The « Intelligent Wardrobe »

In an ageing society technical systems that support the residents at home are becoming increasingly important. Many of the technologies available today focus on detecting falls or monitoring the health of residents. There are a few projects that focus the « smart home for the elderly » and offer support for the daily activities. The Institute of Medical Informatics of the Bern University of Applied Sciences has developed a prototype of an intelligent wardrobe. Based on sensor data from the apartment like inside temperature, weather forecast and todays events suggestions for appropriate clothes are generated and shown on a display. To facilitate the search, the garments are marked in the closet with colored LEDs

Intertextuality of C.S. Lewis’ The Last Battle

The Chronicles of Narnia has an established position in the canon of children’s literature. However, what on the surface is a fairy tale involving adventures and magic; with children, kings, talking beasts, and wood spirits as main protagonists; is, in fact, a set of stories deeply rooted in Christian and chivalric traditions, containing elements of beast fable and morality tale. The story, according to Madeline L’Engle, depending on the reader's cultural knowledge and experience, may be understood on various levels, from the literal one of an adventure story for children, through the moral and allegorical levels, eventually reaching the anagogical level. While reading The Chronicles, one is able to notice various references to other written works, interwoven into the text, with the Bible, chivalric romances and beast fables being the most prominent sources of intertextual allusions. In The Last Battle Lewis attempts to answer John Donne’s question, “What if this present were the world’s last night?" (Holy Sonnet XIII) and presents a comprehensive image of Narnian apocalypse and life after death in Aslan’s country. The following paper will present the most noteworthy intertextual references in the final volume of The Narniad

May the Best (Looking) Man Win: The Unconscious Role of Attractiveness in Employment Decisions

[Excerpt] In 1972, Karen Dion, Ellen Berscheid, and Elaine Walster set out to determine whether people hold “stereotyped notions of the personality traits possessed by individuals of varying attractiveness.” The results of the study were astonishing: based only on the photographs provided, participants predicted attractive subjects would be happier, possess more socially desirable personalities, practice more prestigious occupations, and exhibit higher marital competence. Their findings were published in an article entitled “What is Beautiful is Good” and gave rise to an enduring theory of the same name. In the decades since the Dion et al. experiment, the “what is beautiful is good” hypothesis has played a particularly meaningful role in occupational studies. Given the high-stakes nature of job acquisition, many researchers have asked, for example, whether attractive job candidates are more likely to be hired than their peers. In short, attractive individuals will receive more job offers, better advancement opportunities, and higher salaries than their less attractive peers—despite numerous findings that they are no more intelligent or capable. This article aims to explore the sources and potential resolution of appearance-based employment decisions. In other words, now that we know appearance-based employment discrimination exists, where does it come from and what do we do about it? Part I examines the psychology of attractiveness, exploring what registers as attractive and what unconscious responses attractiveness commonly evokes. It begins with a definition of beauty in terms of both biological and performed traits and concludes with a discussion of beauty facts versus fictions. Part II provides an overview of existing legal remedies to victims of appearance-based discrimination and explains why legal reform is an ill-suited solution. After ruling out the law, this article concludes that appearance-based employment decisions should be curbed internally, via management and human resources efforts

Parameterized Synthetic Image Data Set for Fisheye Lens

Based on different projection geometry, a fisheye image can be presented as a parameterized non-rectilinear image. Deep neural networks(DNN) is one of the solutions to extract parameters for fisheye image feature description. However, a large number of images are required for training a reasonable prediction model for DNN. In this paper, we propose to extend the scale of the training dataset using parameterized synthetic images. It effectively boosts the diversity of images and avoids the data scale limitation. To simulate different viewing angles and distances, we adopt controllable parameterized projection processes on transformation. The reliability of the proposed method is proved by testing images captured by our fisheye camera. The synthetic dataset is the first dataset that is able to extend to a big scale labeled fisheye image dataset. It is accessible via: http://www2.leuphana.de/misl/fisheye-data-set/.Comment: 2018 5th International Conference on Information Science and Control Engineerin

T²GR²: Textile Touch Gesture Recognition with Graph Representation of EMG

The fashion industry’s negative impact and overconsumption require urgent action to improve and reduce fashion consumption. Tactile gesture plays a vital role in understanding, selecting, and feeling attached to clothes. In this paper, we introduce the FabricTouch II dataset with multimodal infromation, which focuses on fabric assessment touch gestures and aims to support sustainable fashion consumption. By integrating gesture labels, we enhance the dataset’s comprehensiveness, improve recognition accuracy, and provide valuable information for consumers and intelligent systems, such as conversational agents in shop or home wardrobe. Additionally, this study has made preliminary explorations on recognizing fabric touch gestures using time-spectral representations of EMG combined with graph representations on this small batch dataset. The experiment found that the graph representation of EMG outperforms the regular neural network and that the representation capacity of bilateral EMG data is superior to that of unilateral data

Spartan Daily, March 6, 1945

Volume 33, Issue 96https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/3576/thumbnail.jp

Values of Silent Commerce: A Study Using Value-Focused Thinking Approach

Silent commerce is a special type of u-commerce that uses RFID and sensor technologies to make objects intelligent and interactive. The unique features available in silent commerce will provide benefits and added values to users. This study aims to uncover the values of silent commerce from the customers’ perspectives and understand what customers desire and expect from silent commerce. The scenario-based method was adopted to provide subjects with the necessary background information and knowledge about the emerging silent commerce phenomenon. The Value-Focused Thinking approach, which provides a systematic way to articulate and organize values, was used to identify the values of silent commerce to users. The result of this study is a means-ends objective network that depicts the fundamental objectives of using silent commerce and how the fundamental objectives can be achieved through means objectives. The findings can serve as a conceptual foundation for future research in the u-commerce area and provide useful guidelines to practitioners in developing and implementing silent commerce applications

Body dissatisfaction, appearance investment and wellbeing: how older obese men orient to 'aesthetic health' [forthcoming]

Most research on male body image to date has focused on young men using quantitative methods. The study reported here is based on qualitative interviews with a sample of older men (n = 30) on a weight management programme, and we asked them about body-related feelings. The interviews were all transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis. Our results indicate that although body weight was typically minimised, body image was a key concern, with many examples of body consciousness and body dissatisfaction evident. On the other hand, post-programme weight loss was associated with a transformative shift in body image, with the men emphasising enhanced body confidence, self-esteem and psychological wellbeing. We conclude by highlighting the need to recognise and address appearance issues and/as health concerns for middle-aged and older men

Glass Ceilings & Leaky Pipelines: Gender Disparity in the Casino Industry

While women account for over half the hospitality workforce there is a gap in leadership positions. This study evaluates 10,950 management positions in 972 United States commercial and Native American casinos, as of December 2016. The results show women hold 35.5% of manager and above positions. Women lead in departments such as human resources, public relations, and sales and events, but lag in casino operations management. This demonstrates horizontal occupational segregation. The results also indicate women represent 46.7% of managers, but significantly less of executive leadership. Women held only 19.4% of owner, president, and chief positions. This suggests vertical occupational segregation or a potential glass ceiling. Gaps in vertical leadership occur across individual departments as well