1,721,012 research outputs found
HCI methodologies and data visualization to foster user awareness
No full textThe purpose of this research concerns the integration between Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Data Visualization to increase users’ awareness of issues of public interest. In particular, it wants to investigate how to design and develop meaningful and effective interactive data visualization and which HCI methodologies can be useful to design and validate these systems that can become effective tools to support communities of users in decision-making processes about issues such as sustainability
EscapeCampus: Exploiting a Game-based Learning tool to increase the sustainability knowledge of students
No full textAre all the flowers the same? A Citizen Science mobile app for increasing awareness about insect pollinators
No full textClimate change is one of the most significant challenges of our time. Biodiversity makes an essential contribution to both climate-change mitigation and adaptation. To this end, it is essential to protect insect pollinators that are responsible for the reproduction of over 80% of the world's flowering plants. To increase citizen awareness about the local flowers species and their attractiveness to wild pollinators, we designed a mobile app exploiting citizen science, AR, deep learning, and gamification. This short paper presents the design framework, the prototype, and some preliminary results of the deep learning performance. Finally, we conclude the paper with future work and directions
Can 360° VR and customization foster personal connections between tourists and locals? An experiment in the sharing economy and hospitality frame
No full textTourism and hospitality have shown to be one of the pioneering sectors in the sharing economy, taking advantages of a collaborative and peer-to-peer market model. In this context, we present ShareCities, a system that allows tourists to exploit a 360° virtual representation of locals' room, customized to include peculiar details related to the host's life/interests/hobbies. Using ShareCities, locals can publish information about themselves and about what to see and do in their locale, while visitors can browse authentic and unmediated information provided by locals, and use the platform to initiate a conversation with them. To evaluate our approach and verify if 360° VR and customization could foster personal connections and affinity, and, eventually, empathy, we carried out an experiment engaging 19 users, obtaining interesting results
Transforming Smart Campuses into User-Centric Environments by integrating BIM and Environmental Data
No full textSmart cities are gaining momentum as a way to enhance urban living, tackling several challenges from economy, to governance, to mobility. Smart buildings, university campuses in particular, can play a crucial role as testing grounds for smart cities, with Building Information Modeling (BIM) systems being an important part of the picture, easing the work of technical personnel. In our case study, we tried providing environmental data gathered from a BIM system to every building occupant, including non-expert people. AlmaMap Navile, installed on public touch displays at the University of Bologna's Navile campus, integrates real-time sensor data with a comfort algorithm and a simple wayfinding system, providing added value and, eventually, informing decision-making to its users. This initiative marks the first step towards creating a smart campus digital twin, fostering efficiency, satisfaction, and sustainability awareness among campus stakeholders, and transforming a smart campus into a user-friendly, data-driven environment
Designing Interfaces to Display Sensor Data: A Case Study in the Human-Building Interaction Field Targeting a University Community
Full text linkThe increase of smart buildings with Building Information Modeling (BIM) and Building Management Systems (BMS) has created a large amount of data, including those coming from sensors. These data are intended for monitoring the building conditions by authorized personnel, not being available to all building occupants. In this paper, we evaluate, from a qualitative point of view, if a user interface designed for a specific community can increase occupants’ context-awareness about environmental issues within a building, supporting them to make more informed decisions that best suit their needs. We designed a user interface addressed to the student community of a smart campus, adopting an Iterative Design Cycle methodology, and engaged 48 students by means of structured interviews with the aim of collecting their feedback and conducting a qualitative analysis. The results obtained show the interest of this community in having access to information about the environmental data within smart campus buildings. For example, students were more interested in data about temperature and brightness, rather than humidity. As a further result of this study, we have extrapolated a series of design recommendations to support the creation of map-based user interfaces that we found to be effective in such contexts
Exploring proximity-based recommendation criteria as a tool for information exchange and interactions between locals and tourists
Full text linkSharing economy and contemporary tourism are two emerging concepts that urge to be investigated together with new ubiquitous and immersive technologies, in the tourism and hospitality sector. In this rich scenario, we designed and implemented ShareCities, a platform to foster remote direct information exchange and meaningful interactions among tourists and locals. Exploiting ShareCities we here present an extended analysis on the opportunity to use people-to-people recommendation criteria based on proximity. We hence defined three criteria which drove our analysis: i) profile similarity, ii) geographical proximity, and iii) random exploration. Through an online questionnaire, we collect answers from 126 young-adult students, obtaining a general positive interest in the three criteria but also concerns in terms of privacy, trust, and feeling of disorientation
Thyroid hormone effect on alpha-fetoprotein and albumin coordinate expression by a human hepatoma cell line.
