Multi-physics Extension of OpenFMO Framework

OpenFMO framework, an open-source software (OSS) platform for Fragment Molecular Orbital (FMO) method, is extended to multi-physics simulations (MPS). After reviewing the several FMO implementations on distributed computer environments, the subsequent development planning corresponding to MPS is presented. It is discussed which should be selected as a scientific software, lightweight and reconfigurable form or large and self-contained form.Comment: 4 pages with 11 figure files, to appear in the Proceedings of ICCMSE 200

Vacuum mechatronics

The discipline of vacuum mechatronics is defined as the design and development of vacuum-compatible computer-controlled mechanisms for manipulating, sensing and testing in a vacuum environment. The importance of vacuum mechatronics is growing with an increased application of vacuum in space studies and in manufacturing for material processing, medicine, microelectronics, emission studies, lyophylisation, freeze drying and packaging. The quickly developing field of vacuum mechatronics will also be the driving force for the realization of an advanced era of totally enclosed clean manufacturing cells. High technology manufacturing has increasingly demanding requirements for precision manipulation, in situ process monitoring and contamination-free environments. To remove the contamination problems associated with human workers, the tendency in many manufacturing processes is to move towards total automation. This will become a requirement in the near future for e.g., microelectronics manufacturing. Automation in ultra-clean manufacturing environments is evolving into the concept of self-contained and fully enclosed manufacturing. A Self Contained Automated Robotic Factory (SCARF) is being developed as a flexible research facility for totally enclosed manufacturing. The construction and successful operation of a SCARF will provide a novel, flexible, self-contained, clean, vacuum manufacturing environment. SCARF also requires very high reliability and intelligent control. The trends in vacuum mechatronics and some of the key research issues are reviewed

A smart environment for biometric capture

The development of large scale biometric systems require experiments to be performed on large amounts of data. Existing capture systems are designed for fixed experiments and are not easily scalable. In this scenario even the addition of extra data is difficult. We developed a prototype biometric tunnel for the capture of non-contact biometrics. It is self contained and autonomous. Such a configuration is ideal for building access or deployment in secure environments. The tunnel captures cropped images of the subject's face and performs a 3D reconstruction of the person's motion which is used to extract gait information. Interaction between the various parts of the system is performed via the use of an agent framework. The design of this system is a trade-off between parallel and serial processing due to various hardware bottlenecks. When tested on a small population the extracted features have been shown to be potent for recognition. We currently achieve a moderate throughput of approximate 15 subjects an hour and hope to improve this in the future as the prototype becomes more complete

Teaching music to students with multiple disabilities: A study into teachers\u27 perspectives and practices for self-contained general music instruction

This study investigates the experience of elementary teachers providing music instruction to students with multiple disabilities in self-contained classrooms. With legislation mandating public education for students with special needs, music teachers increasingly encounter these students in their classrooms, which range from inclusion to self-contained environments. Research indicates that music is a valid and valuable tool for supporting extra-musical learning as well as fostering musical growth in students with special needs. Additionally, research provides insight into inclusion experiences for teachers and for students. However, research into self-contained instruction is minimal. This study addressed that gap through phenomenological exploration of teachers in northwestern Virginia. A survey sent to elementary teachers in the target region provided preliminary data, indicating that the study population was small but did share common perceptions. Teachers expressed uncertainty regarding purpose and process. Interviews with three teachers who have experience in self-contained music settings provided more in-depth data. This represents a purposeful sample. Their shared experience again showed commonalities that fell into categories of worth, support, and process. Each teacher described a journey of self-discovery that led to a richly rewarding experience with this specialized form of instruction. The results, consistent with a review of literature and the personal experience of the researcher, indicate that teachers in self-contained settings value these interactions for musical and extra-musical outcomes. They do not rely on traditional curriculum or standards and frequently adapt materials. All of the teachers in this study report feeling under-qualified to work with this population and desire more training and resources, though they are typically not aware of resources that are available. Several issues surfaced that were not included in the literature review, including the teaching and learning process, working with aides, and factors involving time. These findings indicated that teachers would benefit from networking systems, allowing them to share their frustrations and successes. Administrators could support their staff by providing resources and training opportunities. Further study into self-contained music instruction for elementary students is needed. Possible areas of focus include examining the perceptions of students and parents and exploring curriculum development and presentation

