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Walker DW, Smigaj M, Tani M. The benefits and negative impacts of citizen science applications to water as experienced by participants and communities. WIRES WATER 2021. [PMID: 0 DOI: 10.1002/wat2.1488] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/06/2023]
Affiliation(s)
- David W. Walker
- JSPS International Research Fellow, Faculty of Design Kyushu University Fukuoka Japan
| | - Magdalena Smigaj
- JSPS International Research Fellow, Faculty of Agriculture Kyushu University Fukuoka Japan
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Cappa F, Rosso F, Giustiniano L, Porfiri M. Nudging and citizen science: The effectiveness of feedback in energy-demand management. JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT 2020; 269:110759. [PMID: 32425166 DOI: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2020.110759] [Citation(s) in RCA: 18] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/28/2019] [Revised: 05/07/2020] [Accepted: 05/10/2020] [Indexed: 06/11/2023]
Abstract
Nudging is a framework for directing individuals toward better behavior, both for personal and societal benefits, through heuristics that drive the decision-making process but without preventing any available choice. Considering the Grand Challenges that our society faces today, nudging represents an effective framework to tackle some of these pressing issues. In this work, we assessed the effectiveness of informational nudges in the form of detailed, customized feedback, within an energy-demand-management project. The project aligns energy production and demand, thereby reducing greenhouse gases and pollutant emissions to mitigate climate change. We also offered evidence that this kind of feedback is efficacious in involving individuals as citizen scientists, who volunteer their efforts toward the success of the environmentally-related aim of the project. The results of this research - based on surveys, electroencephalography measurements and online participation measures - indicate that feedback can be an effective tool to steer participants' behavior under the libertarian paternalistic view of nudging, increase their motivation to contribute to citizen science, and improve their awareness about environmentally-related issues. In so doing, we provide evidence that nudging and citizen science can be jointly adopted toward the mitigation of pressing environmental issues.
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Affiliation(s)
- Francesco Cappa
- LUISS Guido Carli University, Department of Business and Management, Viale Pola 12, 00198, Rome, Italy.
| | - Federica Rosso
- Sapienza University of Rome, Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering, Via Eudossiana 18, 00184, Rome, Italy
| | - Luca Giustiniano
- LUISS Guido Carli University, Department of Business and Management, Viale Pola 12, 00198, Rome, Italy
| | - Maurizio Porfiri
- New York University Tandon School of Engineering, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Department of Biomedical Engineering, 6 MetroTech Center Brooklyn, New York, 11201, USA
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3
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De Lellis P, Nakayama S, Porfiri M. Using demographics toward efficient data classification in citizen science: a Bayesian approach. PeerJ Comput Sci 2019; 5:e239. [PMID: 33816892 PMCID: PMC7924415 DOI: 10.7717/peerj-cs.239] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/07/2019] [Accepted: 10/26/2019] [Indexed: 06/12/2023]
Abstract
Public participation in scientific activities, often called citizen science, offers a possibility to collect and analyze an unprecedentedly large amount of data. However, diversity of volunteers poses a challenge to obtain accurate information when these data are aggregated. To overcome this problem, we propose a classification algorithm using Bayesian inference that harnesses diversity of volunteers to improve data accuracy. In the algorithm, each volunteer is grouped into a distinct class based on a survey regarding either their level of education or motivation to citizen science. We obtained the behavior of each class through a training set, which was then used as a prior information to estimate performance of new volunteers. By applying this approach to an existing citizen science dataset to classify images into categories, we demonstrate improvement in data accuracy, compared to the traditional majority voting. Our algorithm offers a simple, yet powerful, way to improve data accuracy under limited effort of volunteers by predicting the behavior of a class of individuals, rather than attempting at a granular description of each of them.