No full textThe action of triiodothyronine on the production of alpha-fetoprotein and albumin in serum-free cultures of Hep G2 human hepatoma cells was examined. Our data showed that a marked inhibition (up to 8-fold) of alpha-fetoprotein secretion and an increase in albumin (up to 4-fold) are produced by 10(-8) M triiodothyronine. These effects were slow in their onset and for completion required 20-25 days of treatment with the hormone. However, an exposure of the cells to triiodothyronine for only the first 4 h was sufficient to affect, in a similar way, the secretion of alpha-fetoprotein and albumin when measured 15 days after treatment. The secretion of the two proteins parallels their intracellular levels. The decrease in alpha-fetoprotein production can be explained by a reduction of the RNA coding for the protein. The same is essentially true also for albumin increased secretion and related mRNA expression
Augmenting good behaviour: Mixing digital and reality to promote sustainability in a campus community
No full textIn this paper, we present a case study inspired by sustainable initiatives carried out by the University of Bologna, such as decreasing the amount of paper used in favor of the digital form, and planting new trees in two Campus green areas to make sustainability tangible to communities. In this scenario, we envisioned the possibility to investigate how to increase awareness of sustainability issues in a specific community who is not directly involved in the decision process, with the final aim to convey sustainable behaviour. To accomplish this objective, we designed and developed an intervention mixing digital and reality experiences exploiting i) web-based technologies to create an interactive infographic, ii) mobile-based technologies to provide augmented reality (AR) features), iii) a sensors infrastructure to gather data about environmental conditions, and iv) an in-situ public installation to visualize the data collected by the sensors
Site-specific monoclonal antibodies against peanut agglutinin (PNA) from Arachis hypogaea. Immunohistochemical study of tissue-cultured cells and of 27 cases of Hodgkin's disease
No full textThe purpose of this study was to increase the sensitivity of the staining reaction for the T antigen on the surface of neoplastic cells grown in vitro with the use of site-specific monoclonal antibodies (MAbs). The authors describe anti-peanut agglutinin (PNA) MAbs selected by screening the hybridomas with PNA and PNA bound to bovine serum albumin conjugated with the T antigen. The selected hybridomas (F2C8, F3D12, F3A5) were then grown in pristane-sensitized mice or in the Amicon Hollow Fiber System (F2C8). The affinity constant values for PNA were measured, and all the purified MAbs were tested on both native and denatured PNA, wheat germ agglutinin, concanavalin A, and ricin by using the immunoassay dot test and immunoblotting methods. Eleven different cell lines were stained with the three MAbs; similar results were obtained with F2C8 and F3D12. In each case the fluorescence, if present, was associated with the cell membrane, and the intensity of the staining was always stronger when the cells were incubated with the MAbs than when stained with fluorescein-labeled PNA. On the other hand, F3A5 failed to stain unfixed cells preincubated with PNA but stained the same cells after fixation, independently of the presence of PNA. One of the antibodies, F2C8, was used to stain histologic preparations from 27 cases of Hodgkin's disease and was compared with the anti-granulocyte antibody, Leu-M1, which has been used by numerous authors to identify the characteristic Reed-Sternberg cells. The results obtained were qualitatively similar; ie, F2C8 was at least as efficient as anti-Leu-M1 in its ability to stain the typical diagnostic cells in Hodgkin's disease
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