Walking along trails in natural areas is a rewarding experience, but visitors sometimes need proper assistance to enhance their enjoyment, maximize learning, and ensure safety. Over the years, various signage techniques have been introduced, but today, the widespread use of smartphones offers new opportunities for visitor support. In this paper, we outline the key principles for designing an Android app tailored for geotourists. Our approach begins by defining user personas and deriving app requirements based on their needs. We then present a proof of concept that addresses the critical aspects identified during the design process.
Learning is an active process that is deeply tied to physical and social contexts. Yet schools traditionally place learners in a passive role and focus on decontextualizing knowledge. Situating learning in more authentic tasks and contexts typically requires taking it outside the classroom via field trips and apprenticeships, but virtual reality (VR) is a promising tool to bring more authentically situated learning experiences into classrooms. In this position paper, I discuss how one of VR's primary affordances for learning is heightening agenct, and how such heightened agency can facilitate more authenticlaly situated learning by allowing learners legitimate peripheral participation.
This investigates the relationship between eye fixation patterns and performance in Java programming exercises using eye-tracking technology. Thirty-one students from a university in Metro Manila participated, and their eye movements were recorded while solving five Java programming exercises (three of the five exercises were picked). The fixation data were preprocessed and visualized using heatmap bin graphs, dividing the participants into correct and wrong answer groups. The Mann-Whitney U Test was employed to determine if there were significant differences in the fixation patterns between the two groups.
Visualization as a discipline often grapples with generalization by reasoning about how study results on the efficacy of a tool in one context might apply to another context. This work offers an account of the logic of generalization in visualization research and argues that it struggles in particular with applications of visualization as a decision aid. We use decision theory to define the dimensions on which decision problems can vary, and we present an analysis of heterogeneity in scenarios where visualization supports decision-making. Our findings identify utility as a focal and under-examined concept in visualization research on decision-making, demonstrating how the visualization community's logic of generalization might benefit from using decision theory as a lens for understanding context variation.
Stereohaptic vibration is an innovative vibrotactile technology that extends the conventional tactile localization to the surrounding space, representing a virtual vibration source in the external environment. Previously, we have developed displays on the forearms and soles. Today, we present a demonstration of a new jacket-type device, which enables localization at any position around the body by arranging multiple vibrators along the torso centered on the midline. In our demonstration, you can experience the footsteps and roars of a inosaur walking around you, and it provides an experience that is as if you are in a fantasy movie.
Shun Watatani, Hikaru Nagano, Yuichi Tazaki
et al.
Digital communication tools are limited to visual and auditory information and lack non-verbal information such as touch, which is important for communicating intentions and emotions. In order to solve this problem, the use of haptic technology in digital communication is attracting attention. In this study, we constructed a virtual handshake system that can reproduce distributed haptic information using a wearable device that presents skin deformation. Using the system, we experimentally obtained the correspondence between emotions and handshaking behavior, and constructed a demonstration of handshakes that can express differences in emotions based on the experimental results.
Data is collected everywhere in our increasingly instrumented world and people are increasingly wanting to access this data from anywhere in it. This kind of anywhere & everywhere data present new challenges and opportunities for data-driven sensemaking and decision-making that will require leveraging novel mobile, immersive, and ubiquitous technologies undergirded by recent advances in human cognition. In this paper, we examine these emerging forms of analytics that are transforming how data analysis will be conducted in the future: in an ecosystem of connected devices, interactive visualizations, and collaborating users with vast amounts of data and analytical mechanisms available at their fingertips.
Jacob L Edelson, Logan D Schneider, David Amar
et al.
AbstractStudy ObjectivesPeriodic limb movement in sleep is a common sleep phenotype characterized by repetitive leg movements that occur during or before sleep. We conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of periodic limb movements in sleep (PLMS) using a joint analysis (i.e., discovery, replication, and joint meta-analysis) of four cohorts (MrOS, the Wisconsin Sleep Cohort Study, HypnoLaus, and MESA), comprised of 6843 total subjects.MethodsThe MrOS study and Wisconsin Sleep Cohort Study (N = 1745 cases) were used for discovery. Replication in the HypnoLaus and MESA cohorts (1002 cases) preceded joint meta-analysis. We also performed LD score regression, estimated heritability, and computed genetic correlations between potentially associated traits such as restless leg syndrome (RLS) and insomnia. The causality and direction of the relationships between PLMS and RLS was evaluated using Mendelian randomization.ResultsWe found 2 independent loci were significantly associated with PLMS: rs113851554 (p = 3.51 × 10−12, β = 0.486), an SNP located in a putative regulatory element of intron eight of MEIS1 (2p14); and rs9369062 (p = 3.06 × 10−22, β = 0.2093), a SNP located in the intron region of BTBD9 (6p12); both of which were also lead signals in RLS GWAS. PLMS is genetically correlated with insomnia, risk of stroke, and RLS, but not with iron deficiency. Pleiotropy adjusted Mendelian randomization analysis identified a causal effect of RLS on PLMS.ConclusionsBecause PLMS is more common than RLS, PLMS may have multiple causes and additional studies are needed to further validate these findings.
