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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. Daily observations of birds from the Toolik Naturalist Journal, Toolik Field Station, Alaska, 2006-2025

   https://doi.org/10.18739/a2kw57m1r  

   Young, Amanda B; van_Dam, Brie; Kade, Anja; Haupert, Christie; Beaudreault, Seth; Schas, Jake; Lawrence, Jade; Funck, Juliette; Murthy, Adeline; Nugteren, Aart; et al (January 2025, NSF Arctic Data Center)

   The Toolik Field Station - Naturalist Journal is a daily collection of observations of weather, wildlife, and phenological characteristics around the Toolik Lake region. The bird records are from as far south as Travis creek (50 kilometers (km) south of Toolik on the Dalton Highway) to as far north as Ice cut (~65 km north of Toolik on the Dalton Highway). Birds are recorded if they are seen, heard, or if in the daily comments there is a record of an bird being seen. Birds not listed in the comments are recorded as common or rare. Rare birds are those that are rarely seen in the Toolik area. Birds are not specifically searched for on a daily basis, all observations are happenstance. During the months of May-September observations are made daily along the Dalton Highway. From October to April, observations are most often limited to the area directly around Toolik Field Station out to Imnaviat Creek (~5 km from Toolik Field Station). Weather conditions greatly impacts sightings of birds, on a cold windy or rainy day there are frequently fewer sightings. However, best efforts are made to record the birds that are present. 

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3. Daily observations of insects from the Toolik Naturalist Journal, Toolik Field Station, Alaska, 2006-2025

   https://doi.org/10.18739/a2bc3t03k  

   Young, Amanda B; van_Dam, Brie; Kade, Anja; Haupert, Christie; Beaudreault, Seth; Schas, Jake; Lawrence, Jade; Funck, Juliette; Murthy, Adeline; Nugteren, Aart; et al (January 2025, NSF Arctic Data Center)

   The Toolik Field Station - Naturalist Journal is a daily collection of observations of weather, wildlife, and phenological characteristics around the Toolik Lake region. The insect records are from as far south as Travis creek (50 kilometers (km) south of Toolik on the Dalton Highway) to as far north as Ice cut (~65 km north of Toolik on the Dalton Highway). Insects are recorded if they are seen or if in the daily comments there is a record of an insect being seen. Insects are not specifically searched for on a daily basis, all observations are happenstance. During the months of May-September observations are made daily along the Dalton Highway. From October to April, observations are most often limited to the area directly around Toolik Field Station out to Imnaviat Creek (~5 km from Toolik Field Station). Weather conditions greatly impacts sightings of insects, on a cold windy or rainy day there are frequently fewer sightings. However, best efforts are made to record the insects that are present. 

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4. 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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5. 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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