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Virtual humans (i.e., embodied conversational agents) have the potential to support college students' mental health, particularly in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields where students are at a heightened risk of mental disorders such as anxiety and depression. A comprehensive understanding of students, considering their cultural characteristics, experiences, and expectations, is crucial for creating timely and effective virtual human interventions. To this end, we conducted a user study with 481 computer science students from a major university in North America, exploring how they co-designed virtual humans to support mental health conversations for students similar to them. Our findings suggest that computer science students who engage in co-design processes of virtual humans tend to create agents that closely resemble them demographically--agent-designer demographic similarity. Key factors influencing virtual human design included age, gender, ethnicity, and the matching between appearance and voice. We also observed that the demographic characteristics of virtual human designers, especially ethnicity and gender, tend to be associated with those of the virtual humans they designed. Finally, we provide insights concerning the impact of user-designer demographic similarity in virtual humans' effectiveness in promoting mental health conversations when designers' characteristics are shared explicitly or implicitly. Understanding how virtual humans' characteristics serve users' experiences in mental wellness conversations and the similarity-attraction effects between agents, users, and designers may help tailor virtual humans' design to enhance their acceptance and increase their counseling effectiveness., Comment: 43 pages, 12 figures, revision after acceptance with minor revisions at ACM Transactions on Applied Perception

Alertness monitoring in the context of driving improves safety and saves lives. Computer vision based alertness monitoring is an active area of research. However, the algorithms and datasets that exist for alertness monitoring are primarily aimed at younger adults (18-50 years old). We present a system for in-vehicle alertness monitoring for older adults. Through a design study, we ascertained the variables and parameters that are suitable for older adults traveling independently in Level 5 vehicles. We implemented a prototype traveler monitoring system and evaluated the alertness detection algorithm on ten older adults (70 years and older). We report on the system design and implementation at a level of detail that is suitable for the beginning researcher or practitioner. Our study suggests that dataset development is the foremost challenge for developing alertness monitoring systems targeted at older adults. This study is the first of its kind for a hitherto under-studied population and has implications for future work on algorithm development and system design through participatory methods., Comment: 12 pages, 14 figures, 6 tables

In this paper, a novel perceptual image hashing scheme for color images is proposed based on ring-ribbon quadtree and color vector angle. First, original image is subjected to normalization and Gaussian low-pass filtering to produce a secondary image, which is divided into a series of ring-ribbons with different radii and the same number of pixels. Then, both textural and color features are extracted locally and globally. Quadtree decomposition (QD) is applied on luminance values of the ring-ribbons to extract local textural features, and the gray level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) is used to extract global textural features. Local color features of significant corner points on outer boundaries of ring-ribbons are extracted through color vector angles (CVA), and color low-order moments (CLMs) is utilized to extract global color features. Finally, two types of feature vectors are fused via canonical correlation analysis (CCA) to prodcue the final hash after scrambling. Compared with direct concatenation, the CCA feature fusion method improves classification performance, which better reflects overall correlation between two sets of feature vectors. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve shows that our scheme has satisfactory performances with respect to robustness, discrimination and security, which can be effectively used in copy detection and content authentication.

Visual noise is often regarded as a disturbance in image quality, whereas it can also provide a crucial clue for image-based forensic tasks. Conventionally, noise is assumed to comprise an additive Gaussian model to be estimated and then used to reveal anomalies. However, for real sensor noise, it should be modeled as signal-dependent noise (SDN). In this work, we apply SDN to splicing forgery localization tasks. Through statistical analysis of the SDN model, we assume that noise can be modeled as a Gaussian approximation for a certain brightness and propose a likelihood model for a noise level function. By building a maximum a posterior Markov random field (MAP-MRF) framework, we exploit the likelihood of noise to reveal the alien region of spliced objects, with a probability combination refinement strategy. To ensure a completely blind detection, an iterative alternating method is adopted to estimate the MRF parameters. Experimental results demonstrate that our method is effective and provides a comparative localization performance.