Today, Machine Learning (ML) applications can have access to tens of thousands of features. With such feature sets, efficiently browsing and curating subsets of most relevant features is a challenge. In this paper, we present a novel approach to visualize up to several thousands of features in a single image. The image not only shows information on individual features, but also expresses feature interactions via the relative positioning of features.
Sanskar Jethi, Avinash Kumar Choudhary, Yash Gupta
et al.
We have seen significant advancements in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in the 21st century. It has enabled a new technology where we can have a human-like conversation with the machines. The most significant use of this speech recognition and contextual understanding technology exists in the form of a Smart Speaker. We have a wide variety of Smart Speaker products available to us. This paper aims to decode its creation and explain the technology that makes these Speakers, "Smart."
At the latest since the advent of the Internet, disinformation and conspiracy theories have become ubiquitous. Recent examples like QAnon and Pizzagate prove that false information can lead to real violence. In this motivation statement for the Workshop on Human Aspects of Misinformation at CHI 2021, I explain my research agenda focused on 1. why people believe in disinformation, 2. how people can be best supported in recognizing disinformation, and 3. what the potentials and risks of different tools designed to fight disinformation are.
Megan M Marron, Stacy G Wendell, Robert M Boudreau
et al.
AbstractBackgroundLow walking ability is highly prevalent with advancing age and predicts major health outcomes. Metabolomics may help to better characterize differences in walking ability among older adults, providing insight into potentially altered molecular processes underlying age-related decline in functioning. We sought to identify metabolites and metabolic pathways associated with high versus low walking ability among 120 participants ages 79–95 from the CHS All Stars study.MethodsUsing a nested case–control design, 60 randomly selected participants with low walking ability were matched one-to-one on age, gender, race, and fasting time with 60 participants with high walking ability. High versus low walking ability was defined as being in the best versus worst tertiles for both gait speed (≥0.9 vs <0.7 m/s) and the Walking Ability Index (7–9 vs 0–1). Using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry, 569 metabolites were identified in overnight-fasting plasma.ResultsNinety-six metabolites were associated with walking ability, where 24% were triacylglycerols. Triacylglycerols that were higher among those with high walking ability consisted mostly of polyunsaturated fatty acids, whereas triacylglycerols that were lower among those with high walking ability consisted mostly of saturated or monounsaturated fatty acids. Body composition partly explained associations between some metabolites and walking ability. Proline and arginine metabolism was a top pathway associated with walking ability.ConclusionThese results may partly reflect pathways of modifiable risk factors, including excess dietary lipids and lack of physical activity, contributing to obesity and further alterations in metabolic pathways that lead to age-related decline in walking ability in this older adult cohort.
A significant amount of our daily lives is dedicated to driving, leading to an unavoidable exposure to driving-related stress. The rise of autonomous vehicles will likely lessen the extent of this stress and enhance the routine traveling experience. Yet, no matter how diverse they may be, current routing criteria are limited to considering only the passive preferences of a vehicle's users. Thus, to enhance the overall driving experience in autonomous vehicles, we advocate here for the diversification of routing criteria, by additionally emphasizing activity- and mood-based requirements.
While many visualization researchers have attempted to define data insights, little is known about how visualization users perceive them. We interviewed 23 professional users of end-user visualization platforms (e.g., Tableau and Power BI) about their experiences with data insights. We report on seven characteristics of data insights based on interviewees' descriptions. Grounded in these characteristics, we propose practical implications for creating tools that aim to automatically communicate data insights to users.
Tactile displays based on friction modulation offer wide-bandwidth forces rendered directly on the fingertip. However, due to a number of touch conditions (e.g., normal force, skin hydration) that result in variations in the friction force and the strength of modulation effect, the precision of the force rendering remains limited. In this paper we demonstrate a closed-loop electroadhesion method for precise playback of friction force profiles on a human finger and we apply this method to the tactile rendering of several textiles encountered in everyday life.
So-called battle maps are an appropriate way to visually summarize the flow of battles as they happen in many team-based combat games. Such maps can be a valuable tool for retrospective analysis of battles for the purpose of training or for providing a summary representation for spectators. In this paper an extension to the battle map algorithm previously proposed by the author and which addresses a shortcoming in the depiction of troop movements is described. The extension does not require alteration of the original algorithm and can easily be added as an intermediate step before rendering. The extension is illustrated using gameplay data from the team-based multiplayer game World of Tanks.
This paper describes a set of data made available that contains detailed subtask coding of interactions with several production vehicle human machine interfaces (HMIs) on open roadways, along with accompanying eyeglance data.