Security Risks of Social Robots Used to Persuade and Manipulate

Earlier research has shown that robots can provoke social responses in people, and that robots often elicit compliance. In this paper we discuss three proof of concept studies in which we explore the possibility of robots being hacked and taken over by others with the explicit purpose of using the robot's social capabilities. Three scenarios are explored: gaining access to secured areas, extracting sensitive and personal information, and convincing people to take unsafe action. We find that people are willing to do these tasks, and that social robots tend to be trusted, even in situations that would normally cause suspicion

A large, crowdsourced evaluation of gesture generation systems on common data : the GENEA Challenge 2020

Co-speech gestures, gestures that accompany speech, play an important role in human communication. Automatic co-speech gesture generation is thus a key enabling technology for embodied conversational agents (ECAs), since humans expect ECAs to be capable of multi-modal communication. Research into gesture generation is rapidly gravitating towards data-driven methods. Unfortunately, individual research efforts in the field are difficult to compare: there are no established benchmarks, and each study tends to use its own dataset, motion visualisation, and evaluation methodology. To address this situation, we launched the GENEA Challenge, a gesture-generation challenge wherein participating teams built automatic gesture-generation systems on a common dataset, and the resulting systems were evaluated in parallel in a large, crowdsourced user study using the same motion-rendering pipeline. Since differences in evaluation outcomes between systems now are solely attributable to differences between the motion-generation methods, this enables benchmarking recent approaches against one another in order to get a better impression of the state of the art in the field. This paper reports on the purpose, design, results, and implications of our challenge.Part of Proceedings: ISBN 978-145038017-1QC 20210607</p

Paving the Way for a Real-Time Context-Aware Predictive Architecture

Internet of Things society generates and needs to consume huge amounts of data in a demanding context-aware scenario. Such exponentially growing data sources require the use of novel processing methodologies, technologies and tools to facilitate data processing in order to detect and prevent situations of interest for the users in their particular context. To solve this issue, we propose an architecture which making use of emerging technologies and cloud platforms can process huge amounts of heterogeneous data and promptly alert users of relevant situations for a particular domain according to their context. Last, but not least, we will provide a graphical tool for domain experts to easily model, automatically generate code and deploy the situations to be detected and the actions to be taken in consequence. The proposal will be evaluated through a real case study related to air quality monitoring and lung diseases in collaboration with a doctor specialist on lung diseases of a public hospital

Intraoperative radiotherapy during awake craniotomies: preliminary results of a single-center case series

Awake craniotomies are performed to avoid postoperative neurological deficits when resecting lesions in the eloquent cortex, especially the speech area. Intraoperative radiotherapy (IORT) has recently focused on optimizing the oncological treatment of primary malignant brain tumors and metastases. Herein, for the first time, we present preliminary results of IORT in the setting of awake craniotomies. From 2021 to 2022, all patients undergoing awake craniotomies for tumor resection combined with IORT were analyzed retrospectively. Demographical and clinical data, operative procedure, and treatment-related complications were evaluated. Five patients were identified (age (mean ± standard deviation (SD): 65 ± 13.5 years (y)). A solid left frontal metastasis was detected in the first patient (female, 49 y). The second patient (male, 72 y) presented with a solid metastasis on the left parietal lobe. The third patient (male, 52 y) was diagnosed with a left temporoparietal metastasis. Patient four (male, 74 y) was diagnosed with a high-grade glioma on the left frontal lobe. A metastasis on the left temporooccipital lobe was detected in the fifth patient (male, 78 y). After awake craniotomy and macroscopic complete tumor resection, intraoperative tumor bed irradiation was carried out with 50 kV x-rays and a total of 20 Gy for 16.7 ± 2.5 min. During a mean follow-up of 6.3 ± 2.6 months, none of the patients developed any surgery- or IORT-related complications or disabling permanent neurological deficits. Intraoperative radiotherapy in combination with awake craniotomy seems to be feasible and safe

Kennis op de akker: toepassing in management tools

Om de positie van de Nederlandse akkerbouw en vollegrondsgroenteteelt te behouden moet er een transitie plaatsvinden naar een duurzame procesgeoriënteerde bedrijfsvoering, gebaseerd op actuele informatie en kennis, waarbij managementondersteunende systemen en ICT kunnen helpen. Het artikel presenteert de resultaten van een programmeringsstudie, die geresulteerd heeft in een voorstel voor een programma om aan deze transitie te gaan werke

Enhancing the sustainability performance of Agri-Food Supply Chains by implementing Industry 4.0

