Street computing workshop 2009

The Street Computing workshop, held in conjunction with OZCHI 2009, solicits papers discussing new research directions, early research results, works-in-progress and critical surveys of prior research work in the areas of ubiquitous computing and interaction design for urban environments. Urban spaces have unique characteristics. Typically, they are densely populated, buzzing with life twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. These traits afford many opportunities, but they also present many challenges: traffic jams, smog and pollution, stress placed on public services, and more. Computing technology, particularly the kind that can be placed in the hands of citizens, holds much promise in combating some of these challenges. Yet, computation is not merely a tool for overcoming challenges; rather, when embedded appropriately in our everyday lives, it becomes a tool of opportunity, for shaping how our cities evolve, for enabling us to interact with our city and its people in new ways, and for uncovering useful, but hidden relationships and correlations between elements of the city. The increasing availability of an urban computing infrastructure has lead to new and exciting ways inhabitants can interact with their city. This includes interaction with a wide range of services (e.g. public transport, public services), conceptual representations of the city (e.g. local weather and traffic conditions), the availability of a variety of shared and personal displays (e.g. public, ambient, mobile) and the use of different interaction modes (e.g. tangible, gesture-based, token-based). This workshop solicits papers that address the above themes in some way. We encourage researchers to submit work that deals with challenges and possibilities that the availability of urban computing infrastructure such as sensors and middleware for sensor networks pose. This includes new and innovative ways of interacting with and within urban environments; user experience design and participatory design approaches for urban environments; social aspects of urban computing; and other related areas.

Hungry 24/7? HCI design for sustainable food culture workshop

This workshop proposes to explore new approaches to cultivate and support sustainable food culture in urban environments via human computer interaction design and ubiquitous technologies. Food is a challenging issue in urban contexts: while food consumption decisions are made many times a day, most food interaction for urbanites occurs based on convenience and habitual practices. This situation is contrasting to the fact that food is at the centre of global environment, health, and social issues that are becoming increasingly immanent and imminent. As such, it is timely and crucial to ask: what are feasible, effective, and innovative ways to improve human-food-interaction through human-computer-interaction in order to contribute to environmental, health, and social sustainability in urban environments? This workshop brings together insights across disciplines to discuss this question, and plan and promote individual, local, and global change for sustainable food culture.

Estimating interactive coefficients for analysing interactive failures

Engineering assets are often complex systems. In a complex system, components often have failure interactions which lead to interactive failures. A system with interactive failures may lead to an increased failure probability. Hence, one may have to take the interactive failures into account when designing and maintaining complex engineering systems. To address this issue, Sun et al have developed an analytical model for the interactive failures. In this model, the degree of interaction between two components is represented by interactive coefficients. To use this model for failure analysis, the related interactive coefficients must be estimated. However, methods for estimating the interactive coefficients have not been reported. To fill this gap, this paper presents five methods to estimate the interactive coefficients including probabilistic method; failure data based analysis method; laboratory experimental method; failure interaction mechanism based method; and expert estimation method. Examples are given to demonstrate the applications of the proposed methods. Comparisons among these methods are also presented.

Young Children and the Environment : Early Learning for Sustainability

This world-first text book on early childhood edcuation for sustainabilty tackles one of the biggest contemporary issues of our times - the changing environmment - and demonstrates how early education can contribute to sustainable living. An essential text for students in early childhood teacher education and a practcial resource for child care practitioners and primary school teachers, it is designed to promote edcuation for sustainabilty from birth to eight years. the text refers to national and international initiatives such as 'sustainable Schools', 'Child Friendly Cities' and 'Health Promoting Schools' and explores their existing and potential links with early childhood education. Groundbreaking content draws on recent literature in the areas of organisational, educational and cultural chnage, and environmental sustainabilty. Specific chapters explore ethical challenges and the use of ICT to advance learning. Case studies and vignettes exemplify leadership in practice and 'provocations' are integrated throughout to inspire new ways of thinking about the environment, the wider world, young children and the transformative power of early edcuation.

Abandoned object detection using multi-layer motion detection

Abandoned object detection (AOD) systems are required to run in high traffic situations, with high levels of occlusion. Systems rely on background segmentation techniques to locate abandoned objects, by detecting areas of motion that have stopped. This is often achieved by using a medium term motion detection routine to detect long term changes in the background. When AOD systems are integrated into person tracking system, this often results in two separate motion detectors being used to handle the different requirements. We propose a motion detection system that is capable of detecting medium term motion as well as regular motion. Multiple layers of medium term (static) motion can be detected and segmented. We demonstrate the performance of this motion detection system and as part of an abandoned object detection system.

