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Publications

Publications by CSE

2022

What Is the Relationship between the Sense of Presence and Learning in Virtual Reality? A 24-Year Systematic Literature Review

Authors
Krassmann, AL; Melo, M; Pinto, D; Peixoto, B; Bessa, M; Bercht, M;

Publication
PRESENCE-VIRTUAL AND AUGMENTED REALITY

Abstract
The sense of presence is an important aspect of experiences in Virtual Reality (VR), an emerging technology in education, leading this construct to be increasingly researched in parallel to learning purposes. However, there is not a consensus in the literature on the outcomes of this association. Aiming to outline a panorama in this regard, a systematic literature review was conducted, with a comprehensive analysis of 140 primary studies recovered from five worldwide databases. The analysis shows an overview of 24 years of areas, factors, and methodological approaches that seem to be more inclined to benefit from the sense of presence toward learning purposes. We contribute to the advancement of state of the art by providing an understanding of the relationship among these variables, identifying potential ways to benefit from the sense of presence to further leverage the use of VR for learning purposes.

2022

A data mining approach to classify serum creatinine values in patients undergoing continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis

Authors
Brito, C; Esteves, M; Peixoto, H; Abelha, A; Machado, J;

Publication
WIRELESS NETWORKS

Abstract
Continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis (CAPD) is a treatment used by patients in the end-stage of chronic kidney diseases. Those patients need to be monitored using blood tests and those tests can present some patterns or correlations. It could be meaningful to apply data mining (DM) to the data collected from those tests. To discover patterns from meaningless data, it becomes crucial to use DM techniques. DM is an emerging field that is currently being used in machine learning to train machines to later aid health professionals in their decision-making process. The classification process can found patterns useful to understand the patients' health development and to medically act according to such results. Thus, this study focuses on testing a set of DM algorithms that may help in classifying the values of serum creatinine in patients undergoing CAPD procedures. Therefore, it is intended to classify the values of serum creatinine according to assigned quartiles. The better results obtained were highly satisfactory, reaching accuracy rate values of approximately 95%, and low relative absolute error values.

2022

Evaluation of the impact of different levels of self-representation and body tracking on the sense of presence and embodiment in immersive VR

Authors
Goncalves, G; Melo, M; Barbosa, L; Vasconcelos Raposo, J; Bessa, M;

Publication
VIRTUAL REALITY

Abstract
The main goal of this paper is to investigate the effect of different types of self-representations through floating members (hands vs. hands + feet), virtual full body (hands + feet vs. full-body avatar), walking fidelity (static feet, simulated walking, real walking), and number of tracking points used (head + hands, head + hands + feet, head + hands + feet + hip) on the sense of presence and embodiment through questionnaires. The sample consisted of 98 participants divided into a total of six conditions in a between-subjects design. The HTC Vive headset, controllers, and trackers were used to perform the experiment. Users were tasked to find a series of hidden objects in a virtual environment and place them in a travel bag. We concluded that (1) the addition of feet to floating hands can impair the experienced realism (p = 0.039), (2) both floating members and full-body avatars can be used without affecting presence and embodiment (p > 0.05) as long as there is the same level of control over the self-representation, (3) simulated walking scores of presence and embodiment were similar when compared to static feet and real walking tracking data (p > 0.05), and (4) adding hip tracking overhead, hand and feet tracking (when using a full-body avatar) allows for a more realistic response to stimuli (p = 0.002) and a higher overall feeling of embodiment (p = 0.023).

2022

Development of a Screening Method for Sulfamethoxazole in Environmental Water by Digital Colorimetry Using a Mobile Device

Authors
Peixoto, PS; Carvalho, PH; Machado, A; Barreiros, L; Bordalo, AA; Oliveira, HP; Segundo, MA;

Publication
CHEMOSENSORS

Abstract
Antibiotic resistance is a major health concern of the 21st century. The misuse of antibiotics over the years has led to their increasing presence in the environment, particularly in water resources, which can exacerbate the transmission of resistance genes and facilitate the emergence of resistant microorganisms. The objective of the present work is to develop a chemosensor for screening of sulfonamides in environmental waters, targeting sulfamethoxazole as the model analyte. The methodology was based on the retention of sulfamethoxazole in disks containing polystyrene divinylbenzene sulfonated sorbent particles and reaction with p-dimethylaminocinnamaldehyde, followed by colorimetric detection using a computer-vision algorithm. Several color spaces (RGB, HSV and CIELAB) were evaluated, with the coordinate a_star, from the CIELAB color space, providing the highest sensitivity. Moreover, in order to avoid possible errors due to variations in illumination, a color palette is included in the picture of the analytical disk, and a correction using the a_star value from one of the color patches is proposed. The methodology presented recoveries of 82-101% at 0.1 mu g and 0.5 mu g of sulfamethoxazole (25 mL), providing a detection limit of 0.08 mu g and a quantification limit of 0.26 mu g. As a proof of concept, application to in-field analysis was successfully implemented.

2022

Game-Based Learning, Gamification in Education and Serious Games

Authors
de Carvalho, CV; Coelho, A;

Publication
COMPUTERS

Abstract
Video games have become one of the predominant forms of entertainment in our society, but they have also impacted many other of its social and cultural aspects [...]

2022

A formal treatment of the role of verified compilers in secure computation

Authors
Almeida, JCB; Barbosa, M; Barthe, G; Pacheco, H; Pereira, V; Portela, B;

Publication
JOURNAL OF LOGICAL AND ALGEBRAIC METHODS IN PROGRAMMING

Abstract
Secure multiparty computation (SMC) allows for complex computations over encrypted data. Privacy concerns for cloud applications makes this a highly desired technology and recent performance improvements show that it is practical. To make SMC accessible to non-experts and empower its use in varied applications, many domain-specific compilers are being proposed.We review the role of these compilers and provide a formal treatment of the core steps that they perform to bridge the abstraction gap between high-level ideal specifications and efficient SMC protocols. Our abstract framework bridges this secure compilation problem across two dimensions: 1) language-based source- to target-level semantic and efficiency gaps, and 2) cryptographic ideal- to real-world security gaps. We link the former to the setting of certified compilation, paving the way to leverage long-run efforts such as CompCert in future SMC compilers. Security is framed in the standard cryptographic sense. Our results are supported by a machine-checked formalisation carried out in EasyCrypt.

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