Enhancement of a Modified Nintendo Wii Game Controller and Validation for Use in Health Games Research
PIs: Colin Depp, Psychiatry and Paul Blair, Calit2
In this study, our goal would be to examine how the data obtained from the modified Wii controller corresponds to actual game play and to established objective measures of physical activity. We propose to recruit a small sample of healthy community-dwelling
adults aged 18 and older who will be asked to play four successive Wii games for five minutes each, with a 2 minute break in between. These individuals will be asked simultaneously wear two CSA accelerometers (Freedson et al., 1998), which are standardized devices to measure physical activity. These devices will be placed on their hip and wrist by way of a Velcro strap. We will then analyze the data obtained from the modified Wii with regard to its correspondence to observed game play (duration, type of game) and the data obtained from the CSA accelerometers (intensity, physical activity level). If the modified Wii can be calibrated to correspond to actual game play and to the CSA accelerometers, then this modified device may be highly valuable to future naturalistic research examining the effect of health games on health outcomes. It would not require players to wear extra sensors which are both inconvenient and expensive. An additional benefit is that the same microprosessor used in modifying the controller to support data capture could also be used to support device accessibility for older adults with physical disabilities that limit their abilities to play the games 'out of the box'. For example, the accelerometer outputs could be 'amplified' in order to give the player a stronger swing in tennis, golf, or baseball. Note that in the currently proposed study individuals with self-reported disabilities will not be included, but ultimately opening up this option for subsequent studies would certainly help attract additional sources of long-term funding.

Automatic Facial Expression Analysis for Measurement of Pain and Stress
PI: Jeannie Huang, Pediatrics, School of Medicine
The goal of this research is to develop automated system for measurement of pain from facial expression using computer vision technology. This project will conduct machine learning on a video dataset of subjects experiencing pain, with multiple concurrent forms of ground truth on the level of pain. As a model for acute abdominal pain, we will study children with acute pancreatitis admitted for treatment at Rady Children’s Hospital (Goal = 10 patients over the study period). This patient population enables concurrent measures of disease severity in addition to questionnaires for the level of pain, as well as repeated measures at different levels of pain as the patient is treated. Automated measurement of pain would provide an important contribution to the health sciences. An automated pain estimation system such as the one proposed here could assist in effective pain management. It can also assist in patients who are unable to verbalize their pain, such as people with intellectual handicaps or brain injuries, and patients during the postoperative recovery period. There is growing evidence that good quality pain control can be associated with other significant benefits, including reduced length of hospital stay. The long term benefits from this line of investigation include continuous monitoring of pain, long distance stress assessments by health care workers via telecommunications and the development of diagnostic aids that can be inexpensively provided to hospitals.

SoniCAVE: An Immersive Visuo/Auditory Simulator to Reduce Medical Error, Stress and Injury in Healthcare Environments
PI: Peter Otto, Music
The acoustic profile of the healthcare environment has a direct and measurable influence on the quality of care and the risk of doing harm. Noise levels in hospitals have steadily increased over the past 50 years, with no studies in a recent literature review reporting noise levels within WHO guidelines for hospitals.i Our own measures in emergency rooms revealed near continuous impulse noise up to 120dB - enough to induce hearing loss in clinical staffii or degrade performanceiii. Average sound pressure levels were up to ten times greater than conversational speech, and may mask accurate perception of lung and cardiac soundsiv or decrease the intelligibility of medical reports v. The epidemic of 15 million preventable medical injuries per yearvi implies an urgent need to improve the environment of care. Yet careful attention to the design and optimization of acoustical characteristics in healthcare environments rarely occurs. We propose the creation of a virtual sound simulation environment that will enable architects and clinicians to hear in advance the consequences of their facilities’ design choices. Existing CalIT2 CAVE, Spatlab and newly emerging systems will be used to develop software-controlled audio rendering environments and an integrated sound and materials object database. This will allow the creation of accurate, predictive auditory “scenes”, derived from CAD and photographic images, ‘real-world’ audio samples, and design materials databases, leveraging deep experience in spatial auralization and 3D scientific visualization for use in entirely new contexts. Inspired by concurrent developments of e-Health CAVE technologies by our interdisciplinary Calit2 team, our goal is to conduct research and demonstrate proof of concept that will lead to the creation of the first SoniCAVE, allowing clinicians and architects to predict and measure neurological and physiological responses to the experience the sound in healthcare environments. We expect this to become a valuable tool for the architectural profession and for medical professionals seeking to improve the quality of care. Ultimately we seek to
offer cyber-simulations so that the clinical team may audition and envision without leaving medical service to participate.

