SenToy in FantasyA: Designing an Affective Sympathetic Interface to a Computer Game

We describe the design process of an affective control toy, named SenToy, used to control a synthetic character in a computer game. SenToy allows players to influence the emotions of a synthetic character placed in FantasyA, a 3D virtual game. By expressing gestures associated with anger, fear, surprise, sadness and joy through SenToy, players influence the emotions of the character they control in the game. When designing SenToy we hypothesized that players would manipulate the toy to express emotions using a particular set of gestures. Those gestures were drawn from literature on how we express emotions through bodily movements and from emotion theories. To evaluate our idea we performed a Wizard Of Oz study [1]. The results of the study show that there are behaviours that players easily pick up for expressing emotions through the gestures with the toy, though not necessarily the ones extracted from literature. The study also provided some indication on what type of toy we should build, in particular, its ‘look and feel’. Correspondence to: Ms A. Paiva, IST & Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores, Rua Alves Redol 9, 1000 Lisboa, Portugal. Email: Ana.Paiva@inesc.pt     

Zweiphasige Strömungsvorgänge in Kreiselpumpen unter Berücksichtigung der Energieübertragung im Laufrad und in der Leiteinrichtung

Zusammenfassung In den verschiedenen Str?mungsbereichen der Kreiselpumpe stellt sich zwischen Feststoffpartikeln und Tr?gerfluid (z. B. Wasser) infolge des Dichteunterschiedes eine Phasenrelativgeschwindigkeit ein. Hieraus resultiert ein differenziertes Verhalten der Phasen bei der Energieübertragung. Auf der Grundlage von [1] sollen die Bewegungsvorg?nge n?her untersucht werden, wobei aus dem Kr?ftegleichgewicht auf die Phasengeschwindigkeiten und damit die Bahnbewegung geschlossen werden kann.     

Digitalrechenprogramm zur Bestimmung von Temperaturen in Rollen und Walzen

Beschreibung instationärer, mehrdimensionaler Wärmetransportvorgänge. Das Digitalrechenprogramm “WINST” zur Berechnung der Temperaturbewegungen in Rollen und Walzen, die mit Stahlsträngen oder Walzgut in Berührung stehen. Bestimmung der Unterschiede zwischen der gröβten und kleinsten Temperatur von Punkten der Oberfläche sowie solchen innerhalb einer Rolle oder Walze während einzelner Umdrehungen. Ermittlung der gröβten, während der Abläufe der Gieβ- oder Walzvorgänge erreichten Oberflächentemperaturen. Vergleich der Rechenergebnisse mit Meβwerten.     

UNIQUAC法预报N-异丙基丙烯酰胺凝胶在乙醇水溶液中的溶胀行为

以N-异丙基丙烯酰胺(NIPAAm)为单体,合成了NIPAAm均聚凝胶。研究了25℃时它们在乙醇水溶液中的溶胀平衡。实验发现：当乙醇浓度约为12％时,少量乙醇的进一步加入将使溶涨的凝胶突然剧烈收缩,表明NIPAAm凝胶在乙醇水溶液中有不连续体积相变。随着乙醇不断加入,凝胶又重新溶涨。结合“自由体积”概念,利用UNIQUAC模型的关联和预报了NIPAAm凝胶在乙醇-水溶液中的这种溶涨行为。     

Further characterization of rat dihydroceramide desaturase: Tissue distribution, subcellular localization, and substrate specificity

The introduction of the double bond in the sphingoid backbone of sphingolipids occurs at the level of dihydroceramide via an NADPH-dependent desaturase, as discovered in permeabilized rat hepatocytes. In the rat, the enzyme activity, which has now been further characterized, appeared to be mostly enriched in liver and Harderian gland. By means of subcellular fractionation of rat liver homogenates and density gradient separation of microsomal fractions, the desaturase was localized to the endoplasmic reticulum. Various detergents were inhibitory to the enzyme, and maximal activities were obtained in the presence of NADPH and when the substrate was complexed to albumin. In the presence of albumin, the chain length of the fatty acid of the truncated dihydroceramides hardly affected the activity. Finally, in view of a likely evolutionary relationship between desaturases and hydroxylases, the formation of hydroxylated intermediates was analyzed. No evidence for their presence was found under our assay conditions. In part presented at the Conférence Jacques Monod “Cell lipids: Topology, transport and signalling functions”, Aussois, May 1997 (France); Van Veldhoven, P.P. “Ceramide biosynthesis: Characterisation of the conversion of dihydroceramide to ceramide”. Contributed equally to this study.     

Plasmonic dimer antennas for surface enhanced Raman scattering

Electron beam induced deposition (EBID) has recently been developed into a method to directly write optically active three-dimensional nanostructures. For this purpose a metal-organic precursor gas (here dimethyl-gold(III)-acetylacetonate) is introduced into the vacuum chamber of a scanning electron microscope where it is cracked by the focused electron beam. Upon cracking the aforementioned precursor gas, 3D deposits are realized, consisting of gold nanocrystals embedded in a carbonaceous matrix. The carbon content in the deposits hinders direct plasmonic applications. However, it is possible to activate the deposited nanostructures for plasmonics by coating the EBID structures with a continuous silver layer of a few nanometers thickness. Within this silver layer collective motions of the free electron gas can be excited. In this way, EBID structures with their intriguing precision at the nanoscale have been arranged in arrays of free-standing dimer antenna structures with nanometer sized gaps between the antennas that face each other with an angle of 90°. These dimer antenna ensembles can constitute a reproducibly manufacturable substrate for exploiting the surface enhanced Raman effect (SERS). The achieved SERS enhancement factors are of the order of 10? for the incident laser light polarized along the dimer axes. To prove the signal enhancement in a Raman experiment we used the dye methyl violet as a robust test molecule. In future applications the thickness of such a silver layer on the dimer antennas can easily be varied for tuning the plasmonic resonances of the SERS substrate to match the resonance structure of the analytes to be detected.     

Optimizing continuous annealing of interstitial-free steels for improving deep drawability

The crystallographic textures and the resulting plastic anisotropy of five interstitial-free (IF) steels with different carbon equivalents and Nb and Ti microalloying content have been investigated. The steels were industrially hot rolled, cold rolled, annealed, and finally hot-dip galvanized. An alternative heat treatment of the cold rolled samples was conducted in laboratory scale using parameters close to those in industry-scale continuous annealing lines. The anisotropy parameters were both measured and predicted on the basis of the measured texture data. The calculated values were corrected by using functions that were fitted to the experimental data. It was found that for a given hot and cold rolling state even minor changes in the annealing conditions can improve the anisotropy parameter by up to 13 pct. Increase in recrystallization texture and improvement of the resulting anisotropy parameters are discussed in terms of partial transformation of ferrite to austenite in the intercritical regime.     

A Note on the Energy Norm for a Singularly Perturbed Model Problem

This paper considers a singularly perturbed reaction diffusion problem. It is investigated whether adaptive approaches are successful to design robust solution procedures. A key ingredient is the a posteriori error estimator. Since robust and mathematically analysed error estimation is possible in the energy norm, the focus is on this choice of norm and its implications. The numerical performance for several model problems confirms that the proposed adaptive algorithm (in conjunction with an energy norm error estimator) produces optimal results. Hence the energy norm is suitable for the purpose considered here. The investigations also provide valuable justification for forthcoming research. Received October 25, 2001; revised July 12, 2002 Published online: October 24, 2002