Vibrotactile and vibroacoustic communications: pairs in interaction and play—an interactive structure and bodies in an urban environment

We designed a vibrotactile vest and The Humming Wall, a vibroacoustic interactive furniture set in an urban environment to interact with each other. We developed the vibrotactile patterns in the vest as a form of vibrotactile language to convey information to the wearer. In addition, we designed a set of interactive movements on The Humming Wall that would trigger patterns on the vest and elicit sensations and encourage body movements onto the wearer’s body. We invited people to interact in pairs at The Humming Wall, with one at the wall and one wearing the vest (they later swapped roles). Actions by the one at the wall, such as swiping or knocking on the wall were repeated on the vest wearer’s body. In addition, participants could ‘feel’ (vibroacoustically) and hear their own heartbeats and breath rates at the wall. We conducted a field trial with 39 participants over a 5-week period. Participants wearing the vest (and their pair) completed a set of tasks. We logged use and responses, recorded all activities on video and conducted post-experiment interviews and questionnaires. The results depicted the participants’ experience, communication and connection while wearing the vibrotactile vest and interacting with the wall. The findings show convincing, strong and positive responses to novel interactions between the responsive vibroacoustic environment and the vibrotactile vest. This work constitutes the first field trial with people ‘working’ in pairs with a vibrotactile wearable responding to and driving vibroacoustic displays with an interactive vibroacoustic environment.     

‘Systemic rationalization’ in Austria: Social and political mediation in technology use and work organization

The paper analyses restructuring processes occuring with the introduction of information technologies into firms in Austria and assesses how far the evidence lends support to the thesis of a fundamental change in rationalization patterns as postulated by continental industrial sociologists claiming the emergence of a novel type of systemic rationalization. Based on a research perspective putting emphasis on several levels of social mediation of technological change the broad conclusion is the following: there are clear indications of a novel systemic approach to rationalization but the associated forms of work organization show substantial variation. The analysis of the influence of national-level institutions, industry- and firm-specific conditions, and their role in micro-political processes of system and work design, points towards an underutilization of work humanization potentials and suggests an increase in skill supply as one of the possible intervention strategies.     

Existence and Uniqueness in Shape from Shading

For the image of a smooth surface object fully contained within the field of view and illuminated in and arbitrary direction,this paper discusses the existence and uniqueness o the conditions for solving a shape-from-shading problem under the conditions that the Fourier series expansion of the image intensity contains only zero and first order terms in a polar coordinate system.Three theorems are established,one for the existence and two for the uniqueness of z-axis symmetric shape from shading.     

Similarity in DTOL and related problems†

Deterministic Informationless Lindenmayer Sytems with Tables (DTOL) aro systems introduced for the mathematical modelling of the development of Filainontoita organisms under changing environmental conditions. The sequence equivalence problem for DTOL, i.e. the problem of determining whether the sequences of organisms produced by two given DTOL are equal, is open in the general case. We introduce hero a weaker notion of equivalence between DTOL, to be called similarity, and prove its decidability. We also prove the decidability of the original sequence-equivalence problem for some particular cases.     

Robust identification and interpolation in H∞

We consider system identification in H_∞ in the framework proposed by Helmicki, Jacobson and Nett. An algorithm using the Jackson polynomials is proposed that achieves an exponential convergence rate for exponentially stable systems. It is shown that this, and similar identification algorithms, can be successfully combined with a model reduction procedure to produce low-order models. Connections with the Nevanlinna-Pick interpolation problem are explored, and an algorithm is given in which the identified model interpolates the given noisy data. Some numerical results are provided for illustration. Finally, the case of unbounded random noise is discussed and it is shown that one can still obtain convergence with probability 1 under natural assumptions.     

