Open University of Cyprus

CURE2026 workshop provides a venue for research on how interactive and intelligent interfaces can be leveraged to ensure effective uncertainty communication. With the increased capabilities of black-box AI models, particularly large language models (LLMs), there is a growing urgency to understand exactly what these models can and cannot do. Effective uncertainty communication can help users calibrate their trust and reliance on the AI system. However, effectively conveying uncertainty, be it through conversation or by visualizing their confidence levels, remains a major challenge, as users often get confused or misinterpret uncertainty information due to poorly designed interfaces. CURE2026 workshop brings together researchers from HCI, AI, design, and psychology to investigate how we can design, develop, and evaluate intelligent and interactive interfaces for uncertainty communication. The workshop includes a mini-conference section aimed at inspiring discussion and investigating the role of intelligent and interactive interfaces in uncertainty communication. The workshop also features keynotes by Professors Jessica Hullman and Katrien Verbert. Finally, a part of the workshop is dedicated to an interactive activity to discuss and develop guidelines for communicating uncertainty across different domains and tasks.

This paper introduces SmartHouseOperator, a multi-agent intelligent control framework for adaptive and energy-efficient smart-home management. Modern smart homes integrate heterogeneous devices and sensors, yet most existing solutions rely on static rules or manual coordination, limiting their ability to adapt to dynamic environmental conditions and evolving user preferences. SmartHouseOperator addresses these limitations through an agentic architecture that coordinates device-specific agents for air conditioning, lighting, refrigeration, and shutters under a central orchestrator. The system combines contextual inputs (e.g., weather, occupancy, power load), persistent knowledge, reinforcement-learning-based preference modeling, and LLM-powered reasoning to enable coordinated and personalized control decisions. Experimental results show that the framework achieves consistent reasoning performance across multiple agent orchestration engines and reduces air-conditioning power consumption by up to 16% under critical load conditions. These findings demonstrate the potential of multi-agent, learning-enabled control systems to deliver intelligent, energy-aware, and user-centric smart-home operation.

This conceptual-speculative article examines political polarization as a deliberate strategy of affective governance in an age defined by mass dispossession and ecological collapse. We argue that polarization should not be treated as a temporary crisis to be resolved but as a governing technology that organizes fragmentation, consolidates elite power, and deflects attention away from demands for structural transformation. To theorize this dynamic, we introduce the concept of affective eugenics , describing how affective governance legitimizes privatized futures for the few while rendering the many surplus through a sentimentalist and biopolitical sorting of affective capacity. Within education, this affective sorting materializes as a triage of feeling: elite institutions cultivate planetary crisis managers, middle-class students are conditioned for resilient compliance, and underfunded schools are left to manage disposability. We conclude by outlining the educational implications of affective eugenics and calling for praxes of affective de-settlement, refusal, and opacity that unsettle these hierarchies.

This study explores the role of Applied Theatre as a form of cultural mediation in addressing issues of environmental justice within higher education. Eight university professors participated in the study, providing qualitative data through semi-structured interviews that focused on their perceptions of environmental inequalities, their teaching practices, and the potential of theatrical approaches to foster critical engagement with sustainability issues, drawing on their prior use of drama-based methods in university teaching. Using a directed content analysis framework, the study highlights that environmental inequalities are not only material or ecological but are closely intertwined with social relations, access to resources, and collective experiences. The findings indicate that Applied Theatre can create an intermediate learning space where knowledge, emotion, and action intersect, enabling students to engage critically and experientially with social and environmental injustices. Essential conditions for successful integration include targeted professional development of faculty, institutional support, and interdisciplinary collaborations, while challenges such as limited resources, time constraints, and lack of curricular recognition remain significant. The study contributes to the development of a theoretical framework that positions Applied Theatre as cultural mediation in higher education, framing it not only as an artistic methodology but also as a social and educational practice. This framework provides directions for future research and policy, particularly in the design of sustainable teaching practices that connect higher education with social justice and ecological responsibility.

In an era increasingly shaped by Artificial Intelligence (AI), Orthodox Christian theology is called to engage critically and constructively with the ethical, spiritual, and anthropological challenges posed by this technological transformation. While AI excels in data processing and simulation of human behavior, it fundamentally lacks personhood, freedom, and spiritual discernment—elements essential to the Orthodox understanding of the human being as created in the image of God. This article explores how Orthodox theology, grounded in the patristic tradition, offers a distinct framework for evaluating AI: one that upholds human dignity, relationality, and the sacredness of embodied and sacramental life. Rather than rejecting AI, the Orthodox approach calls for discernment—embracing technology as a tool for ministry and human flourishing, but resisting its use when it undermines communion, spiritual depth, or the mystery of divine grace. The question is not whether AI will change the world—it already has—but whether this change will align with the vision of the Kingdom of God. Orthodox Christianity offers a prophetic voice in the digital age, proposing that true transformation comes not through algorithms, but through theosis—our journey toward divine likeness through love, prayer, and communion with God and neighbor.

Walking has always been a primary mode of transportation and is recognized as an essential activity for maintaining good health. Despite the need for safe walking conditions in urban environments, sidewalks are frequently obstructed by various obstacles that hinder free pedestrian movement. Any object obstructing a pedestrian's path can pose a safety hazard. The advancement of pervasive computing and egocentric vision techniques offers the potential to design systems that can automatically detect such obstacles in real time, thereby enhancing pedestrian safety. The development of effective and efficient identification algorithms relies on the availability of comprehensive and well-balanced datasets of egocentric data. In this work, we introduce the PEDESTRIAN dataset, comprising egocentric data for 29 different obstacles commonly found on urban sidewalks. A total of 340 videos were collected using mobile phone cameras, capturing a pedestrian's point of view. Additionally, we present the results of a series of experiments that involved training several state-of-the-art deep learning algorithms using the proposed dataset, which can be used as a benchmark for obstacle detection and recognition tasks. The dataset can be used for training pavement obstacle detectors to enhance the safety of pedestrians in urban areas.

ABSTRACT Research Question/Issue This study aims to examine the impact of independent directors' industry‐specific CEO experience on environmental innovation and subsequent firm performance and value in US firms. Research Findings/Insights Drawing key insights from the management, corporate governance, and innovation literature, this study provides new empirical evidence that independent directors with CEO experience in industries similar to the appointing firm tend to promote value‐enhancing environmental innovation strategies. Our findings reveal that while the presence of industry‐specific CEO directors on the board may reduce environmental innovation, this reduction aligns with industry norms and contributes to improved firm performance and value. Furthermore, this effect is more pronounced in states with weak environmental regulation, where environmental initiatives are discretionary rather than mandatory. Finally, we ruled out alternative explanations for our results, which remained robust across various specifications and tests. Theoretical/Academic Implications We provide robust evidence that independent directors' industry‐specific CEO experience affects environmental innovation at the firm level, thus adding and further expanding the literature on the corporate outcomes of the board of directors' human capital. Second, we provide evidence on the impact of environmental innovation initiated by firms with industry‐aligned CEO expertise on their boards on firm value and performance. Third, our study answers the current call for research on any neglected individual‐level factors that could possibly shape a firm's focus towards environmental innovation. Fourth, our sample period is long enough to capture potential changes in external conditions that may have influenced firm behavior and outcomes. Thus, we go beyond prior studies and control for several factors likely to affect a firm's environmental innovation. Practitioner/Policy Implications We demonstrate that independent directors with industry‐specific CEO experience contribute to firm profitability and value by guiding firms towards industry‐consistent, higher value‐added, and performance‐enhancing green innovation levels. These results have important implications for corporate decision‐making in firm environmental innovation and beyond.