Spontaneous symmetry breaking mechanism in quantum phase transitions manifests the existence of degenerate groundstates in broken symmetry phases. To detect such degenerate groundstates, we introduce a quantum fidelity as an overlap measurement between system groundstates and an arbitrary reference state. This quantum fidelity is shown a multiple bifurcation as an indicator of quantum phase transitions, without knowing any detailed broken symmetry, between a broken symmetry phase and symmetry phases as well as between a broken symmetry phase and other broken symmetry phases, when a system parameter crosses its critical value (i.e., multiple bifurcation point). Each order parameter, characterizing a broken symmetry phase, from each of degenerate groundstates is shown similar multiple bifurcation behavior. Furthermore, to complete the description of an ordered phase, it is possible to specify how each order parameter from each of degenerate groundstates transforms under a symmetry group that is possessed by the Hamiltonian because each order parameter is invariant under only a subgroup of the symmetry group although the Hamiltonian remains invariant under the full symmetry group. Examples are given in the quantum $q$-state Potts models with a transverse magnetic field by employing the tensor network algorithms based on infinite-size lattices. For any $q$, a general relation between the local order parameters is found to clearly show the subgroup of the $Z_q$ symmetry group. In addition, we systematically discuss the criticality in the $q$-state Potts model., Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures

String correlations are investigated in an infinite-size XXZ spin-1 chain. By using the infinite matrix product state representation, we calculate a long-range string order. In the XY phase, the string correlations decay within a relatively very large lattice distance, which makes a finite-size study difficult to verify the non-existence of the string order. Thus, in the Haldane phase, the non-vanishing string correlations in the limit of a very large distance allow to characterize the phase boundaries to the XY phase and the Neel phase, which implies that the transverse long-range string order is the order parameter for the Haldane phase. In addition, the singular behaviors of the von Neumann entropy and the fidelity per lattice site are shown to capture clearly the phase transition points that are consistent with the results from the string order. The estimated critical points including a BKT transition from the XY phase to the Haldane phase agree well with the previous results: $\Delta_{c2} = 0$ for the XY-Haldane phase transition and $\Delta_{c3} = 1.185$ for the Haldane-N'eel phase transition from the density renormalization group. From a finite-entanglement scaling of the von Neumann entropy with respect to the truncation dimension, the central charges are found to be $c \simeq 1.0$ at $\Delta_{c2} = 0$ and $c \simeq 0.5$ at $\Delta_{c3} = 1.185$, respectively, which shows that the XY-Haldane phase transition at $\Delta_{c2} = 0$ belongs to the Heisenberg universality class, while the Haldane-Neel phase transition at $\Delta_{c2} = 1.185$ belongs to the two-dimensional classical Ising universality class. It is also shown that, the long-range order parameters and the von Neumann entropy, as well as the fidelity per site approach, can be applied to characterize quantum phase transitions as a universal phase transition indicator for one-dimensional lattice many-body systems., Comment: 12 pages, 12 figures

We have developed an efficient tensor network algorithm for spin ladders, which generates ground-state wave functions for infinite-size quantum spin ladders. The algorithm is able to efficiently compute the ground-state fidelity per lattice site, a universal phase transition marker, thus offering a powerful tool to unveil quantum many-body physics underlying spin ladders. To illustrate our scheme, we consider the two-leg and three-leg Heisenberg spin ladders with staggering dimerization. The ground-state phase diagram thus yielded is reliable, compared with the previous studies based on the density matrix renormalization group. Our results indicate that the ground-state fidelity per lattice site successfully captures quantum criticalities in spin ladders., Comment: 4+ pages, 5 figures

Coherent quantum tunneling effects on quantum interference are investigated in electron transport through a mesoscopic interferometer. An evanescent wave tunneling through a potential barrier in one arm can interfere with a propagating wave passing through the other arm of interferometer. It is shown that, even for the same arm lengths, such a quantum interference can induce a circulating current, where Fano antiresonances do not occur in electron transmission. It is found that there exists a critical value of asymmetric arm lengths that gives rise to a Fano antiresonance in electron transmission for the quantum interference between evanescent and propagating waves. We discuss the effects of Fano antiresonances originating from the asymmetric arm lengths on circulating currents., Comment: 11 pages