A First Step Towards Nuance-Oriented Interfaces for Virtual Environments

Designing usable interfaces for virtual environments (VEs) is not a trivial task. Much of the difficulty stems from the complexity and volume of the input data. Many VEs, in the creation of their interfaces, ignore much of the input data as a result of this. Using machine learning (ML), we introduce the notion of a nuance that can be used to increase the precision and power of a VE interface. An experiment verifying the existence of nuances using a neural network (NN) is discussed and a listing of guidelines to follow is given. We also review reasons why traditional ML techniques are difficult to apply to this problem

Affordances and Feedback in Nuance-Oriented Interfaces

Virtual Environments (VEs) and perceptive user interfaces must deal with complex users and their modes of interaction. One way to approach this problem is to recognize users’ nuances (subtle conscious or unconscious actions). In exploring nuance-oriented interfaces, we attempted to let users work as they preferred without being biased by feedback or affordances in the system. The hope was that we would discover the users’ innate models of interaction. The results of two user studies were that users are guided not by any innate model but by affordances and feedback in the interface. So, without this guidance, even the most obvious and useful components of an interface will be ignored

The Pacific Ocean and the Pacific Northwest

"…the Pacific Northwest seems to stand at the point where the national control passed over to the international interest in the great ocean…

The State Archives at Olympia

"In a report on the State archives of Washington… I gave a detailed account of the condition and contents of the archives at Olympia, Tacoma and Seattle.

The Establishment of the State Government in California, 1846-1850

"The book is well written; it is, however, a bit broken and irregular in its story through following carefully the chronology of events.

Visualization of dominant stress-transfer mechanisms in experimental debris flows of different particle-size distribution

Physical modelling of debris flow in a small-scale flume has been carried out to investigate the internal stress-transfer mechanisms within unsteady, saturated, and segregating granular free-surface flows. Measurements of the internal velocity fields within model flows were obtained via planar laser–induced fluorescence and particle image velocimetry. Normalized velocity profiles taken at a section over the flow duration were found to essentially collapse onto a single curve, the shape of which was dependent on the particle-size distribution. While all flows exhibited internal basal slip and shear, for tests on well-graded materials that are most representative of debris flows, the shear rate was found to reduce towards the surface to near-zero, exhibiting near plug-flow. Dimensional analysis shows that particles of different size within these flows experienced different dominant stress-transfer mechanisms — frictional, collisional or viscous. Rapid grain-size segregation therefore is both due to and results in different modes of stress transfer within a single flow. This means that in a segregating and hence, stratified system, different flow regimes will act concurrently at microscale and mesoscale. Results highlight the complexity of debris flows, so that it may be undesirable to ascribe a single microscale constitutive behaviour throughout, and further calls into question the concept of flow regimes for debris flows based on bulk measurements

Editorial

What is the meaning of ‘forms’ practice within the traditional Asian martial arts? Were Bruce Lee’s movies actually ‘kung fu’ films? Was the famous Ali vs. Inoki fight a step on the pathway to MMA or a paradoxical failure to communicate? What pitfalls await the unwary as we rush to define key terms in a newly emerging, but still undertheorized, discipline? The rich and varied articles offered in Issue 3 of Martial Arts Studies pose these questions and many more. Taken as a set, they reflect the growing scholarly engagement between our field and a variety of theoretical and methodological traditions. Many monographs, academic articles, book chapters, conference papers and proceedings that have appeared over the last year have been forced to address the question that Paul Bowman raised in the very first issue of this journal in 2015: Is martial arts studies an academic field