SERIOUS GAMES TO COPE WITH THE GENETIC TEST REVOLUTION

Il progresso tecnologico e l'abbassamento del costo di sequenziamento del DNA, hanno reso i test genetici sempre pi\uf9 accessibili al pubblico. Questo sviluppo per\uf2 non procede di pari passo con la scarsa conoscenza che la gente comune risulta avere in ambito genetico. Oggi giorno \ue8 possibile sottoporsi ad un test genetico autonomamente senza il consulto medico, ma la diffusa carenza di consapevolezza e informazione in questo ambito pu\uf2 portare ad un fraintendimento dei risultati genetici ottenuti e quindi a possibili conseguenze negative per quanto concerne le decisioni relative alla propria salute. Per cercare di porre rimedio a questa lacuna sono state sviluppate diverse policy. Tra queste, la necessit\ue0 di educare la gente sui concetti di genetica assume un rilievo di particolare importanza. Si vuole infatti cercare di potenziare la consapevolezza della cittadinanza, favorendo prese di decisione in ambito medico pi\uf9 responsabili. Per ottenere questo risultato l'impiego di Serious Games (SG) sembra uno tra gli approcci pi\uf9 promettenti. I SG hanno infatti mostrato ottimi risultati se impiegati in ambiti quali l'educazione, l'addestramento, la promozione della salute e la socializzazione; ecco dunque perch\ue8 sembrano essere un valido strumento per divulgare concetti di genetica tra la gente comune. Lo scopo di questa ricerca \ue8 studiare la possibilit\ue0 di utilizzare i SG come media fortemente interattivo per incoraggiare un apprendimento esperienziale, aumentare la conoscenza e promuovere il processo cognitivo dell'autoefficacia nel contesto dei processi decisionali in ambito genetico. Per ottenere questo risultato esploriamo lo stato dell'arte dei SG legati alla genetica e discutiamo sulla possibilit\ue0 di farli utilizzare dalla gente comune. Successivamente progettiamo, sviluppiamo e testiamo una suite di SG su misura per educare la gente sui concetti di genetica e di test genetico. Lo sviluppo e la validazione di videogiochi arcade custom per illustrare concetti di genetica di base e l'utilizzo del genere ``Adventure Game'' per mettere in relazione il rischio genetico individuale ai fattori dello stile di vita, risulta essere, sulla base delle nostre ricerche, completamete nuovo in questo ambito. Concludiamo infine presentando i risultati della ricerca condotta testando i videogiochi sviluppati per quanto riguarda la loro usabilit\ue0, la capacit\ue0 di trasferire conoscenza e migliorare il processo cognitivo nell'ambito dei processi decisionali in ambito medico e analizzando i dati collezionati durante le sessioni di gioco.Technological progress and the lowering of DNA sequencing costs have made genetic testing increasingly accessible to the general public. However, this progress does not reflect an increased genetics literacy in lay people that at present remains poor. Thus almost everyone has the possibility to undergo genetic testing independently, but the diffuse lack of knowledge may lead to misinterpretation of genetic information and result in negative consequences for personal health decisions. Several policies have been developed to try to address this issue. The most appropriate one is to educate people about genetic concepts and genetic test interpretation, to empower them in order to make responsible health-related decisions. To reach this goal the Serious Games (SG) approach seems very promising as it has been shown to be very powerful in education, training, health promotion, and socialization. This is why SG appear an attractive means to communicate genetic concepts to the general public. The aim of this research is to study the feasibility of using SG as a highly interactive medium to encourage experiential learning, increase literacy and promote self-efficacy in the genetic-related decision-making process. For this purpose, we explore state-of-the-art of Serious Games related to genetics, discussing whether these games are an adequate instrument to increase literacy and self-efficacy in the general public. Based on this analysis we design, develop and test a suite of SG specifically tailored to educate people about genetic concepts and genetic testing. To maximize the efficacy and mass appeal, the level of complexity of genetic information was balanced with the intent of making comprehensible and usable games. We believe that our approach --development and validation, using an evidence-based approach, of customized arcade games to convey basic genetics concepts together with the use of the ``Adventure Game'' genre to relate the individual genetic risk with lifestyle factors-- is completely new in this field. We conclude by discussing results about usability/playability, knowledge transfer and self-efficacy promotion in the field of health-related decision making, analysing data collected during monitored playing sessions

The role of technology in improving the Customer Experience in the banking sector: a systematic mapping study

