Netpot: easy meal enjoyment for distant diners

Abstract. We capture key factors of a group meal with communication and interface technologies to make a meal more enjoyable for diners who cannot be collocated. We determined three factors of a popular group meal, Chinese hotpot, that are essential for a group meal experience: interacting as a group with food, a central shared hotpot, and a feeling that others are nearby. We developed a prototype system to maintain these factors for an online meal with remote friends. Our technique is of interest to designers creating technology for isolated diners

The genetic architecture of the human cerebral cortex

The cerebral cortex underlies our complex cognitive capabilities, yet little is known about the specific genetic loci that influence human cortical structure. To identify genetic variants that affect cortical structure, we conducted a genome-wide association meta-analysis of brain magnetic resonance imaging data from 51,665 individuals. We analyzed the surface area and average thickness of the whole cortex and 34 regions with known functional specializations. We identified 199 significant loci and found significant enrichment for loci influencing total surface area within regulatory elements that are active during prenatal cortical development, supporting the radial unit hypothesis. Loci that affect regional surface area cluster near genes in Wnt signaling pathways, which influence progenitor expansion and areal identity. Variation in cortical structure is genetically correlated with cognitive function, Parkinson's disease, insomnia, depression, neuroticism, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

A pursuit method for video annotation

Video annotation is a process of describing or elaborating on objects or events represented in video. Part of this process involves time consuming manual interactions to define spatio-temporal entities - such as a region of interest within the video. This dissertation proposes a pursuit method for video annotation to quickly define a particular type of spatio-temporal entity known as a point- based path. A pursuit method is particularly suited to annotation contexts when a precise bounding region is not needed, such as when annotators draw attention to objects in consumer video. We demonstrate the validity of the pursuit method with measurements of both accuracy and annotation time when annotators create point-based paths. Annotator tool designers can now chose a pursuit method for suitable annotation contexts.Applied Science, Faculty ofElectrical and Computer Engineering, Department ofGraduat

Polymorphic Letters: Transforming Pen Movements to Extend Written Expression

We are developing a digital writing tool, Polymorphic Letters (PL), to investigate hand and pen movements as they may extend and enrich expression in written language. PL recognizes individual letters and associated spatial, temporal and pressure qualities of pen movements. The system maps these features to typography and colour variables, creating lively representations on-screen. Writers will use the tool in learning environments emphasizing the role of personal expressions. We explore style and voice as they pertain to expressions through hand, pen, and words, and describe the rationale for PL, its iterative design, and next steps based on writers' and readers' experiences

Time, Voice, and Joyce

We present a design for recapitulating walks through Dublin's City Centre by characters in James Joyce's Ulysses. Our computationally supported walkers will avail themselves of a "map with a sense of time" and a system that translates their hand lettering gestures as attributes of colourful typographic forms. Participants will walk around Dublin, read passages from Ulysses, and write reflections of their experiences. Their colourfully transformed reflections will blend with others' to create a pluralistic account of today's Dublin, organised according to the sequence of Joyce's descriptions. The experiment will help us to refine initial versions of the two digital systems while suggesting future directions for comparable story systems and techniques such as ad-hoc networking for distributed story making and telling. These developments will serve our larger agenda of exploring individuals' engagements, expressions, and learning with and through such systems