Improving Behavioral-Based Safety Training in Using Verbal Commands Through a Theory-Driven and Feedback-Based Nonimmersive Virtual Reality Game: Development and Usability Study.

BACKGROUND: The construction, chemical, aviation, medical, and health care industries have used serious games for safety training. To our knowledge, serious games have not been developed focusing on behavioral change to improve safety through the use of verbal commands and instilling players with heightened awareness of their spatial proximity to other people in their surroundings. OBJECTIVE: We aimed to develop a theory-driven serious game for improving safety behavior using verbal commands and validate the implementation of the theoretical frameworks used for game development. The game developed, KitchenSpeak, was a first-person character (FPC) game where users respond to in-game prompts to use loud verbal commands when they are approaching another employee's blind spot. METHODS: In addition to using the SERES framework in guiding the general game design and development, and the Reflection, Engagement, Choice, Information, Play, Exposition (RECIPE) framework to inform the design of the game mechanics, we also applied gestalt laws of perception for graphic design to guide the design of the game's user interface. We conducted 2 evaluative tests (alpha and beta) to collect end user and stakeholder feedback on the implementation of the theoretical frameworks, as well as to collect relevant information for full-scale implementation and a future validation study. RESULTS: The alpha and beta tests had 8 and 40 participants, respectively. The alpha test results revealed that the theoretical frameworks were adequately applied; however, suggestions were also made to modify and improve the game. The beta test results suggested further improvements for the game design and found no differences in the perception of ease of play between participants with and without previous FPC gaming experience (P=.47; Kruskal-Wallis). Results suggested that the game met its design and theoretical requirements, and it would be easily playable by all players regardless of their previous experience in FPC games. CONCLUSIONS: A theory-driven and evidence-based FPC game titled KitchenSpeak was developed to teach the use of kitchen-speak terms in commercial kitchens. Evaluative tests were conducted to validate the implementation of the theoretical frameworks. Our main contributions are creating and validating game-based training to improve behavioral-based safety in the workplace and the incorporation of gestalt laws of perception for graphic design in the game's user interface.

Novel and stable QTL regions conferring resistance to MYMV disease and its inheritance in blackgram (Vigna mungo (L.) Hepper).

Mungbean yellow mosaic virus (MYMV) disease is a significant constraint for blackgram production. The present study employed a mapping population derived from a cross between susceptible (MDU 1) and resistant (TU 68) genotypes to identify quantitative trait loci (QTL) associated with MYMV disease resistance in addition to bruchine resistance loci identified from the previous study. Phenotyping was carried out in F2 generation under the disease spreader row method at field condition. Disease score observations were carried out 60 days after sowing (DAS). The chi-square goodness of fit test revealed inhibitory gene action with two genes controlling the expression of resistance to MYMV disease. However, QTL analysis revealed one major QTL region, i.e. qMYMVD_60 at LG 10 responsible for MYMV disease score at 60 DAS, accounted for 21 per cent of variation. The identified QTL has the flanking markers as CEDG180 and CEDG116. Hence, the QTL, qMYMVD_60 may be utilized in the breeding of MYMV disease resistance. Further, the marker-assisted introgression of both the MYMV and bruchine resistance QTLs can be performed in the near future.

Numerical Characterization of DNA Sequences for Alignment-free Sequence Comparison - A Review.

BACKGROUND: Biological macromolecules, namely, DNA, RNA, and protein, have their building blocks organized in a particular sequence and the sequential arrangement encodes the evolutionary history of the organism (species). Hence, biological sequences have been used for studying evolutionary relationships among the species. This is usually carried out by Multiple Sequence Algorithms (MSA). Due to certain limitations of MSA, alignment-free sequence comparison methods were developed. The present review is on alignment-free sequence comparison methods carried out using the numerical characterization of DNA sequences. DISCUSSION: The graphical representation of DNA sequences by chaos game representation and other 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional methods are discussed. The evolution of numerical characterization from the various graphical representations and the application of the DNA invariants thus computed in phylogenetic analysis are presented. The extension of computing molecular descriptors in chemometrics to the calculation of a new set of DNA invariants and their use in alignment-free sequence comparison in an N-dimensional space and construction of phylogenetic trees are also reviewed. CONCLUSION: The phylogenetic tress constructed by the alignment-free sequence comparison methods using DNA invariants were found to be better than those constructed using alignment-based tools such as PHLYIP and ClustalW. One of the graphical representation methods is now extended to study viral sequences of infectious diseases for the identification of conserved regions to design peptidebased vaccines by combining numerical characterization and graphical representation.