3D-Enabled Surgical System
PIs: Mark Talamini, Surgery and Truong Nguyen, Electrical and Computer Engineering
In this project, we propose to deliver immersive 3D technology into the operating room to mitigate the negative effects of traditional 2-dimensional displays. 2D displays cannot convey the depth information necessary to perform a remote operation effectively. Even in MIS surgeries, surgeons undergo many hours of training to be able to operate in a 3D world (e.g., the abdominal cavity) by seeing only the 2D representation of it on an LCD display. We see from technology such as the DaVinci that 3D is a desired element of the surgical experience. We plan to leverage the use of autostereoscopic displays to synthesize 3D images that can be seen with the naked eye. Thus, we enable everyone in the OR to see the 3D video from the DaVinci cameras without the need for any special glasses. Our long-term goal is to extend the stereo methods to develop algorithms to enable 3D for single-camera surgical systems, such as conventional laparoscopes and the Surgicam system.

Enabling a Revolution in Digitized Medicine by Compressing and Querying Genomic Sequence Fragments
PI: George Varghese, Computer Science and Engineering
The proposed effort seeks to revolutionize data handling in genomics that is in part inspired by our work in compressing whole genome Illumina sequences by a factor of 40. Even such factors of 40 will not suffice in the future when sequencing costs have dropped below $1000 and every patient/subject has been sequenced. Our vision is to store the sequences at a centralized repository but to allow higher level query access to this repository using a flexible query language we call GenomeSQL. GenomeSQL has three advantages: since the majority of answers to queries are small because they are localized to a few genes, the answer can be sent interactively across the network. Second, researchers can compose new queries in a few minutes as opposed to the current situation where every new query requires a program to be written possibly in months. Third, it allows researchers to easily integrate data from other studies as opposed to the current situation where individual researcher data form isolated silos. GenomeSQL requires the design of a new query language because existing query languages like SQL and XQuery do not extend naturally to data in the form of fragments with errors, and to queries for say structural variation. This proposal seeks to build a proof-of-concept GenomeSQL database for sequence data from 10-12 cancer patients and demonstrate the flexibility of the resulting query system. A successful demonstration of a working prototype will provide us data on the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed technique and its use by existing researchers.

Low-Cost Lab-on-Chip Sensor Platform
PI: Deli Wang, Electrical and Computer Engineering
We propose the proof-of-concept research of a novel low cost lab-on-chip (LOC) sensor platform, which can be utilized broadly as point of care devices and for personal medicines. Specifically, the proposed research develop an on-chip optofluidic microscope (OFM) system that integrates the plasmonic lenses, miocofluidic devices, and CMOS image sensor arrays and is capable of generating 4D images through computational photography. The proposed sensor platform can be attached to cell phone and utilize the cell phone camera for point of care devices and for personal medicine applications.

Advanced Intermedia Telepresence
PI: Mark Dresser, Music
Principal investigators Mark Dresser and Victoria Petrovich will collaborate with visiting artists Michael Dessen and John Crawford at Calit2 Irvine. We will establish a telepresence connection between Calit2 San Diego and Calit2 UCI to produce four artistic events over two years to take place in the Atkinson Blackbox Theater and using the eMedia studio at Calit2 Irvine as the remote stage. We will produce collaborative work that pushes musical, dance and theatrically framed performance to a new level of visual impact and intimacy via shared technologies. We will begin by utilizing JackTrip for multi channel uncompressed audio, sculptural stage design by Victoria Petrovich, LifeSize video conferencing hardware, and the video performance platform, Active Space, an interactive media programming system designed by John Crawford that generates visuals and sound in response to movement. Through the course of the two years we will continue to investigate network platforms within and without the Calit community that will facilitate the performative demands of our evolving work.

