Collective choreography of space: modelling digital co-Presence in a public arena

In this paper we report on recent investigations within an ongoing research project, which aims at developing a better understanding of the urban space augmented with the digital space. We are looking at developing sensing environments acting as an interface that can facilitate interactions between people and people, and people and their surrounding. Here we describe a preliminary study that aims at mapping and visualising the digital presence of people in the public arena. We outline initial observations about how people move and congregate, and illustrate the impact of the spatial and syntactical properties on the type of shared interactions. We suggest that by altering the relation between consciousness of communication and the intention of interaction, technology can be appropriated to support emergent choreography of space. This may help throw further light on the complex relationship between the digital space and urban space in general, and people’s relationship to each other and to the sensing environment. Finally, we discuss our initial results and mention briefly our ongoing work

The urban screen as a socialising platform: exploring the role of place within the urban space

In this paper we explore shared encounters mediated by technologies in the urban space. We investigate aspects that influence the interactions between people and people and people and their surroundings when technology is introduced in the urban space. We highlight the importance of space and the role of place in providing temporal and spatial mechanisms facilitating different types of social interactions and shared encounters. An emperical experiment was condeucted with a prototype that was implemented in the form of a digital screen, embeded in the physical surrounding in selected locations with low, medium and high pedestrian flows in the heritage City of Bath, UK. The aim is to create a novel urban experience that triggers shared encounters among friends, observers or strangers. Using the body as an interaface, the screen acted as a non-traditional interface and a facilitator between people and people and people and their surrounding environment. Here we outline early findings from deploying the digital screen as a socialiasing platform in a city context. We describe the user experience and demonstrate how people move, congregate and socialize around the digital surface. We illustrate the impact of the spatial and syntactical properties on the type of shared interactions in and highlight related issues. The initial findings indicated that introducing a digital platform as a public interactive installation in the urban space may provide a stage for emergent social interactions among various people and motivate users to actively and collaboratively play with the media. However, situating the digital platform in various locations, and depending on the context, might generate diverse and unpredicted social behaviours designers might be unaware of. In this respect we believe that the final experience is shaped by interconnection of structural, social, cultural, temporal and perhaps personal elements. We conclude by mentioning briefly our on going work

A sense of place and pervasive computing within the urban landscape

In this paper we report on recent investigations within an ongoing research project, which aims at developing a better understanding of the urban landscape augmented with the digital landscape in the heritage City of Bath. Here we describe early findings from the deployment of a socialiasing digital installation in various locations in the city. The aim is to create a novel urban experience that triggers shared social encounters among friends, observes or strangers. The installation is implemented in the form of a digital urban ground , embeded in the physical surrounding, which acts as a non-traditional interface and a facilitator between people and people and people and their surrounding environment . In this paper we explore the relationship between the urban space and technology driven encounters. We outline initial findings about how people move, congregate and socialize around the digital ground and illustrate the impact of the spatial and syntactical properties on the type of shared interactions in a city context. Finally we discuss initial results and mention briefly our on going work

A socializing interactive installation for the urban environments

In this paper we present the LEDs Urban Carpet: an interactive urban installation using a body-input as a form of a non-traditional user interface. The installation was tested in various locations around the city of Bath, UK. We selected locations with low, medium and high pedestrian flows. The aim is to generate a novel urban experience, which can be introduced in different locations in the city and with different social situations. The installation represents a game with a grid of LEDs that can be embedded as an interactive carpet into the urban context. A pattern of lights is generated dynamically following the pedestrians movement over the carpet. In this case the pedestrians become active participants that influence the generative process and make the pattern of LED-s change. The paper suggests that introducing this kind of display in a social scenario can enrich the casual interaction of people nearby and this might enhance social awareness and engagement. However, we should point out that a number of factors need to be taken into consideration when designing an interactive installation, especially when situated within the urban space. The experience we present here can assist designers in understanding difficulties and issues that need to be taken into account during the design of an interactive urban project of this nature

Generating Narrative Spaces from Events History

For a successful distributed teamwork it is vital to provide team-members with awareness on collaborative activities. One way of achieving this is through applying a narrative based approach to construct the events that have taken place on documents and folders in a project workspace, as various members make changes to its content. The research presented in this paper investigates the possibility of exploring the history of activities performed by team members. Past events are aggregated in the form of a three dimensional environment time tunnel, providing the team-members with a generative tool to visualize the project?s events history in various configurations, in order to reveal the usually hidden relationships between separate pieces of events. Furthermore we provide a tool for managing and inspecting the folder?s contents: the DocuDrama Timetunnel. Here we present preliminary findings showing how the visualisation of a sequence of connected actions and happenings using a temporal and spatial narrative based approach may lead to a better understanding of the project-related events history

