DyNamic Interactive Anticipation–Time for a Paradigmatic Shift

Social neuroscience has called for new experimental paradigms aimed toward real-time interactions. A distinctive feature of interactions is mutual information exchange: One member of a pair changes in response to the other while simultaneously producing actions that alter the other. Combining mathematical and neurophysiological methods, we introduce a paradigm called the human dynamic clamp (HDC), to directly manipulate the interaction or coupling between a human and a surrogate constructed to behave like a human. Inspired by the dynamic clamp used so productively in cellular neuroscience, the HDC allows a person to interact in real time with a virtual partner itself driven by well-established models of coordination dynamics. People coordinate hand movements with the visually observed movements of a virtual hand, the parameters of which depend on input from the subject's own movements. We demonstrate that HDC can be extended to cover a broad repertoire of human behavior, including rhythmic and discrete movements, adaptation to changes of pacing, and behavioral skill learning as specified by a virtual "teacher." We propose HDC as a general paradigm, best implemented when empirically verified theoretical or mathematical models have been developed in a particular scientific field. The HDC paradigm is powerful because it provides an opportunity to explore parameter ranges and perturbations that are not easily accessible in ordinary human interactions. The HDC not only enables to test the veracity of theoretical models, it also illuminates features that are not always apparent in real-time human social interactions and the brain correlates thereof.

Article MetricsDownloadsCitationsNo data available.0246810AugSepOctNovDecJan1890Total6 Months12 MonthsTotal number of downloads for the most recent 6 whole calendar months.

In the contemporary digital era, advertising has undergone a profound metamorphosis, transcending its traditional boundaries to assume a pivotal role in shaping the success and trajectory of modern businesses. This research delves into the multifaceted and dynamic role that advertising plays within the digital landscape. Digital advertising has evolved into a precision instrument, enabling businesses to target specific audiences with personalized content, thereby optimizing the allocation of marketing resources. This paradigm shift has ushered in a new era of audience involvement characterized by real-time interactions, data-driven insights, and unparalleled personalization. The integration of data analytics allows advertisers to measure and refine campaigns with a level of precision previously unattainable. The most common form of advertising in ancient times was word of mouth. Television, radio, magazines, and newspapers have dominated the advertising world in the 20th century, but the Internet has continued to gain popularity among advertisers since its initial rapid growth in the 1990s. Advertising is not limited to media options; ads are placed in physical locations, such as billboards and shop windows. As advertising media change, business practices also change in response, ensuring that the business world, and specifically marketing departments, never stay stagnant. Advertising is a form of communication aimed at promoting a product, service, idea, or brand to a target audience. Advertising messages are carefully crafted to appeal to the target audience’s emotions, desires, and needs. The effectiveness of advertising campaigns is often measured through metrics like reach, engagement, click-through rates, conversions, and return on investment (ROI). Advertising uses powerful media to control people's choices. We also have the power to choose, the power to think for ourselves, and the power to influence others. How we use that power is central to the creation of a good and healthy society. This research explores the various dimensions of advertising in the digital age, emphasizing its transformative influence on brand building, customer engagement, and adaptability to emergent technologies. Ultimately, it underscores how advertising, in its digital incarnation, serves as the linchpin connecting businesses with their target audiences, orchestrating a symphony of strategies and innovations to thrive in an ever-changing digital milieu.

A summary, with emphasis on Australian contributions, is given of 20 years of research on the learning of intellectual skills. The historical development of the field is outlined, beginning with studies of the validity of learning hierarchies, then moving to issues concerning the understanding of intellectual skills. Shifts in the experimental paradigm are identified for investigations of the effects of methods of instruction on the learning of intellectual skills, and methods of probing and depicting cognitive structure are described. Suggestions for future research are presented throughout.

