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This paper introduces modular and context-aware evaporative cooling for the outdoor urban environment as a physical structure that could be implemented at various scales and physical contexts. We propose a technique for collecting occupancy and climatic data to create a computational context and optimise its operation. We then outline a concept for developing a predictive algorithm that would further enhance its performance. The research focuses on the interaction between the proposed system and the environment and establishes an evidence-based technique to balance the temperature drop and the humidity it generates. The study combines architectural design, mechanical engineering and computer science to enable the upscaled application of evaporative cooling to help reduce local heat accumulation in cities.

In this paper we present a conceptual solution of modular panel for measuring health parameters of the elderly. The conceptual solution was followed by a study that analyzed the design and evaluated interface of the system. Modular panel contains sensors, processing unit, and interface enabling data acquisition and communication between the user and the medical staff. Positioning of the panel within the residential unit was determined by the categories of actions which it should provide and functional areas of typical housing unit. Interface design is based on a specific type of users and is on the basis of the type of data that should be collected and displayed. Evaluation of interface is conducted by using two user groups, where the first is made up of people older than 60 years and represents the interest group of the study, while the second group consisted of people younger than 60 years as the control group. The collected data were analyzed and the results indicate that the simplicity of the interface suits good to the users. Elderly users need more time to conduct certain commands, but most of them understood interface completely. The limitations of the system, such as lack of information provided for the users, will be considered in the future work.

Comunicació presentada a: ICALT 2020 International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies and Technology-enhanced Learning, organitzada a Tartu, Estònia, del 6 al 9 de juliol de 2020 Self-reports of affective states are increasingly being collected in educational settings. However, individual definitions and usage of emotion and mood terms are often subjective despite objective definitions becoming more widely accepted. We explore whether the variation among individual learners in how mood terms are defined presents an obstacle to using self-reported mood data for group comparison studies. Following a design-based research methodology, we ran two case studies to explore the use of ClassMood App in a multimodal learning study and the validity of the self-reported mood data it collected. During the first case, 24 primary school students experienced difficulty understanding the words used to describe the moods in ClassMood App. In the second case, involving 77 university students, we explored whether the misunderstanding of mood words persisted with older students. Participants were asked to rate their familiarity with and match definitions to a set of 8 mood words. We found that levels of familiarity with the mood words varied greatly and 17.9% of all definition matching attempts were incorrect. The results suggest that the variation in subjective definitions of mood terms is likely to affect the validity of the data collected by the ClassMood App for group comparison studies. This work has been partially funded by the European Regional Development Fund, Erasmus+, and the National Research Agency of the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, under project grants TIN2017-85179-C3-3-R, 2018-1-ESOI-KA20I-050646, and MDM-2015-0502. D. Hernández-Leo acknowledges the support by ICREA under the ICREA Academia programme.

The orchestration of collaborative learning activities in technology-enhanced classrooms has become a nontrivial endeavor for educators. Depending on the behaviors and needs of students that emerge in real educational situations, educators may need to orchestrate activity adaptations on the fly. These adaptations may range from the provision of additional scaffolding by the educator (e.g., the educator's participation in a group discussion) to a change in the planned pedagogical scenario (e.g., the duration). This article aims to contribute to the orchestration of technology-mediated collaborative learning sessions in a classroom context. We present the design, implementation, and evaluation of a teacher-facing dashboard that supports teachers in orchestrating scripted collaboration. Evaluation studies were conducted in 16 classroom sessions. The findings indicate that teachers found the information on the dashboard to be actionable and help facilitate just in time support to student groups. This work has been partially funded by "la Caixa Foundation" (CoT project, 100010434) and the National Research Agency of the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovations and Universities MDM-2015- 0502, TIN2014-53199-C3-3-R, TIN2017-85179-C3-3-R.

Advances in the field of multimodal learning analytics (MMLA) research is often accomplished by actively exploring new technologies and techniques related to the collection and analysis of data. Exploration of ethical principles and procedures for governing the use of new technologies and techniques, however, is not as readily pursued. As collected data grow in complexity and invasiveness, potentially, a growing need is arising to scrutinize ethical aspects of MMLA research. In our study, we introduce an informed consent comprehension test for educational technology research and assess the effects of enhancing MMLA consent forms on comprehension of informed consent and on rates of enrollment in a MMLA study. One form is written from a researcher perspective and the other from a participant perspective. Results of the study involving first‐year undergraduate students suggest that the overall level of comprehension did not differ between conditions. Yet, the participant‐oriented consent form resulted in significantly lower rates of enrollment. Implications for MMLA researchers are discussed. This work was partially funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under MDM-2015-0502, TIN2017-85179-C3-3-R. D. Hernández-Leo acknowledges financial support by ICREA under the ICREA Academia programme.

