My Virtual Comic Girl – Ineractive mobile game with artificial intelligence – Video

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My Virtual Comic Girl - Ineractive mobile game with artificial intelligence
Interactive pocket game with artificial intelligence engine Valentina is much more than a simple virtual girl, she has a real sophisticated artificial intell...

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My Virtual Comic Girl - Ineractive mobile game with artificial intelligence - Video

The Aerospace Corporation Awards Highest Honors to Nine Employees

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The Aerospace Corporation honored nine employees during its 35th annual Presidents and Trustees Distinguished Achievement Awards ceremony on Sep. 18, 2014. Robert Walker, board of trustees member and chair of the awards subcommittee, and Dr. Wanda Austin, president and CEO for the corporation, presided over the ceremony.

Enold Pierre-Louis was honored with the 2014 Trustees Distinguished Achievement Award for developing an integrated technique combining stress and probabilistic analyses to resolve numerous launch-critical issues. He is a senior project leader for Environments, Test, and Assessment Department, Engineering and Technology Group. Pierre-Louis developed an integrated analysis technique used on numerous programs to resolve flight-critical issues.

The first group winner of the Presidents Achievement Award comprised: Dr. Steven Beck, distinguished scientist, Electronics and Photonics Laboratory; Henry Montes, senior technical staff, Photonics Technology Department; and Michael Williams, technical staff, Photonics Technology Department. This team was honored for sustaining contributions to the Space Based Infrared System by developing and helping deploy a number of mobile laser beacon systems, which have been critical to the early orbit testing of all U.S. overhead persistent infrared sensors launched and in orbit.

The second group honored with the Presidents Achievement Award included: Dr. Russel Benson, systems director, GEOINT Development Office, National Systems Group; Alison Kremer, project engineer, International Space Systems, Systems Planning, Engineering, and Quality; and Dr. Ashley Williams, senior technical staff, Control Analysis Department, ETG. This team was awarded for their application of innovative controls analysis to diagnose and mitigate issues on a critical national program.

The final Presidents Achievement Award went to James Gin, systems director, Aerospace Western Test Range, Systems Engineering, Space Systems Group, and Chafic Hammoud, systems director, Targets and Interceptor, Systems Planning, Engineering, and Quality for their exceptional leadership in mitigating critical path risks to the first Ballistic Missile Defense System operational flight test. Their support to the Missile Defense Agency has relied heavily upon the breadth of Aerospace expertise in mission assurance for launch vehicles. Gins and Hammouds efforts saved MDA over three months of scheduling time, millions of dollars in costs, and ensured crew safety.

The Aerospace Corporation is a California nonprofit corporation that operates a federally funded research and development center and has almost 3,500 employees. It provides technical guidance and advice on all aspects of space missions to military, civil, and commercial customers to assure space mission success. The Aerospace Corporation is headquartered in El Segundo, Calif., with multiple locations across the United States.

Contact Jessica Brown, 310-336-1195 or jessica.a.brown@aero.org

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The Aerospace Corporation Awards Highest Honors to Nine Employees

EmotEds therapeutic intervention tool will use video games to help patients relearn emotions

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Update Alexithymia is not a condition that many outside the world of behavioral science are familiar with but its the focus of Indiana University School of Medicine Assistant Research Professor Dawn Neumanns work. She recently received an SBIR grant for her business EmotEd for a therapeutic intervention tool that functions as a video game, which shes developing with Indiana University School of Medicine, Indiana University School of Informatics, and Indiana software design and developer business, DeveloperTown.

She offered an explanation of her work in a phone interview with MedCity News.

The intervention will focus on helping brain injured adults in rehabilitation hospitals identify and understand when they are angry, upset, have anxiety or are depressed and eventually learn to perceive those emotions in others as well. Alexithymia, is present in about 10 percent of the typical population, and in 30 percent to 60 percent of patients with brain injury, Neumann said.

Just so were clear, this isnt World of Warcraft. Its a video game, but it focuses on scenarios as a teaching tool.

Neumann offers a couple of the scenarios the video game may embrace, though she emphasizes it is early days in the development phase. For example, you have a dentist appointment in the morning. You set the alarm the night before and wake up immediately the next day, only to realize the clock is one hour behind. Patients are given cues in a series of steps designed to trigger a response on how they feel. They are rewarded with points for these responses the more specific they can be, the more points they get. They also get additional points for things like empathy and demonstrating emotional intelligence. The long-term goal is to build an emotional foundation.

Another scenario could involve making dinner for your boyfriend/girlfriend and theyre one hour late. The person may say some mean things to their significant other but they may not even realize theyre angry or upset. The game is all about getting to a point where the patient knows what they are feeling and why. Even more importantly, they may come to understand how the other person may be feeling.

So why video games? Neumann points out that its more effective than role-playing in person because it offers more opportunities to freeze and replay the action and discuss it without throwing the participants off or requiring them to recall something that happened several minutes ago. EmotEds customers will include rehab centers and neuropsychologists.

The virtual environments Neumanns program envisions will create a platform for training patients. The emotion builder will also allow patients to dig deeper so they can process what they are feeling and give them tools and strategies to be better aware of them.

One of the biggest problems Neumann currently sees with this group of patients is that as soon as insurers decide members have reached the end of their recovery, the reimbursement for therapy ends. So theres no way to ensure that patients keep re-enforcing the progress they have made. Neumann said she has seen people that have lost the skills they built in recovery. The longterm vision is for the interactive scenario video game to be accessible online. So the skills learned in rehab can be reinforced. As a result, there is a movement to classify brain injury as a chronic condition, since it affects many stages and capacities of living.

Long-term, Neumann hopes to build app modules onto the program to focus on different scenarios, particularly for improving patients grasp of empathy.