Role of Thrips palmi and Parthenium hysterophorus pollen in active spread of tobacco streak virus in the cotton ecosystem.

Tobacco streak virus incidence in the cotton field, cv.CO14 at Department of Cotton, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU), Coimbatore, India was nearly 36.50 %. Cotton plants infected with TSV exhibits different types of symptoms, including necrotic spots, lesions, mosaic, purplish necrotic rings, square drying, veinal necrosis and drying of terminal shoots. The highly prevalent thrips species in this cotton ecosystem was established as Thrips palmi (60.00 %) by morphological (ESEM) and molecular methods (RT-PCR using mtCOI primers). The density of the alternate weed host, Parthenium hysterophorus, was 15.05 plants per m2 in these fields. Association of Thrips palmi with Parthenium was confirmed, when observed under environmental scanning electron microscope (ESEM), Parthenium pollen grains (i.e., average size @ 15000X =12.94 µm) were found adhering to its body. Molecular studies through RT-PCR confirmed the presence of TSV in the leaves and pollen grains of symptomatic and symptom-free Parthenium plants collected from the cotton field (cv. CO14). Therefore, the combined role of Thrips palmi and the Parthenium pollen grains in the transmission of TSV was examined; acquiring of TSV and its presence in the body of Thrips palmi instars and adults after 72 h of AAP was convincingly demonstrated using RT-PCR, NASH and qPCR. However virus acquired thrips could not transmit the virus. Pollen from TSV infected Parthenium plants when dusted on cotton (ANKUR 2110) seedlings along with virus acquired or non-acquired thrips led to symptom development 22 days after sowing. From the study it is evident that thrips only facilitate the movement of TSV borne pollen grains, and thereby contributing to active spread of the virus.

Alignment-free sequence comparison using N-dimensional similarity space.

Several alignment free sequence comparison methods are available and they use similarity, based on a particular numerical descriptor of biological sequences. Any loss of information incurred in the transformation of a sequence into a numerical descriptor affects the results. A pool of descriptors that use different algorithms in their computation is expected to suffer minimum loss of information and an attempt is made in this direction to study the similarity of DNA sequences that are homogenous or heterogeneous. Several numerical descriptors for the characterization of DNA sequences are described, based on information theoretic approach, connectivity of vertex weighted line-graphs and those derived from the matrices obtained from the graphs constructed by depicting DNA sequences as a random walk on a Euclidean plane. The information theoretic descriptors were obtained based on the L-tuple approach for the combination of different numbers of bases. The connectivity type descriptors were calculated by converting the DNA sequence into vertex weighted graphs in which vertices (nucleotide) were assigned weights based on the pKa of the bases. The graphical representations were converted into numerical descriptors by constructing matrices. Computer programs were developed to calculate seventy DNA descriptors; 560 sequences of different types of organisms were used. After initial data analysis to eliminate almost perfectly correlated descriptors, orthogonal descriptors were obtained by performing principal component analysis. Principal components (PCs) were used to construct an N-dimensional similarity space wherein the 560 sequences were clustered by k-means cluster algorithm. Five principal components (orthogonal descriptors) were extracted and found to explain 92% of data variance. The PCs were used to cluster the sequences in a five-dimensional similarity space. The similarity-based dissimilarity clustering procedure using numerical descriptors was found to be effective for studying similarity/ dissimilarity of large number of sequences.