Detecting and Locating Failures in Communication Networks

The connectivity of a strongly connected network may be destroyed after link damage.Since many networks are connected by directed links,the reachability may be restore by altering the direction of one or more of the links and thus reconfiguring the network.The location of the failed link ust first be determined.In this paper,we examine new methods to determine the location of failed links and nodes in networks.A routing test approach is proposed and the conditions under which communication networks may be tested are discussed Finally,an adaptive algorithm and a heuristic algorithm that can locate a single failed link or a single failed node are presented.     

Octree Representation and Its Applications in CAD

In this paper,a survey of octree representation and its applications in CAD is presented.The octree representation may be categorized as pure octree representation and polytree(or extended octree),and the latter is actually a boundary representation decomposed by octree.Linear octree which is a variant of regular octree representation has the advantage of saving memory space.The mapping between Cartesian coordinates and node addresses in linear octree is discussed.Then,algorithms for converting a boundary representation of 3D object into an octree are investiged and major approaches for transforming an octree encoded object are presented.After that,some of the applications of octree representation in CAD are listed,in particular,the applications in solid modeling,in accelerating ray tracing and in generating meshes for FEM.     

Full Or-Parallemism and Restricted And-Parallelism in BTM

BTM is a new And/Or parallel execution model for logic programs which exploits both full Or-parallelism and restricted And-parallelism.The advantages of high parallelism and low run time cost make BTJ,an experimental execution system of BTM implemented on a nonshared-memory multiprocessor system,achieve significant speedup for both And-paralled and Or-parallel logic programs.     

Laboratory or Department? Exploration and Creation in Computer Science and Technology

In the very beginning, the Computer Laboratory of the University of Cambridge was founded to provide computing service for different disciplines across the university. As computer science developed as a discipline in its own right, boundaries necessarily arose between it and other disciplines, in a way that is now often detrimental to progress. Therefore, it is necessary to reinvigorate the relationship between computer science and other academic disciplines and celebrate exploration and creativ...     

Towards Restructuring and Normalization of Types in Databases

The equivalence-preserving transformation and normalization of types in object-oriented databases are discussed.Specifically,A normal form of types based on set-theoretic equivalence is proposed,rewrite rules which transform types into normal forms are presented,and the uniqueness of normal form and the completeness of rewrite rules are proved.The emphasis of this work is on normal forms and corresponding rewrite rules.It provides a new formal approach for the study of restructuring of database schema and other manipulations in object-oriented databases.     

Distributivity in Łℵ0 and Other Sentential Logics

Certain distributivity results for ukasiewicz's infinite-valued logic ₀ are proved axiomatically (for the first time) with the help of the automated reasoning program OTTER. In addition, nondistributivity results are established for a wide variety of positive substructural logics by the use of logical matrices discovered with the automated model-finding programs MACE and MAGIC.     

Hand Interface in Traditional Modeling and Animation Tasks

3-D task space in modeling and animation is usually reduced to the separate control dimensions supported by conventional interactive devices.This limitation maps only partial view of the problem to the device space at a time,and results in tedious and unnatural interface of control.This paper uses the DataGlove interface for modeling and animating scene behaviors.The modeling interface selects,scales,rotates,translates,copies and deletes the instances of the primitives.These basic modeling processes are directly performed in the task space,using hand shapes and motions.Hand shapes are recognized as discrete states that trigger the commands,and hand motion are mapped to the movement of a selected instance.The interactions through hand interface place the user as a participant in the process of behavior simulation.Both event triggering and role switching of hand are experimented in simulation.The event mode of hand triggers control signals or commands through a menu interface.The object mode of hand simulates itself as an object whose appearance or motion influences the motions of other objects in scene.The involvement of hand creates a diversity of dynamic situations for testing variable scene behaviors.Our experiments have shown the potential use of this interface directly in the 3-D modeling and animation task space.     