Multi-sensor tracking using a scalable condensation filter

Surveillance and tracking systems typically use a single colour modality for their input. These systems work well in controlled conditions but often fail with low lighting, shadowing, smoke, dust, unstable backgrounds or when the foreground object is of similar colouring to the background. With advances in technology and manufacturing techniques, sensors that allow us to see into the thermal infrared spectrum are becoming more affordable. By using modalities from both the visible and thermal infrared spectra, we are able to obtain more information from a scene and overcome the problems associated with using visible light only for surveillance and tracking. Thermal images are not affected by lighting or shadowing and are not overtly affected by smoke, dust or unstable backgrounds. We propose and evaluate three approaches for fusing visual and thermal images for person tracking. We also propose a modified condensation filter to track and aid in the fusion of the modalities. We compare the proposed fusion schemes with using the visual and thermal domains on their own, and demonstrate that significant improvements can be achieved by using multiple modalities.

Multi-spectral fusion for surveillance systems

Surveillance systems such as object tracking and abandoned object detection systems typically rely on a single modality of colour video for their input. These systems work well in controlled conditions but often fail when low lighting, shadowing, smoke, dust or unstable backgrounds are present, or when the objects of interest are a similar colour to the background. Thermal images are not affected by lighting changes or shadowing, and are not overtly affected by smoke, dust or unstable backgrounds. However, thermal images lack colour information which makes distinguishing between different people or objects of interest within the same scene difficult. ----- By using modalities from both the visible and thermal infrared spectra, we are able to obtain more information from a scene and overcome the problems associated with using either modality individually. We evaluate four approaches for fusing visual and thermal images for use in a person tracking system (two early fusion methods, one mid fusion and one late fusion method), in order to determine the most appropriate method for fusing multiple modalities. We also evaluate two of these approaches for use in abandoned object detection, and propose an abandoned object detection routine that utilises multiple modalities. To aid in the tracking and fusion of the modalities we propose a modified condensation filter that can dynamically change the particle count and features used according to the needs of the system. ----- We compare tracking and abandoned object detection performance for the proposed fusion schemes and the visual and thermal domains on their own. Testing is conducted using the OTCBVS database to evaluate object tracking, and data captured in-house to evaluate the abandoned object detection. Our results show that significant improvement can be achieved, and that a middle fusion scheme is most effective.

Professional education in built environment and design

Early and rich conversations with a range of stakeholders – academics, professionals and graduates in their early years of practice – quickly clarified that the singular challenge for most parties centres on the ways in which courses prepare graduates for the pace, diversity and flux of contemporary professional practice.---------In pursuing understanding of this central challenge this study has focused on new graduates in BED disciplines by canvassing their views and those of two other major stakeholder groups (academic staff and professional practitioners in the disciplines studied). The first crucial years of a young graduate’s life in the workforce are shaped by a number of factors including the quality of the transition-to-work experience. The quality of this life-shaping transition is dependent on a range of factors including the ways in which graduates are educated in universities, their personal developmental characteristics and those of the professional people around them and the preparedness of workplaces and other professional groups to guide new recruits through the transition experience. This study makes recommendations about how the variations in transition experience, resulting from the vagaries of all these factors across a range of worksites, may be better understood, perhaps normalised, and, at least, supported. . Early and rich conversations with a range of stakeholders – academics, professionals and graduates in their early years of practice – quickly clarified that the singular challenge for most parties centres on the ways in which courses prepare graduates for the pace, diversity and flux of contemporary professional practice. The study proceeded through literature review, focus group interviews, national online survey and workshops. Through all these methods a number of challenges and factors essential to the transition experience, and the quality of education which precedes it, were identified. Firstly the study found further evidence of the importance of higher-order graduate capabilities, namely, the development of judgment, critical enquiry and strategic thinking. Alongside these capabilities the importance of the development of emotional intelligence, particularly interpersonal and social skills, was stressed by all stakeholders. At the time of writing the global economic crisis was providing challenges to the sector and its young graduates. This phenomenon proved the value of the development of resilience and persistence in graduates, the education system was called upon by all stakeholders as a place where the future-proofing of neophytes would ensure that the unknown challenges of the future could also be confronted. The study found that the challenges of transition to work are best supported by authentic undergraduate experiences both on and off campus, inside and outside classrooms, and that commencing professional life is made easier for new graduates when university courses and workplace settings develop, sustain and support high standards and high expectations of students. All these findings indicate the importance of stakeholder expectations, roles and responsibilities in respect of the transition-to-work experience. Whilst full agreement about how these things should occur is not necessary, a process (amongst stakeholders) which seeks value alignment around transition through discussion, debate and agenda-setting would probably assist to address what is seen as a major challenge in built environment and design education.

