Broadband for culture, a culture for broadband?

The augmentation of cultural participation in Flanders is one of the major cornerstones of the current cultural policy. Digital technologies offer a wide range of opportunities to achieve this goal, as the internet is often seen as a way to augment the number of visitors for arts centres. However, the availability of digital information technologies and the willingness to adopt these new ways of processing cultural material, is a prerequisite for this (r)evolution. This article is based on data collected in three surveys, one for each of the cultural actors; cultural organisations such as museums, arts centres etc, individual artists and art lovers in Flanders. Despite that most artists and cultural organizations are sufficiently equipped with up-to-date technological infrastructure, most websites lack true interactivity with a strong one-to-one relationship between audience, artists and cultural institutions. We therefore conclude that, although there are plenty of broadband connections and other digital tools available to the Flemish art scene, artists and cultural organisations lack a mind-set (or culture) to truly embrace and benefit from the potential of the current digital technologies

A spatio-temporal modelling and analysis of digital sensor data for underground mine health and safety

A Research Report submitted to the Faculty of Science, University of the Witwatersrand, in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Science 2017Health and safety of employees within their work environment is critical. In the mining industry and especially in underground mines, monitoring and management of health and safety of employees is particularly important Most underground mines today are not fully mechanized, except for coal mines. The industry thus still relies on and employs human personnel. Monitoring and managing these mines and hence personnel health and safety as they undertake their trade is therefore a necessity. Implementation of technology, especially in digital sensor systems and real-time spatial analysis systems, provides a means by which health and safety risk factors can be monitored and information gathered to facilitate determination of prevailing risks or prediction of such risks. Technology therefore can be used to make better decisions and implement specialized emergency response to avert or reduce the extent of injuries, casualties and damages in an underground mine. This research project looks into determination of prominent risk factors in an underground mine, determination of parameters for modeling of such risk factors and the implementation of ESRI’s ArcGIS platform for the retrieval and analysis of streaming sensor data about this parameter from an underground mine. A proof of concept (POC) system is developed that analyses streaming digital sensor data and determines the status of the underground mine environment. The results from this analysis are displayed in a dashboard application for a control room environment. The results and achievements of this research project, especially from a dashboard system perspective, show the possibilities of an integrated GIS-based solution for real-time data processing and determination of the prevailing conditions in an underground mine. This solution also opens up a wide pool of possibilities through which systems integration and its benefits can be achieved, especially in underground mines and focusing on health and safety, as previously silo systems can be integrated at data levels, enabling data sharing, analysis, predictions and making of informed decisions.MT201

Virtual community based secure service discovery and access for 3D video steaming applications

The Freehand I-Share project aims to define the mechanisms for trust, willingness, resource discovery and sharing mechanisms in virtual communities. To improve the secure and performance of a 3D video streaming application, which is a research vehicle of the I-Share project, we propose a virtual community based access control approach for secure service discovery and access (VICSDA) which groups services in virtual communities and only grants authenticated community members to discover and access these community services. There are two main contributions associated with this approach. First, different from most of the other access control approaches it adopts a dual access control mechanism which allows community services to define their local access control policy besides following the community membership policy. Second, behavior of these community services is monitored in order to guarantee a better QoS provision. Using this approach, the 3D video streaming application can be guaranteed with authentication and message confidentiality through the dual secure service discovery and access mechanism. Better application performance can also be achieved through the community member behavior audit.</p

Media fusion and future TV: Examining multi-screen TV convergence in Singapore

This study examines Singapore's national media blueprint and industry stakeholders' coping strategies in response to multi-screen TV development. The findings show Singapore muti-screen TV development is still at a nascent stage after launching Media Fushion and FutureTV plans in mid 2009. The policymakers play a key role to follow national media blueprint to unify the inter-industry and cross-country collaboration. TV operators and telcos are found to remediate themselves by harnessing the power of internet and mobile technologies for content innovation and distribution. To tackle the complicated convergent issues in multi-screen TV industry, this study proposes to separately regulate the technology-neutral platforms and diverse audiovisual content. It also recommends a pro-innovative policy with the light-touch licensing scheme and loose content regulation to facilitate the development of the next TV. --three-screen TV,multi-screen TV,convergence,media fusion,IPTV,mobile TV,cross-platform,TV technologies,TV market,TV policy

An inertial motion capture framework for constructing body sensor networks

Motion capture is the process of measuring and subsequently reconstructing the movement of an animated object or being in virtual space. Virtual reconstructions of human motion play an important role in numerous application areas such as animation, medical science, ergonomics, etc. While optical motion capture systems are the industry standard, inertial body sensor networks are becoming viable alternatives due to portability, practicality and cost. This thesis presents an innovative inertial motion capture framework for constructing body sensor networks through software environments, smartphones and web technologies. The first component of the framework is a unique inertial motion capture software environment aimed at providing an improved experimentation environment, accompanied by programming scaffolding and a driver development kit, for users interested in studying or engineering body sensor networks. The software environment provides a bespoke 3D engine for kinematic motion visualisations and a set of tools for hardware integration. The software environment is used to develop the hardware behind a prototype motion capture suit focused on low-power consumption and hardware-centricity. Additional inertial measurement units, which are available commercially, are also integrated to demonstrate the functionality the software environment while providing the framework with additional sources for motion data. The smartphone is the most ubiquitous computing technology and its worldwide uptake has prompted many advances in wearable inertial sensing technologies. Smartphones contain gyroscopes, accelerometers and magnetometers, a combination of sensors that is commonly found in inertial measurement units. This thesis presents a mobile application that investigates whether the smartphone is capable of inertial motion capture by constructing a novel omnidirectional body sensor network. This thesis proposes a novel use for web technologies through the development of the Motion Cloud, a repository and gateway for inertial data. Web technologies have the potential to replace motion capture file formats with online repositories and to set a new standard for how motion data is stored. From a single inertial measurement unit to a more complex body sensor network, the proposed architecture is extendable and facilitates the integration of any inertial hardware configuration. The Motion Cloud’s data can be accessed through an application-programming interface or through a web portal that provides users with the functionality for visualising and exporting the motion data

Biosignal and context monitoring: Distributed multimedia applications of body area networks in healthcare

We are investigating the use of Body Area Networks (BANs), wearable sensors and wireless communications for measuring, processing, transmission, interpretation and display of biosignals. The goal is to provide telemonitoring and teletreatment services for patients. The remote health professional can view a multimedia display which includes graphical and numerical representation of patients’ biosignals. Addition of feedback-control enables teletreatment services; teletreatment can be delivered to the patient via multiple modalities including tactile, text, auditory and visual. We describe the health BAN and a generic mobile health service platform and two context aware applications. The epilepsy application illustrates processing and interpretation of multi-source, multimedia BAN data. The chronic pain application illustrates multi-modal feedback and treatment, with patients able to view their own biosignals on their handheld device