Information Technology (IT) has revolutionized the way we manage our money. The adoption of innovative technologies in banking scenarios allows to access old and new financial services but in a faster and more secure, comfortable, rewarding and engaging way. The number, the performances and the seamless integration of these innovations is a driver for banks to retain their customers and avoid costly change of hearts. The literature is rich in works reporting on the use of technology with direct or indirect impact on the experience of banking customers. Some mapping studies about the adoption of technologies in the field exist, but they are specific to particular technologies (e.g., only Artificial Intelligence), or vice versa too generic (e.g., reviewing the adoption of technologies to support any kind of banking process). So a specific research effort on the crossed domain of technology and Customer Experience (CX) is missing. This paper aims to overcome the following gaps: the lack of a comprehensive map of the research made in the field in the past decade; a discussion on the current research trends of top publications and journals is missing; the next research challenges are yet to be identified. To face these limitations, we designed and submitted 7 different queries to pull papers out of 4 popular scientific databases. From an initial set of 6,756 results, we identified a set of 89 primary studies that we thoroughly analyzed. A selection of the top 20% works allowed us to seek the most performant technologies as well as other promising ones that have not been experimented yet in the field. Main results prove that the combined study of technology and CX in the banking sector is not approached systematically and thus the development of a new specific research line is needed

WoX+: A Meta-Model-Driven Approach to Mine User Habits and Provide Continuous Authentication in the Smart City

The literature is rich in techniques and methods to perform Continuous Authentication (CA) using biometric data, both physiological and behavioral. As a recent trend, less invasive methods such as the ones based on context-aware recognition allows the continuous identification of the user by retrieving device and app usage patterns. However, a still uncovered research topic is to extend the concepts of behavioral and context-aware biometric to take into account all the sensing data provided by the Internet of Things (IoT) and the smart city, in the shape of user habits. In this paper, we propose a meta-model-driven approach to mine user habits, by means of a combination of IoT data incoming from several sources such as smart mobility, smart metering, smart home, wearables and so on. Then, we use those habits to seamlessly authenticate users in real time all along the smart city when the same behavior occurs in different context and with different sensing technologies. Our model, which we called WoX+, allows the automatic extraction of user habits using a novel Artificial Intelligence (AI) technique focused on high-level concepts. The aim is to continuously authenticate the users using their habits as behavioral biometric, independently from the involved sensing hardware. To prove the effectiveness of WoX+ we organized a quantitative and qualitative evaluation in which 10 participants told us a spending habit they have involving the use of IoT. We chose the financial domain because it is ubiquitous, it is inherently multi-device, it is rich in time patterns, and most of all it requires a secure authentication. With the aim of extracting the requirement of such a system, we also asked the cohort how they expect WoX+ will use such habits to securely automatize payments and identify them in the smart city. We discovered that WoX+ satisfies most of the expected requirements, particularly in terms of unobtrusiveness of the solution, in contrast with the limitations observed in the existing studies. Finally, we used the responses given by the cohorts to generate synthetic data and train our novel AI block. Results show that the error in reconstructing the habits is acceptable: Mean Squared Error Percentage (MSEP) 0.04%

The fine line between total and partial tidal disruption events

Flares from tidal disruption events are unique tracers of quiescent black holes at the centre of galaxies. The appearance of these flares is very sensitive to whether the star is totally or partially disrupted, and in this paper we seek to identify the critical distance of the star from the black hole (r_d) that enables us to distinguish between these two outcomes. We perform here Mesh-free Finite Mass, traditional, and modern Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamical simulations of star-black hole close encounters, with the aim of checking if the value of r_d depends on the simulation technique. We find that the critical distance (or the so-called critical disruption parameter beta_d) depends only weakly on the adopted simulation method, being beta_d=0.92\pm 0.02 for a gamma=5/3 polytrope and beta_d=2.01\pm 0.01 for a gamma=4/3 polytrope.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables; accepted to A&

A Sustainable Approach to Delivering Programmable Peer-to-Peer Offline Payments

Payment apps and digital wallets are powerful tools used to exchange e-money via the internet. However, with the progressive disappearance of cash, there is a need for the digital equivalent of physical banknotes to guarantee the same level of anonymity of private payments. Few efforts to solve the double-spending problem exist in P2P payments (i.e., in avoiding the possibility of a payer retaining copies of digital coins in absence of a trusted third party (TTP)), and further research efforts are needed to explore options to preserve the privacy of payments, as per the mandates of numerous central bank digital currency (CBDC) exploratory initiatives, such as the digital euro. Moreover, generic programmability requirements and energetic impacts should be considered. In this paper, we present a sustainable offline P2P payment scheme to face the double-spending problem by means of a one-time program (OTP) approach. The approach consists of wiping the business logic out of a client’s app and allowing financial intermediaries to inject a certified payment code into the user’s device, which will execute (asynchronously and offline) at the time of payment. To do so, we wrap each coin in a program at the time of withdrawal. Then the program exploits the trusted execution environment (TEE) of modern smartphones to transfer itself from the payer to the payee via a direct IoT link. To confirm the validity of the approach, we performed qualitative and quantitative evaluations, specifically focusing on the energetic sustainability of the proposed scheme. Results show that our payment scheme is energetically sustainable as the current absorbed for sending one coin is, at most, ~1.8 mAh on an Apple smartphone. We advance the state-of-the-art because the scheme meets the programmability, anonymity, and sustainability requirements (at the same time)