This paper reports on a data-driven motion planning approach for interaction-aware, socially-compliant robot navigation among human agents. Autonomous mobile robots navigating in workspaces shared with human agents require motion planning techniques providing seamless integration and smooth navigation in such. Smooth integration in mixed scenarios calls for two abilities of the robot: predicting actions of others and acting predictably for them. The former requirement requests trainable models of agent behaviors in order to accurately forecast their actions in the future, taking into account their reaction on the robot's decisions. A human-like navigation style of the robot facilitates other agents—most likely not aware of the underlying planning technique applied—to predict the robot motion vice versa, resulting in smoother joint navigation. The approach presented in this paper is based on a feature-based maximum entropy model and is able to guide a robot in an unstructured, real-world environment. The model is trained to predict joint behavior of heterogeneous groups of agents from onboard data of a mobile platform. We evaluate the benefit of interaction-aware motion planning in a realistic public setting with a total distance traveled of over 4 km. Interestingly the motion models learned from human-human interaction did not hold for robot-human interaction, due to the high attention and interest of pedestrians in testing basic braking functionality of the robot.

Journal Article Pluralistic Ignorance Across Issues and Over Time: Information Cues and Biases Get access JACOB SHAMIR, JACOB SHAMIR Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar MICHAEL SHAMIR MICHAEL SHAMIR Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Public Opinion Quarterly, Volume 61, Issue 2, August 1997, Pages 227–260, https://doi.org/10.1086/297794 Published: 01 August 1997

This thesis explores the relationship between ‘community’ and ‘sustainability’. The descriptor, ‘community’, is lent to human groupings characterised by two things: the strength of their social relationships and the sharing of some territory, resource or value system. ‘Sustainability’ refers to the viability and continuity of natural, built and social systems, incorporating as many human as environmental considerations.This research suggests that the supportive social setting often associated with a ‘sense of community’ can be critical to the effective application of pro-environmental attitudes. Excessive Western materialism is linked to a slow but steady loss of community that typically manifests in shallow interpersonal relationships and creeping social alienation. Social degradation, it is argued, contributes to reduced concern for, and engagement with, the environment. Supportive community-based social relations, on the other hand, can engender a sense of belonging and allegiance to one’s locale. Cohesive community life can induce a commitment to the local environment which, if nurtured, can grow into a broader and more effective environmentalism. The argument is eventually linked to issues of housing and urban form, and a wider discussion of environmentally sustainable development.Empirical evidence for these propositions is gathered through an investigation of cohousing, a new form of residential community that provides clues to the link between the social dynamics of such a group and the pro-environmental praxis of its members. Cohousing is a rapidly evolving ‘intentional community’ type with attributes linking it to communitarian history and tradition. It began in Denmark and the Netherlands in the 1970s, spread to North America in the late 1980s and, to a limited extent, to Australia in the 1990s. Cohousing members share property, resources and aspirations. They eat, meet and recreate together. They network, publish and hold national conferences. Collectively, they constitute a resurgent communitarian movement. Cohousing groups generally acknowledge the debt they owe to historical communities and would claim, in particular, to be applying lessons learnt from communal experimentation of the 1960s and ’70s. Foremost among these is the recognition that exclusivity and isolation from wider society can be socially and politically detrimental. Most cohousing is located in cities and deeply embedded within mainstream culture. Communities believe they can maintain internal social cohesion despite the potential tension between members’ commitment to community life and their association with the world beyond.Grounded theory was employed as the principal methodology for this thesis. With its emphasis on theory construction, grounded theory requires the collection and analysis of data to proceed concurrently, and, to some extent, determine the direction of the research. By this process, preliminary ethnographic research (in 1992) of a single cohousing community in Denmark, broadened into a comparative analysis of a number of Danish communities. Between 1992 and 1996, cohousing became established in North America, leading to a second period of fieldwork (in late 1996) incorporating multiple case-study analysis of 18 North American cohousing communities. A survey of over 70% of all cohousing households existing at the time, revealed a number of influences due to living in cohousing, which members reported had improved their proenvironmental practices. Analysis of data gathered from multiple sources led to the development of a model that reveals the nexus between dimensions of community life and members’ environmental praxis. The model contributes to both attitude-behaviour theory and empowerment theory, and holds implications for the design and planning of housing, and for the direction of urban development. Cohousing demonstrates compact building form and efficient, innovative land use. It facilitates the sharing of resources and reduced household consumption. Cohousing encourages human interaction and lends support to disadvantaged members of society. It provides a physical and social milieu that nurtures an awareness of the consequences of one’s actions for others and for the environment. Cohousing suggests a way of rethinking the structure and fabric of urban life, which prompts a vision of a civilised and environmentally sustainable future.

