Continuous Interaction with a Virtual Human

Attentive Speaking and Active Listening require that a Virtual Human be capable of simultaneous perception/interpretation and production of communicative behavior. A Virtual Human should be able to signal its attitude and attention while it is listening to its interaction partner, and be able to attend to its interaction partner while it is speaking – and modify its communicative behavior on-the-fly based on what it perceives from its partner. This report presents the results of a four week summer project that was part of eNTERFACE’10. The project resulted in progress on several aspects of continuous interaction such as scheduling and interrupting multimodal behavior, automatic classification of listener responses, generation of response eliciting behavior, and models for appropriate reactions to listener responses. A pilot user study was conducted with ten participants. In addition, the project yielded a number of deliverables that are released for public access

A cognitive approach to modeling bad news conversations

One of the fundamental aspects of human culture is our capacity to use complex natural language to communicate with each other. The complexity of language is caused by the huge diversity in the use and meaning of words, gestures and facial expressions. The research that is presented in this thesis has several focus points. \ud First, it focuses on how the function and meaning of verbal and non-verbal communicative behaviors in medical bad news situations can be determined. We show that these two aspects can, for a large part, be determined by analyzing the properties and characteristics of conversational behaviors. Analysis of the properties and characteristics was done based on the study of various linguistic and psychological theories and models such as Speech Act Theory and Dialogue Act Theory. \ud Secondly, it focuses on determining how perceived conversational behaviors are cognitively processed by a listener and how the listener generates an appropriate response behavior. To this end, several approaches that describe features of the internal states of people (including beliefs, desires and intentions, but also emotions and social dispositions) are presented. In additions, we argue that the listener’s assumptions about the internal state of the speaker are essential in the processing mechanisms.\ud The third focus of the research is to determine how the cognitive processes and the associated internal state features might be represented. To that end, a cognitive dialogue model was constructed where effort was made to keep the representation of the processes and features as natural and human-like as possible.\ud The idea behind this is that, based on the cognitive dialogue model, a dialogue system can be constructed that performs human-like conversational behaviors while at the same time have underlying processes that can be intuitively be understood by the user

Reflections on the graph representation of darwinian evolution

The proposal of Jagers op Akkerhuis et al. (Chap. 4) is that Darwinian evolution can better be discussed in terms of a graph-pattern than in terms of population- based frequencies of properties that change from one generation to the next. The authors suggest that the use of a graph-pattern can contribute to resolving current debates about extending and generalizing the concept of evolution, because a graph-pattern allows for detailed discussions of the objects, the relationships, and the patterns that constitute the concept of Darwinian evolution. We raise some questions about the currently suggested graph pattern, which-in our view-may require an additional generation. Furthermore, the use of a minimalistic and abstract graph- pattern raises questions about the links with several biologically relevant evolutionary principles including natural selection, mutation and recombination, development, and genetic drift and genetic bottlenecks. We ask the question whether a graph representation of Darwinian evolution can be extended in such a way that it suffi ciently refl ects this type of biological complexity. This, in our view, presents a challenge for the further development of Jagers op Akkerhuis’ abstract representation of evolutionary theory.</p

Enhancing Embodied Conversational Agents with Social and Emotional Capabilities

In this paper we present our current work on an embodied conversational agent for training medical bad news conversations and discuss the inspiration gained from previous work of our own and others. Central in this research is the influence of emotional and social features on the selection and realization of conversational behavior

An integrative omics approach to unravel toxicity mechanisms of environmental chemicals: effects of a formulated herbicide

The use of integrative molecular approaches can aid in a comprehensive understanding of the effects of toxicants at different levels of biological organization, also supporting risk assessment. The present study aims to unravel the toxicity mechanisms of a widely used herbicide to the arthropod Folsomia candida exposed in a natural soil, by linking effects on reproduction, proteomics and genome-wide gene expression. The EC50 effects on reproduction over 4 weeks was 4.63 mg glyphosate/kg of soil. The formulation included a polyethoxylated tallowamine as an adjuvant, which at 50% effect on reproduction had an estimated concentration of 0.87-1.49 mg/kg of soil. No effects were observed on survival and reproduction when using the isolated active substance, pointing the toxicity of the formulated product to the co-formulant instead of the active ingredient, glyphosate. RNA sequencing and shotgun proteomics were applied to assess differential transcript and protein expressions between exposed and control organisms in time, respectively. Specific functional categories at protein and transcriptome levels were concordant with each other, despite overall limited correlations between datasets. The exposure to this formulation affected normal cellular respiration and lipid metabolism, inducing oxidative stress and leading to impairment in biological life cycle mechanisms such as molting and reproduction.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Using time-lapse omics correlations to integrate toxicological pathways of a formulated fungicide in a soil invertebrate

The use of an integrative molecular approach can actively improve the evaluation of environmental health status and impact of chemicals, providing the knowledge to develop sentinel tools that can be integrated in risk assessment studies, since gene and protein expressions represent the first response barriers to anthropogenic stress. This work aimed to determine the mechanisms of toxic action of a widely applied fungicide formulation (chlorothalonil), following a time series approach and using a soil model arthropod, Folsomia candida. To link effects at different levels of biological organization, data were collected on reproduction, gene expression and protein levels, in a time series during exposure to a natural soil. Results showed a mechanistic mode of action for chlorothalonil, affecting pathways of detoxification and excretion, immune response, cellular respiration, protein metabolism and oxidative stress defense, causing irregular cell signaling (JNK and NOD ½ pathways), DNA damage and abnormal cell proliferation, leading to impairment in developmental features such as molting cycle and reproduction. The omics datasets presented highly significant positive correlations between the gene expression levels at a certain time-point and the corresponding protein products 2e3 days later. The integrated omics in this study has provided useful insights into pesticide mechanisms of toxicity, evidencing the relevance of such analyses in toxicological studies, and highlighting the importance of considering a time-series when integrating these datasets.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio