Applications of Virtual Reality

Information Technology is growing rapidly. With the birth of high-resolution graphics, high-speed computing and user interaction devices Virtual Reality has emerged as a major new technology in the mid 90es, last century. Virtual Reality technology is currently used in a broad range of applications. The best known are games, movies, simulations, therapy. From a manufacturing standpoint, there are some attractive applications including training, education, collaborative work and learning. This book provides an up-to-date discussion of the current research in Virtual Reality and its applications. It describes the current Virtual Reality state-of-the-art and points out many areas where there is still work to be done. We have chosen certain areas to cover in this book, which we believe will have potential significant impact on Virtual Reality and its applications. This book provides a definitive resource for wide variety of people including academicians, designers, developers, educators, engineers, practitioners, researchers, and graduate students

Investigating the build-up of precedence effect using reflection masking

The auditory processing level involved in the build‐up of precedence [Freyman et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 90, 874–884 (1991)] has been investigated here by employing reflection masked threshold (RMT) techniques. Given that RMT techniques are generally assumed to address lower levels of the auditory signal processing, such an approach represents a bottom‐up approach to the buildup of precedence. Three conditioner configurations measuring a possible buildup of reflection suppression were compared to the baseline RMT for four reflection delays ranging from 2.5–15 ms. No buildup of reflection suppression was observed for any of the conditioner configurations. Buildup of template (decrease in RMT for two of the conditioners), on the other hand, was found to be delay dependent. For five of six listeners, with reflection delay=2.5 and 15 ms, RMT decreased relative to the baseline. For 5‐ and 10‐ms delay, no change in threshold was observed. It is concluded that the low‐level auditory processing involved in RMT is not sufficient to realize a buildup of reflection suppression. This confirms suggestions that higher level processing is involved in PE buildup. The observed enhancement of reflection detection (RMT) may contribute to active suppression at higher processing levels

The Architecture of Nineteenth-Century Cuban Sugar Mills: Creole Power and African Resistance in Late Colonial Cuba

By the mid-nineteenth century, Cuba had become the world\u27s leading sugar producer, providing about a third of the world\u27s supply. As a result, sugar mills dominated the Cuban countryside, each one growing into a micro-town, with housing complexes (mansions for owners and slave barracks or bohios for workers), industrial facilities (mills and boiler houses), and adjoining buildings (kitchens, infirmaries, etc.), all organized around a central, open space, known as a batey. Owned by the Creole elite (New World offspring of Spanish settlers) and worked by African slaves, sugar mills became places of enslavement and subjugation as well as contact, interaction, and mestizaje. My dissertation will provide the first comprehensive and in-depth study of the architecture of nineteenth-century Cuban sugar mills, with a twofold aim: first, to examine how the Creole sugar planters designed and manipulated the architectural forms and spaces to convey order, power, and affluence, and to enforce slavery and racial difference; second, to analyze how African slaves countered Creole power through violent forms of resistance (intentional fires, collective protests) as well as non-violent ones (preservation of native customs, beliefs, music and dance) that involved subversive and transformative uses of architectural spaces. A study of socio-spatial negotiation, this dissertation traces the process by which an architectural setting designed for subjugation developed a distinctive architectural language. The first chapter reconstructs the typical plantation scheme adopted by most Cuban planters in the early nineteenth century, analyzing how it combined earlier Spanish models with more contemporaneous Neoclassical ones. The second chapter analyzes the architecture of the industrial naves, along with the beautifully rendered nineteenth-century lithographs of Eduardo Laplante, in the context of the Creoles\u27 fascination with technology and mechanization. Chapter three explores the ways in which planters used architecture to enforce segregation, full visibility, and panoptic surveillance, while chapter four examines the development of a unique, distinctively Cuban architectural language, clearly manifested in the bohios and casas de viviendas. The fifth and last chapter investigates how the slaves appropriated and transformed the architectural spaces to undermine Creole power and make their own condition more bearable

Space is the machine: a configurational theory of architecture

Since The social logic of space was published in 1984, Bill Hillier and his colleagues at University College London have been conducting research on how space features in the form and functioning of buildings and cities. A key outcome is the concept of ‘spatial configuration’ — meaning relations which take account of other relations in a complex. New techniques have been developed and applied to a wide range of architectural and urban problems. The aim of this book is to assemble some of this work and show how it leads the way to a new type of theory of architecture: an ‘analytic’ theory in which understanding and design advance together. The success of configurational ideas in bringing to light the spatial logic of buildings and cities suggests that it might be possible to extend these ideas to other areas of the human sciences where problems of configuration and pattern are critical

Foraging, personality and parasites : investigations into the behavioural ecology of fishes

This thesis investigated differences in foraging behaviour, personality and parasitic infection, using behaviour experiments, traditional parasitology and molecular ecology. Five fish species, and a directly-transmitted ectoparasite, were used as model organisms. Evidence for a conservative foraging strategy was found in the four tropical fish species (Poecilia reticulata, P. sphenops, Xiphophorus maculates, X. hellerii) and in a temperate species (Gasterosteus aculeatus). In the latter, this behaviour was unaffected by social context, with no significant differences between isolated fish and shoals. Also, guppies showed a reduced acceptance of novel, conspicuously-coloured prey. Furthermore, using molecular scatology techniques, both prey and host species-specific DNA were detected in fish faecal samples so this methodology can be used in the future to examine diet in the wild. When considering the personality trait, boldness, guppies from two wild populations differed significantly in their relative boldness, but individuals within a single population were similar in their relative boldness. Boldness of fish was affected by mating, with virgin and pregnant females being bolder than their mated counterparts. Also, boldness impacted on shoaling behaviour, shy fish formed larger and tighter shoals than bold conspecifics. This had consequences for parasite transmission, with shy fish having higher parasite loads and a greater change in parasite load across an infection period than their bold counterparts. Furthermore, host contact was the main factor influencing transmission of a directly-transmitted ectoparasite within a group-living host species. Significantly more parasites were transmitted between hosts when hosts had more frequent and more prolonged contact with each other. Clearly, monitoring individual differences in various aspects of an animal's behaviour can answer many questions of ecological relevance, as well as discovering the evolutionary origins of such individual behavioural traits.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Value and price: a critical analysis of the "transformation problem”

Von Bortkiewicz commences his analysis of Marx with an assertion, viz., that there is a quantitative disagreement between value and price of production, or granting an approximate exactness, a quantitative disagreement between value and price constituting a specific characteristic of Marx: "The quantitative incongruity of value and price (more precisely: price of production) forms a specific characteristic of Marx's theory of the capitalist economy." (von Bortkiewicz, 1952, p. 5) Far from proceeding next to qualify or substantiate his claims on Marx, von Bortkiewicz presents us instead with a theory of value. This, he does "in order to avoid misunderstandings due to the multiple significance of the concept of value." (von Bortkiewicz, 1952, p.6) At first glance, he has a sui generis way of proceeding. He pleads to avoid "misunderstandings" by means of providing several understandings. The "multiple significance of the concept of value" looks like a contradiction in terms. Von Bortkiewicz's observations on value are most helpful, as he would explain to us more precisely how value can have not one but many meanings, multiple meanings according to him. To his explanations, we proceed next

Dress and Visual Identities of the Nyonyas in the British Straits Settlements; mid-nineteenth to early-twentieth century

This thesis examines the identities of the Straits Chinese women presented visually through their dress in the former British Straits Settlements from the mid-nineteenth to the early-twentieth century. The Straits Chinese were the Straits-born Chinese who were British subjects; their women were often called Nyonyas during the period under study. For that reason, the identities of Straits Chinese women are frequently assumed to be the same to that of Nyonyas. This thesis challenges that assumption and argues that the Nyonyas, unlike their men, did not visually present themselves as Straits Chinese women in the way they dressed, until a later point in time. It is the main argument of this thesis that their identities presented visually through their dress switched from being ‘local Nyonyas’ to being ‘locally born Straits Chinese women’, consequently revealing a visual gap in identity between Straits Chinese men and women before the twentieth century. Straits Chinese men or Babas initially adhered to Chinese costume before adopting western attire in the later part of the colonial period. Nyonya dress, on the other hand, was unique, hybrid and adapted from the local dress styles of insular Southeast Asia in the period before twentieth century. Since the Nyonyas had a different visual approach to the men in the way they presented themselves to the world through dress, this thesis argues that the Nyonyas developed separate identities to the Babas, visually. The early twentieth century witnessed a process of change in dress among the Nyonyas, from local dress styles to Chinese and Western styles. This thesis demonstrates that the Nyonyas identities also changed visually, along with their dress styles. The identities portrayed visually switched and enabled the Nyonyas to join their men and be ‘Straits Chinese’, that is both (Straits) ‘Chinese’ and ‘British’ (subjects). This thesis employs a visual approach to interrogate the identities of the Nyonyas, in a context where written sources by the Nyonyas are scarce. Specifically, this thesis reconstructs the Nyonyas’ visual identities through their dress relying mainly on the evidence captured in portrait photographs and paintings, as well as dress materials that survive today. This thesis demonstrates that the changing identities of Nyonyas can be observed visually through their dress and that the Nyonyas did not associate themselves with the ‘Straits Chinese’, visually at least, until the early twentieth century when they visually asserted themselves as such