Affective design using machine learning : a survey and its prospect of conjoining big data

Customer satisfaction in purchasing new products is an important issue that needs to be addressed in today’s competitive markets. Consumers not only need to be solely satisfied with the functional requirements of a product, and they are also concerned with the affective needs and aesthetic appreciation of the product. A product with good affective design excites consumer emotional feelings so as to buy the product. However, affective design often involves complex and multi-dimensional problems for modelling and maximising affective satisfaction of customers. Machine learning is commonly used to model and maximise the affective satisfaction, since it is effective in modelling nonlinear patterns when numerical data relevant to the patterns is available. This article presents a survey of commonly used machine learning approaches for affective design when two data streams namely traditional survey data and modern big data are used. A classification of machine learning technologies is first provided which is developed using traditional survey data for affective design. The limitations and advantages of each machine learning technology are also discussed and we summarize the uses of machine learning technologies for affective design. This review article is useful for those who use machine learning technologies for affective design. The limitations of using traditional survey data are then discussed which is time consuming to collect and cannot fully cover all the affective domains for product development. Nowadays, big data related to affective design can be captured from social media. The prospects and challenges in using big data are discussed so as to enhance affective design, in which very limited research has so far been attempted. This article provides guidelines for researchers who are interested in exploring big data and machine learning technologies for affective design

Evolution of genes and genomes on the Drosophila phylogeny

Comparative analysis of multiple genomes in a phylogenetic framework dramatically improves the precision and sensitivity of evolutionary inference, producing more robust results than single-genome analyses can provide. The genomes of 12 Drosophila species, ten of which are presented here for the first time (sechellia, simulans, yakuba, erecta, ananassae, persimilis, willistoni, mojavensis, virilis and grimshawi), illustrate how rates and patterns of sequence divergence across taxa can illuminate evolutionary processes on a genomic scale. These genome sequences augment the formidable genetic tools that have made Drosophila melanogaster a pre-eminent model for animal genetics, and will further catalyse fundamental research on mechanisms of development, cell biology, genetics, disease, neurobiology, behaviour, physiology and evolution. Despite remarkable similarities among these Drosophila species, we identified many putatively non-neutral changes in protein-coding genes, non-coding RNA genes, and cis-regulatory regions. These may prove to underlie differences in the ecology and behaviour of these diverse species