Team Diversity,Learning, and Innovation: A Mediation Model

This study aims to examine the direct and mediating relationships between team diversity, individual and team learning, and individual and team innovation performance. Using a sample of 266 white-collar professionals in Hong Kong, we found that team diversity plays a substantial role in improving both individual and team learning. Individual learning and team learning are independent and positively related to individual and team innovation performance. Individual learning partially mediates the relationship between team diversity and team learning. Individual innovation performance is found to be a partial mediator of team learning and team innovation performance. This study contributes in understanding the unexplored mediating effects of individual learning on team learning, and the individual innovation performance on team innovation performance. Team diversity is found to be the main enabler in the overall model. It is hoped that the research paradigm of this article will generate further development of information systems and technology literature.     

Multiple human tracking in drone image

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Object tracking, especially human tracking is one of the challenging research problems in computer vision. Although the performance has gained some positive...     

Magnetic compass fault detection method for GPS/INS/magnetic compass integrated navigation systems

This paper proposes a magnetic compass fault detection method for GPS/INS/Magnetic compass integrated navigation systems. The fault is assumed to be caused by the hard iron and soft iron effect and modeled as an abrupt change in the magnetic compass output. In order to detect the fault, a test statistic related with only azimuth error measurement is determined. When a fault is detected, the GPS/INS/Magnetic compass integrated navigation system is changed into a GPS/INS integrated navigation system mode. In order to show the validity of the proposed method, computer simulation and van testing are carried out. The simulation and van test results show that the proposed navigation system gives more accurate outputs than the GPS/INS/Magnetic compass without the proposed method.     

Age differences in trust and reliance of a medication management system

The present study examined age differences in trust and reliance of an automated decision aid. In Experiment 1, older and younger participants performed a simple mathematical task concurrent with a simulated medication management task. The decision aid was designed to facilitate medication management, but with varying reliability. Trust, self-confidence and usage of the aid were measured. The results indicated that older adults had greater trust in the aid and were less confident in their performance, but they did not calibrate trust differently than younger adults. In Experiment 2, a variant of the same task was used to investigate whether older adults are subject to over-reliance on the automation. Differences in omission and commission errors were examined. The results indicated that older adults were more reliant on the decision aid and committed more automation-related errors. A signal detection analyses indicated that older adults were less sensitive to automation failures. Results are discussed with respect to the perceptual and cognitive factors that influence age differences in the use of fallible automation.     

Parametric Formant Modelling and Transformation in Voice Conversion

This paper presents a method for the estimation and mapping of parametric models of speech resonance at formants for voice conversion. The spectral features at formants that contribute to voice characteristics are the trajectories of the frequencies, the bandwidths and intensities of the resonance at formants. The formant features are extracted from the poles of a linear prediction (LP) model of speech. The statistical distributions of formants are modelled by a two-dimensional hidden Markov model (HMM) spanning the time and frequency dimensions. Experimental results are presented which show a close match between HMM-based formant models and the histograms of formants. For voice conversion two alternative methods are explored for mapping the formants of a source speaker to those of a target speaker. The first method is based on an adaptive formant-tracking warping of the frequency response of the LP model and the second method is based on the rotation of the poles of the LP model of speech. Both methods transform all spectral parameters of the resonance at formants of the source speaker towards those of the target speaker. In addition, the issues affecting the selection of the warping ratios for the mapping functions are investigated. Experimental results of formant estimation and perceptual evaluation of voice morphing based on parametric formant models are presented.     

State estimation for delayed neural networks

In this letter, the state estimation problem is studied for neural networks with time-varying delays. The interconnection matrix and the activation functions are assumed to be norm-bounded. The problem addressed is to estimate the neuron states, through available output measurements, such that for all admissible time-delays, the dynamics of the estimation error is globally exponentially stable. An effective linear matrix inequality approach is developed to solve the neuron state estimation problem. In particular, we derive the conditions for the existence of the desired estimators for the delayed neural networks. We also parameterize the explicit expression of the set of desired estimators in terms of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). Finally, it is shown that the main results can be easily extended to cope with the traditional stability analysis problem for delayed neural networks. Numerical examples are included to illustrate the applicability of the proposed design method.     

Acquiring linear subspaces for face recognition under variable lighting

Previous work has demonstrated that the image variation of many objects (human faces in particular) under variable lighting can be effectively modeled by low-dimensional linear spaces, even when there are multiple light sources and shadowing. Basis images spanning this space are usually obtained in one of three ways: a large set of images of the object under different lighting conditions is acquired, and principal component analysis (PCA) is used to estimate a subspace. Alternatively, synthetic images are rendered from a 3D model (perhaps reconstructed from images) under point sources and, again, PCA is used to estimate a subspace. Finally, images rendered from a 3D model under diffuse lighting based on spherical harmonics are directly used as basis images. In this paper, we show how to arrange physical lighting so that the acquired images of each object can be directly used as the basis vectors of a low-dimensional linear space and that this subspace is close to those acquired by the other methods. More specifically, there exist configurations of k point light source directions, with k typically ranging from 5 to 9, such that, by taking k images of an object under these single sources, the resulting subspace is an effective representation for recognition under a wide range of lighting conditions. Since the subspace is generated directly from real images, potentially complex and/or brittle intermediate steps such as 3D reconstruction can be completely avoided; nor is it necessary to acquire large numbers of training images or to physically construct complex diffuse (harmonic) light fields. We validate the use of subspaces constructed in this fashion within the context of face recognition.     

The case for technology in developing regions

Alongside good governance, technology is considered among the greatest enablers for improved quality of life. However, the majority of its benefits have been concentrated in industrialized nations and therefore limited to a fraction of the world's population. We believe that technology has a large role to play in developing regions, that "First World" technology to date has been a poor fit in these areas, and that there is thus a need for technology research for developing regions. Despite the relative infancy of technology studies in developing regions, anecdotal evidence suggests that access to technology has a beneficial economic impact. Cellular telephony is probably the most visible application, but there are many others, some of which we cover in this article. The World Bank's infoDev site catalogs hundreds of information and communications technologies (ICT) projects, albeit not all successful. Most of these projects use existing off-the-shelf technology designed for the industrialized world. Although it is clear that there are large differences in assumptions related to cost, power, and usage, there has been little work on how technology needs in developing regions differ from those of industrialized nations. We argue that Western market forces continue to meet the needs of developing regions accidentally at best.     

Development of panel generation system for seakeeping analysis

In this paper, a panel generation system for analyzing seakeeping performance of a ship is developed. Given a set of offset data representing the ship hull, the system first creates a surface model of the ship. From the surface model, the wetted part of the ship is obtained by computing the intersection between the water surface and the hull, which is then processed to generate quadrilateral panels for the hull and the water surface. The system is designed to handle various kinds of ships such as ships with a mono-skeg, a twin-skeg and/or a bulbous bow in either an automatic or an interactive manner. Moreover, it can generate input panels for three different seakeeping analysis methods. Examples are provided to demonstrate the capabilities of the system.     

The photoionization of excited hydrogen atom in plasmas

The photoionization processes of excited hydrogen atoms in plasma environments are investigated using the method of complex coordinate rotation. The standard Debye–Hückel model and modified Debye–Hückel model are adopted to describe the plasma screening effects. The photoionization cross sections of plasma-embedded excited hydrogen atoms varied with different screening lengths are displayed to illustrate the influence of plasma screening. The results of the Debye–Hückel model compared with the modified Debye–Hückel are presented. The shape resonances and Cooper minima due to the plasma screening are observed and discussed.