[EN] In order to enhance the sustainability in the supply chain, its members should define and pursue common objectives in the three dimensions of the sustainability (economic, environmental and social). The Agri-Food Supply Chain (AFSC) is a network of different members such as farmers (producers), processors and distributors (wholesales, retailers.), etc.. In order to achieve the performance objectives of the AFSC, Industry 4.0 technologies can be implemented. The aim of this paper is to present a classification of these technologies according to two criteria: objective to be achieved (environmental or social) specified in the main issues to be covered in each objective and member of the AFSC supply chain where it is implemented. In this work, we focus on technologies that deal with environmental and social sustainability because economic sustainability will depend on the specific characteristics of the business (a supply chain using a specific Industry 4.0 technology may be profitable while others do not).This work has been funded by the Project GV/2017/065 "Development of a decision support tool for the management and improvement of sustainability in supply chains" funded by the Regional Government of Valencia. Authors also acknowledge the Project 691249, RUC-APS: Enhancing and implementing Knowledge based ICT solutions within high Risk and Uncertain Conditions for Agriculture Production Systems.Pérez Perales, D.; Verdecho Sáez, MJ.; Alarcón Valero, F. (2019). Enhancing the sustainability performance of Agri-Food Supply Chains by implementing Industry 4.0. IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology. 568:496-503. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28464-0_43S496503568Camarinha-Matos, L.M., Fornasiero, R., Afsarmanesh, H.: Collaborative networks as a core enabler of Industry 4.0. In: Camarinha-Matos, L.M., Afsarmanesh, H., Fornasiero, R. (eds.) PRO-VE 2017. IAICT, vol. 506, pp. 3–17. Springer, Cham (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65151-4_1Stich, V., Gudergan, G., Zeller, V.: Need and solution to transform the manufacturing industry in the age of Industry 4.0 – a capability maturity index approach. In: Camarinha-Matos, L.M., Afsarmanesh, H., Rezgui, Y. (eds.) PRO-VE 2018. IAICT, vol. 534, pp. 33–42. Springer, Cham (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99127-6_3Flores, M., Maklin, D., Golob, M., Al-Ashaab, A., Tucci, C.: Awareness towards Industry 4.0: key enablers and applications for internet of things and big data. In: Camarinha-Matos, L.M., Afsarmanesh, H., Rezgui, Y. (eds.) PRO-VE 2018. 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Adherence to colorectal cancer screening: Four rounds of faecal immunochemical test-based screening

Background:The effectiveness of faecal immunochemical test (FIT)-based screening programs is highly dependent on consistent participation over multiple rounds. We evaluated adherence to FIT screening over four rounds and aimed to identify determinants of participation behaviour.Methods:A total of 23 339 randomly selected asymptomatic persons aged 50-74 years were invited for biennial FIT-based colorectal cancer screening between 2006 and 2014. All were invited for every consecutive round, except for those who had moved out of the area, passed the upper age limit, or had tested positive in a previous screening round. A reminder letter was sent to non-responders. We calculated participation rates per round, response rates to a reminder letter, and differences in participation between subgroups defined by age, sex, and socioeconomic status (SES).Results:Over the four rounds, participation rates increased significantly, from 60% (95% CI 60-61), 60% (95% CI 59-60), 62% (95% CI 61-63) to 63% (95% CI 62-64; P for trend&lt;0.001) with significantly higher participation rates in women in all rounds (P&lt;0.001). Of the 17 312 invitees eligible for at least two rounds of FIT screening, 12 455 (72%) participated at least once, whereas 4857 (28%) never participated; 8271 (48%) attended all rounds when eligible. Consistent participation was associated with older age, female sex, and higher SES. Offering a reminder letter after the initial invite in the first round increased uptake with 12%; in subsequent screening rounds this resulted in an additional uptake of up to 10%.Conclusions:In four rounds of a pilot biennial FIT-screening program, we observed a consistently high and increasing participation rate, whereas sending reminders remain effective. The substantial proportion of inconsistent participants suggests the existence of incidental barriers to participation, which, if possible, should be identified and removed

Enhanced Gene Delivery Mediated by Low Molecular Weight Chitosan/DNA Complexes: Effect of pH and Serum

This study was designed to systematically evaluate the influence of pH and serum on the transfection process of chitosan-DNA complexes, with the objective of maximizing their efficiency. The hydrodynamic diameter of the complexes, measured by dynamic light scattering (DLS), was found to increase with salt and pH from 243 nm in water to 1244 nm in PBS at pH 7.4 and aggregation in presence of 10% serum. The cellular uptake of complexes into HEK 293 cells assessed by flow cytometry and confocal fluorescent imaging was found to increase at lower pH and serum. Based on these data, new methodology were tested and high levels of transfection (>40%) were achieved when transfection was initiated at pH 6.5 with 10% serum for 8-24 h to maximize uptake and then the media was changed to pH 7.4 with 10% serum for an additional 24-40 h period. Cytotoxicity of chitosan/DNA complexes was also considerably lower than Lipofectamine. Our study demonstrates that the evaluation of the influence of important parameters in the methodology of transfection enables the understanding of crucial physicochemical and biological mechanisms which allows for the design of methodologies maximising transgene expression