From white elephant to Nobel Prize: Dennis Gabor’s wavefront reconstruction

Dennis Gabor devised a new concept for optical imaging in 1947 that went by a variety of names over the following decade: holoscopy, wavefront reconstruction, interference microscopy, diffraction microscopy and Gaboroscopy. A well-connected and creative research engineer, Gabor worked actively to publicize and exploit his concept, but the scheme failed to capture the interest of many researchers. Gabor’s theory was repeatedly deemed unintuitive and baffling; the technique was appraised by his contemporaries to be of dubious practicality and, at best, constrained to a narrow branch of science. By the late 1950s, Gabor’s subject had been assessed by its handful of practitioners to be a white elephant. Nevertheless, the concept was later rehabilitated by the research of Emmett Leith and Juris Upatnieks at the University of Michigan, and Yury Denisyuk at the Vavilov Institute in Leningrad. What had been judged a failure was recast as a success: evaluations of Gabor’s work were transformed during the 1960s, when it was represented as the foundation on which to construct the new and distinctly different subject of holography, a re-evaluation that gained the Nobel Prize for Physics for Gabor alone in 1971. This paper focuses on the difficulties experienced in constructing a meaningful subject, a practical application and a viable technical community from Gabor’s ideas during the decade 1947-1957

Determinants of harassment in online multiplayer games

Objective. Online multiplayer games allow large numbers of participants to play simultaneously online. Unfortunately, this has also given rise to new forms of harassment and abuse. The current study used the criminological framework of Routine Activity Theory to identify possible circumstantial and individual risk factors that predict both general and sexual harassment victimization in this online context. Method. An online survey of online multiplayer gamers (N = 883) was conducted. Measures included harassment exposure, guardianship, and target suitability. These determinants were used to predict general and sexual harassment victimization in multiple regression analyses. Analyses controlled for social desirability responding. Results. Both sexual harassment victimization (R² = 63%) and general harassment victimization (R² = 57%) were successfully predicted using the determinants. The gender of the gamer is associated with the type of harassment received; women are more likely to encounter sexual harassment, while men are more likely to be harassed in the general sense. Gaming for fewer hours per week, with mostly or exclusively female avatars, and sharing personal information (e.g. gender) predicts sexual harassment victimization, whereas playing in Player-versus-Player game modes predicts general harassment victimization. Harassing other gamers and associating with harassers predicts both general and sexual harassment. Conclusions. Our models explained a sizable percentage of the variation in harassment, indicating for the first time that the Routine Activity Theory can be applied to understand online harassment in gaming. Specifically, it was found that different types of in-game exposure predict different types of victimization, that lacking personal self-guardianship predicts sexual harassment and that gender (or revealing gender) is associated with changes in harassment

Editorial Letter

This ia a pre-publication for Vol40, No.2(2019

Editorial Letter

This ia a pre-publication for Vol40, No.1(2019