Comunicació presentada a: 10th International Learning and Analytics Conference (LAK 2020), el 24 de març de 2020, virtualment. In this workshop paper, we report a study conducted to investigate the use of tracking technologies to measure the teachers’ orchestration load when conducting colocated collaborative learning activities. We distinguish the orchestration load experienced by the teachers in the absence and presence of teacher supporting tools, i.e. teacher-facing dashboards. Electrodermal activity (EDA) sensor and other multimodal data including observations, log data and subjective responses to questionnaires have been collected to measure the teachers’ orchestration load in authentic collaborative learning scenarios. This workshop paper presents the study context, quantitative and qualitative data collection process undertaken and other considerations in detail. This work has been partially funded by FEDER, the national research agency of the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovations and Universities MDM-2015-0502, TIN2017-85179-C3-3-R.

Comunicació presentada a: EC-TEL 2019 celebrat a Delft, Països Baixos, del 16 al 19 de setembre de 2019. In this paper, we describe an exploratory study where we investigate the possibilities of motion capture system as an instrument to consider in multi-modal analyses of face-to-face collaborative learning scenarios. The goal is to understand to what extent motion capture can facilitate certain measurements leading to collaborative learning indicators that are currently time-consuming to achieve with other instruments. We focus on the simultaneous measurement of known physical collaboration indicators such as gaze direction, the distance be-tween learners and the speed of movement/reactions. The study considers a lab setting simulating a classroom scenario based on the Jigsaw collaborative learn-ing flow pattern, which proposes a sequence of activities with changes in group size and formation. Preliminary results indicate a high degree of applicability of the system in measuring these indicators, with certain limitations for gaze direc-tion measurements. With appropriate marker position on the participants, the sys-tem is able to automatically provide desired measurements with satisfactory pre-cision. Additionally, with a small number of additional markers, we were able to determine the way students used working surfaces (shared desks). This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 713673. Milica Vujovic has received financial support through the “la Caixa” INPhINIT Fellowship Grant for Doctoral studies at Spanish Research Centres of Excellence, “la Caixa” Banking Foundation, Barcelona, Spain. This work has been partially supported by the National Research Agency of the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovations and Universities MDM-2015-0502, TIN2014- 53199-C3-3-R, TIN2017-85179-C3-3-R.

Thyroid hormone is well known for its profound direct effects on cardiovascular function and metabolism. Recent evidence, however, suggests that the hormone also regulates these systems indirectly through the central nervous system. While some of the molecular mechanisms underlying the hormone’s central control of metabolism have been identified, its actions in the central cardiovascular control have remained enigmatic. Here, we describe a previously unknown population of parvalbuminergic neurons in the anterior hypothalamus that requires thyroid hormone receptor signaling for proper development. Specific stereotaxic ablation of these cells in the mouse resulted in hypertension and temperature-dependent tachycardia, indicating a role in the central autonomic control of blood pressure and heart rate. Moreover, the neurons exhibited intrinsic temperature sensitivity in patch-clamping experiments, providing a new connection between cardiovascular function and core temperature. Thus, the data identify what we believe to be a novel hypothalamic cell population potentially important for understanding hypertension and indicate developmental hypothyroidism as an epigenetic risk factor for cardiovascular disorders. Furthermore, the findings may be beneficial for treatment of the recently identified patients that have a mutation in thyroid hormone receptor α1.

Thyroid hormone is a well-known regulator of brain, lung and kidney development and function. However, the molecular mechanisms by which the hormone exerts its function have remained largely enigmatic, and only a limited set of target genes have been identified in these tissues. Using a mouse model with a mutation in thyroid hormone receptor α1 (TRα1), we here demonstrate that the expression of carbonic anhydrase 4 in lung and brain of the adult animal depends on intact TRα1 signaling. In the kidney, carbonic anhydrase 4 mRNA and protein are not affected by the mutant TRα1, but are acutely repressed by thyroid hormone. However, neither lung function--as measured by respiration rate and oxygen saturation--nor urine pH levels were affected by altered carbonic anhydrase 4 levels, suggesting that other carbonic anhydrases are likely to compensate. Taken together, our findings identify a previously unknown marker of TRα1 action in brain and lung, and provide a novel negatively regulated target gene to assess renal thyroid hormone status.