The Provocateur Project
PI: Shlomo Dubnov, Music
The purpose of the project is to develop a system and an environment for participatory events that supports audience back-channeling analytics with moderator functions for novel models of learning and entertainment. The system will be deployed in various locations in Calit2 such as Atkinson Auditorium, Black box theatre, and various conference rooms, to be used in concerts, films, presentations and executive brainstorming sessions. We request to establish a lab in Calit2 in order to develop and experiment with the system. The new lab will be a focal point for researchers of the new center for research in entertainment and learning (CREL), offering a unique platform for experimenting with group collaboration and understanding. The lab will be equipped with projection and sound systems from opera-of-meaning (Debate and Play) project. An ideal place for such lab would be one of the reconfigurable studios on first floor, as the space needs to be sufficiently spacious to host around a dozen of subjects in various presentation settings, such as talks, films or live performances, be acoustically isolated, and in proximity to the Auditorium and Black Box is of an advantage.

Cyberinfrastructure, Portable NexCAVE and Archaeological Research Project
PI: Tom Levy, CISA3 and Archaeology
The proposed CISA3 Cyberinfrastructure, Portable NexCAVE and Archaeological Research (CPNAR) Project seeks to achieve this by establishing the cyberinfrastructure field component for helping to transform archaeological excavation and world cultural heritage site recording, data analysis and research that serves both researchers and the public. Like other field sciences, archaeology is now facing a “data avalanche” caused by the availability of new portable data recording technologies that are suitable for 3D analyses. The CPNAR project takes advantage of Calit2’s important enabling cyberinfrastructure resources to: build the software interfaces to allow access to the archaeological field datasets from the CAVE and NexCAVE virtual reality environments; enhance the helium balloon-based platform, a cultural heritage data recording tool developed at CISA3-Calit2 for stereo digital photography; investigate the utility of videoconferencing and recording/playback in the context of archaeological research. Specifically, CPNAR’s funding by CSRO will start to build the new cyberinfrastructure that will be needed for Calit2’s new Portable NexCAVE proposal to the King Abdul Aziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), and an NSF EAGER grant, leveraging Calit2’s technical expertise and also partial matching support by Cisco for videoconferencing incorporation in tiled displays.

Innovation, Engineering, and Exploration: Human Computation and Big Cats Initiative
PI: Albert Yu-Min Lin, Calit2
This project includes activities on two fronts: the Big Cats Initiative, and distributed human computational analytics. The latter effort is motivated by the massive visual analytics required for the VOTK project. Thousands of square kilometers of ultrahigh resolution multi-spectral data collected by the IKONOS (1 meter resolution), GEOEYE-1 (0.41 meter resolution) earth sensing satellites, have been provided through the GeoEye Foundation in in-kind support valued at approximately $80,000 through a relationship that has enabled over $10,000 in data support for other Calit2 research programs. The proposed Human Computation effort will exploit the VOTK Project as a case study to develop technologies and theories that will build the foundations off of an innovative human/computer relationship. Through collaboration with National Geographic Digital Media (non-profit) we seek to build the interface and information system that will enable massive scale web participation to identify anomalies in an overwhelming amount of image data. The Big Cats Initiative (BC) is a program created by National Geographic Fellows Derek and Beverly Joubert to reverse the declining population trend of African Lions by 2015. It now represents one of NGS’s major focuses for the next 5 years. The proposed work originated from interactions between Dr. Lin and the Jouberts during the 2009 Explorer’s Symposium and was developed through a series of Calit2 site visits that included Calit2 research faculty & staff, the Jouberts, NG Council of Advisor members, and program managers. Leveraging Calit2’s wireless and nanomaterial core competency, this project aims to facilitate the application development of very-low power wake-up radio technologies and alloy nanobarcode materials. These Calit2 created technologies will be utilized and augmented to track and deter animal/human conflict, and identify illegal poaching, if necessary. The “Deployable Animal Radar Tracking” (D.A.R.T.) system extends a previous Calit2 initiative (DARBie) to create an emergency, low-data-rate communications system for cell phones.

Interactive Supervisualization of Large Image Collections for Humanities Research
PI: Lev Manovich, Visual Arts
The proposed project aims to take Cultural Analytics ‐ a new methodology for research, teaching and exhibition of culture being developed at Software Studies Initiative at Calit2 ‐ to a new stage. While we have already achieved significant results and attracted outside interest and funding for our work with data sets which consists from hundreds or thousands of images, in this project we plan to visualize much larger sets –1074790 (i.e. 1,07 million) pages which represent 912 Manga titles which were published in Japan, Korea and China. Nobody in humanities ever analyzed cultural artifacts on that scale; and a few computer science projects that have analyzed large image sets all so far only used Flickr as image source (i.e., photos taken by non‐professional users). Therefore, our project will be the first to analyze and visualize over 1 million professionally produced images asking research questions important for humanities. Because of its innovative profile, the project will further enhance Calit2 status as the world pioneer in application of interactive visualization to cultural research. It will also further enhance unique technology developed at Calit2 – HIPerSpace supervisualization system. To be able to work interactively with image sets of that size, we plan to add new interactive features to the HIPerSpace application we already developed and also expand its ability to handle more images in real‐time.

Social Cognition and Interactive Artificial Agents
PI: Ayse Saygin, Cognitive Science
Folklore, mythology and religious texts have made references to gods creating humans in their image for millenia. Here, we are concerned with what humans make, if and to what degree they do so in their image, or even whether they should. No longer encountered only in science fiction, artificial agents such as humanoid robots and interactive animated characters are rapidly becoming participants in many aspects of social and cultural life. New artificial agents are being developed every day for use not only in entertainment and retail, but also in a range of domains that concern all of us, such as education, healthcare, security, and defense. We need to understand human factors guiding our interactions with these agents. This project brings together our previous work in computer science and engineering with our active cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging research program to explore how humans perceive, respond to, and interact with other beings, including artificial agents. The research program is interdisciplinary, spanning the biomedical and social sciences, technology, science and engineering, with specific planned follow-ups exploring human factors in artificial agent technology in the domains of health and education. We aim to both improve our understanding of how the human brain enables social cognition, and to help engineers and designers in developing interactive agents that are well-suited to their application domains, as well as to the brains of their creators.

California 3D
PI: Chaitan Baru, San Diego Supercomputer Center
The goal of the California 3D project is to install a 24 terabyte California state-wide digital 3D orthophotography dataset with 50-80cm resolution at Calit2, for access and display via Calit2’s various advanced visualization systems, including the StarCAVE in Calit2’s Immersive Visualization Lab. The ability to view the entire state in 3D in not only visually stunning, but provides a paradigm shift for a number of Calit2’s applications in the Environment thrust area. This project lies at the intersection of Calit2’s Cyberspace and Environment strategic areas.

Center for Design Policy
PI: Benjamin Bratton, Visual Arts and Calit2
The Center for Design Policy is a interdisciplinary think-tank, technology transfer, and systems design initiative that draws upon technological and cultural research to inform public policy. Leveraging Calit2's extensive resources, we collaborate directly with our network of artists, researchers, designers, private sector enterprises, policy-makers, citizen-stakeholders and grassroots advocacy groups to identify resilient, resourceful, and unexpected responses to the most complex problems that will define the future of California, and to develop high-risk/high-gain model solutions.

An Open Architecture, Low Power, Low Cost Underwater Acoustic Modem
PIs: Ryan Kastner, Computer Science and Engineering and Don Kimball, Calit2
There is substantial interest in the design and deployment of underwater acoustic communication networks. For example, the FRONT network uses acoustic modems to transmit real-time ocean current data via cell-phone relays. The Seaweb network uses a similar mix of acoustic modems, buoys and cell phones for real-time surveillance data. A network of acoustic modems was proposed for seismic monitoring. A network of freely drifting vehicles is proposed to exchange environmental data using acoustic communications. Our proposed acoustic modem would feature revolutionary low power, low cost and open architecture. This will result in the ubiquitous deployment of our acoustic modem to create the world’s 1st under water internet of things.

Real-Time Adaptive Digital Pre-Distortion (DPD) for Next Generation Cellular Communications
PI: Peter Asbeck, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Real-Time adaptive DPD systems are currently used to linearize power amplifiers for compliance with cellular communication standards. Existing DPD is limited to cellular base-stations using standards that are voice-centric such as WCDMA. The latest cellular standards such as 3.9GPP LTE (Long Term Evolution) and LTE-Advanced are data-centric and based on Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA), and require new DPD algorithms. Specifically, high-efficiency base-station power amplifier techniques such as Envelope Tracking (ET), Digital Power Modulation (DPM), as well as smart-phone hand-set power amplifiers cannot just adapt the older CDMA DPD algorithms to OFDMA applications. New DPD algorithms require adaptation with much lower latency times, larger RF power steps, and more efficient computational complexity. This proposal will build proof-of-concept systems using state of the art FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) around an RFFE (RF Front End) that will result in high efficiency cellular power amplifiers with sufficient linearity for high over-the-air data rates. The successful demonstration of the working prototype will show for the 1st time that advanced base-station power amplifiers and hand-set power amplifiers can be efficiently linearized with real-time adaptive DPD.

Emerging Simulation and Visualization Technology for Wind Energy and Automotive Industry
PI: David Benson, Structural Engineering
The goal of this project is to research how to efficiently integrate new and emerging computational methods and tools, which include visualization and virtual reality, with engineering design and industrial-¬‐strength analysis and visualization software. Our vision is that the only way to break down the barriers between engineering design and analysis is to reconstitute the entire process, but at the same time maintain compatibility with existing practices. We believe that the fundamental step is to focus on one, and only one, geometric model, which can be utilized directly as an analysis model, or from which geometrically precise analysis models can be automatically built. This will require a change from classical analysis procedures to one based on CAD representations. This concept is referred to as Isogeometric Analysis, which was first proposed in 2005 by Hughes, Cottrell and Bazilevs [1]. After the analysis is done, then realistic renderings of the results are necessary to make the results accessible to the engineer. This involves going beyond the traditional contours of stress to including photo real renderings with textures, preferably in an immersive environment.

Frictional Stress Modeling for Efficient Biomass Thermo-Chemical Conversion
PI: Anjani Didwania, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
The proposed effort seeks to radically improve the present capability of Fluidized Bed Gasifier operations trouble shooting resulting in efficient biomass thermo-chemical conversion. New frictional stress models describing solids phase flow behavior in the transition flow regime will be implemented in Multi-Eulerian Multiphase simulations creating a true simulation of high temperature Gasifier flow processes. This will result in improved troubleshooting, control and scale-up of present day biomass Gasifiers. Results of the project will enable us to respond to the upcoming solicitation related to the midterm (by 2012) goals of technology roadmap for multiphase science identified by NETL (National Energy Technology Laboratory), DOE. In this study, our goal would be to examine how the data obtained from the modified Wii controller corresponds to actual game play and to established objective measures of physical activity. We propose to recruit a small sample of healthy community-dwelling adults aged 18 and older who will be asked to play four successive Wii games for five minutes each, with a 2 minute break in between. These individuals will be asked simultaneously wear two CSA accelerometers (Freedson et al., 1998), which are standardized devices to measure physical activity. These devices will be placed on their hip and wrist by way of a Velcro strap. We will then analyze the data obtained from the modified Wii with regard to its correspondence to observed game play (duration, type of game) and the data obtained from the CSA accelerometers (intensity, physical activity level). If the modified Wii can be calibrated to correspond to actual game play and to the CSA accelerometers, then this modified device may be highly valuable to future naturalistic research examining the effect of health games on health outcomes. It would not require players to wear extra sensors which are both inconvenient and expensive. An additional benefit is that the same microprosessor used in modifying the controller to support data capture could also be used to support device accessibility for older adults with physical disabilities that limit their abilities to play the games 'out of the box'. For example, the accelerometer outputs could be 'amplified' in order to give the player a stronger swing in tennis, golf, or baseball. Note that in the currently proposed study individuals with self-reported disabilities will not be included, but ultimately opening up this option for subsequent studies would certainly help attract additional sources of long-term funding.

Multispectral Airborne Sensor Platform for Energy and Environmental Audits
PIs: Falko Kuester and Maurizio Seracini, CISA3 and Structural Engineering
Develop a versatile, rotary-wing, airborne sensor and communication platform for real-time energy and environmental audits of large structures. Provide foundation for in-depth understanding of a structure’s thermal footprint and improved data flow into building management systems for automated control of energy supply, reduction of heat/cooling losses and overall cost savings.