Development of a Car-like Online Navigation Testbed

We present new realtime path planning and collision avoidance algorithms for an autonomous rover equipped with a laser range finder to be used as a platform for multi-agent navigation and control in unknown environments. For successful navigation, such tasks as localization, map-building, and collision avoidance should be handled at the vehicle level. The proposed architecture covers these aspects of robotic path- planning in a modular and robust manner, allowing quicker development of more sophisticated path-planners. Using a conventional SLAM algorithm, a feature map and the location of the vehicle is obtained. The information for orientation and distance of the obstacles ahead is available from a laser range finder. The proposed collision avoidance algorithm provides multiple paths to guide the vehicle through the environment. The system acts as a self-contained extendable platform for development and testing of high-level pathfinders

On-site surface reflectometry

The rapid development of Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) applications over the past years has created the need to quickly and accurately scan the real world to populate immersive, realistic virtual environments for the end user to enjoy. While geometry processing has already gone a long way towards that goal, with self-contained solutions commercially available for on-site acquisition of large scale 3D models, capturing the appearance of the materials that compose those models remains an open problem in general uncontrolled environments. The appearance of a material is indeed a complex function of its geometry, intrinsic physical properties and furthermore depends on the illumination conditions in which it is observed, thus traditionally limiting the scope of reflectometry to highly controlled lighting conditions in a laboratory setup. With the rapid development of digital photography, especially on mobile devices, a new trend in the appearance modelling community has emerged, that investigates novel acquisition methods and algorithms to relax the hard constraints imposed by laboratory-like setups, for easy use by digital artists. While arguably not as accurate, we demonstrate the ability of such self-contained methods to enable quick and easy solutions for on-site reflectometry, able to produce compelling, photo-realistic imagery. In particular, this dissertation investigates novel methods for on-site acquisition of surface reflectance based on off-the-shelf, commodity hardware. We successfully demonstrate how a mobile device can be utilised to capture high quality reflectance maps of spatially-varying planar surfaces in general indoor lighting conditions. We further present a novel methodology for the acquisition of highly detailed reflectance maps of permanent on-site, outdoor surfaces by exploiting polarisation from reflection under natural illumination. We demonstrate the versatility of the presented approaches by scanning various surfaces from the real world and show good qualitative and quantitative agreement with existing methods for appearance acquisition employing controlled or semi-controlled illumination setups.Open Acces

SOCIAL-PROFESSIONAL ENVIRONMENT OF PERSONALITY

In the conditions of globalization and the chaotic nature of the normative and value system, the problem of world perception formation is particularly important: how do we want to see the global world?Interpersonal relationships can be relations of tolerance and cooperation; advantage and exploitation, oppression or care and support. In this case, the personality will be in different social environments. Accordingly, the process of its development will take place in different ways. The correlation of the concepts “environment” and “spaciousness” is analogous to the correlation of “part” and “whole”. Environment can be contained in space because “spaciousness” is multidimensional and “environment” is only one of its dimensions. Spaciousness contains the past, present and future times; the environment is representation of the present events.Keywords: personality, environment, spaciousness, social-professional environment, self-regulation, life activities

Software scaffolds to promote regulation during scientific inquiry learning

This research addresses issues in the design of online scaffolds for regulation within inquiry learning environments. The learning environment in this study included a physics simulation, data analysis tools, and a model editor for students to create runnable models. A regulative support tool called the Process Coordinator (PC) was designed to assist students in planning, monitoring, and evaluating their investigative efforts within this environment. In an empirical evaluation, 20 dyads received a “full” version of the PC with regulative assistance; dyads in the control group (n = 15) worked with an “empty” PC which contained minimal structures for regulative support. Results showed that both the frequency and duration of regulative tool use differed in favor of the PC+ dyads, who also wrote better lab reports. PC− dyads viewed the content helpfiles more often and produced better domain models. Implications of these differential effects are discussed and suggestions for future research are advanced

Evaluating usability of cross-platform smartphone applications

The computing power of smartphones is increasing as time goes. However, the proliferation of multiple different types of operating platforms affected interoperable smartphone applications development. Thus, the cross-platform development tools are coined. Literature showed that smartphone applications developed with the native platforms have better user experience than the cross-platform counterparts. However, comparative evaluation of usability of cross-platform applications on the deployment platforms is not studied yet. In this work, we evaluated usability of a crossword puzzle developed with PhoneGap on Android, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry. The evaluation was conducted focusing on the developer's adaptation effort to native platforms and the end users. Thus, we observed that usability of the cross-platform crossword puzzle is unaffected on the respective native platforms and the SDKs require only minimal configuration effort. In addition, we observed the prospect of HTML5 and related web technologies as our future work towards evaluating and enhancing usability in composing REST-based services for smartphone applications