“Current facilities for computing, display, and real time interaction have developed substantially beyond our understanding of how to use them effectively in data analysis. Current limitations in data analysis technology are mainly in explicating and organizing the science of data analysis and of defining and implementing the necessary associated computer software. “From the statistical side of the discipline must come: broader, more permissive, empirically oriented concepts and theories; more inclusive and realistic classifications of objectives; more effective and coherent classifications of useful techniques; research toward more empirically informative techniques that will provide both exposure and summarization; more understanding and research on techniques of reforming and re-expressing variables; deeper insight into the psychology of graphs, pictures and output formats in general, both for interaction and for communication; progress toward standardized data structures of great flexibility and comprehensiveness. “From the computing side of the discipline is required software to provide: convenience with flexibility, simple and effective bookkeeping and history keeping, adequate editing, effective means for treating output as input, more flexible and general graphical presentations, and a variety of means to facilitate real time interaction. “Though some progress is being made on many of these needs, the technology of data analysis is still in its infancy.” (Tukey and Wilk, 1966) John Tukey and Martin Wilk have described what, they feel are the future needs in data analysis and statistics in the following terms.

The notion that the cerebellum is devoted exclusively to motor control has been replaced by a more sophisticated understanding of its role in neurological function, one that includes cognition and emotion. Early clinical reports, as well as physiological and behavioral studies in animal models, raised the possibility of a nonmotor role for the cerebellum. Anatomical studies demonstrate cerebellar connectivity with the distributed neural circuits linked with autonomic, sensorimotor, vestibular, associative and limbic/paralimbic brain areas. Identification of the cerebellar cognitive affective syndrome in adults and children underscored the clinical relevance of the role of the cerebellum in cognition and emotion. It opened new avenues of investigation into higher order deficits that accompany the ataxias and other cerebellar diseases, as well as the contribution of cerebellar dysfunction to neuropsychiatric and neurocognitive disorders. Brain imaging studies demonstrate the complexity of cerebellar functional topography, revealing a double representation of the sensorimotor cerebellum in the anterior lobe and lobule VIII and a triple cognitive representation in the cerebellar posterior lobe, as well as representation in the cerebellum of the intrinsic connectivity networks identified in the cerebral hemispheres. This paradigm shift in thinking about the cerebellum has been advanced by the theories of dysmetria of thought and the universal cerebellar transform, harmonizing the dual anatomic realities of homogeneously repeating cerebellar cortical microcircuitry set against the heterogeneous and topographically arranged cerebellar connections with extracerebellar structures. This new appreciation of the cerebellar incorporation into circuits that subserve cognition and emotion enables deeper understanding and improved care of our patients with cerebellar ataxias and novel cerebellar-based approaches to therapy in neuropsychiatry.

Microfluidic experimental models allow to study the mutual interrelation between tumor development and the microvasculature avoiding animal use and lacking interspecies differences. This study aimed to develop and characterize a 3D tissue culture model employing a two-compartment microfluidic chip-perfused platform to visualize and quantify human bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (hBM-MSCs) and MCF-7 breast cancer cell-cell interactions in real time. MCF-7 cells were implanted in the tumor chamber and hBM-MSCs were injected into microvascular channels. hBM-MSCs culture media was perfused into microvascular compartments. The microfluidic device was microscopically examined weekly for four weeks. VE- and E-cadherin immunofluorescence validated hBM-MSCs differentiation into endothelial cells and MCF-7 cell tumor formation. hBM-MSCs differentiation was highly heterogeneous along the microvascular channels, due to different perfusion flow. hBM-MSCs lining microvascular channels acquired VE-cadherin positive endothelial phenotype and continuously covered microchannels as an endothelium like layer. MCF-7 cells were constantly grown as spheroidal aggregates and later formed a compact area of E-cadherin-positive tumor cells inside tumor compartment. Our study provides valuable knowledge on the properties of hBM-MSCs as vasculogenesis-supporting cells when co-cultured with MCF-7 cells on a 3D perfused biomimetic microfluidic device. This newly established model may serve as an experimental platform for testing anti-tumor/anti-angiogenic drugs.

