14 research outputs found

    Perspectives On Lhc Physics

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    The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), located at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland, is the world's largest and highest energy and highest intensity particle accelerator. Here is a timely book with several perspectives on the hoped-for discoveries from the LHC.This book provides an overview on the techniques that will be crucial for finding new physics at the LHC, as well as perspectives on the importance and implications of the discoveries. Among the accomplished contributors to this book are leaders and visionaries in the field of particle physics beyond the Standard Model, including two Nobel Laureates (Steven Weinberg and Frank Wilczek), and presumably some future Nobel Laureates, plus top younger theorists and experimenters. With its blend of popular and technical contents, the book will have wide appeal, not only to physical scientists but also to those in related fields

    Letrar : um modelo de ambiente virtual de apoio ao ensino da língia portuguesa escrita como segunda língua para crianças surdas mediado pela Libras

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    Orientadora: Profª. Drª. Laura Sánchez GarcíaCoorientadora: Profª. Drª. Tanya Amara FelipeTese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal do Paraná, Setor de Ciências Exatas, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Informática. Defesa : Curitiba, 19/11/2021Inclui referênciasÁrea de concentração: Ciência da ComputaçãoResumo: A proposta desta tese foi desenvolver um ambiente virtual com um método de letramento para crianças surdas do 1º e 2º ano do ensino fundamental. A tese está inserida na Arquitetura de Interação Humano-Computador em Língua de Sinais (HCI-SL). A hipótese da pesquisa consistiu em: propor um ambiente adequado para crianças surdas, com recursos tecnológicos e ferramentas acessíveis, capaz de auxiliar o processo de letramento/alfabetização e que privilegie as diferenças linguísticas destas. Desenvolveu-se um protótipo navegável não funcional para um Ambiente Virtual, o Letrar, de apoio ao Letramento de crianças surdas, mediado pela LIBRAS. No ambiente, utilizou-se o Método de Letramento pela Via Direta (MLVD) da Associação Francesa de Leitura - AFL. A pesquisa-Ação anterior a esta tese comprovou a eficiência do método. Para esta tese, foram realizadas revisões de literatura de teses e dissertações da arquitetura HCI-SL, Revisões Sistemáticas de Literatura-RSL para coleta dos requisitos do Avatar - requisitos necessários de Ambiente Virtual de Aprendizagem e ferramentas comuns nos modelos de AVA-Moodle, um curso EAD de qualificação profissional em Formação Continuada de Tutores à Distância com a duração de 120 horas, a fim de utilizar um ambiente de aprendizagem na plataforma Moodle, e revisões de literatura sobre o contexto dos sujeitos surdos e letramento. Especialistas em IHC inclusiva aos Surdos avaliaram o protótipo. Desenvolveu-se a primeira versão do protótipo, e, posteriormente, o protótipo navegável que totalizou 49 (quarenta e nove) frames. Utilizaram-se, na avaliação, o Método de Inspeção Semiótica - MIS e o Método de Avaliação de Comunicabilidade - MAC, bem como Identificaram-se problemas para reajustes e melhorias futuras. Avaliaram-se as ferramentas AVA, incluídas no ambiente, por uma docente especialista que atua com o mesmo público desta tese há mais de 9 (nove) anos. Acredita-se que o ambiente desenvolvido atende às necessidades levantadas no início desta tese. O recurso de acessibilidade é oferecido com a tradução da Língua de Sinais e outros recursos que atendem a WCAG. Além disso, oferece um guia/diretriz para a elaboração das atividades e sugestões de como explorar no contexto do público Surdo. Realizou-se a análise da proposta curricular - PSLS/ 2021 para o ensino de Português como L2 para Surdos, comparando-a às atividades propostas no ambiente. Assim, revelou-se que as atividades já constantes do Ambiente se coadunam com a maioria das atividades dos cadernos da Educação Infantil, do 1º e do 2º ano. Também analisou-se a Lei n.º 14.191/2021 e suas diferenças em relação à Lei n.º 13.146/2015. Espera-se que, uma vez testado por professores e estudantes Surdos, atualizado e implementado, o ambiente Letrar possa contribuir, inicialmente, como uma ferramenta de apoio ao docente e discente em relação à aprendizagem da Língua Portuguesa escrita.Abstract: The proposal of this Thesis is inserted in the Sign Language Human-Computer Interaction Architecture (HCI-SL). The research hypothesis consisted of: proposing a suitable environment for deaf children, with technological resources and accessible tools, capable of assisting the literacy/literacy process and that favors the linguistic differences of these children. A nonfunctional navigable prototype was developed for a Virtual Environment the Letrar to support Literacy for deaf children mediated by LIBRAS. In the environment, the Direct Way Literacy Method (DWLM) of the French Reading Association - AFL was used. The Action Research prior to this thesis, proved the efficiency of the method. For this thesis, literature reviews of thesis and dissertations of the HCI-SL architecture were carried out, Systematic Literature Reviews-RSL to collect the Avatar requirements - necessary Virtual Learning Environment requirements and common tools in the AVA-Moodle models, an EAD course of professional qualification in Continuing Education of Distance Tutors lasting 120 hours, in order to use a learning environment on the Moodle platform, and literature reviews on the context of deaf subjects and literacy. The prototype was evaluated by specialists in IHC inclusive of the Deaf. The first paper version of the prototype was developed, and later the navigable prototype which totaled 49 (forty-nine) frames. The Semiotic Inspection Method - MIS and the Communicability Assessment Method - MAC, were used in the evaluation, identifying problems for readjustments and future improvements. The VLE tools included in the environment were evaluated by an expert teacher who has worked with the same audience as this thesis for more than 9 (nine) years. It is believed that the developed environment meets the needs raised at the beginning of this thesis. The accessibility feature is provided with Sign Language translation and other features that support WCAG. And, it offers a guide/guideline for the elaboration of the activities, and suggestions on how to explore the activities. The analysis of the curricular proposal - PSLS/ 2021 for the teaching of Portuguese as L2 for the Deaf was carried out and compared with the activities proposed in the environment, revealing that the activities already included in the Environment are consistent with most activities in the Early Childhood Education notebooks, 1st and 2nd year. The thesis analyzed Law nº. 14.191/2021, and their differences in relation to Law no. 13.146/2015. It is expected that, once tested by Deaf teachers and students, updated and implemented, the Letrar environment can contribute, initially, as a support tool for teachers and students for the effective literacy of deaf children, as it can serve, also, to listeners in teaching and learning the written Portuguese language

    Avatars with faces of real people: A construction method for scientific experiments in virtual reality

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    Experimental psychology research typically employs methods that greatly simplify the real-world conditions within which cognition occurs. This approach has been successful for isolating cognitive processes, but cannot adequately capture how perception operates in complex environments. In turn, real-world environments rarely afford the access and control required for rigorous scientific experimentation. In recent years, technology has advanced to provide a solution to these problems, through the development of affordable high-capability virtual reality (VR) equipment. The application of VR is now increasing rapidly in psychology, but the realism of its avatars, and the extent to which they visually represent real people, is captured poorly in current VR experiments. Here, we demonstrate a user-friendly method for creating photo-realistic avatars of real people and provide a series of studies to demonstrate their psychological characteristics. We show that avatar faces of familiar people are recognised with high accuracy (Study 1), replicate the familiarity advantage typically observed in real-world face matching (Study 2), and show that these avatars produce a similarity-space that corresponds closely with real photographs of the same faces (Study 3). These studies open the way to conducting psychological experiments on visual perception and social cognition with increased realism in VR

    Online opera: an applied collision of opera and web creativity

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    This practice-based research explores the collision of opera and web creativity through the development and evaluation of a new 'online opera' called "The Village" (2015). Contrasting existing offerings that position the web as a means of disseminating more familiar representations of opera, "The Village" draws on concepts of participatory culture, digital storytelling and co-creativity to advance a culturally novel apprehension of online opera that treats the web as a unique creative space. This interpretation is intrinsically digital, unable to be realised through conventional forms of theatrical presentation, and transformative in its approach to the core elements of opera. "The Village" in additional serves as a vehicle to investigate how the phenomenon of 'liveness' - that is, a feeling of 'now-ness' experienced in live performance - may be reimagined in the context of an entirely mediated opera. A range of theoretical perspectives are drawn on to establish a set of liveness devices that attempt to evoke in visitors to "The Village" a sense of contemporaneity and shared experience. These include temporal alignment between virtual and real-world events and the facilitation of social interaction through a narrative mechanism called the 'Digital Chorus', amongst others. Evaluative activities critique the effectiveness of such devices, and offer means in which they may be modified to better construct 'the live'

    Técnicas de coste reducido para el posicionamiento del paciente en radioterapia percutánea utilizando un sistema de imágenes ópticas

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    Patient positioning is an important part of radiation therapy which is one of the main solutions for the treatment of malignant tissue in the human body. Currently, the most common patient positioning methods expose healthy tissue of the patient's body to extra dangerous radiations. Other non-invasive positioning methods are either not very accurate or are very costly for an average hospital. In this thesis, we explore the possibility of developing a system comprised of affordable hardware and advanced computer vision algorithms that facilitates patient positioning. Our algorithms are based on the usage of affordable RGB-D sensors, image features, ArUco planar markers, and other geometry registration methods. Furthermore, we take advantage of consumer-level computing hardware to make our systems widely accessible. More specifically, we avoid the usage of approaches that need to take advantage of dedicated GPU hardware for general-purpose computing since they are more costly. In different publications, we explore the usage of the mentioned tools to increase the accuracy of reconstruction/localization of the patient in its pose. We also take into account the visualization of the patient's target position with respect to their current position in order to assist the person who performs patient positioning. Furthermore, we make usage of augmented reality in conjunction with a real-time 3D tracking algorithm for better interaction between the program and the operator. We also solve more fundamental problems about ArUco markers that could be used in the future to improve our systems. These include highquality multi-camera calibration and mapping using ArUco markers plus detection of these markers in event cameras which are very useful in the presence of fast camera movement. In the end, we conclude that it is possible to increase the accuracy of 3D reconstruction and localization by combining current computer vision algorithms with fiducial planar markers with RGB-D sensors. This is reflected in the low amount of error we have achieved in our experiments for patient positioning, pushing forward the state of the art for this application.En el tratamiento de tumores malignos en el cuerpo, el posicionamiento del paciente en las sesiones de radioterapia es una cuestión crucial. Actualmente, los métodos más comunes de posicionamiento del paciente exponen tejido sano del mismo a radiaciones peligrosas debido a que no es posible asegurar que la posición del paciente siempre sea la misma que la que tuvo cuando se planificó la zona a radiar. Los métodos que se usan actualmente, o no son precisos o tienen costes que los hacen inasequibles para ser usados en hospitales con financiación limitada. En esta Tesis hemos analizado la posibilidad de desarrollar un sistema compuesto por hardware de bajo coste y métodos avanzados de visión por ordenador que ayuden a que el posicionamiento del paciente sea el mismo en las diferentes sesiones de radioterapia, con respecto a su pose cuando fue se planificó la zona a radiar. La solución propuesta como resultado de la Tesis se basa en el uso de sensores RGB-D, características extraídas de la imagen, marcadores cuadrados denominados ArUco y métodos de registro de la geometría en la imagen. Además, en la solución propuesta, se aprovecha la existencia de hardware convencional de bajo coste para hacer nuestro sistema ampliamente accesible. Más específicamente, evitamos el uso de enfoques que necesitan aprovechar GPU, de mayores costes, para computación de propósito general. Se han obtenido diferentes publicaciones para conseguir el objetivo final. Las mismas describen métodos para aumentar la precisión de la reconstrucción y la localización del paciente en su pose, teniendo en cuenta la visualización de la posición ideal del paciente con respecto a su posición actual, para ayudar al profesional que realiza la colocación del paciente. También se han propuesto métodos de realidad aumentada junto con algoritmos para seguimiento 3D en tiempo real para conseguir una mejor interacción entre el sistema ideado y el profesional que debe realizar esa labor. De forma añadida, también se han propuesto soluciones para problemas fundamentales relacionados con el uso de marcadores cuadrados que han sido utilizados para conseguir el objetivo de la Tesis. Las soluciones propuestas pueden ser empleadas en el futuro para mejorar otros sistemas. Los problemas citados incluyen la calibración y el mapeo multicámara de alta calidad utilizando los marcadores y la detección de estos marcadores en cámaras de eventos, que son muy útiles en presencia de movimientos rápidos de la cámara. Al final, concluimos que es posible aumentar la precisión de la reconstrucción y localización en 3D combinando los actuales algoritmos de visión por ordenador, que usan marcadores cuadrados de referencia, con sensores RGB-D. Los resultados obtenidos con respecto al error que el sistema obtiene al reproducir el posicionamiento del paciente suponen un importante avance en el estado del arte de este tópico

    A Holmes and Doyle Bibliography, Volume 9: All Formats—Combined Alphabetical Listing

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    This bibliography is a work in progress. It attempts to update Ronald B. De Waal’s comprehensive bibliography, The Universal Sherlock Holmes, but does not claim to be exhaustive in content. New works are continually discovered and added to this bibliography. Readers and researchers are invited to suggest additional content. This volume contains all listings in all formats, arranged alphabetically by author or main entry. In other words, it combines the listings from Volume 1 (Monograph and Serial Titles), Volume 3 (Periodical Articles), and Volume 7 (Audio/Visual Materials) into a comprehensive bibliography. (There may be additional materials included in this list, e.g. duplicate items and items not yet fully edited.) As in the other volumes, coverage of this material begins around 1994, the final year covered by De Waal's bibliography, but may not yet be totally up-to-date (given the ongoing nature of this bibliography). It is hoped that other titles will be added at a later date. At present, this bibliography includes 12,594 items

    Personalized Digital Body: Enhancing Body Ownership and Spatial Presence in Virtual Reality

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    person\u27s sense of acceptance of a virtual body as his or her own is generally called virtual body ownership (VBOI). Having such a mental model of one\u27s own body transferred to a virtual human surrogate is known to play a critical role in one\u27s sense of presence in a virtual environment. Our focus in this dissertation is on top-down processing based on visual perception in both the visuomotor and the visuotactile domains, using visually personalized body cues. The visual cues we study here range from ones that we refer to as direct and others that we classify as indirect. Direct cues are associated with body parts that play a central role in the task we are performing. Such parts typically dominate a person\u27s foveal view and will include one or both of their hands. Indirect body cues come from body parts that are normally seen in our peripheral view, e.g., legs and torso, and that are often observed through some mediation and are not directly associated with the current task. This dissertation studies how and to what degree direct and indirect cues affect a person\u27s sense of VBOI for which they are receiving direct and, sometimes, inaccurate cues, and to investigate the relationship between enhanced virtual body ownership and task performance. Our experiments support the importance of a personalized representation, even for indirect cues. Additionally, we studied gradual versus instantaneous transition between one\u27s own body and a virtual surrogate body, and between one\u27s real-world environment and a virtual environment. We demonstrate that gradual transition has a significant influence on virtual body ownership and presence. In a follow-on study, we increase fidelity by using a personalized hand. Here, we demonstrate that a personalized hand significantly improves dominant visual illusions, resulting in more accurate perception of virtual object sizes

    A Holmes and Doyle Bibliography, Volume 5: Periodical Articles--Secondary References, Alphabetical Listing

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    This bibliography is a work in progress. It attempts to update Ronald B. De Waal’s comprehensive bibliography, The Universal Sherlock Holmes, but does not claim to be exhaustive in content. New works are continually discovered and added to this bibliography. Readers and researchers are invited to suggest additional content. Volume 5 includes "passing" or "secondary" references, i.e. those entries that are passing in nature or contain very brief information or content

    A Holmes and Doyle Bibliography, Volume 6: Periodical Articles, Subject Listing, By De Waal Category

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    This bibliography is a work in progress. It attempts to update Ronald B. De Waal’s comprehensive bibliography, The Universal Sherlock Holmes, but does not claim to be exhaustive in content. New works are continually discovered and added to this bibliography. Readers and researchers are invited to suggest additional content. Volume 6 presents the periodical literature arranged by subject categories (as originally devised for the De Waal bibliography and slightly modified here)
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