“Walk on the Sun”: an interactive image sonification exhibit

“Walk on the Sun” is an interactive experience of image as music. As explorers move across images that are data projected onto the floor, their movements are visually tracked and used to select pixels in the images which they immediately hear as musical pitches played by various instruments. The sonification design maps color to one of 9 instruments, brightness to one of 50 pitches, and location in the image to panning position, creating 57,600 differentiable musical events. This high resolution and interactive auditory presentation of pixel data enables the blind to explore images of the Sun from the STEREO space mission, nebula and galactic images from Hubble, as well as art masterpieces. Specifically, the blind can hear when hot spots cross the center of the Sun or the solar winds and corona are changing by sonifying virtual geometric structures, such as lines and circles, to create chords of music reflecting the changing content of the selected pixels within that structure as images are played as movies. Originally funded by a NASA/STSCI Ideas grant, the exhibit has toured to more than 12 cities in the US, visiting blind and science centers in the process and receiving enthusiastic response throughout. Plans for additional work furthering NASA wide image sonification standards are in process.     

Comments on “Transient stability of an a.c. generator by Lyapunov's direct method”

A matrix method is presented for the determination of the response sequences of discrete time-invariant linear systems for a large range of deterministic input sequences.

Using the z-transform formulation the transfer function of the discrete system is defined and, assuming that the input sequence is a linear combination of a certain set of basic sequences, it is demonstrated that an explicit formulation of the output sequence may be obtained by purely matrix operations. This approach not only simplifies the application of the z-transform technique but can also be used as the basis of a digital computer programme.

Examples are given to illustrate the use of the method including its application to the solution of general nth-order difference equations     

E.D.I.T擦去“牛顿环”

与普通正片扫描相比,胶片扫描的最大优势是在给用户事来更加清晰图像效果的同时,也为用户节约了大量金钱与时间。可胶片扫描也有新的难题,选便是牛顿环(Newton's Rings)现象,也就是用户通常会在扫描后的图像上看到的一圈圈明暗相间的光环。用一个半凸透镜置于玻璃表面,然后用白色光源照射,便可观察到一系列明暗相间的光环,这便是牛顿杯。牛顿杯是由光源的干涉情况造成,主要是由于     

SSLE: A framework for evaluating the “Filter Bubble” effect on the news aggregator and recommenders

World Wide Web - Recommendation algorithms are data filtering tools that make use of algorithms and data to recommend the most relevant items to a particular user. The algorithm-driven recommenders...     

Breaking “Tirpitz”: Cryptanalysis of the Japanese-German joint naval cipher

This article gives the solutions of the only four messages known to still exist from the previously unbroken Japanese-German joint naval radio communications traffic in the system known as “Tirpitz,” which used the specially-designed model T Enigma machine. It also explains the methods used by the author to break the messages, and gives some background on the model T Enigma and its usages.     

“Those found responsible have been sacked”: some observations on the usefulness of error

Erik Hollnagel’s body of work in the past three decades has molded much of the current research approach to system safety, particularly notions of “error”. Hollnagel regards “error” as a dead-end and avoids using the term. This position is consistent with Rasmussen’s claim that there is no scientifically stable category of human performance that can be described as “error”. While this systems view is undoubtedly correct, “error” persists. Organizations, especially formal business, political, and regulatory structures, use “error” as if it were a stable category of human performance. They apply the term to performances associated with undesired outcomes, tabulate occurrences of “error”, and justify control and sanctions through “error”. Although a compelling argument can be made for Hollnagel’s view, it is clear that notions of “error” are socially and organizationally productive. The persistence of “error” in management and regulatory circles reflects its value as a means for social control.     

DVDs: Much Needed “Shot in the Arm” for Video Servers

The release of DVD-ROMs (Digital Versatile Disk—Read Only Memory), capable of storing an entire 133 minute MPEG-2 movie, coupled with the gradual deployment of high speed networks will give a much needed impetus to Video-on-Demand systems, especially movie-on-demand services. Various memory components such as DVD-ROMs, magnetic RAID towers, and RAM are available, each with different storage and bandwidth capabilities, and each with different costs. To design a video server, we need to optimize the cost factor, yet meet the massive storage, high bandwidth and continuity requirements of video stream delivery.In the first part of this paper we compare DVD-ROM and RAID systems on the basis of two factors—a storage factor and a bandwidth factor. We work out relations to calculate capacity requirements and costs, of these systems given the demands of video delivery. We then propose an architecture for a video server where we deploy three layers of memory functioning as video pumps: DVD-ROM towers, RAID towers, and RAM. We then work out expressions to determine the migration strategy of a movie between these layers of storage so as to optimize on the cost of storage while satisfying the performance requirements. We then show the method by which the amount of storage required for each type of memory in the three layers can be fixed, knowing the usage pattern.In the second part of the paper, we discuss the implementation of a video pump where there is a need to integrate scheduling, admission control, VBR stream management, and handling of VCR-like requests such as fast-forward, fast-reverse and pause. We first work out general relations for calculation of the service time of a request knowing the seek overheads and playback rates. We then show that, surprisingly, the C-SCAN algorithm, which incurs the least amount of seek overhead and therefore has a lesser cycle time, is twice as efficient as SCAN in terms of buffer space requirements. We then propose a full-load admission control and scheduling algorithm that operates on a constant cycle time basis. We test the validity of this scheme though a the simulator which we have built based on our disk model and use it to extract parameters such as disk bandwidth utilization factor and buffer sizes needed for a VBR load scenario.     

