High Social Acceptance of Head Gaze Loosely Synchronized with Speech for Social Robots

This research demonstrates that robots can achieve socially acceptable interactions, using loosely synchronized head gaze-speech, without understanding the semantics of the dialog. Prior approaches used tightly synchronized head gaze-speech, which requires significant human effort and time to manually annotate synchronization events in advance, restricting interactive dialog, and requiring the operator to act as a puppeteer. This approach has two novel aspects. First, it uses affordances in the sentence structure, time delays, and typing to achieve autonomous synchronization of head gaze-speech. Second, it is implemented within a behavioral robotics framework derived from 32 previous implementations. The efficacy of the loosely synchronized approach was validated through a 93-participant 1 x 3 (loosely synchronized head gaze-speech, tightly synchronized head gaze-speech, no-head gazespeech) between-subjects experiment using the “Survivor Buddy” rescue robot in a victim management scenario. The results indicated that the social acceptance of loosely synchronized head gaze-speech is similar to tightly synchronized head gazespeech (manual annotation), and preferred to the no head gaze-speech case. These findings contribute to the study of social robotics in three ways. First, the research overall contributes to a fundamental understanding of the role of social head gaze in social acceptance, and the production of social head gaze. Second, it shows that autonomously generated head gaze-speech coordination is both possible and acceptable. Third, the behavioral robotics framework simplifies creation, analysis, and comparison of implementations

Survivor Buddy and SciGirls: Affect, Outreach, and Questions

This paper describes the Survivor Buddy human-robot interaction project and how it was used by four middle-school girls to illustrate the scientific process for an episode of “SciGirls”, a Public Broadcast System science reality show. Survivor Buddy is a four degree of freedom robot head, with the face being a MIMO 740 multi-media touch screen monitor. It is being used to explore consistency and trust in the use of robots as social mediums, where robots serve as intermediaries between dependents (e.g., trapped survivors) and the outside world (doctors, rescuers, family members). While the SciGirl experimentation was neither statistically significant nor rigorously controlled, the experience makes three contributions. It introduces the Survivor Buddy project and social medium role, it illustrates that human-robot interaction is an appealing way to make robotics more accessible to the general public, and raises interesting questions about the existence of a minimum set of degrees of freedom for sufficient expressiveness, the relative importance of voice versus non-verbal affect, and the range and intensity of robot motions

Kinetics of desorption of hydrogen from copper chromite catalyst

Isothermal desorption of hydrogen from copper chromite has been studied from 50 to 300° C. An empirical expression, β exp [-α q]= t, is found to fit the desorption data satisfactorily, while the application of the Elovich and the first order desorption rate expressions lead to the detection of three kinetic stages in the desorption process. The rate parameters obtained using these latter two models have a complex trend in their behaviour with temperature. The Elovich rate parameters are found to undergo undulatory changes with temperature like those of the adsorption isobar and their transition regions are very close to those of the adsorption isobar. Also, there seems to be a close relationship between the surface coverage at transition points and the adsorption isobars. The presence of the three kinetic stages in the desorption process may be accounted for by considering the three distinctly different types of adsorption sites on the reduced copper chromite

Homology-Based Prediction of Potential Protein-Protein Interactions between Human Erythrocytes and Plasmodium falciparum

Plasmodium falciparum , a causative agent of malaria, is a well-characterized obligate intracellular parasite known for its ability to remodel host cells, particularly erythrocytes, to successfully persist in the host environment. However, the current levels of understanding from the laboratory experiments on the host-parasite interactions and the strategies pursued by the parasite to remodel host erythrocytes are modest. Several computational means developed in the recent past to predict host-parasite/pathogen interactions have generated testable hypotheses on feasible protein-protein interactions. We demonstrate the utility of protein structure-based protocol in the recognition of potential interacting proteins across P. falciparum and host erythrocytes. In concert with the information on the expression and subcellular localization of host and parasite proteins, we have identified 208 biologically feasible interactions potentially brought about by 59 P. falciparum and 30 host erythrocyte proteins. For selected cases, we have evaluated the physicochemical viability of the predicted interactions in terms of surface complementarity, electrostatic complementarity, and interaction energies at protein interface regions. Such careful inspection of molecular and mechanistic details generates high confidence on the predicted host-parasite protein-protein interactions. The predicted host-parasite interactions generate many experimentally testable hypotheses that can contribute to the understanding of possible mechanisms undertaken by the parasite in host erythrocyte remodeling. Thus, the key protein players recognized in P. falciparum can be explored for their usefulness as targets for chemotherapeutic intervention