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Affiliation(s)
- Pietro De Lellis
- Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy
- Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, New York University Tandon School of Engineering, Brooklyn, NY, USA
| | - Shinnosuke Nakayama
- Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, New York University Tandon School of Engineering, Brooklyn, NY, USA
| | - Maurizio Porfiri
- Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, New York University Tandon School of Engineering, Brooklyn, NY, USA
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, New York University Tandon School of Engineering, Brooklyn, NY, USA
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Hine K, Tasaki H. Active View and Passive View in Virtual Reality Have Different Impacts on Memory and Impression. Front Psychol 2019; 10:2416. [PMID: 31736823 PMCID: PMC6838773 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02416] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/14/2019] [Accepted: 10/10/2019] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Virtual reality (VR) through a head-mounted display (HMD) can provide new experiences. However, it remains unclear how the characteristics of HMDs affect users’ memory. To use HMDs more effectively and appropriately in several applied fields, including education, it is necessary to clarify what characteristics of HMDs affect users’ memory. A head-tracking function mounted on an HMD helps to detect the user’s head direction to enable a simulation experience akin to the real world. When we experience a simulation on an HMD, we actively perceive the visual world. In this study, we assessed how active/passive viewing affects users’ memory of VR content. We conducted a psychological experiment in which participants watched a movie on an HMD. In the active viewing condition, the presented view changed depending on the participant’s head direction. In the passive viewing condition, the presented view was a recorded movie that was shown to the participants in the active viewing condition. All participants took a memory test about the content presented in the movie on the day of viewing and 2 weeks later. The results showed that performance on the memory test in the active viewing condition was significantly lower than that in the passive viewing condition after 2 weeks. This result indicated that active viewing in VR inhibited users’ memory compared to passive viewing. The current study contributes to the development of new VR techniques, such as educational learning.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kyoko Hine
- Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Toyohashi University of Technology, Toyohashi, Japan
| | - Hodaka Tasaki
- Department of Information Environment, Tokyo Denki University, Tokyo, Japan
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Tsueng G, Nanis M, Fouquier JT, Mayers M, Good BM, Su AI. Applying citizen science to gene, drug and disease relationship extraction from biomedical abstracts. Bioinformatics 2019; 36:1226-1233. [PMID: 31504205 PMCID: PMC8104067 DOI: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btz678] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/17/2019] [Revised: 08/05/2019] [Accepted: 08/29/2019] [Indexed: 01/31/2023] Open
Abstract
MOTIVATION Biomedical literature is growing at a rate that outpaces our ability to harness the knowledge contained therein. To mine valuable inferences from the large volume of literature, many researchers use information extraction algorithms to harvest information in biomedical texts. Information extraction is usually accomplished via a combination of manual expert curation and computational methods. Advances in computational methods usually depend on the time-consuming generation of gold standards by a limited number of expert curators. Citizen science is public participation in scientific research. We previously found that citizen scientists are willing and capable of performing named entity recognition of disease mentions in biomedical abstracts, but did not know if this was true with relationship extraction (RE). RESULTS In this article, we introduce the Relationship Extraction Module of the web-based application Mark2Cure (M2C) and demonstrate that citizen scientists can perform RE. We confirm the importance of accurate named entity recognition on user performance of RE and identify design issues that impacted data quality. We find that the data generated by citizen scientists can be used to identify relationship types not currently available in the M2C Relationship Extraction Module. We compare the citizen science-generated data with algorithm-mined data and identify ways in which the two approaches may complement one another. We also discuss opportunities for future improvement of this system, as well as the potential synergies between citizen science, manual biocuration and natural language processing. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION Mark2Cure platform: https://mark2cure.org; Mark2Cure source code: https://github.com/sulab/mark2cure; and data and analysis code for this article: https://github.com/gtsueng/M2C_rel_nb. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Max Nanis
- Department of Integrative Structural and Computational Biology, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA
| | - Jennifer T Fouquier
- Department of Integrative Structural and Computational Biology, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA
| | - Michael Mayers
- Department of Integrative Structural and Computational Biology, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA
| | - Benjamin M Good
- Department of Integrative Structural and Computational Biology, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA
| | - Andrew I Su
- Department of Integrative Structural and Computational Biology, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA
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A Citizen Science Approach to Determine Physical Activity Patterns and Demographics of Greenway Users in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH AND PUBLIC HEALTH 2019; 16:ijerph16173150. [PMID: 31470544 PMCID: PMC6747415 DOI: 10.3390/ijerph16173150] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/23/2019] [Revised: 08/23/2019] [Accepted: 08/24/2019] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
Abstract
Citizen science is a growing method of scientific discovery and community engagement. To date, there is a paucity of data using citizen scientists to monitor community level physical activity, such as bicycling or walking; these data are critical to inform community level intervention. Volunteers were recruited from the local community to make observations at five local greenways. The volunteers picked their location, time to collect data and duration of data collection. Volunteer observations included recording estimated age, race or ethnicity and activity level of each individual they encountered walking, running or bicycling on the greenway. A total of 102 volunteers were recruited to participate in the study, of which 60% completed one or more observations. Average observational time lasted 81 minutes and resulted in recording the demographics and physical activity of a mean of 48 people per session. The majority of adult bicyclists observed were biking at a moderate pace (86%) and were white (72%) males (62%). Similar results were observed for those walking. We demonstrate the feasibility of using citizen scientists to address the current scarcity of data describing community-level physical activity behavior patterns. Future work should focus on refining the citizen science approach for the collection of physical activity data to inform community-specific interventions in order to increase greenway use.
