Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic, India’s complete lockdown was implemented from March 24 to May 3 2020, to minimize the effects of community transfer and control the rapidly growing rate of the virus spread. In this paper, we focus on quantifying the change in air pollution due to Hyderabad’s lockdown, the capital of Telangana State. For this, two datasets are employed. The first dataset is from the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) stations in the city. In contrast, the second dataset is the dense IoT network of PM monitors deployed in the educational campus of IIITH in Gachibowli, Hyderabad. An analysis is done on the collected data to understand the effect of lockdown on PM values while considering the yearly and seasonal variations. It has been shown that while there has been a significant drop in PM values. However, through correlation analysis between the temperature and the PM values during the regular times, not all PM values decrease because of the lockdown. Index Terms

Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic, India’s complete lockdown was implemented from March 24 to May 3 2020, to minimize the effects of community transfer and control the rapidly growing rate of the virus spread. In this paper, we focus on quantifying the change in air pollution due to Hyderabad’s lockdown, the capital of Telangana State. For this, two datasets are employed. The first dataset is from the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) stations in the city. In contrast, the second dataset is the dense IoT network of PM monitors deployed in the educational campus of IIITH in Gachibowli, Hyderabad. An analysis is done on the collected data to understand the effect of lockdown on PM values while considering the yearly and seasonal variations. It has been shown that while there has been a significant drop in PM values. However, through correlation analysis between the temperature and the PM values during the regular times, not all PM values decrease because of the lockdown

Abstract

Clickbait headlines are compelling and designed to lure readers to click on the linked article. To understand their impact on the credibility of news items, we designed and conducted an experiment on news articles from the WebisClickbait-17 dataset. The role of readers’ age and epistemic curiosity on clickbait propensity was also studied. Two datasets of 6 articles each of news relevant to North America and India were selected and each article was assigned a clickbait and a non-clickbait headline based on a pre-test for clickbait perception. 200 participants (100 each of English-speaking American and English-speaking Indian) were instructed to click and read through any two articles of their choice and fill a credibility questionnaire. Epistemic curiosity and demographic data were collected at the end of the experiment. Clickbait headlines significantly reduced the credibility of news items. A correlation between age and propensity for clickbait was observed. No correlation was observed between diversive epistemic curiosity and clickbait propensity, while a weakly negative correlation was observed between specific epistemic curiosity and clickbait propensity. We hope that our findings may lead to a better end-user experience in terms of access to credible information for news readers, bereft of clickbait. Keywords— clickbait, credibility, journalism, digital media, social

Abstract

A behaviourally transformative experience via a strong theme, narrative, and gameplay is a powerful learning paradigm when presented coherently. The interplay of these factors facilitates learning and allows for an immersive experience. It enables players to explore their options and deliberate on the outcomes of their decisions. In this paper, we focus on the socially relevant theme of human trafficking. With Unlocked, we present a perspective that has not been addressed by similarly themed games so far. Understanding such an outlook is crucial to connect with the realities of human trafficking. Our game demonstrates the obstacles in real-life escapes and rescue operations while using well-established literature on learning as guiding principles to create an effective transformative experience. It allows the player to identify with victims and understand their mindset and thought processes. We measure our game’s efficacy in educating players about factors like socio-economic and cultural predicaments, and latent conditions that influence these crimes. Such factors are often overlooked and are hard to understand until they are experienced first-hand. Our study attempts to show that transformative games can help recognize the role that these factors play by placing the player in the victim’s position and building a strong narrative around it. We evaluate the learning process by having two phases of survey, pre-test, and post-test. The pre-test survey tests the player’s knowledge about the current state of human trafficking. In the post-test survey, players rate the experience, gameplay, and effectiveness of the game in educating them about the trafficking scenario. The game was tested and validated by social activists who work to rescue trafficked women and children. They acknowledged the potential impact our game could have on raising awareness. Our findings establish that transformative games grounded with a strong narrative and built with a meticulous design guided by principles of transformation and learning prove to be highly effective in propagating social messages on the perils of human trafficking. Index Terms—Transformative play, Game based learning, Serious games, Human Trafficking, Role playing

Abstract

A corpus of Hindi news headlines shared on Twitter was created by collecting tweets of 5 mainstream Hindi news sources for a period of 4 months. 7 independent annotators were recruited to mark the 20 most retweeted news posts by each of the 5 news sources on its clickbait nature. The clickbait score hence generated was assessed for its correlation with interactions on the platform (retweets, favorites, reader replies), tweet word count, and normalized POS (part-of-speech) tag counts in tweets. A positive correlation was observed between readers’ interactions with tweets and tweets’ clickbait score. Significant correlations were also observed for POS tag counts and clickbait score. The prevalence of clickbait in mainstream Hindi news media was found to be similar to its prevalence in English news media. We hope that our observations would provide a platform for discussions on clickbait in mainstream Hindi news media.

Abstract

Current air pollution monitoring systems are bulky and expensive resulting in a very sparse deployment. In addition, the data from these monitoring stations may not be easily accessible. This paper focuses on studying the dense deployment based air pollution monitoring using IoT enabled low-cost sensor nodes. For this, total nine low-cost IoT nodes monitoring particulate matter (PM), which is one of the most dominant pollutants, are deployed in a small educational campus in Indian city of Hyderabad. Out of these, eight IoT nodes were developed at IIIT-H while one was bought off the shelf. A web based dashboard website is developed to easily monitor the real-time PM values. The data is collected from these nodes for more than five months. Different analyses such as correlation and spatial interpolation are done on the data to understand efficacy of dense deployment in better understanding the spatial variability and time-dependent changes to the local pollution indicators.

Abstract

The studys objective was to measure the somatic state response (skin conductance and heart rate) and understand the decision making processes in a two-player Centipede game, an extensive form game, with a modified payoff. The experiment included fixed and random termination for analyzing the effect of players mutual trust on risk-taking behavior. The behavioral results reveal that trust controls the game rounds (that is, the number of pass decisions) in known or random termination game conditions, though the exit points were higher in the former compared to the latter condition. Higher skin conductance and heart rate during the game-play is noticed as compared to the baseline data showing anxiety during the gameplay and interestingly opponents action induced higher skin conductance amplitude than during self-play for the same decision. The data provides strong preliminary evidence of trust influencing cooperative gameplay.

Abstract

Analytic reasoning differences, as gauged from intelligence metrics, in students engaged in streams requiring a predominantly divergent (arts) or convergent thinking (science and engineering) is a topic of interest. In this paper we have examined this difference by a modified sequence of two sections (D & E) of the Standard Ravens Progressive matrices (RPM). The scan path gaze behavior was analyzed with an eye tracker. The 30 engineering students (half of them are also trained in fine arts) scored higher than the 15 fine arts students. In the former cohort, the artistic and the non-artistic set show no difference in performance but the scan path, fixation count and time taken indicate possible differences in visual strategies for pattern identification. From the detailed analysis, we argue that intelligence as measured by RPM is enhanced by training in reasoning and logic as in engineering streams and might not reflect an innate ability

Abstract

Honking in traffic is an auditory warning to indicate: driver’s actions, alert pedestrians and to convey an emergency situation requiring right of way. Though studies have shown the importance of honking in maintaining traffic flow, there have been cases where irrational use leads to an increase in stress/irritation with effects on driver decision making. Most drivers are unaware of the adverse health effects of high decibel honking. In this report, we looked at the effects of honking on driving behavior in a lab-developed VR driving simulator and anxiety/stress as indicated by changes in skin conductance /pulse rate measured using sensors.

Abstract

A professional player's expertise rests on the ability to predict action by optimally extracting the opponent's postural cues. Eye tracking (head-mounted system) data in a naturalistic singles badminton play was collected from one professional wor0ld-ranked player facing five amateur players (10 serves or 50 trials) and two amateurs playing against four other amateur players each (10 serves or 80 trials). The visual gaze on the opponent body, segregated into 3 areas-of-interest covering the feet, face/torso, and hand/racket of the opponent and the shuttle, was analysed for a) the period just before the serve, b) while receiving the serve and c) the entire rally. The comparative analysis shows the first area-of-interest for professional player as the opponent's feet while executing the serve and the hand/racket when receiving a serve. On the other hand, the amateur players show no particular strategy of fixation location either for the serve task or while facing a serve. The average fixation duration (just before serve) for the professional was 0.96s and for the amateurs it was 1.48s. The findings highlight the differences in the postural cue considered important and the preparatory time in professional and amateur players. We believe, analytical models from dynamic gaze behavior in naturalistic game conditions as applied in this study can be used for enhancing perceptual-cognitive skills during training.