Chosen postures during specific sitting activities

This research study analysed the interaction between people's postures and activities while in semi-public/leisure situations and during transportation (journey by train). In addition, the use of small electronic devices received particular emphasis. Video recordings in German trains and photographs in Dutch semi-public spaces were analysed using a variation of Branton and Grayson's (An evaluation of train seats by observation of sitting behaviour. Ergonomics, 10 (1), (1967), 35-51) postural targeting forms and photos. The analysis suggests a significant relationship between most activities and the position of the head, trunk and arms during transportation situations. The relationship during public situations is less straightforward. Watching, talking/discussing and reading were the most observed activities for the transportation and leisure situations combined. Surprisingly, differences in head, trunk, arm and leg postures were not significant when using small electronic devices. Important issues not considered in this study include the duration of the activities, the gender and age of observed subjects and the influence of the time of day. These are interesting issues to consider and include for future research. STATEMENT OF RELEVANCE: This study shows what activities people choose to carry out and their related postures when not forced to a specific task (e.g. driving). The results of this study can be used for designing comfortable seating in the transportation industry (car passenger, train, bus and aircraft seats) and semi-public/leisure spaces.     

Deterministic extractors for small-space sources

We give polynomial-time, deterministic randomness extractors for sources generated in small space, where we model space s sources on ${\{0,1\}}^n$ as sources generated by width $2^s$ branching programs. Specifically, there is a constant $\eta >0$ such that for any $\zeta >n^{?\eta }$, our algorithm extracts $m=(\delta ?\zeta )n$ bits that are exponentially close to uniform (in variation distance) from space s sources with min-entropy δn, where $s=\Omega ({\zeta }^{3}n)$. Previously, nothing was known for $\delta ?1/2$, even for space 0. Our results are obtained by a reduction to the class of total-entropy independent sources. This model generalizes both the well-studied models of independent sources and symbol-fixing sources. These sources consist of a set of r independent smaller sources over ${\{0,1\}}^{?}$, where the total min-entropy over all the smaller sources is k. We give deterministic extractors for such sources when k is as small as $\mathsf{polylog}(r)$, for small enough ?.     

ManyEyes: a site for visualization at internet scale

We describe the design and deployment of Many Eyes, a public web site where users may upload data, create interactive visualizations, and carry on discussions. The goal of the site is to support collaboration around visualizations at a large scale by fostering a social style of data analysis in which visualizations not only serve as a discovery tool for individuals but also as a medium to spur discussion among users. To support this goal, the site includes novel mechanisms for end-user creation of visualizations and asynchronous collaboration around those visualizations. In addition to describing these technologies, we provide a preliminary report on the activity of our users.     

Technology roles and paths of influence in an ecosystem model of technology evolution

We propose a new conceptual model for understanding technology evolution that highlights dynamic and highly interdependent relationships among multiple technologies. We argue that, instead of considering technologies in isolation, technology evolution is best viewed as a dynamic system or ecosystem that includes a variety of interrelated technologies. By considering the interdependent nature of technology evolution, we identify three roles that technologies play within a technology ecosystem. These roles are components, products and applications, and support and infrastructure. Technologies within an ecosystem interact through these roles and impact each others’ evolution. We also classify types of interactions between technology roles, which we term paths of influence. We demonstrate the use of our proposed model through examples of wireless networking (Wi-Fi) technologies and a business mini-case on the digital music industry.

Designing for social data analysis

The NameVoyager, a Web-based visualization of historical trends in baby naming, has proven remarkably popular. We describe design decisions behind the application and lessons learned in creating an application that makes do-it-yourself data mining popular. The prime lesson, it is hypothesized, is that an information visualization tool may be fruitfully viewed not as a tool but as part of an online social environment. In other words, to design a successful exploratory data analysis tool, one good strategy is to create a system that enables "social" data analysis. We end by discussing the design of an extension of the NameVoyager to a more complex data set, in which the principles of social data analysis played a guiding role.     

Cyberbroker: A lightweight web object collector

Centralized heavyweight collectors have been used to collect text-based web objects for building search engines. However, these collectors do not meet the need of collecting big web objects such as images and videos. We propose a lightweight mobile on-call object collector for the world wide web. Using this approach, we can deploy a collector easily on the site being indexed. We present a prototype system consisting of mobile Java collectors and search engines for collecting HTML/image objects. We provide analysis to find a lower bound in terms of total data transfer time required. This idealized scenario is complemented with another model based on implementation of the HTTP over TCP. The lower bound and the upper bound of the gains accrued are then validated using experiments. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Parametric toeplitz systems

This paper investigates the properties of the two-variable polynomialu (, z) built on the first column of the adjoint matrix ofI -C, whereC is a given Hermitian Toeplitz matrix. In particular, the stability properties ofu (,z) are discussed and are shown to depend essentially on the location of X with respect to the eigenvalues ofC. The eigenvectors ofC, which have recently found some applications in signal processing and estimation theory, are obtained from the polynomialu(,z) when tends to the eigenvalues ofC. This allows one to derive several results concerning the eigenpolynomials, including those for the case of multiple eigenvalues.     

Defining resilience for the US building industry

ABSTRACT

Initiatives to operationalize the concept of resilience in the building industry are rapidly emerging. The concept of resilience has introduced a way to explore solutions to some important problems in the building industry. However, much of the work that has taken place to date represents activities generally assigned to risk management, which is discussed as being inherently insufficient for sustaining the functions of the built environment under stresses. This commentary considers the opportunities and limitations for mainstreaming resilience into building industry processes and actors. Barriers include indeterminate analytical meaning, event and performance uncertainty, immature regulatory standards setting, and untested enterprise economics. Further, the multiple outcomes of recovery and the relationship between building recovery and adaptation are discussed and, along with economics of resilience investments, a research need highlighted. A simple heuristic is presented to illustrate the complement of resilience to risk management and advance the integration of resilience into existing industry workflows.