Proceedings of the 7th Sound and Music Computing Conference

Proceedings of the SMC2010 - 7th Sound and Music Computing Conference, July 21st - July 24th 2010

The Virtual Armory Survey and Portal

This project created an interactive, online survey to generate a personalized museum map for visitors to the Higgins Armory Museum; it also created a web portal to display past and future online interactives generated for the museum by WPI student teams. Research was done in the fields of arms and armor, museum tours and demographics, and profiling in order to create an educational product that would appeal to younger generations

Investigation Report on Universal Multimedia Access

Universal Multimedia Access (UMA) refers to the ability to access by any user to the desired multimedia content(s) over any type of network with any device from anywhere and anytime. UMA is a key framework for multimedia content delivery service using metadata. This investigation report analyzes the state-of-the-art technologies in UMA and tries to identify the key issues of UMA. The state-of-the-art in multimedia content adaptation, an overview of the standards that supports the UMA framework, potential privacy problems in UMA systems and some new UMA applications are presented in this report. This report also provides challenges that still remain to be resolved in UMA to make clear the potential key problems in UMA and determine which ones to solve

An analysis of strategic management in the digital music industry in a Chinese context

There are elements of cultural innovation only partly articulated in managing the business of Digital Music within academic research in a Chinese context. This thesis research into one question, how far management and operational systems developed with a western background can be applied efficiently to the Chinese context within the field of the Digital Music Industry? The study adopted a chronological approach. It followed the development history of three timelines, the development of management theories and logic in China and the West, the development of global Digital Music, the development of China's Digital Music Industry, which including understanding a critical introduction to management in its historical and intellectual context which provided a useful expansion of the issues raised. This research analyses China's Digital Music Industry from the perspective of the insider, with a people-oriented research angle and a comprehensive methodology based on an interpretive approach combined with dialectical thinking. The research distinguishes China's Digital Music Industry from other mature Digital Music industries and highlights the contemporary challenges it presents in the current context. This thesis begins by building a theoretical framework of Western management and its development, contrasting this with a Chinese experience of theories and philosophy of management. It tested these theories by analysing the changes and growth of Digital Music management in China from the external environment perspective and a case study of QQ Music. The research compares the similarities and differences between China's Digital Music Industry and others which include definitions of Digital Music, historical developments, people's concept of consumption, attitude, and behavioural habits around Digital Music. It reviews the literature on management research to conceptualise Western theories combined with the case study of QQ music, to make explicit how they apply or do not apply in China, and to be more specific, within the Chinese Digital Music Industry. The research defines the mission and goal of Digital Music in a Chinese context. More importantly, based on the analysis to understand the Chinese Digital Music management logic, makes clear the unique attributes (service as the core competitiveness), the development pattern of China's Digital Music Industry (an online and offline interactive digital business ecosystem) and offers a way to extend existing theories (the collision of fan economy, experience economy and the Long Tail theory). The research has collected a lot of valuable first-hand data, including many hard-to-reach groups and includes non-public data from the company and local government. The study concludes that Western management theories are distinct from China's experience in the Digital Music Industry. This lies in, particularly, the core profit model and consumer habits of Digital Music in China and their difference to the West. Consumers have different perceptions of the value of music content and service. It is valuable to seek new insights into advanced business models and management theories which is set to enhance the study of China's Digital Music Industry and which may provide the practical assessment of good practice in a Chinese context to inform management practice from non-Western models

New Frontiers in Universal Multimedia Access

Universal Multimedia Access (UMA) refers to the ability to access by any user to the desired multimedia content(s) over any type of network with any device from anywhere and anytime. UMA is a key framework for multimedia content delivery service using metadata. This report consists of three parts. The first part of this report analyzes the state-of-the-art technologies in UMA, identifies the key issues and gives what are the new challenges that still remain to be resolved in UMA. The key issues in UMA include the adaptation of multimedia contents to bridge the gap between content creation and consuming, standardized metadata description that facilitates the adaptation (e.g. MPEG-7, MPEG-21 DIA, CC/PP), and UMA system designing considering its target application. The second part introduces our approach towards these challenges; how to jointly adapt multimedia contents including different modalities and balance their presentation in an optimal way. A scheme for adapting audiovisual contents and its metadata (text) to any screen is proposed to provide the best experience in browsing the desired content. The adaptation process is modeled as an optimization problem of the total value of the content provided to the user. The total content value is optimized by jointly controlling the balance between video and metadata presentation, the transformation of the video content, and the amount of the metadata to be presented. Experimental results show that the proposed adaptation scheme enables users to browse audiovisual contents with their metadata optimized to the screen size of their devices. The last part reports some potential UMA applications especially focusing on a universal access application to TV news archives as an example