Soft-biometrics : unconstrained authentication in a surveillance environment

Soft biometrics are characteristics that can be used to describe, but not uniquely identify an individual. These include traits such as height, weight, gender, hair, skin and clothing colour. Unlike traditional biometrics (i.e. face, voice) which require cooperation from the subject, soft biometrics can be acquired by surveillance cameras at range without any user cooperation. Whilst these traits cannot provide robust authentication, they can be used to provide coarse authentication or identification at long range, locate a subject who has been previously seen or who matches a description, as well as aid in object tracking. In this paper we propose three part (head, torso, legs) height and colour soft biometric models, and demonstrate their verification performance on a subset of the PETS 2006 database. We show that these models, whilst not as accurate as traditional biometrics, can still achieve acceptable rates of accuracy in situations where traditional biometrics cannot be applied.

Impact of cognitive load and frustration on drivers’ speech [Abstract]

Secondary tasks such as cell phone calls or interaction with automated speech dialog systems (SDSs) increase the driver’s cognitive load as well as the probability of driving errors. This study analyzes speech production variations due to cognitive load and emotional state of drivers in real driving conditions. Speech samples were acquired from 24 female and 17 male subjects (approximately 8.5 h of data) while talking to a co-driver and communicating with two automated call centers, with emotional states (neutral, negative) and the number of necessary SDS query repetitions also labeled. A consistent shift in a number of speech production parameters (pitch, first format center frequency, spectral center of gravity, spectral energy spread, and duration of voiced segments) was observed when comparing SDS interaction against co-driver interaction; further increases were observed when considering negative emotion segments and the number of requested SDS query repetitions. A mel frequency cepstral coefficient based Gaussian mixture classifier trained on 10 male and 10 female sessions provided 91% accuracy in the open test set task of distinguishing co-driver interactions from SDS interactions, suggesting—together with the acoustic analysis—that it is possible to monitor the level of driver distraction directly from their speech.

Osteoarthritic cartilage chondrocytes alter subchondral bone osteoblast differentiation via MAPK signalling pathway involving ERK1/2

Osteoarthritic subchondral bone is characterized by abnormal bone density and enhanced production of bone turnover markers, an indication of osteoblast dysfunction. Several studies have proposed that pathological changes in articular cartilage influence the subchondral bone changes, which are typical of the progression of osteoarthritis; however, direct evidence of this has yet to be reported. The aim of the present study was to investigate what effects articular cartilage cells, isolated from normal and osteoarthritic joints, may have on the subchondral bone osteoblast phenotype, and also the potential involvement of the mitogen activated protein kinase (MAPK) signalling pathway during this process. Our results suggest that chondrocytes isolated from a normal joint inhibited osteoblast differentiation, whereas chondrocytes isolated from an osteoarthritic joint enhanced osteoblast differentiation, both via a direct and indirect cell interaction mechanisms. Furthermore, the interaction of subchondral bone osteoblasts with osteoarthritic chondrocyte conditioned media appeared to significantly activate ERK1/2 phosphorylation. On the other hand, conditioned media from normal articular chondrocytes did not affect ERK1/2 phosphorylation. Inhibition of the MAPK–ERK1/2 pathways reversed the phenotype changes of subchondral bone osteoblast, which would otherwise be induced by the conditioned media from osteoarthritic chondrocytes. In conclusion, our findings provide evidence that osteoarthritic chondrocytes affect subchondral bone osteoblast metabolism via an ERK1/2 dependent pathway.