Medical Field Exercise With a Social Telepresence Robot

This article reports observations from a field study in which medical responders used a social telepresence robot to communicate with participants playing the role of a trapped victim in two search and rescue exercises. The interaction between the robot, victims, and responders suggests the coexistence of two distinct social identities for the robot. One which is a pure conduit for the remote medic, and another in which the robot is treated as an independent social actor. Participants acting as victims demonstrated fluidity in interacting with each identity. The social identify of a robot has important implications for the development of future telepresence systems, particularly in the healthcare domain. Since victims in the exercises gave attention to both the robot and the remote medic, it is possible that the robot’s social actor role may divert attention from the remotely connected individual. The work provides a starting point for investigation of role conflict between a remote medical professional and the robot they are using to assist a patient

Stimulated Brillouin scattering mitigation using optimized phase modulation waveforms in high power narrow linewidth Yb-doped fiber amplifiers

We demonstrate the mitigation of stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) in a double-clad single mode Yb-doped optical fiber amplifier through external phase modulation of narrow linewidth laser radiation using optimized periodic waveforms from an arbitrary waveform generator. Such optimized phase modulation waveforms are obtained through a multi-objective Pareto optimization based on a comprehensive model for SBS in high power narrow linewidth fiber amplifiers using Brillouin parameters determined from controlled measurements. The ability of our approach to mitigate SBS is tested experimentally as a function of RMS linewidth of the modulated optical radiation, and we measure an enhancement in SBS threshold with respect to optical linewidth of ∼ 10 GHz−1. Furthermore, we discuss the dependence of the SBS threshold enhancement on key parameters such as the amplifier length and the period of the optimized waveforms. Through simulations we find that waveforms of sufficiently long periods and optimized for a relatively long fiber (10 m) are effective for SBS suppression for shorter fibers as well. We also investigate the effect of increase in the bandwidth and amplitude of the modulation waveform on the SBS threshold enhancement observed at higher optical linewidth.</p

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Not AvailableSemen was collected from six dromedary camels using artificial vagina during rutting season. Liquefaction of the viscous semen occurred in 23.89 ± 1.49h. During liquefaction, proteins with molecular masses of 24.55 kDa and 22.07 kDa appeared in conjunction with the disappearance of intact 26.00 kDa protein after 18–24 h. These proteins were identified as β-nerve growth factors (β-NGFs) in liquefied camel semen. Guanidine-HCL improves the rheological characteristics of dromedary camel semen along with significant (p < 0.01) increase in sperm motility. No significant differences were found in viability of spermatozoa indicating no visible detrimental effects on spermatozoa. The cause of semen viscosity, as well as proteins that are present in liquefied dromedary camel seminal plasma, is described for the first time.Not Availabl

Not Available

Not AvailableSemen was collected from six dromedary camels using artificial vagina during rutting season. Liquefaction of the viscous semen occurred in 23.89+1.49 h. During liquefaction, proteins with molecular masses of 24.55 kDa and 22.07 kDa appeared in conjunction with the disappearance of intact 26.00 kDa protein after 18–24 h. These proteins were identified as β-nerve growth factors (β-NGFs) in liquefied camel semen. Guanidine-HCL improves the rheological characteristics of dromedary camel semen along with significant (P<0.01) increase in sperm motility. No significant differences were found in viability of spermatozoa indicating no visible detrimental effects on spermatozoa. The cause of semen viscosity, as well as proteins that are present in liquefied dromedary camel seminal plasma, is described for the first timeNot Availabl

Amine Functionalized polyaniline grafted to exfoliated graphite oxide: Synthesis, characterization and multi-element sensor studies

An amine functionalized polyaniline (AMPANI) derivative has been grafted onto exfoliated graphite oxide (EGO). The synthesis involved the in-situ chemical oxidative polymerization of functionalized aniline monomer in the presence of EGO with diaminobenzene acting as a bridging ligand to yield EGAMPANI. The synthesized compound was characterized by FT-IR and FT-Raman spectroscopy as well as thermogravimetric and X-ray diffraction analysis. The EGAMPANI was then used to modify a carbon paste electrode (CPE), which was applied for multi-elemental sensing of Pb2+, Cd2+ and Hg2+ ions using differential pulse anodic stripping voltammetty. The limits of detection achieved using the EGAMPANI modified CPE were 22 x 10(-6) M for Hg2+ ion, 1.2 x 10(-6) M for Cd2+ ion and 9.8 x 10(-7) M for Pb2+ ion. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved