Abstract. While objects of our focus of attention ("where we are looking at") and accompanying affective responses to those objects is part of our daily experience, little research exists on investigating the relation between attention and positive affective evaluation. The purpose of our research is to process users' emotion and attention in real-time, with the goal of designing systems that may recognize a user's affective response to a particular visually presented stimulus in the presence of other stimuli, and respond accordingly. In this paper, we introduce the AutoSelect system that automatically detects a user's preference based on eye movement data and physiological signals in a two-alternative forced choice task. In an exploratory study involving the selection of neckties, the system could correctly classify subjects' choice of in 81%. In this instance of AutoSelect, the gaze 'cascade effect' played a dominant role, whereas pupil size could not be shown as a reliable predictor of preference.

N atural-sciences researchers have created innovative, powerful computational tools to analyze the large amount of data their experiments generate. Commonly, these tools use visualization techniques that help scientists better understand their data and obtain a complete picture of the situation. Through visualizations, scientists can more easily generate and test hypotheses, which otherwise would be time consuming or impractical. Because researchers and experts are often geographically distributed and sparse, demand for collaboration in scientific data visualization is growing. So, scientists need intuitive collaborative environments for natural interaction and data sharing.Several initiatives aim to advance scientific collaboration by providing powerful networking infrastructure and tools. The Cyber Science Infrastructure, for example, is a comprehensive framework the National Institute of Informatics and other Japanese institutions implemented in 2004 to create an information-technology-based environment for advancing scientific research, collaboration, and education.1 The US National Science Foundation (NSF) launched the Cyber-Enabled Discovery and Innovation initiative in 2008 to explore new approaches at the intersection of computation and the life sciences.2 These initiatives, among others, demonstrate collaboration's importance in advancing scientific R&D of better high-end tools that let researchers visualize, share, and discuss their results.Our research intends to contribute to those international efforts by providing an environment for synchronous collaborative visualization for astrophysics, using standard equipment (a networked computer). Most tools for astronomers are standalone, highly customized solutions. However, given the relatively small number of experts in each astronomy field, a platform for live collaboration is essential. (For a brief look at the main approaches to collaborative visualization, see the "Trends in Collaborative Visualization Systems" sidebar.)For a visualization platform, we use the popular 3D multiuser online environment of Second Life (www.secondlife.com). Users, graphically represented as avatars, can communicate and collaborate in real time to coexperience the world of astrophysics. Specifically, our AstroSim system supports important activities and features for research and education, such as data zooming, playing back stellar simulations, and color-coding properties or stars. AstroSim's salient collaborative features include the ability to manipulate stars' visual properties for annotation and to point and refer to stars. Developed in the SecondLife 3D online multiuser environment, AstroSim (astrophysics simulation) provides synchronous collaborative visualization for astronomers. Users can play, halt, and rewind simulations and annotate stars interactively to track individual stars and gain a better understanding of stellar dynamics and astrophysics phenomena.

In this paper, we present the results of a systematic review involving the use of usability techniques in software developments where agile methodologies were used. The search strategy identified 307 studies, where only 32 were finally selected for the review. We found that complementary techniques are the most frequent techniques used with agile methodologies. In addition, most studies performed usability evaluations only during the implementation phase, and these evaluations were mostly constructed as elaborations of case studies.

Storytelling models are usually constrained to the applications they are implemented in because of the particular characteristics of the data used to define story events and the way those events are linked. In order to develop a more generic model to create storytelling applications, we need to focus the solution not on the data itself, but on the manner this data, in the form of events, is organized and conveyed to the user. In this paper, we present SRST (Storytelling RST), our proposal for a generic storytelling ontology model based on the organization of events using the relations proposed by the Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) and how narrative principles are applied to these RST relations to generate coherent stories.

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