The use of graphics in the design of the human-telerobot interface

The Man-Systems Telerobotics Laboratory (MSTL) of NASA's Johnson Space Center employs computer graphics tools in their design and evaluation of the Flight Telerobotic Servicer (FTS) human/telerobot interface on the Shuttle and on the Space Station. It has been determined by the MSTL that the use of computer graphics can promote more expedient and less costly design endeavors. Several specific examples of computer graphics applied to the FTS user interface by the MSTL are described

Swarming and Mating in \u3ci\u3eAedes Provocans\u3c/i\u3e (Diptera: Culicidae)

Male Aedes provocans formed canopy-level linear swarms in association with prominent trees along hedgerows or convex prominences along woodlot margins. Males oriented along the east-west or north-south axis of the swarm site and flew continuously in alternating directions along the longitudinal axis of the swarm. Swarming began shortly before (mean=-0.78 crep) and ended after sunset (mean=0.81 crep). The time of onset of swarming was more variable than the time of cessation; on 3 of 5 occasions, swarming stopped abruptly at 0.94 crep, about 2 minutes before the end of civil twilight. Swarming began 4 d after the onset of emergence of the adults and persisted for 3 weeks, but copulations were observed for only the first 6 d. In-flight mating always took place after sunset, many minutes after the onset of swarming. On average, copulation lasted 9.9 s

Why Do School District Budget Referenda Fail?

[Excerpt] Public elementary and secondary education is financed in many states at least partially at the local level and school district budgets in many states are determined by voter referenda. To date, however, there have been no studies that sought to explain why the proportion of school district budget proposals in a state that are approved by voters in referenda varies over time. Similarly no research has used panel data on school districts to test whether budget referenda failures are concentrated in a small number of school districts within a state and whether the failure of a budget referendum in a school district in one year influences the likelihood that voters in the district subsequently defeat a budget referendum in the next year. Our paper uses data from school budget votes in New York State to answer these questions

Estimating the General Equilibrium Benefits of Large Policy Changes: The Clean Air Act Revisited

This paper reports the first comprehensive approach for measuring the general equilibrium willingness to pay for large changes in air quality. It is based on a well defined locational equilibrium model. The approach allows estimation of households' indirect utility function and the underlying distribution of household types. With these estimates it is possible to compute a new locational equilibrium and the resulting housing prices in response to exogenous changes in air quality. This permits construction of welfare measures which properly take into consideration the adjustments of households in equilibrium to non-marginal changes in air quality. These types of measures are outside the scope of more traditional approaches. The empirical approach of this paper provides, for the first time, an internally consistent framework for estimation and applied general equilibrium welfare analysis. We compute the general equilibrium willingness to pay for the changes in air quality between 1990 and 1995. We implement our empirical framework using data from Southern California, an area which has experienced dramatic improvements in air quality during the past 20 years. Our findings are by and large supportive for our approach and suggest that accounting for general equilibrium effects in applied welfare can be especially important.

Memorandum of understandings promise nothing; media mergers require close scrutiny by the FCC for their impacts on Latinas/os

Mergers have become an increasing frequent part of the American media landscape, and alongside this consolidation interest groups have sprung up to challenge them on the grounds of minority representation, In new work, Jason A. Smith and Randy Abreu take a close look at the effects on Latina/o representation of the 2011 merger between Comcast and NBC Universal. They write that while the memorandum of understandings signed by Comcast and Latina/o organizations promised increased minority representation, this has not come to pass in the intervening years. Such voluntary agreements, they write, have no teeth and need to be superseded by greater federal oversight

General Equilibrium Benefit Transfers for Spatial Externalities: Revisiting EPA's Prospective Analysis

Environmental policy analyses increasingly require the evaluation of benefits from large changes in spatially differentiated public goods. Such changes are likely to induce general equilibrium effects through changes in household expenditures and local migration, yet current practice "transfers" constant marginal values for even the largest changes. Moreover, it ignores important distributional effects of policy. This paper demonstrates that recently developed locational equilibrium models can provide transferable general equilibrium benefit measures. Our results suggest that taking account of the potential for adjustment and household heterogeneity is important. Applying benefits estimated from this method to the effect of the Clean Air Act amendments in Los Angeles, we find that the estimated annual general equilibrium benefits in 2000 and 2010 are dramatically different by income group and location. The gains range from $33 to about$2,400 per household. These differences arise from variations in the air quality conditions, income, and the effects of general equilibrium price adjustment.air quality, clean air act, non-market valuation, Tiebout model

Telepresence for space: The state of the concept

The purpose here is to examine the concept of telepresence critically. To accomplish this goal, first, the assumptions that underlie telepresence and its applications are examined, and second, the issues raised by that examination are discussed. Also, these assumptions and issues are used as a means of shifting the focus in telepresence from development to user-based research. The most basic assumption of telepresence is that the information being provided to the human must be displayed in a natural fashion, i.e., the information should be displayed to the same human sensory modalities, and in the same fashion, as if the person where actually at the remote site. A further fundamental assumption for the functional use of telepresence is that a sense of being present in the work environment will produce superior performance. In other words, that sense of being there would allow the human operator of a distant machine to take greater advantage of his or her considerable perceptual, cognitive, and motor capabilities in the performance of a task than would more limited task-related feedback. Finally, a third fundamental assumption of functional telepresence is that the distant machine under the operator's control must substantially resemble a human in dexterity

Ariel - Volume 12 Number 1

Executive Editors David G. Polin Larry H. Pastor Business Manager Alex Macones Jean Lien Editorial Page Editor Sam Markind Photography Editors Ken Yonemura Lois Leach Sports Editor Todd Hoove

Measuring the Impact of Air Quality on Housing Markets and Residential Choices in Southern California

No abstract.