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EmotEds therapeutic intervention tool will use video games to help patients relearn emotions

New Dartmouth smartphone app reveals users' mental health, performance, behavior

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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

18-Sep-2014

Contact: John Cramer John.Cramer@Dartmouth.edu 603-646-9130 Dartmouth College @dartmouth

Dartmouth researchers and their colleagues have built the first smartphone app that automatically reveals students' mental health, academic performance and behavioral trends. In other words, your smartphone knows your state of mind -- even if you don't -- and how that affects you.

The StudentLife app, which compares students' happiness, stress, depression and loneliness to their academic performance, also may be used in the general population for example, to monitor mental health, trigger intervention and improve productivity in workplace employees.

"The StudentLife app is able to continuously make mental health assessment 24/7, opening the way for a new form of assessment," says computer science Professor Andrew Campbell, the study's senior author. "This is a very important and exciting breakthrough."

The researchers presented their findings on Wednesday at the ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing. The paper has been nominated for best paper at UbiComp, the top conference mobile computing. A PDF of the paper and a summary of the findings are available on request. They also released an anonymized version of the dataset in the hope that other social and behavioral scientists will use it in further studies.

The researchers built an Android app that monitored readings from smartphone sensors carried by 48 Dartmouth students during a 10-week term to assess their mental health (depression, loneliness, stress), academic performance (grades across all their classes, term GPA and cumulative GPA) and behavioral trends (how stress, sleep, visits to the gym, etc., change in response to college workload -- assignments, midterms, finals -- as the term progresses).

They used computational method and machine learning algorithms on the phone to assess sensor data and make higher level inferences (i.e., sleep, sociability, activity, etc.) The app that ran on students phones automatically measured the following behaviors 24/7 without any user interaction: sleep duration, the number and duration of conversations per day, physical activity (walking, sitting, running, standing), where they were located and how long they stayed there (i.e., dorm, class, party, gym), stress level, how good they felt about themselves, eating habits and more. The researchers used a number of well known pre- and post-mental health surveys and spring and cumulative GPAs for evaluation of mental health and academic performance, respectively.

The results show that passive and automatic sensor data from the Android phones significantly correlated with the students' mental health and their academic performance over the term.

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New Dartmouth smartphone app reveals users' mental health, performance, behavior

OU Proctorville Center hosting free seminar on Paleo Diet benefits

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Sep. 18, 2014 @ 09:39 AM

PROCTORVILLE, Ohio -- As part of its community education program, Ohio University Proctorville Center is offering a free seminar on the benefits of the Paleo Diet at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 23.

Dr. Jane Kurucz will speak about the Paleo Diet, which is based upon everyday, modern foods that mimic the food groups of our pre-agricultural, hunter-gatherer ancestors and are believed to help optimize overall health, minimize the risk of chronic disease and support weight loss, according to a release.

Kurucz, a former breast cancer surgeon for 20 years, now focuses her efforts to help patients and others improve their health and achieve such goals as hormonal balance, disease prevention and treatment of chronic conditions such as diabetes and obesity.

A certified diplomat of the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine, a certified Hospice Medical Director, and a member of the Institute for Functional Medicine, Kurucz brings a wealth of expertise and knowledge in the area of wellness, according to the release.

For planning purposes, anyone interested in attending the community education seminar should contact Evelyn Capper, community relations coordinator for the Proctorville Center, at capper@ohio.edu .

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OU Proctorville Center hosting free seminar on Paleo Diet benefits

"A Force for Freedom" – NATO Secretary General Speech at Carnegie Europe, 15 SEP 2014 – Part 1/2 – Video

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"A Force for Freedom" - NATO Secretary General Speech at Carnegie Europe, 15 SEP 2014 - Part 1/2
A Force for Freedom - Speech by NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen at Carnegie Europe, 15 September 2014. Opening Remarks. Transcript: http://goo.g...

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US and NATO Troops Begin ‘Operation Rapid Trident’ In Western Ukraine! – Video

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US and NATO Troops Begin #39;Operation Rapid Trident #39; In Western Ukraine!
http://www.undergroundworldnews.com The US says the drill had been planned before the current crisis in eastern Ukraine, where government forces have been battling pro-Russian rebels. Clashes...

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US and NATO Troops Begin 'Operation Rapid Trident' In Western Ukraine! - Video

NATO Drill in Ukraine: US-led military alliance shows support for Ukraine – Video

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NATO Drill in Ukraine: US-led military alliance shows support for Ukraine
The United States and its NATO allies have staged a long-planned joint military exercise involving approximately 1300 troops from 15 countries near the city of Lviv in western Ukraine. Check...

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NATO Drill in Ukraine: US-led military alliance shows support for Ukraine - Video

Ukraine Ceasefire May Aid Russia: NATO searching for answer to Russian hybrid war tactics – Video

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Ukraine Ceasefire May Aid Russia: NATO searching for answer to Russian hybrid war tactics
The ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia may allow the Kremlin to achieve its aims in Ukraine and to establish more frozen conflict zones in post-Soviet states warns US Air Force General Philip...

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Ukraine Ceasefire May Aid Russia: NATO searching for answer to Russian hybrid war tactics - Video

World War 3 : US and NATO Troops begin Rapid Trident Military Exercises in Ukraine (Sept 16, 2014) – Video

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World War 3 : US and NATO Troops begin Rapid Trident Military Exercises in Ukraine (Sept 16, 2014)
News Articles: US-Led Army Exercise #39;Rapid Trident 2014 #39; Underway in Ukraine http://en.ria.ru/military_news/20140915/192967077/US-Led-Army-Exercise-Rapid-Trident-2014-Underway-in-Ukraine.html...

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World War 3 : US and NATO Troops begin Rapid Trident Military Exercises in Ukraine (Sept 16, 2014) - Video