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Barak Ventura R, Nakayama S, Raghavan P, Nov O, Porfiri M. The Role of Social Interactions in Motor Performance: Feasibility Study Toward Enhanced Motivation in Telerehabilitation. J Med Internet Res 2019; 21:e12708. [PMID: 31094338 PMCID: PMC6540723 DOI: 10.2196/12708] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/06/2018] [Revised: 02/12/2019] [Accepted: 02/17/2019] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND Robot-mediated telerehabilitation has the potential to provide patient-tailored cost-effective rehabilitation. However, compliance with therapy can be a problem that undermines the prospective advantages of telerehabilitation technologies. Lack of motivation has been identified as a major factor that hampers compliance. Exploring various motivational interventions, the integration of citizen science activities in robotics-based rehabilitation has been shown to increase patients' motivation to engage in otherwise tedious exercises by tapping into a vast array of intrinsic motivational drivers. Patient engagement can be further enhanced by the incorporation of social interactions. OBJECTIVE Herein, we explored the possibility of bolstering engagement in physical therapy by leveraging cooperation among users in an environmental citizen science project. Specifically, we studied how the integration of cooperation into citizen science influences user engagement, enjoyment, and motor performance. Furthermore, we investigated how the degree of interdependence among users, such that is imposed through independent or joint termination (JT), affects participation in citizen science-based telerehabilitation. METHODS We developed a Web-based citizen science platform in which users work in pairs to classify images collected by an aquatic robot in a polluted water canal. The classification was carried out by labeling objects that appear in the images and trashing irrelevant labels. The system was interfaced by a haptic device for fine motor rehabilitation. We recruited 120 healthy volunteers to operate the platform. Of these volunteers, 98 were cooperating in pairs, with 1 user tagging images and the other trashing labels. The other 22 volunteers performed both tasks alone. To vary the degree of interdependence within cooperation, we implemented independent and JTs. RESULTS We found that users' engagement and motor performance are modulated by their assigned task and the degree of interdependence. Motor performance increased when users were subjected to independent termination (P=.02), yet enjoyment decreased when users were subjected to JT (P=.005). A significant interaction between the type of termination and the task was found to influence productivity (P<.001) as well as mean speed, peak speed, and path length of the controller (P=.01, P=.006, and P<.001, respectively). CONCLUSIONS Depending on the type of termination, cooperation was not always positively associated with engagement, enjoyment, and motor performance. Therefore, enhancing user engagement, satisfaction, and motor performance through cooperative citizen science tasks relies on both the degree of interdependence among users and the perceived nature of the task. Cooperative citizen science may enhance motivation in robotics-based telerehabilitation, if designed attentively.
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Affiliation(s)
- Roni Barak Ventura
- Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, New York University Tandon School of Engineering, Brooklyn, NY, United States
| | - Shinnosuke Nakayama
- Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, New York University Tandon School of Engineering, Brooklyn, NY, United States
| | - Preeti Raghavan
- Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY, United States
| | - Oded Nov
- Department of Technology Management and Innovation, New York University Tandon School of Engineering, Brooklyn, NY, United States
| | - Maurizio Porfiri
- Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, New York University Tandon School of Engineering, Brooklyn, NY, United States.,Department of Biomedical Engineering, New York University Tandon School of Engineering, Brooklyn, NY, United States
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Torre M, Nakayama S, Tolbert TJ, Porfiri M. Producing knowledge by admitting ignorance: Enhancing data quality through an "I don't know" option in citizen science. PLoS One 2019; 14:e0211907. [PMID: 30811452 PMCID: PMC6392254 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0211907] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/04/2018] [Accepted: 01/22/2019] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Abstract
The "noisy labeler problem" in crowdsourced data has attracted great attention in recent years, with important ramifications in citizen science, where non-experts must produce high-quality data. Particularly relevant to citizen science is dynamic task allocation, in which the level of agreement among labelers can be progressively updated through the information-theoretic notion of entropy. Under dynamic task allocation, we hypothesized that providing volunteers with an "I don't know" option would contribute to enhancing data quality, by introducing further, useful information about the level of agreement among volunteers. We investigated the influence of an "I don't know" option on the data quality in a citizen science project that entailed classifying the image of a highly polluted canal into "threat" or "no threat" to the environment. Our results show that an "I don't know" option can enhance accuracy, compared to the case without the option; such an improvement mostly affects the true negative rather than the true positive rate. In an information-theoretic sense, these seemingly meaningless blank votes constitute a meaningful piece of information to help enhance accuracy of data in citizen science.
