação do risco aplicadas em três contextos: postos de trabalho, processos da qualidade e gestão estratégica. Através da aplicação da metodologia, verificaram-se quais os riscos que apresentavam um impacto significativo e por consequência demonstrou-se a importância do tratamento do risco estabelecendo medidas preventivas, de forma a alterar a probabilidade de ocorrência do risco. Por fim, o processo de gestão do risco termina com a etapa de monitorização e revisão. Os resultados obtidos evidenciaram efeitos positivos ao aplicar metodologias de apreciação do risco. Também, como resultado, realizou-se um procedimento de gestão do risco, uma instrução de trabalho de apreciação do risco e vários impressos de registos. Implementação de um sistema de gestão da qualidade baseada na gestão do risco viii Estes são documentos base de sustentação de implementação do Sistema de Gestão da Qualidade ao nível da gestão do risco, isto é, foi definida metodologia de base que permitiu a aplicação da abordagem do” Pensamento baseado em risco”

Novel epigenetic target therapy for prostate cancer: a preclinical study.

Epigenetic events are critical contributors to the pathogenesis of cancer, and targeting epigenetic mechanisms represents a novel strategy in anticancer therapy. Classic demethylating agents, such as 5-Aza-29-deoxycytidine (Decitabine), hold the potential for reprograming somatic cancer cells demonstrating high therapeutic efficacy in haematological malignancies. On the other hand, epigenetic treatment of solid tumours often gives rise to undesired cytotoxic side effects. Appropriate delivery systems able to enrich Decitabine at the site of action and improve its bioavailability would reduce the incidence of toxicity on healthy tissues. In this work we provide preclinical evidences of a safe, versatile and efficient targeted epigenetic therapy to treat hormone sensitive (LNCap) and hormone refractory (DU145) prostate cancers. A novel Decitabine formulation, based on the use of engineered erythrocyte (Erythro-Magneto-Hemagglutinin Virosomes, EMHVs) drug delivery system (DDS) carrying this drug, has been refined. Inside the EMHVs, the drug was shielded from the environment and phosphorylated in its active form. The novel magnetic EMHV DDS, endowed with fusogenic protein, improved the stability of the carried drug and exhibited a high efficiency in confining its delivery at the site of action in vivo by applying an external static magnetic field. Here we show that Decitabine loaded into EMHVs induces a significant tumour mass reduction in prostate cancer xenograft models at a concentration, which is seven hundred times lower than the therapeutic dose, suggesting an improved pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics of drug. These results are relevant for and discussed in light of developing personalised autologous therapies and innovative clinical approach for the treatment of solid tumours