Hand Rehabilitation and Telemonitoring through Smart Toys

We describe here a platform for autonomous hand rehabilitation and telemonitoring of young patients. A toy embedding the electronics required to sense fingers pressure in different grasping modalities is the core element of this platform. The system has been realized following the user-centered design methodology taking into account stakeholder needs from start: clinicians require reliable measurements and the ability to get a picture remotely on rehabilitation progression; children have asked to interact with a pleasant and comfortable object that is easy to use, safe, and rewarding. These requirements are not antithetic, and considering both since the design phase has allowed the realization of a platform reliable to clinicians and keen to be used by young children

HF-SCA: Hands-Free Strong Customer Authentication Based on a Memory-Guided Attention Mechanisms

Strong customer authentication (SCA) is a requirement of the European Union Revised Directive on Payment Services (PSD2) which ensures that electronic payments are performed with multifactor authentication. While increasing the security of electronic payments, the SCA impacted seriously on the shopping carts abandonment: an Italian bank computed that 22% of online purchases in the first semester of 2021 did not complete because of problems with the SCA. Luckily, the PSD2 allows the use of transaction risk analysis tool to exempt the SCA process. In this paper, we propose an unsupervised novel combination of existing machine learning techniques able to determine if a purchase is typical or not for a specific customer, so that in the case of a typical purchase the SCA could be exempted. We modified a well-known architecture (U-net) by replacing convolutional blocks with squeeze-and-excitation blocks. After that, a memory network was added in a latent space and an attention mechanism was introduced in the decoding side of the network. The proposed solution was able to detect nontypical purchases by creating temporal correlations between transactions. The network achieved 97.7% of AUC score over a well-known dataset retrieved online. By using this approach, we found that 98% of purchases could be executed by securely exempting the SCA, while shortening the customer’s journey and providing an elevated user experience. As an additional validation, we developed an Alexa skill for Amazon smart glasses which allows a user to shop and pay online by merely using vocal interaction, leaving the hands free to perform other activities, for example driving a car

The importance of camera calibration and distortion correction to obtain measurements with video surveillance systems

Video surveillance systems are commonly used as important sources of quantitative information but from the acquired images it is possible to obtain a large amount of metric information. Yet, different methodological issues must be considered in order to perform accurate measurements using images. The most important one is the camera calibration, which is the estimation of the parameters defining the camera model. One of the most used camera calibration method is the Zhang's method, that allows the estimation of the linear parameters of the camera model. This method is very diffused as it requires a simple setup and it allows to calibrate cameras using a simple and fast procedure, but it does not consider lenses distortions, that must be taken into account with short focal lenses, commonly used in video surveillance systems. In order to perform accurate measurements, the linear camera model and the Zhang's method are improved in order to take nonlinear parameters into account and compensate the distortion contribute. In this paper we first describe the pinhole camera model that considers cameras as central projection systems. After a brief introduction to the camera calibration process and in particular the Zhang's method, we give a description of the different types of lens distortions and the techniques used for the distortion compensation. At the end some numerical example are shown in order to demonstrate the importance of the distortion compensation to obtain accurate measurements

A Cloud Telemedicine Platform Based on Workflow Management System: A Review of an Italian Case Study

The paper aims to describe a new technological and organizational approach in order to manage teleconsultation and telemonitoring processes involving a Physician, who remotely interacts with one or more Specialists, in order to evaluate and discuss the specific clinical conditions of a patient, based primarily on the sharing of digital clinical data, reports and diagnostic images. In the HINT project (Healthcare INtegration in Telemedicine), a teleconsultation and telemonitoring cloud platform has been developed using a Hub and Spoke architecture, based on a Business Process Management System (BPMS). The specialized clinical centres (Hubs) operate in connection with the territorial hospital centres (Spokes), which receive specific diagnostic consultations and telemonitoring data from the appropriate Specialist, supported by advanced AI systems. The developed platform overcomes the concepts of a traditional and fragmented teleconsultation and consequently the static organization of Hubs and Spokes, evolving towards an integrated clinical workflow management. The project platform adopts international healthcare standards, such as HL7 FHIR, IHE (XDS and XDW) and DICOM for the acquisition and management of healthcare data and diagnostic images. A Workflow Management System implemented in the platform allows to manage multiple and contemporaneous processes through a single platform, correctly associating the tasks to the Physicians responsible for their execution, monitoring the status of the health activities and managing possible clinical issues