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1. Recognition of Tactile Facial Action Units by Individuals Who Are Blind and Sighted: A Comparative Study

   https://doi.org/10.3390/mti3020032  

   McDaniel, Troy; Tran, Diep; Chowdhury, Abhik; Fakhri, Bijan; Panchanathan, Sethuraman (June 2019, Multimodal Technologies and Interaction)

   Given that most cues exchanged during a social interaction are nonverbal (e.g., facial expressions, hand gestures, body language), individuals who are blind are at a social disadvantage compared to their sighted peers. Very little work has explored sensory augmentation in the context of social assistive aids for individuals who are blind. The purpose of this study is to explore the following questions related to visual-to-vibrotactile mapping of facial action units (the building blocks of facial expressions): (1) How well can individuals who are blind recognize tactile facial action units compared to those who are sighted? (2) How well can individuals who are blind recognize emotions from tactile facial action units compared to those who are sighted? These questions are explored in a preliminary pilot test using absolute identification tasks in which participants learn and recognize vibrotactile stimulations presented through the Haptic Chair, a custom vibrotactile display embedded on the back of a chair. Study results show that individuals who are blind are able to recognize tactile facial action units as well as those who are sighted. These results hint at the potential for tactile facial action units to augment and expand access to social interactions for individuals who are blind. 

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2. Fortified-Edge 4.0: A ML-Based Error Correction Framework for Secure Authentication in Collaborative Edge Computing

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3649476.3660384  

   Aarella, Seema G; Yanambaka, Venkata Prasanth; Mohanty, Saraju P; Kougianos, Elias (June 2024, ACM)

   Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) are widely researched in the field of security because of their unique, robust, and reliable nature, PUFs are considered device-specific root keys that are hard to duplicate. There are many variants of PUFs that are being studied and implemented including hardware and software PUFs. Though PUFs are believed to be secure and reliable, they are not without challenges of their own. The efficient performance of PUF depends on various environmental factors, which leads to inefficiency. Bit flipping is one such problem that can bring down the reliability of the PUF. Memory-based PUFs are prone to unavoidable bit flips occurring in the hardware, similarly, sensor-based PUFs are prone to bit flips occurring due to temperature variation. The number of errors in the PUF response must be minimized to improve the reliability of the PUF in security applications. In this research we explore the Machine Learning (ML) model based on K-mer sequencing to detect and correct the bit flips in the PUFs, hence fortifying the PUF-based secure authentication system for authentication and authorization of Edge Data Centers (EDC) in a Collaborative Edge Computing (CEC) Environment. 

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3. Accessible Block-Based Programming for K-12 Students Who Are Blind or Low Vision

   https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78095-1_5  

   Das M., Marghitu D. (July 2021, Human-Computer Interaction. Access to Media, Learning and Assistive Environments. HCII 2021)

   Antona M., Stephanidis C. (Ed.)

   Block-based programming applications, such as MIT’s Scratch and Blockly Games, are commonly used to teach K-12 students to code. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many K-12 students are attending online coding camps, which teach programming using these block-based applications. However, these applications are not accessible to the Blind/Low Vision (BLV) population since they neither produce audio output nor are screen reader accessible. In this paper, we describe a solution to make block-based programming accessible to BLV students using Google’s latest Keyboard Navigation and present its evaluation with four individuals who are BLV. We distill our findings as recommendations to developers who may want to make their Block-based programming application accessible to individuals who are BLV. 

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4. Partially activated reconfigurable arrays to guide acoustic waves

   https://doi.org/10.1177/1045389X211006906  

   Zhao, Ningxiner; Zou, Chengzhe; Harne, Ryan L (December 2021, Journal of Intelligent Material Systems and Structures)

   Recent studies have exemplified the potential for curved origami-inspired acoustic arrays to focus waves. Yet, reconfigurable structures that adopt curvatures are often difficult to translate to practice due to mechanical deformation of the facets that inhibit straightforward folding. In addition, not all tessellations that curve upon folding are also flat-foldable, which is a key advantage of portability inherent to many origami-inspired structures. This research introduces a new concept of partially activated reconfigurable acoustic arrays as a means to mitigate these drawbacks. Here, tessellations are studied where a subset of the facet surfaces are considered to radiate acoustic waves. The analytical results reveal focusing behaviors in such arrays that are otherwise not manifest for the array when fully activated. The focused waves are more intense in amplitude and space for partially activated arrays than fully activated counterparts. These trends are verified by experiment and are also found to be applicable to multiple reconfigurable array geometries. The results encourage broader study of the design space accessible in reconfigurable arrays to capitalize on all of the functionality afforded by origami-inspired wave guiding structures. 

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5. Coastal Wetlands in the Anthropocene

   https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-environ-121922-041109  

   Day, John; Anthony, Edward; Costanza, Robert; Edmonds, Douglas; Gunn, Joel; Hopkinson, Charles; Mann, Michael E; Morris, James; Osland, Michael; Quirk, Tracy; et al (September 2024, Annual Review of Environment and Resources)

   We review the functioning and sustainability of coastal marshes and mangroves. Urbanized humans have a 7,000-year-old enduring relationship to coastal wetlands. Wetlands include marshes, salt flats, and saline and freshwater forests. Coastal wetlands occur in all climate zones but are most abundant in deltas. Mangroves are tropical, whereas marshes occur from tropical to boreal areas. Quantification of coastal wetland areas has advanced in recent years but is still insufficiently accurate. Climate change and sea-level rise are predicted to lead to significant wetland losses and other impacts on coastal wetlands and the humans associated with them. Landward migration and coastal retreat are not expected to significantly reduce coastal wetland losses. Nitrogen watershed inputs are unlikely to alter coastal marsh stability because watershed loadings are mostly significantly lower than those in fertilization studies that show decreased belowground biomass and increased decomposition of soil organic matter. Blue carbon is not expected to significantly reduce climate impacts. The high values of ecosystem goods and services of wetlands are expected to be reduced by area losses. Humans have had strong impacts on coastal wetlands in the Holocene, and these impacts are expected to increase in the Anthropocene. 

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