National libraries' use of Facebook and Twitter and user engagement

This research investigated national libraries' use of Facebook and Twitter and the user responses to those activities. Data was collected directly from the Facebook and Twitter pages of three national libraries (Library of Congress between 30.01.18 and 24.04.18, National Library of Australia and National Library of Scotland both between 10.06.19 and 1.09.19) including the posts and user comments. Content and thematic analysis was performed on the posts to determine library behaviour and a developed toolkit utilising thematic discourse analysis was used to understand user responses. Libraries were found to post about library-centric topics such as collections, events and resources, and linked users to library controlled webspaces such as their websites or other social media. Images were used to either complement or enhance the information contained in posts, though no overall patterns emerged as the libraries varied slightly in their posting patterns. Two major differences were responses to other social media on Twitter that were not available on Facebook, and the NLS using more personable themes. The libraries also responded to users differently with LoC barely responding, and NLA and NLS liking and responding to comments. Users mostly responded to the content of posts, as well as having conversations in the NLA and NLS datasets. Common motivations for responding including liking the content, sharing the content with others, sharing relevant memories or content as well as gratitude and answering a question, with most motivations and comments positive. Response rates varied, with the NLS receiving the most comments on Twitter despite the smallest library size. The results aligned with existing research in other areas, and beyond the advice for practitioners to respond to users and use informal language, one of the main outputs of the research is a toolkit that can be used by others to gain deeper understanding of user engagements.This research investigated national libraries' use of Facebook and Twitter and the user responses to those activities. Data was collected directly from the Facebook and Twitter pages of three national libraries (Library of Congress between 30.01.18 and 24.04.18, National Library of Australia and National Library of Scotland both between 10.06.19 and 1.09.19) including the posts and user comments. Content and thematic analysis was performed on the posts to determine library behaviour and a developed toolkit utilising thematic discourse analysis was used to understand user responses. Libraries were found to post about library-centric topics such as collections, events and resources, and linked users to library controlled webspaces such as their websites or other social media. Images were used to either complement or enhance the information contained in posts, though no overall patterns emerged as the libraries varied slightly in their posting patterns. Two major differences were responses to other social media on Twitter that were not available on Facebook, and the NLS using more personable themes. The libraries also responded to users differently with LoC barely responding, and NLA and NLS liking and responding to comments. Users mostly responded to the content of posts, as well as having conversations in the NLA and NLS datasets. Common motivations for responding including liking the content, sharing the content with others, sharing relevant memories or content as well as gratitude and answering a question, with most motivations and comments positive. Response rates varied, with the NLS receiving the most comments on Twitter despite the smallest library size. The results aligned with existing research in other areas, and beyond the advice for practitioners to respond to users and use informal language, one of the main outputs of the research is a toolkit that can be used by others to gain deeper understanding of user engagements

Elements of Ion Linear Accelerators, Calm in The Resonances, Other_Tales

The main part of this book, Elements of Linear Accelerators, outlines in Part 1 a framework for non-relativistic linear accelerator focusing and accelerating channel design, simulation, optimization and analysis where space charge is an important factor. Part 1 is the most important part of the book; grasping the framework is essential to fully understand and appreciate the elements within it, and the myriad application details of the following Parts. The treatment concentrates on all linacs, large or small, intended for high-intensity, very low beam loss, factory-type application. The Radio-Frequency-Quadrupole (RFQ) is especially developed as a representative and the most complicated linac form (from dc to bunched and accelerated beam), extending to practical design of long, high energy linacs, including space charge resonances and beam halo formation, and some challenges for future work. Also a practical method is presented for designing Alternating-Phase- Focused (APF) linacs with long sequences and high energy gain. Full open-source software is available. The following part, Calm in the Resonances and Other Tales, contains eyewitness accounts of nearly 60 years of participation in accelerator technology. (September 2023) The LINACS codes are released at no cost and, as always,with fully open-source coding. (p.2 & Ch 19.10)Comment: 652 pages. Some hundreds of figures - all images, there is no data in the figures. (September 2023) The LINACS codes are released at no cost and, as always,with fully open-source coding. (p.2 & Ch 19.10

THE ROLE OF JAVANESE CULTURE IN CHARACTER BUILDING AT ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

Nowadays, character education becomes a major concern in Indonesia. Character development has been done by various strategy, but the results is yet to be seen. Character development should beginin elementary school in order that the children's charactercould formed early so that it could be developed until they are mature. One of the efforts of character building is integrating the local wisdom in learning. One of them is the Javanese culture. Javanese culture has a variety of rules called the "unggah-ungguh" that always give good models to the public community, especially to the Javanese. Along with the times, the Javanese culture that upholds ethics began to degraded and replaced by foreign cultures that came later. The parents’ roles in instilling the Javanese culture to their children also decreased gradually. This paper will examine the Javanese culture’s roles toward the character building in elementary schools’ students. Descriptive method supported by a depth review of the literature and the previous studies is used in this paper as a method. Based on the results of these reviews, we obtain some information about the types and mechanisms of Javanese culture in character building of students, especially elementary school students