Thyroid hormone has profound direct effects on cardiac function, but the hormonal interactions with the autonomic control of heart rate are unclear. Because thyroid hormone receptor (TR)-alpha1 has been implicated in the autonomic control of brown adipose energy metabolism, it might also play an important role in the central autonomic control of heart rate. Thus, we aimed to analyze the role of TRalpha1 signaling in the autonomic control of heart rate using an implantable radio telemetry system. We identified that mice expressing the mutant TRalpha1R384C (TRalpha1+m mice) displayed a mild bradycardia, which becomes more pronounced during night activity or on stress and is accompanied by a reduced expression of nucleotide-gated potassium channel 2 mRNA in the heart. Pharmacological blockage with scopolamine and the beta-adrenergic receptor antagonist timolol revealed that the autonomic control of cardiac activity was similar to that in wild-type mice at room temperature. However, at thermoneutrality, in which the regulation of heart rate switches from sympathetic to parasympathetic in wild-type mice, TRalpha1+m mice maintained sympathetic stimulation and failed to activate parasympathetic signaling. Our findings demonstrate a novel role for TRalpha1 in the adaptation of cardiac activity by the autonomic nervous system and suggest that human patients with a similar mutation in TRalpha1 might exhibit a deficit in cardiac adaptation to stress or physical activity and an increased sensitivity to beta-blockers.

Mice expressing the mutant thyroid hormone receptor TR alpha 1R384C, which has a 10-fold reduced affinity to the ligand T-3, exhibit hypermetabolism due to an overactivation of the sympathetic nervous system. To define the consequences in the liver, we analyzed hepatic metabolism and the regulation of liver genes in the mutant mice. Our results showed that hepatic phosphoenolpyruvate-carboxykinase was up-regulated and pyruvate kinase mRNA down-regulated, contrary to what observed after T-3 treatment. In contrast, mice expressing a mutant TR alpha 1L400R specifically in the liver did not show a dysregulation of these genes; however, when the TR alpha 1L400R was expressed ubiquitously, the hepatic phenotype differed from TR alpha 1R384C animals, suggesting that the localization of the mutation plays an important role for its consequences on glucose metabolism. Furthermore, we observed that glycogen stores were completely depleted in TR alpha 1R384C animals, despite increased gluconeogenesis and decreased glycolysis. Exposure of the mutant mice to high maternal levels of thyroid hormone during fetal development leads to a normal liver phenotype in the adult. Our results show how genetic and maternal factors interact to determine the metabolic setpoint of the offspring and indicate an important role for maternal thyroid hormone in the susceptibility to metabolic disorders in adulthood. (Endocrinology 150: 2940-2947, 2009)

Comunicació presentada a: the 13th International Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL), celebrada del 17 al 21 de juny de 2019 a Lió, França. In this paper we question the role of environmental sound on the process of CL. The first pilot study is presented where we investigated effects of environmental sound on EDA and voice VA of the participants. The created visualization presents the dependence between mentioned parameters and serves as an awareness tool for participants in CL. Preliminary results are provocative; there seems to be mentioned dependences and participants accept the proposed visualization as a useful tool to support self-regulation during CL. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 713673. Milica Vujovic has received financial support through the “la Caixa” INPhINIT Fellowship Grant for Doctoral studies at Spanish Research Centres of Excellence, “la Caixa” Banking Foundation, Barcelona, Spain. This work has been partially supported by the National Research Agency of the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovations and Universities MDM-2015-0502, TIN2014-53199-C3-3-R, TIN2017-85179-C3-3-R.

Background Friedewald's formula for the estimation of LDL-C concentration is the most often used formula in clinical practice. A recent formula by Anandaraja and colleagues for LDL-C estimation still needs to be evaluated before it is extensively applied in diagnosis. In the present study we validated existing formulas and derived a more accurate formula to determine LDL-C in a Serbian population. Methods Our study included 2053 patients with TG ≤ 4.52 mmol/L. In an initial group of 1010 patients, Friedewald's and Anandaraja's formulas were compared to a direct homogenous method for LDL-C determination. The obtained results allowed us to modify Friedewald's formula and apply it in a second group of patients. Results The mean LDL-C concentrations were 3.9 ± 1.09 mmol/L, 3.63 ± 1.06 mmol/L and 3.72 ± 1.04 mmol/L measured by a direct homogenous assay (D-LDL-C), calculated by Friedewald's formula (F-LDL-C) and calculated by Anandaraja's formula (A-LDL-C), respectively in the 1010 patients. The Student's paired t-test showed that D-LDL-C values were significantly higher than F-LDL-C and A-LDL-C values (p < 0.001). The Passing-Bablok regression analysis indicated good correlation between calculated and measured LDL-Cs (r > 0.89). Using lipoprotein values from the initial group we modified Friedewald's formula by replacing the term 2.2 with 3. The new modified formula for LDL-C estimation (S-LDL-C) showed no statistically significant difference compared to D-LDL-C. The absolute bias between these two methods was -0.06 ± 0.37 mmol/L with a high correlation coefficient (r = 0.96). Conclusions Our modified formula for LDL-C estimation appears to be more accurate than both Friedewald's and Anandaraja's formulas when applied to a Serbian population.