356 research outputs found
A Visual Analytics Approach to Debugging Cooperative, Autonomous Multi-Robot Systems' Worldviews
Autonomous multi-robot systems, where a team of robots shares information to
perform tasks that are beyond an individual robot's abilities, hold great
promise for a number of applications, such as planetary exploration missions.
Each robot in a multi-robot system that uses the shared-world coordination
paradigm autonomously schedules which robot should perform a given task, and
when, using its worldview--the robot's internal representation of its belief
about both its own state, and other robots' states. A key problem for operators
is that robots' worldviews can fall out of sync (often due to weak
communication links), leading to desynchronization of the robots' scheduling
decisions and inconsistent emergent behavior (e.g., tasks not performed, or
performed by multiple robots). Operators face the time-consuming and difficult
task of making sense of the robots' scheduling decisions, detecting
de-synchronizations, and pinpointing the cause by comparing every robot's
worldview. To address these challenges, we introduce MOSAIC Viewer, a visual
analytics system that helps operators (i) make sense of the robots' schedules
and (ii) detect and conduct a root cause analysis of the robots' desynchronized
worldviews. Over a year-long partnership with roboticists at the NASA Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, we conduct a formative study to identify the necessary
system design requirements and a qualitative evaluation with 12 roboticists. We
find that MOSAIC Viewer is faster- and easier-to-use than the users' current
approaches, and it allows them to stitch low-level details to formulate a
high-level understanding of the robots' schedules and detect and pinpoint the
cause of the desynchronized worldviews.Comment: To appear in IEEE Conference on Visual Analytics Science and
Technology (VAST) 202
Lessons from the Development of an Anomaly Detection Interface on the Mars Perseverance Rover using the ISHMAP Framework
While anomaly detection stands among the most important and valuable problems
across many scientific domains, anomaly detection research often focuses on AI
methods that can lack the nuance and interpretability so critical to conducting
scientific inquiry. In this application paper we present the results of
utilizing an alternative approach that situates the mathematical framing of
machine learning based anomaly detection within a participatory design
framework. In a collaboration with NASA scientists working with the PIXL
instrument studying Martian planetary geochemistry as a part of the search for
extra-terrestrial life; we report on over 18 months of in-context user research
and co-design to define the key problems NASA scientists face when looking to
detect and interpret spectral anomalies. We address these problems and develop
a novel spectral anomaly detection toolkit for PIXL scientists that is highly
accurate while maintaining strong transparency to scientific interpretation. We
also describe outcomes from a yearlong field deployment of the algorithm and
associated interface. Finally we introduce a new design framework which we
developed through the course of this collaboration for co-creating anomaly
detection algorithms: Iterative Semantic Heuristic Modeling of Anomalous
Phenomena (ISHMAP), which provides a process for scientists and researchers to
produce natively interpretable anomaly detection models. This work showcases an
example of successfully bridging methodologies from AI and HCI within a
scientific domain, and provides a resource in ISHMAP which may be used by other
researchers and practitioners looking to partner with other scientific teams to
achieve better science through more effective and interpretable anomaly
detection tools
A fieldwork of the future with user enactments
Designing radically new technology systems that people will want to use is complex. Design teams must draw on knowledge related to people’s current values and desires to envision a preferred yet plausible future. However, the introduction of new technology can shape people’s values and practices, and what-we-know-now about them does not always translate to an effective guess of what the future could, or should, be. New products and systems typically exist outside of current understandings of technology and use paradigms; they often have few interaction and social conventions to guide the design process, making efforts to pursue them complex and risky. User Enactments (UEs) have been developed as a design approach that aids design teams in more successfully investigate radical alterations to technologies ’ roles, forms, and behaviors in uncharted design spaces. In this paper, we reflect on our repeated use of UE over the past five years to unpack lessons learned and further specify how and when to use it. We conclude with a reflection on how UE can function as a boundary object and implications for future work
Deconstructing wall turbulence -visualization of resolvent modes
This article accompanies a fluid dynamics video entered into the Gallery of
Fluid Motion of the 66th Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics.Comment: High and low resolution videos associated with this manuscript can be
found as ancillary file
Gender, migration and the ambiguous enterprise of professionalizing domestic service: the case of vocational training for the unemployed in France
Drawing on ethnographic data concerning migrant male domestic workers, this article examines the gendered dimensions of the process of racialization in Italy and France. First, it shows that specific racialized constructions of masculinity are mobilized by the employers as well as by training and recruitment agencies. These constructions of masculinity are related to different forms of organization of the sector in each country and to different ideologies about the integration of migrants. Second, the data presented reveal the strategies used by migrant male domestic workers to reaffirm their masculinity in a traditionally feminized sector. In doing so, this article intends to explore the connections between international migration and the gendering of occupations, with regard to the construction and management of masculinities in domestic service. Finally, by examining men’s experiences, this article aims to contribute to a more complex definition of the international division of care work
Immersive and Collaborative Data Visualization Using Virtual Reality Platforms
Effective data visualization is a key part of the discovery process in the
era of big data. It is the bridge between the quantitative content of the data
and human intuition, and thus an essential component of the scientific path
from data into knowledge and understanding. Visualization is also essential in
the data mining process, directing the choice of the applicable algorithms, and
in helping to identify and remove bad data from the analysis. However, a high
complexity or a high dimensionality of modern data sets represents a critical
obstacle. How do we visualize interesting structures and patterns that may
exist in hyper-dimensional data spaces? A better understanding of how we can
perceive and interact with multi dimensional information poses some deep
questions in the field of cognition technology and human computer interaction.