Seeding of the nematic-isotropic phase transition by an electric field

In this paper, we use a relatively simple continuum model to investigate the effects of dielectric inhomogeneity within confined liquid crystal cells. Specifically, we consider, in planar, cylindrical and spherical geometries, the stability of a nematic-isotropic interface subject to an applied voltage. Depending on the magnitude of this voltage, the temperature and the geometry of the cell, the nematic region may shrink until the material is completely isotropic within the cell, grow until the nematic phase cells the cell or, in certain geometries, coexist with the isotropic phase. For planar geometry, no coexistence is found, but we are able to give analytical expressions for the critical voltage for an electric-field-induced phase transition as well as the critical wetting layer thickness for arbitrary applied voltage. In cells with cylindrical and spherical geometries, however, stable nematic-isotropic coexistence is predicted, the thickness of the nematic region being controllable by alteration of the applied voltage.</p

Searching for novel cell cycle regulators in Trypanosoma brucei with an RNA interference screen

&lt;b&gt;Background&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt; The protozoan parasite, Trypanosoma brucei, is spread by the tsetse fly and causes Human African Trypanosomiasis. Its cell cycle is complex and not fully understood at the molecular level. The T. brucei genome contains over 6000 protein coding genes with &gt;50% having no predicted function. A small scale RNA interference (RNAi) screen was carried out in Trypanosoma brucei to evaluate the prospects for identifying novel cycle regulators.&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;b&gt;Results&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt; Procyclic form T. brucei were transfected with a genomic RNAi library and 204 clones isolated. However, only 76 RNAi clones were found to target a protein coding gene of potential interest. These clones were screened for defects in proliferation and cell cycle progression following RNAi induction. Sixteen clones exhibited proliferation defects upon RNAi induction, with eight clones displaying potential cell cycle defects. To confirm the phenotypes, new RNAi cell lines were generated and characterised for five genes targeted in these clones. While we confirmed that the targeted genes are essential for proliferation, we were unable to unambiguously classify them as cell cycle regulators.&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;b&gt;Conclusion&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt; Our study identified genes essential for proliferation, but did not, as hoped, identify novel cell cycle regulators. Screening of the RNAi library for essential genes was extremely labour-intensive, which was compounded by the suboptimal quality of the library. For such a screening method to be viable for a large scale or genome wide screen, a new, significantly improved RNAi library will be required, and automated phenotyping approaches will need to be incorporated.&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt

Tracking autophagy during proliferation and differentiation of trypanosoma brucei

Autophagy is a lysosome-dependent degradation mechanism that sequesters target cargo into autophagosomal vesicles. The Trypanosoma brucei genome contains apparent orthologues of several autophagy-related proteins including an ATG8 family. These ubiquitin-like proteins are required for autophagosome membrane formation, but our studies show that ATG8.3 is atypical. To investigate the function of other ATG proteins, RNAi compatible T. brucei were modified to function as autophagy reporter lines by expressing only either YFP-ATG8.1 or YFP-ATG8.2. In the insect procyclic lifecycle stage, independent RNAi down-regulation of ATG3 or ATG7 generated autophagy-defective mutants and confirmed a pro-survival role for autophagy in the procyclic form nutrient starvation response. Similarly, RNAi depletion of ATG5 or ATG7 in the bloodstream form disrupted autophagy, but did not impede proliferation. Further characterisation showed bloodstream form autophagy mutants retain the capacity to undergo the complex cellular remodelling that occurs during differentiation to the procyclic form and are equally susceptible to dihydroxyacetone-induced cell death as wild type parasites, not supporting a role for autophagy in this cell death mechanism. The RNAi reporter system developed, which also identified TOR1 as a negative regulator controlling YFP-ATG8.2 but not YFP-ATG8.1 autophagosome formation, will enable further targeted analysis of the mechanisms and function of autophagy in the medically relevant bloodstream form of T. brucei

Multistable alignment states in nematic liquid crystal filled wells

Two distinct, stable alignment states have been observed for a nematic liquid crystal confined in a layer with thickness of 12 μm and in square wells with sides of length between 20 and 80 μm. The director lies in the plane of the layer and line defects occur in two corners of the squares. The positions of the defects determine whether the director orientation is across the diagonal or is parallel to two opposite edges of the square. The device is multistable because both the diagonal and parallel states are stable when rotated by multiples of 90° in plane