Entrainment and musicality in the human system interface

What constitutes our human capacity to engage and be in the same frame of mind as another human? How do we come to share a sense of what ‘looks good’ and what ‘makes sense’? How do we handle differences and come to coexist with them? How do we come to feel that we understand what someone else is experiencing? How are we able to walk in silence with someone familiar and be sharing a peaceful space? All of these aspects are part of human ‘interaction’. In designing interactive technologies designers have endeavoured to explicate, analyse and simulate, our capacity for social adaptation. Their motivations are mixed and include the desires to improve efficiency, improve consumption, to connect people, to make it easier for people to work together, to improve education and learning. In these endeavours to explicate, analyse and simulate, there is a fundamental human capacity that is beyond technology and that facilitates these aspects of being, feeling and thinking with others. That capacity, we suggest, is human entrainment. This is our ability to coordinate the timing of our behaviours and rhythmically synchronise our attentional resources. Expressed within the movements of our bodies and voices, it has a quality that is akin to music. In this paper, disparate domains of research such as pragmatics, social psychology, behaviourism, cognitive science, computational linguistics, gesture, are brought together, and considered in light of the developments in interactive technology, in order to shape a conceptual framework for understanding entrainment in everyday human interaction.     

Mg AZ80/SiC composite bars fabricated by infiltration of porous ceramic preforms

Semi-industrial samples of Mg AZ80/SiC/50p composites (machined bars with o.d.=80 mm and length=150 mm, having a maximum 2 vol pct of retained porosity) were successfully fabricated by pressureless, low-pressure (under overpressure of about 0.3 MPa) and moderate-pressure (under overpressure of about 0.8 MPa) infiltration. Pressureless infiltration was completed in 24 hours under the flowing atmosphere of nitrogen, whereas the moderate and low-pressure infiltrations were performed under a static atmosphere of pressurized nitrogen for 7 and 0.5 hours, respectively. The composite samples obtained by all applied infiltration paths posessed a homogeneous microstructure and superior mechanical properties as compared to the nonreinforced matrix. Due to the improved productivity of composite fabrication in comparison with the other two infiltration paths investigated in this work, the moderate-pressure infiltration process was recognized as the most competitive.     

Second-order stresses and strains in heterogeneous steels: Self-consistent modeling and X-ray diffraction analysis

Theoretical and experimetal methods have been developed to characterize the effect of mechanical loading on the mesoscopic and macroscopic mechanical state of polycrystalline materials. Ferritic and austenitic single-phase materials were first analyzed, then phase interaction was studied in a multiductile phase material (austeno-ferritic duplex steel) and a natural reinforced composite (pearlitic steel). The theoretical method is based on the self-consistent approach in which elastic and plastic characteristics of the phases have been applied through the micromechanical behavior of single-crystal-using slip systems and microscopic hardening. The effects of a crystallographic texture and phase interaction during loading and after unloading were studied. The elastic and plastic anisotropy of the grains having the same crystallographic orientation were assessed by diffraction strain analysis. The simulation was compared with the experiments performed using the X-ray diffraction technique. In the considered duplex and pearlitic steels, it was observed that the ferrite stress state is much lower than the austenite and cementite ones. The results of diffraction strain distribution have showed the pertinence of the models and give valuable information, for example, for the yield stress and the hardening parameters of each phase in a two-phase material.     

Cyclic oxidation response of multiphase niobium-based alloys

Cyclic oxidation tests were performed on multiphase Nb-based alloys containing silicide, Laves, and Nb solid solution phases. In particular, the oxidation resistance of six alloys with various compositions (Nb, Ti, Hf, Cr, Ge, and Si) and microstructures was characterized by thermal cycling from ambient temperature to a peak temperature that ranges from 900 °C to 1400 °C. Weight change data were obtained and the corresponding spalled oxides were collected and identified by X-ray diffraction. The results indicated that Nb-based alloys formed a mixture of CrNbO₄, Nb₂O₅, and Nb₂O₅ · TiO₂, with possibly small amounts of SiO₂ or GeO₂. The oxidation resistance was improved when CrNbO₄ formed instead of Nb₂O₅ and Nb₂O₅ · TiO₂. These results were used to assess the influence of microstructure and composition on the oxidation resistance of multiphase Nb-based alloys.     

On one boundary-value problem for the Laplace equation

We have derived a Fredholm-type equation of the second kind for a directional derivative problem arising in the stationary theory of heat conduction. One result of Ya. B. Lopatinskii has been refined. __________ Translated from Inzhenerno-Fizicheskii Zhurnal, Vol. 80, No. 2, pp. 197–200, March–April, 2007.     

Properties of fine-grained graphites based on two-component fillers

The effect of the nature of two-component fillers on the physical and mechanical properties of finegrained graphites was studied using highly oriented needle coke and nearly isotropic synthetic graphite as components of fillers. Each filler was prepared in the form of coarse (-120 µm) and fine (-10 µm) powders. Different mixtures of these components were used in producing graphite samples, which were then characterized by density, thermal expansion, compressive strength, and modulus of elasticity measurements. The results demonstrate that the thermal expansion, compressive strength, and modulus of elasticity of the graphites thus prepared depend on the microtexture, size, and shape of the filler particles.Translated from Neorganicheskie Materialy, Vol. 40, No. 12, 2004, pp. 1448–1454.Original Russian Text Copyright © 2004 by Samoilov.     

Preparation and properties of heavy-metal halide glasses

We have studied the effect of In³⁺, Pb²⁺, Gd³⁺, and Cl (heavier ions) substitutions for Al³⁺, Ba²⁺, La³⁺, and F^? on the crystallization stability and UV/IR optical properties of HBLAN fluorohafnatc glasses (HfF₄-BaF₂-LaF₃-AlF₃-NaF system). We obtained stable glasses containing InF₃ and BaCl₂ instead of AlF₃ and BaF₂, respectively, and offering increased IR transmission. The presence of CCl₄ in the process atmosphere and the removal of oxygen-containing impurities via directional solidification are shown to have an advantageous effect on the optical quality of the glasses. The fluoride-chloride glasses are capable of accommodating about 1.5 times higher levels of rare-earth activators in comparison with their fluoride analogs.     

Semiconductor-insulator structures in the phototargets of vidicons sensitive in the middle infrared region of the spectrum

The kinetics of electronic processes in vidicon phototargets based on semiconductor-insulator structures with a narrow-gap semiconductor is considered taking into account charge drain in the insulator layer and relaxation of the nonequilibrium depletion region in the semiconductor layer. The integration time, threshold sensitivity, and resolution at various intensities of incident radiation are estimated.