Buildings are responsible for over 30% of global final energy consumption and nearly 40% of total CO2 emissions. Thus, rapid penetration of renewable energy technologies (RETs) in this sector is required. Integration of renewable energy sources (RESs) into residential buildings should not only guarantee an overall neutral energy balance over long term horizon (nZEB concept), but also provide a higher flexibility, a real-time monitoring and a real time interaction with end-users (smart-building concept). Thus, increasing interest is being given to the concepts of Hybrid Renewable Energy Systems (HRES) and Multi-Energy Buildings, in which several renewable and nonrenewable energy systems, the energy networks and the energy demand optimally interact with each other at various levels, exploring all possible interactions between systems and vectors (electricity, heat, cooling, fuels, transport) without them being treated separately. In this context, the present paper gives an overview of functional integration of HRES in Multi-Energy Buildings evidencing the numerous problems and potentialities related to the application of HRESs in the residential building sector. Building-integrated HRESs with at least two RESs (i.e., wind–solar, solar–geothermal and solar–biomass) are considered. The most applied HRES solutions in the residential sector are presented, and integration of HRES with thermal and electrical loads in residential buildings connected to external multiple energy grids is investigated. Attention is focused on the potentialities that functional integration can offer in terms of flexibility services to the energy grids. New holistic approaches to the management problems and more complex architectures for the optimal control are described.

The archaeological site of Moregine, discovered near Pompei during local highway maintenance works and mainly known for the beautiful paintings and jewels found within a very well preserved Roman villa, has been buried according to cost and convenience evaluations (Nappo 2003). As there are still a lot of unanswered questions which archaeologists can no longer address through field research, this site is paradigmatic of how computer generated images, real time interaction and stereoscopy can be of help for the further study of inaccessible locations. The methodology proposed in this study is aimed at achieving the most accurate and visually realistic virtual reconstruction of the site as it appeared to archaeologists after the completion of the excavation. In this sense, the resulting simulation is more focused on the archaeologists’ interests than most of the available digital reconstructions, typically designed to address the request of cultural heritage dissemination for a wide audience. The object of the digital reconstruction is “building B” of the Moregine archaeological area (Mastroroberto 2003), more precisely “house D”, which is part of a wider block consisting of cauponae located on the northern side of the ancient Sarno river bed (Di Maio and Stefani 2003). This compound house was originally buried by the eruption of the Vesuvio in 79 AD, and was first unearthed by a survey in the years 1880–1881. Overall, the excavation considered for virtual reconstruction covered an area of 20 × 10 m, with a floor level positioned 3 m below the present-day street level, exposed to the water table, the main reason behind the decision to rebury the site.

Multiplanar Reformatting (MPR) of 3D biomedical images is an important technique in visualising, editing, and interacting with volumetric data. To obtain near real time interactions with the data in many applications such as telemedicine and teleconsultation, the MPR slices are produced and transmitted dynamically. The MPR compression is an important technique to improve the transmission and display efficiency. We develop a dedicated MPR compression scheme by exploiting the characteristics of MPR slices, especially for thin MPR. Robust regression techniques are applied to predict the current slice from the previous ones. In the presence of scales, rotations, and translations, we make use of the known knowledge of the operations, or the transform domain representations of the image in the case of unknown parameters. The effectiveness of the scheme is confirmed by experimental results.

Visual analysis of time varying scientific data can be divided into four different categories with an increasing degree of user interaction.1) Production of static images representing scientific data at selected times.2) Production of video sequences in which graphical representation, time line and viewpoints are predefined.3) Interactive streaming of logged data sets, allowing the user to alter graphical representation, filtering, time lines and viewpoints.4) Real time interaction with the simulation or experiment that produces the data, allowing the user to alter parameters, graphical representation, filtering, time lines and viewpoints.

The COVID-19 outbreaks in 2020 caused prolonged periods of social distancing. After mandates were lifted, social calendars filling up with plans felt like a dream come true to many. At the same time, a stark increase in real time interactions and number of social obligations likely experienced as stressful. The shift to in-person socialization may be especially distressing considering an extended period of reduced and controlled ways of gathering. Here, we analyzed peoples’ accounts of dealing with a sense of overinclusion in pandemic and post-pandemic socializing. In the varied responses in a qualitative sample of 24 participants, we found a disproportionate amount of post-distancing socializing brought up among recalled interactions deemed as “overwhelming”, than other inclusion interactions. Among the “overwhelming” interactions, post-distancing socializing was described as of more negative as positive emotional quality.