A Review of “I Found it on the Internet: Coming of Age Online”

SUMMARY

This article will address the problems of developing and implementing a federated searching system and the involvement by reference staff expected to use, teach, and promote it. Implementation of federated search usually begins with developing basic technical functionality and then progresses to increased participation by public service librarians and system users in order to refine searching interfaces and content retrieval mechanisms and display. From the reference perspective, some impediments occurred in utilizing the federated search system since reference staff did not participate in the development of the product; since there was resistance to the concept of the product by instructional staff; and since performance inconsistencies and the use of a complex interface hampered functionality. This article will address the evolution of organizational stakeholder participation in the development of the federated search system at the Loyola Notre Dame Library.     

Retraction Note: Note on “Smaller Explicit Superconcentrators” by N. Alon and M. Capalbo

Problems of Information Transmission - This article has been retracted. Please see the Retraction Notice for more detail: https://doi.org/10.1134/S0032946020040092 .     

洛伊.霍洛尔:“回旋”

正2018.3.27-5.31|佩斯画廊(香港)洛伊.霍洛尔:回旋是艺术家在佩斯的第2个个展,此次展览目的是为了持续呈现艺术家对人体景观及神圣图像的研究,特别是对人类形体及女性身体的暗示。霍洛尔的作品抽象提取了人体最亲密和性感的部分为原始形状,这给她的作品带来一种内在的可触碰性。每件作品的存在都是纯粹的、自成一体的有着统一的戏剧性及视觉刺激形式。     

Comment on: “secure direct communication based on ping-pong protocol” [Quantum Inf. Process. 8, 347 (2009)]

The crucial issue of quantum communication protocol is its security. In this paper, the security of a secure direct communication based on ping-pong protocol [Chamoli A, Bhandari CM, Quantum Inf Process 8, 347 (2009)] is analyzed. It is shown that in this protocol any dishonest party can obtain all the other one’s secret message with zero risk of being detected by using a special type of attack, i.e., using fake entangled particles (FEP attack). Finally, a simple improvement to resist this attack is proposed.     

“TV no longer commands our full attention”: Effects of second-screen viewing and task relevance on cognitive load and learning from news

Second-screen viewing—the use of smartphones, tablets, and laptops while watching television—has increased dramatically in the last few years. Using multiple resource theory and threaded cognition theory, this study investigated the effects of second-screen viewing on cognitive load, factual recall and comprehension of news. Second, we examined the effects of relevant (i.e., looking up information related to the news story) and irrelevant (i.e., looking up information unrelated to the story) second-screen viewing on learning from news. Results from an experiment (N = 85) showed that second-screen viewing led to lower factual recall and comprehension of news content than single-screen viewing. These effects were mediated by cognitive load: second-screen viewing led to a higher cognitive load than single-screen viewing, with higher cognitive load, in turn, leading towards lower factual recall and comprehension of news content. Contrary to our expectations, we found no statistically significant differences between effects of relevant and irrelevant second-screen viewing.     

Remark on “on the capacity of a multiple-access vector adder channel” by A.A. Frolov and V.V. Zyablov

For vector adder channel, we present an upper bound on the capacity, which coincides with the lower bound given in [1]. Thus, we prove optimality of the uniform probability distribution of symbols for γ ∈ (0, γ*] and of the twisted distribution for γ ∈ (γ*,∞), where γ is the ratio of the number of users to the number of subchannels and γ* = 1.3382.     

The development of an autonomous service robot. Implementation: “Lucas”—The library assistant robot

This paper describes an autonomous mobile device that was designed, developed and implemented as a library assistant robot. A complete autonomous system incorporating human–robot interaction has been developed and implemented within a real world environment. The robotic development is comprehensively described in terms of its localization systems, which incorporates simple image processing techniques fused with odometry and sonar data, which is validated through the use of an extended Kalman filter (EKF). The essential principles required for the development of a successful assistive robot are described and put into demonstration through a human–robot interaction application applied to the library assistant robot.     

“What I’ve received doesn’t match what I saw online”: Effects of purchase-risk notices on reducing online returns

Many online returns are caused by mismatches between what consumers see online and what they actually receive. This paper discusses e-sellers’ use of purchase-risk notices (PRNs) for possible mismatches as a preemptive action to avoid returns. Two one-factor (purchase-risk notice: presence vs. absence) scenario experiments were conducted via two studies (Study 1 and Study 2). The pre-purchase effects and post-purchase effects of PRNs were examined in Study 1 and Study 2, respectively. One-way ANOVAs were used to test the hypotheses. It was found that returns can be avoided by using PRNs without negatively affecting consumers’ purchase intentions. Additionally, using PRNs can make consumers more tolerant of minor mismatches, attract more repurchases, and reduce consumers’ dissatisfaction and regret about purchase decisions.