To this effect, we are exploring the use of immersive virtual reality platforms
for scientific data visualization, both as software and inexpensive commodity
hardware. These potentially powerful and innovative tools for multi dimensional
data visualization can also provide an easy and natural path to a collaborative
data visualization and exploration, where scientists can interact with their
data and their colleagues in the same visual space. Immersion provides benefits
beyond the traditional desktop visualization tools: it leads to a demonstrably
better perception of a datascape geometry, more intuitive data understanding,
and a better retention of the perceived relationships in the data.Comment: 6 pages, refereed proceedings of 2014 IEEE International Conference
on Big Data, page 609, ISBN 978-1-4799-5665-
Multioccupant Activity Recognition in Pervasive Smart Home Environments
been the center of lot of research for many years now. The aim is to recognize the sequence of actions by a specific person using sensor readings. Most of the research has been devoted to activity recognition of single occupants in the environment. However, living environments are usually inhabited by more than one person and possibly with pets. Hence, human activity recognition in the context of multi-occupancy is more general, but also more challenging. The difficulty comes from mainly two aspects: resident identification, known as data association, and diversity of human activities. The present survey paper provides an overview of existing approaches and current practices for activity recognition in multi-occupant smart homes. It presents the latest developments and highlights the open issues in this field
'If You Desire to Enjoy Life, Avoid Unpunctual People': Women, Timetabling and Domestic Advice, 1850–1910
In the second half of the nineteenth century domestic advice manuals applied the language of modern, public time management to the private sphere. This article uses domestic advice and cookery books, including Isabella Beeton's Book of Household Management, to argue that women in the home operated within multiple, overlapping temporalities that incorporated daily, annual, linear and cyclical scales. I examine how seasonal and annual timescales coexisted with the ticking clock of daily time as a framework within which women were instructed to organize their lives in order to conclude that the increasing concern of advice writers with matters of timekeeping and punctuality towards the end of the nineteenth century indicates not the triumph of 'clock time' but rather its failure to overturn other ways of thinking about and using time
Metabolic alterations underlying Bevacizumab therapy in glioblastoma cells
Anti-VEGF therapy with Bevacizumab is approved for glioblastoma treatment, however, it is known that tumors acquired resistance and eventually became even more aggressive and infiltrative after treatment. In the present study we aimed to unravel the potential cellular mechanisms of resistance to Bevacizumab in glioblastoma in vitro models.
Using a panel of glioblastoma cell lines we found that Bevacizumab is able to block the secreted VEGF by the tumor cells and be internalized to the cytoplasm, inducing cytotoxicity in vitro. We further found that Bevacizumab increases the expression of hypoxic (HIF-1α and CAIX) and glycolytic markers (GLUT1 and MCT1), leading to higher glucose uptake and lactate production. Furthermore, we showed that part of the consumed glucose by the tumor cells can be stored as glycogen, hampering cell dead following Bevacizumab treatment. Importantly, we found that this change on the glycolytic metabolism occurs independently of hypoxia and before mitochondrial impairment or autophagy induction. Finally, the combination of Bevacizumab with glucose uptake inhibitors decreased in vivo tumor growth and angiogenesis and shift the expression of glycolytic proteins.
In conclusion, we reported that Bevacizumab is able to increase the glucose metabolism on cancer cells by abrogating autocrine VEGF in vitro. Define the effects of anti-angiogenic drugs at the cellular level can allow us to discover ways to revert acquired resistance to this therapeutic approaches in the futureThis study was partially developed under the scope of the project NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000013, supported by the Northern Portugal Regional Operational Programme (NORTE 2020), under the Portugal 2020 Partnership Agreement, through the European Regional Development Fund (FEDER), and through the Competitiveness Factors Operational Programme (COMPETE), by Portuguese funds, through the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), under the scope of the project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007038, and by Brazilian MCTI/CNPq No 73/2013. VMG was recipient from a PhD fellowship (SFRH/BD/51997/2012) from Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT), Portugal. FC was recipient of a master FAPESP fellowship (n° 2014/03684-0) and “BEPE - Bolsa Estágio de Pesquisa no Exterior” (n° 2015/02691-6). OM is recipient of a post-doc fellowship (SFRH/BPD/108351/2015) from FCT, Portugalinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Understanding a language of ‘aristocracy’, 1700-1850
This article engages with current debates about linguistic usage but in a new way. It examines linguistic change, the shifts in frequency of usage of ‘aristocracy,’ both qualitatively and quantitatively, at specific moments and over time, in print of the period 1700 to 1850. Digital resources are utilized to provide broad quantitative evidence not previously available to historians. The potential use and value of digitized sources is also explored in calculating the volume and frequency of keyword appearance within a broad set of genres. This article also examines qualitatively usage of ‘aristocracy’ by contemporaries and historians and concludes that historians have often used the term anachronistically. It reveals that for much of the eighteenth century ‘aristocracy’ was entirely a political term confined primarily to the educated elite but that by 1850 it had become a common social descriptor of an elite class. It also compares the trajectory of usage of ‘aristocracy’ with that of ‘democracy’ and accounts for the divergence in such usage. It is argued here that analyzing the prevalence and usage of ‘aristocracy’ in contemporary contexts reveals an important narrative of linguistic changes that parallel shifts in political and social culture
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