Effects of task duration, display curvature, and presbyopia on physiological and perceived visual fatigue for 27??? desktop monitors

Department of Human and Systems EngineeringWith the advancement of display technologies, more diverse display products are available around us. VDT (Visual Display Terminal) tasks are, however, associated with various visual fatigue symptoms that can reduce work efficiency and task performance. Such results can be more severe for older individuals with diminished visual abilities, which typically start around the age of 40. However, studies on visual fatigue of older individuals are relatively fewer than those for younger individuals. Though, proper work-rest schedules are deemed to reduce visual fatigue, workers have difficulty in taking rest breaks due to many reasons. It is expected that a real-time rest reminder will be effective because the time to onset of visual fatigue can vary as visual fatigue is affected by many factors including individual and task characteristics. Curved displays provide relatively even viewing distances across their display surface for the center viewer than flat displays, which could benefit viewing experience while reducing visual fatigue. Indeed, some studies on display curvature demonstrated that curved displays are more effective than flat displays in terms of task performance, visual fatigue, and preference. Previously, various physiological measures (e.g. accommodation amplitude and near point accommodation) were considered as indices of visual fatigue. Using these measures to predict visual fatigue in daily life are, however, not practical because of difficulties in measuring and/or needs for high-cost equipment. The aims of the current study were 1) to examine the effects of task duration, display curvature, and presbyopia on physiological and perceived visual fatigue and display satisfaction associated with performing proofreading tasks on 27??? displays, and 2) to develop a prediction model for visual fatigue using pupil- and bulbar conjunctiva-related measurements which can be easily obtained in daily life. A total of 64 participants (32 for each age group) performed a 1-hr proofreading task. The current study considered task duration (within-subjects0, 15, 30, 45, and 60 min), display curvature (between-subjects600mm, 1140mm, 4000mm, and flat) and age group [between-subjectsyounger (20-35 yrs) and older (45-60 yrs)] as independent variables. Pupil diameter, bulbar conjunctival redness, perceived visual fatigue [measured in ECQ (Eye Complaint Questionnaire) scores], and display satisfaction were obtained every 15 minutes, while CFF (Critical Fusion Frequency) was obtained pre and post the 1-hr proofreading task. The rear-projection environment was comprised of 27??? curved rear screens, a beam projector, and the Warpalizer software. Environmental factors that can affect visual fatigue were controlled. An eye tracking system, a digital camera, and a flicker fusion system were used to measure physiological measures of visual fatigue, and a series of questionnaires were used to measure perceived visual fatigue and satisfaction of display. 3-way ANOVA was used to examine how 3 independent variables and their interactions affected each of 5 dependent variables. Four methods were considered in developing prediction models for visual fatigue and display satisfaction, and the developed models were compared in terms of predictive accuracy. The results showed that over the 1-hr task, pupil diameters decreased (5.1%), bulbar conjunctival redness increased (18.8%), CFF thresholds decreased (0.94%), and ECQ scores increased (207%), all indicating an increase in visual fatigue. Even with a 15 min of VDT task, visual fatigue increased significantly. At the 1140mm curvature, pupil diameters were the largest, indicating less visual fatigue, and the display satisfaction of the older group, though not significant, gradually increased over the 1-hr task, indicating a less increase in visual fatigue. Display satisfaction was not affected by any independent variables. In terms of predictive accuracy of visual fatigue, the artificial neural network model was the best followed by the 3rd degree polynomial regression model. The results of this study can be utilized when scheduling work-rest, determining a better display curvature for 27??? displays, and predicting visual fatigue in real time to notify the time to take a rest.ope

A Framework for Context Sensitive Risk-Based Access Control in Medical Information Systems

Since the access control environment has changed and the threat of insider information leakage has come to the fore, studies on risk-based access control models that decide access permissions dynamically have been conducted vigorously. Medical information systems should protect sensitive data such as medical information from insider threat and enable dynamic access control depending on the context such as life-threatening emergencies. In this paper, we suggest an approach and framework for context sensitive risk-based access control suitable for medical information systems. This approach categorizes context information, estimating and applying risk through context- and treatment-based permission profiling and specifications by expanding the eXtensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML) to apply risk. The proposed framework supports quick responses to medical situations and prevents unnecessary insider data access through dynamic access authorization decisions in accordance with the severity of the context and treatment

Extended Collaborative Filtering Technique for Mitigating the Sparsity Problem

Many online shopping malls have implemented personalized recommendation systems to improve customer retention in the age of high competition and information overload. Sellers make use of these recommendation systems to survive high competition and buyers utilize them to find proper product information for their own needs. However, transaction data of most online shopping malls prevent us from using collaborative filtering (CF) technique to recommend products, for the following two reasons: 1) explicit rating information is rarely available in the transaction data; 2) the sparsity problem usually occurs in the data, which makes it difficult to identify reliable neighbors, resulting in less effective recommendations. Therefore, this paper first suggests a means to derive implicit rating information from the transaction data of an online shopping mall and then proposes a new user similarity function to mitigate the sparsity problem. The new user similarity function computes the user similarity of two users if they rated similar items, while the user similarity function of traditional CF technique computes it only if they rated common items. Results from several experiments using an online shopping mall dataset in Korea demonstrate that our approach significantly outperforms the traditional CF technique

The More the Worse? Mining Valuable Ideas with Sentiment Analysis for Idea Recommendation

Many firms have an interest in an open innovation community, recognizing its business value. They can collect and analyze the ideas of their customers from the community to get valuable ideas which can lead to innovation such as a new product or service. However, such a community overloaded with too many ideas from customers cannot make use of them at the right time because of the limited time and human resources to deal with them. Therefore, it would be a great help to those firms if they have a recommendation system which recommends top n ideas for innovation. MyStarbucksIdea (MSI) is such an open community, created by Starbucks. To build such an innovative idea recommendation system for Starbucks, we analyzed a dataset collected from MSI, utilizing data mining and sentiment analysis techniques. Experimental results show that our recommendation system can help firms identify prospective ideas which can be valuable enough for their innovation among a large amount of ideas, efficiently

