Determining principles for the development of virtual environments for future clinical applications

The aim of the present research was to determine a range of principles for the development of virtual natural environments (VNEs), using low-cost commercial-off-the-shelf simulation technologies, for bedside and clinical healthcare applications. A series of studies have been conducted to systematically investigate different aspects of the VNEs on a wide variety of participants, ranging from undergraduate and postgraduate students, hospital patients and clinicians, to West Country villagers. The results of these studies suggest that naturalistic environmental spatial sounds can have a positive impact on user ratings of presence and stress levels. High visual fidelity and real-world-based VNEs can increase participants’ reported ratings of presence, quality and realism. The choice of input devices also has a significant impact on usability with these types of virtual environment (VE). Overall, the findings provide a strong set of principles supporting the future development of VNEs. Highly transferrable tools and techniques have also been developed in order to investigate the exploitation of new digital technology approaches in the generation of believable and engaging real-time, interactive virtual natural environments that can be modified and updated relatively easily, thereby delivering a system that can be regularly modified and updated to meet the needs of individual patients

Landscape and Tourism, Landscapes of Tourism

Landscape is central to tourism. It is key to the development, marketing/promotion, and consumption of tourism destinations, to triggering and sustaining tourism markets, and to enticing tourist dreams, fantasies, and behaviors. From ‘sight-seeing’ practices—at the basis of all tourism activities—landscape figures prominently all the way to the overall spatial planning and management of a destination for tourism development. The intertwined relationship between tourism and landscape comes with a series of costs and benefits, in the context of tourism landscapes. Landscapes of tourism reflect and stage recreational trends, multifunctional livelihood systems, conflicts and opportunities for employment and income generation, as well as human, cultural, and natural resource management and use. This Special Issue aims to enhance the interdisciplinary scientific dialogue on these issues and challenges, while highlighting their range and significance for tourism and the landscape, in terms of theory, empirical practice, approach, policy, ethics, and future prospects. Some of the questions posed for consideration here are: What are landscapes of tourism, for whom and how/why? What is the role of the landscape in tourism promotion, attraction, and experience? How does tourism affect the landscape? What lessons do the history and geography of tourism have to offer to tourism landscape stewardship? How may we best plan for and manage the landscape in the context of various forms of tourism growth and spread, at various scales? Scholarly advances in the past few decades have steadily built on a diverse—but spread-out and not adequately connected—bibliographical basis for future research. Much remains to be understood and exchanged as landscape and tourism—two highly complex and multifaceted scientific areas—come together in the scope of this Special Issue in a variety of ways across time, space, and culture

MS FT-2-2 7 Orthogonal polynomials and quadrature: Theory, computation, and applications

Quadrature rules find many applications in science and engineering. Their analysis is a classical area of applied mathematics and continues to attract considerable attention. This seminar brings together speakers with expertise in a large variety of quadrature rules. It is the aim of the seminar to provide an overview of recent developments in the analysis of quadrature rules. The computation of error estimates and novel applications also are described

Generalized averaged Gaussian quadrature and applications

A simple numerical method for constructing the optimal generalized averaged Gaussian quadrature formulas will be presented. These formulas exist in many cases in which real positive GaussKronrod formulas do not exist, and can be used as an adequate alternative in order to estimate the error of a Gaussian rule. We also investigate the conditions under which the optimal averaged Gaussian quadrature formulas and their truncated variants are internal

Geotechnical Engineering for the Preservation of Monuments and Historic Sites III

The conservation of monuments and historic sites is one of the most challenging problems facing modern civilization. It involves, in inextricable patterns, factors belonging to different fields (cultural, humanistic, social, technical, economical, administrative) and the requirements of safety and use appear to be (or often are) in conflict with the respect of the integrity of the monuments. The complexity of the topic is such that a shared framework of reference is still lacking among art historians, architects, structural and geotechnical engineers. The complexity of the subject is such that a shared frame of reference is still lacking among art historians, architects, architectural and geotechnical engineers. And while there are exemplary cases of an integral approach to each building element with its static and architectural function, as a material witness to the culture and construction techniques of the original historical period, there are still examples of uncritical reliance on modern technology leading to the substitution from earlier structures to new ones, preserving only the iconic look of the original monument. Geotechnical Engineering for the Preservation of Monuments and Historic Sites III collects the contributions to the eponymous 3rd International ISSMGE TC301 Symposium (Naples, Italy, 22-24 June 2022). The papers cover a wide range of topics, which include: 　 - Principles of conservation, maintenance strategies, case histories - The knowledge: investigations and monitoring - Seismic risk, site effects, soil structure interaction - Effects of urban development and tunnelling on built heritage - Preservation of diffuse heritage: soil instability, subsidence, environmental damages The present volume aims at geotechnical engineers and academics involved in the preservation of monuments and historic sites worldwide

On the energy sources of Mozambican households and the demand-supply curves for domestic electricity in the northern electrical grid in Mozambique

Department Head: Allan Thomson Kirkpatrick.2009 Summer.Includes bibliographical references (pages 317-330).The development of electrical infrastructure to supply rural households is considered economically unfeasible because of the high cost of capital investment required to expand the distribution grids. Although domestic electricity consumption in many developing regions is small when compared to the requirements of some emerging agroindustries, the social benefits are significant, such that many donor agencies agree to finance grid extensions based on poorly projected social benefits of electrification. However, there is evidence that households with electrical connections do not increase their electricity consumption above the bare minimum, allegedly because electricity is more expensive and possibly because of insufficient funds to invest in electrical appliances. The controversy is then whether or not electrification can support household development (and poverty alleviation) and vice-versa, can domestic consumption support the costs of electrification investments. The current work is composed of a theoretical model and two empirical models, developed in order to answer the following specific questions: 1) To what extent the ownership of assets is determinant to the adoption of high-grade energy sources in the domestic settings of poor families? 2) What is the price of electricity that sustains the supply costs and still promotes increased energy consumption in Mozambican households? To answer these questions the study formulated an inter-temporal utility maximization problem by which households can determine the limits of investment for energy consumption and for income generation that is required to evolve out of poverty in a sustainable manner. Next, the study calculated the elasticities of demand for the various domestic sources used by Mozambican households, surveyed in 2002/3 at the national level, enabling the construction of demand curves for these sources. The study also derived empirical loss equations for the northern transmission electrical grid (Linha Centro-Norte, LCN) in Mozambique, and constructed the supply curves for the distribution networks connected to the substations of the system. Based on the household data, the likelihood of adopting electricity as a domestic source was analyzed and results show that wealth is a major determining factor, confirming the findings of the theoretical and empirical household models. Finally, the study constructed the supply and demand plots, from which the sustainable price of electricity supplied to domestic consumers can be estimated and welfare evaluations made. Results indicate that households can evolve consuming electricity if credit for investment is made available and the income base is enlarged. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that current electricity prices are within budget of households and that electricity is competitive with biomass sources and kerosene in the domestic setting