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Affiliation(s)
- Marina Torre
- Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, New York University Tandon School of Engineering, Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
| | - Shinnosuke Nakayama
- Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, New York University Tandon School of Engineering, Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
| | - Tyrone J. Tolbert
- Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, New York University Tandon School of Engineering, Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
| | - Maurizio Porfiri
- Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, New York University Tandon School of Engineering, Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, New York University Tandon School of Engineering, Brooklyn, New York, United States of America
- * E-mail:
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Nakayama S, Tolbert TJ, Nov O, Porfiri M. Social Information as a Means to Enhance Engagement in Citizen Science‐Based Telerehabilitation. J Assoc Inf Sci Technol 2018. [DOI: 10.1002/asi.24147] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/19/2023]
Affiliation(s)
- Shinnosuke Nakayama
- Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering New York University Tandon School of Engineering 6 MetroTech Center, Brooklyn NY 11201
| | - Tyrone J. Tolbert
- Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering New York University Tandon School of Engineering 6 MetroTech Center, Brooklyn NY 11201
| | - Oded Nov
- Department of Technology Management and Innovation New York University Tandon School of Engineering 5 MetroTech Center, Brooklyn NY 11201
| | - Maurizio Porfiri
- Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Department of Biomedical Engineering, New York University Tandon School of Engineering 6 MetroTech Center, Brooklyn NY 11201
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Palermo E, Rossi S, Patanè F, Laut J, Porfiri M. In Memoriam: Paolo Cappa. SENSORS 2017; 17:s17112661. [PMID: 29156582 PMCID: PMC5713654 DOI: 10.3390/s17112661] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/14/2017] [Revised: 11/14/2017] [Accepted: 11/15/2017] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
Abstract
Prof. Paolo Cappa passed away on 26 August 2016, at the age of 59, after a long and courageous fight against cancer. Paolo Cappa was a Professor in Mechanical and Thermal Measurements and Experimental Biomechanics in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering of Sapienza University of Rome, where he had also served as the Head of the Department, and a Research Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering of New York University Tandon School of Engineering. During his intense, yet short, career, he made several significant scientific contributions within the discipline of Mechanical and Thermal Measurements, pioneering fundamental applications to Biomechanics. He co-founded the Motion Analysis and Robotics Laboratory (MARLab) within the Neurorehabilitation Division of IRCCS Pediatric Hospital “Bambino Gesu”, in Rome, to fuel transitional research from the laboratory to clinical practice. Through collaboration with neurologists and physiatrists at MARLab, Prof. Cappa led the development of a powerful array of novel mechanical solutions to wearable robotics for pediatric patients, addressing dramatic needs for children’s health and contributing to the training of an entire generation of Mechanical Engineering students.
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Affiliation(s)
- Eduardo Palermo
- Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome 00184, Italy.
| | - Stefano Rossi
- Department of Economics, Engineering, Society and Business Organization (DEIM), University of Tuscia, Viterbo 01100, Italy.
| | - Fabrizio Patanè
- Niccolò Cusano University, via Don Gnocchi, Rome 00166, Italy.
| | - Jeffrey Laut
- Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, New York University Tandon School of Engineering, Brooklyn, NY 11201, USA.
| | - Maurizio Porfiri
- Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, New York University Tandon School of Engineering, Brooklyn, NY 11201, USA.
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Palermo E, Laut J, Nov O, Cappa P, Porfiri M. Spatial memory training in a citizen science context. COMPUTERS IN HUMAN BEHAVIOR 2017. [DOI: 10.1016/j.chb.2017.03.017] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/20/2022]
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