Input–output structure and growth in China

The fast and steady economic growth in China during the 1990s has attracted much international attention. Using the three most recent Chinese input–output tables, this paper investigates industry structure and inter-industry relationships and the relationship of both to economic growth. The input–output tables contain intermediate demand and final demand for six broad industries, namely, Agriculture, Industry, Construction, Transportation, Post and Telecommunications, Services, and Others, for 1992, 1995 and 1997, which enables computing of input–output coefficients for three time periods. As direct and indirect input–output coefficients characterise industry structure during a particular time period, changes over time reflect the patterns in industry structure evolvement. Furthermore, output growth in a particular industry can be analysed from two different sources, namely the changes in input–output coefficients that reflect technological change, and the change in final demand. This paper sheds light on four different issues over the five-year period from 1992 to 1997: (1) Was growth driven by technological changes or final demand increases? (2) As a result of the interdependence of industries, how did an increase in final demand in one industry affect growth in another? (3) How has the bottleneck of an insufficient capability in the transportation, post and telecommunications sectors to cope with demands from other sectors been affected during this period? (4) Has the industry structure of the economy been shifting in conformity with traditional growth theory, namely, with a decline in the agricultural sector and a rise in the modern industrial sector?     

Heterogeneous Robots Allocation and Selection in Robocup Environment

I. INTRODUCTION RoboCup is an international joint project to promote artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, and related fields [1]. It is an attempt to foster AI and intelligent robotics research by providing a standard problem for which a wide range of technologies can be integrated and examined. The RoboCup Soccer Server version 7 introduced the concept of heterogeneous players. A heterogeneous player is a robot who has different capabilities to other players. Soccer Server define…     

Relationship between Meaning and Expression in Architecture Design

During the evolvement of architecture, the research on architectural form and structure as well as different ways to express and realize architectural thoughts is constantly the focus of many architects. This paper illustrates the mutual influence of the ways of expression and design of architecture to people's understanding of the meaning of architecture throughout the history of their efforts and exploration. The paper also discusses the extensive usage of virtual-reality approach through computer technology. It points out that the traditional architectural standpoint will undergo breakthrough by the emergence of new expression and design method. In this way, people's understanding of architecture will be more profound and lasting.     

Explanation in Case-Based Reasoning–Perspectives and Goals

We present an overview of different theories of explanation from the philosophy and cognitive science communities. Based on these theories, as well as models of explanation from the knowledge-based systems area, we present a framework for explanation in case-based reasoning (CBR) based on explanation goals. We propose ways that the goals of the user and system designer should be taken into account when deciding what is a good explanation for a given CBR system. Some general types of goals relevant to many CBR systems are identified, and used to survey existing methods of explanation in CBR. Finally, we identify some future challenges.     

Innovations in science education: Challenging and changing teachers’ roles and beliefs

Abstract:

This qualitative case study sought to identify and explore new roles adopted by three science teachers when the context of teaching and learning science was drastically changed. The study was conducted in a school utilizing student‐centred, self‐paced learning, where traditional classrooms have been replaced by subject‐specific resource areas and seminar rooms. Students do not follow a fixed daily schedule; instead, they plan their own school day and move freely between resource areas at self‐directed, often irregular intervals, according to daily and weekly goals. Through interviews, classroom observation, and personal journals, the study explored the ways in which the teachers perceived and implemented their roles in the changed context.     

Sleep schedules and peak times of oral temperature and alertness in morning and evening ‘types’

Abstract

The relation between circadian variables (oral temperature and subjective alertness) and sleep-awake schedules was explored as a function of a subjective preference index (Home and Ostberg 1976) which classifies subjects as ’morning’ or ‘evening’ type. Measurements of oral temperature and self-assessed alertness were obtained every 3 hours from rising time to bedtime over a 2 week period in 49 medical students. Sleep logs were kept by the students during the same period. Sleep schedules and alertness peak time, as well as the relative temporal location of alertness peak time and temperature peak time, differed in relation to the Home and Ostberg index. These results suggest that in normal conditions the coupling between temperature circadian rhythm and sleep-awake cycle differs in morning types and evening types.