Evaluation of contextual influences on the medication administration practice of paediatric nurses

Aim. This paper is a report of a study conducted to explore the impact of preidentified contextual themes (related to work environment and socialization) on nursing medication practice. Background. Medication administration is a complex aspect of paediatric nursing and an important component of day-to-day nursing practice. Many attempts are being made to improve patient safety, but many errors remain. Identifying and understanding factors that influence medication administration errors are of utmost importance. Method. A cross-sectional survey was conducted with a sample of 278 paediatric nurses from the emergency department, intensive care unit and medical and surgical wards of an Australian tertiary paediatric hospital in 2004. The response rate was 67%. Result. Contextual influences were important in determining how closely medication policy was followed. Completed questionnaires were returned by 185 nurses (67%). Younger nurses aged <34 years thought that their medication administration practice could be influenced by the person with whom they checked the drugs (P = 0·001), and that there were daily circumstances when it was acceptable not to adhere strictly to medication policy (P < 0·001), including choosing between following policy and acting in the best interests of the child (P = 0·002). Senior nurses agreed that senior staff dictate acceptable levels of medication policy adherence through role modelling (P = 0·01). Less experienced nurses reported greater confidence with computer literacy (P < 0·001). Conclusions. Organizations need to employ multidisciplinary education programmes to promote universal understanding of, and adherence to, medication policies. Skill mix should be closely monitored to ensure adequate support for new and junior staff.

Wireless channel modelling for indoor populated environments : statistical characterization of narrowband channels at 2.45 Ghz and 5.2 Ghz

The recent development of indoor wireless local area network (WLAN) standards at 2.45 GHz and 5 GHz has led to increased interest in propagation studies at these frequency bands. Within the indoor environment, human body effects can strongly reduce the quality of wireless communication systems. Human body effects can cause temporal variations and shadowing due to pedestrian movement and antenna- body interaction with portable terminals. This book presents a statistical characterisation, based on measurements, of human body effects on indoor narrowband channels at 2.45 GHz and at 5.2 GHz. A novel cumulative distribution function (CDF) that models the 5 GHz narrowband channel in populated indoor environments is proposed. This novel CDF describes the received envelope in terms of pedestrian traffic. In addition, a novel channel model for the populated indoor environment is proposed for the Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) narrowband channel in presence of pedestrians at 2.45 GHz. Results suggest that practical MIMO systems must be sufficiently adaptive if they are to benefit from the capacity enhancement caused by pedestrian movement.

Contrasting scenarios : embracing speech recognition

The purpose of this chapter is to describe the use of caricatured contrasting scenarios (Bødker, 2000) and how they can be used to consider potential designs for disruptive technologies. The disruptive technology in this case is Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) software in workplace settings. The particular workplace is the Magistrates Court of the Australian Capital Territory.----- Caricatured contrasting scenarios are ideally suited to exploring how ASR might be implemented in a particular setting because they allow potential implementations to be “sketched” quickly and with little effort. This sketching of potential interactions and the emphasis of both positive and negative outcomes allows the benefits and pitfalls of design decisions to become apparent.----- A brief description of the Court is given, describing the reasons for choosing the Court for this case study. The work of the Court is framed as taking place in two modes: Front of house, where the courtroom itself is, and backstage, where documents are processed and the business of the court is recorded and encoded into various systems.----- Caricatured contrasting scenarios describing the introduction of ASR to the front of house are presented and then analysed. These scenarios show that the introduction of ASR to the court would be highly problematic.----- The final section describes how ASR could be re-imagined in order to make it useful for the court. A final scenario is presented that describes how this re-imagined ASR could be integrated into both the front of house and backstage of the court in a way that could strengthen both processes.

Automatic tracking, super-resolution and recognition of human faces from surveillance video

Identifying an individual from surveillance video is a difficult, time consuming and labour intensive process. The proposed system aims to streamline this process by filtering out unwanted scenes and enhancing an individual's face through super-resolution. An automatic face recognition system is then used to identify the subject or present the human operator with likely matches from a database. A person tracker is used to speed up the subject detection and super-resolution process by tracking moving subjects and cropping a region of interest around the subject's face to reduce the number and size of the image frames to be super-resolved respectively. In this paper, experiments have been conducted to demonstrate how the optical flow super-resolution method used improves surveillance imagery for visual inspection as well as automatic face recognition on an Eigenface and Elastic Bunch Graph Matching system. The optical flow based method has also been benchmarked against the ``hallucination'' algorithm, interpolation methods and the original low-resolution images. Results show that both super-resolution algorithms improved recognition rates significantly. Although the hallucination method resulted in slightly higher recognition rates, the optical flow method produced less artifacts and more visually correct images suitable for human consumption.