KitchenScale: Learning to predict ingredient quantities from recipe contexts

Determining proper quantities for ingredients is an essential part of cooking practice from the perspective of enriching tastiness and promoting healthiness. We introduce KitchenScale, a fine-tuned Pre-trained Language Model (PLM) that predicts a target ingredient's quantity and measurement unit given its recipe context. To effectively train our KitchenScale model, we formulate an ingredient quantity prediction task that consists of three sub-tasks which are ingredient measurement type classification, unit classification, and quantity regression task. Furthermore, we utilized transfer learning of cooking knowledge from recipe texts to PLMs. We adopted the Discrete Latent Exponent (DExp) method to cope with high variance of numerical scales in recipe corpora. Experiments with our newly constructed dataset and recommendation examples demonstrate KitchenScale's understanding of various recipe contexts and generalizability in predicting ingredient quantities. We implemented a web application for KitchenScale to demonstrate its functionality in recommending ingredient quantities expressed in numerals (e.g., 2) with units (e.g., ounce).Comment: Expert Systems with Applications 2023, Demo: http://kitchenscale.korea.ac.kr

Microarray analysis of replicative senescence

AbstractBackground: Limited replicative capacity is a defining characteristic of most normal human cells and culminates in senescence, an arrested state in which cells remain viable but display an altered pattern of gene and protein expression. To survey widely the alterations in gene expression, we have developed a DNA microarray analysis system that contains genes previously reported to be involved in aging, as well as those involved in many of the major biochemical signaling pathways.Results: Senescence-associated gene expression was assessed in three cell types: dermal fibroblasts, retinal pigment epithelial cells, and vascular endothelial cells. Fibroblasts demonstrated a strong inflammatory-type response, but shared limited overlap in senescent gene expression patterns with the other two cell types. The characteristics of the senescence response were highly cell-type specific. A comparison of early- and late-passage cells stimulated with serum showed specific deficits in the early and mid G1 response of senescent cells. Several genes that are constitutively overexpressed in senescent fibroblasts are regulated during the cell cycle in early-passage cells, suggesting that senescent cells are locked in an activated state that mimics the early remodeling phase of wound repair.Conclusions: Replicative senescence triggers mRNA expression patterns that vary widely and cell lineage strongly influences these patterns. In fibroblasts, the senescent state mimics inflammatory wound repair processes and, as such, senescent cells may contribute to chronic wound pathologies

The Effect of Age at First Calving and Calving Interval on Productive Life and Lifetime Profit in Korean Holsteins

This study was performed to estimate the effect of age at first calving and first two calving intervals on productive life and life time profit in Korean Holsteins. Reproduction data of Korean Holsteins born from 1998 to 2004 and lactation data from 276,573 cows with birth and last dry date that calved between 2000 and 2010 were used for the analysis. Lifetime profit increased with the days of life span. Regression of Life Span on Lifetime profit indicated that there was an increase of 3,800 Won (approximately $3.45) of lifetime profit per day increase in life span. This is evidence that care of each cow is necessary to improve net return and important for farms maintaining profitable cows. The estimates of heritability of age at first calving, first two calving intervals, days in milk for lifetime, lifespan, milk income and lifetime profit were 0.111, 0.088, 0.142, 0.140, 0.143, 0.123, and 0.102, respectively. The low heritabilities indicated that the productive life and economical traits include reproductive and productive characteristics. Age at first calving and interval between first and second calving had negative genetic correlation with lifetime profit (−0.080 and −0.265, respectively). Reducing age at first calving and first calving interval had a positive effect on lifetime profit. Lifetime profit increased to approximately 2,600,000 (2,363.6) from 800,000 Won ($727.3) when age at first calving decreased to (22.3 month) from (32.8 month). Results suggested that reproductive traits such as age at first calving and calving interval might affect various economical traits and consequently influenced productive life and profitability of cows. In conclusion, regard of the age at first calving must be taken with the optimum age at first calving for maximum lifetime profit being 22.5 to 23.5 months. Moreover, considering the negative genetic correlation of first calving interval with lifetime profit, it should be reduced against the present trend of increase

Comparison of the Spasmolytic Effects of Jakyak-Gamcho Decoctions Derived via Different Extractants

Aim. To investigate whether differences in the amounts of effective index components in Jakyak-Gamcho decoctions derived via extraction with either water or ethanol were associated with differential spasmolytic effectiveness. Methods. The amounts of effective index components (paeoniflorin, benzoic acid, glycyrrhizin, and isoliquiritin) contained in water-extracted Jakyak-Gamcho decoction and 70% ethanol-extracted Jakyak-Gamcho decoction were compared by high-performance liquid chromatography. Muscle cramp reduction rates were compared between the two decoctions by comparing the degrees of muscle contraction, measured as the tension developed during electrical stimulation, before and 1 and 2 h after injection in rats. Results. The relative amounts of effective index components were, on average, about 43% higher in the 70% ethanol-extracted decoction than in the water-extracted decoction. Two hours after injection, 0.25 g/kg of 70% ethanol-extracted decoction produced a significantly greater spasmolytic effect than 0.25 g/kg of water-extracted Jakyak-Gamcho decoction or distilled water (both p<0.05). Conclusion. Differences in the amounts of effective index components resulting from the use of different extractants were associated with differences in spasmolytic effectiveness. Hence, it may be worthwhile to investigate alternative extraction methods in terms of extraction efficiency and in vivo effectiveness for various herbal medicines in the future