Learning about End-User Development for Smart Homes by "Eating Our Own Dog Food"

SPOK is an End-User Development Environment that permits people to monitor, control, and configure smart home services and devices. SPOK has been deployed for more than 4 months in the homes of 5 project team members for testing and refinement, prior to longitudinal experiments in the homes of families not involved in the project. This article reports on the lessons learned in this initial deployment

Principal Bundles and the Dixmier Douady Class

A systematic consideration of the problem of the reduction and extension of the structure group of a principal bundle is made and a variety of techniques in each case are explored and related to one another. We apply these to the study of the Dixmier-Douady class in various contexts including string structures, U-res bundles and other examples motivated by considerations from quantum field theory.Comment: 28 pages, latex, no figures, uses amsmath, amsthm, amsfonts. Revised version - only change a lot of irritating typos remove

Multimodal Observation and Interpretation of Subjects Engaged in Problem Solving

In this paper we present the first results of a pilot experiment in the capture and interpretation of multimodal signals of human experts engaged in solving challenging chess problems. Our goal is to investigate the extent to which observations of eye-gaze, posture, emotion and other physiological signals can be used to model the cognitive state of subjects, and to explore the integration of multiple sensor modalities to improve the reliability of detection of human displays of awareness and emotion. We observed chess players engaged in problems of increasing difficulty while recording their behavior. Such recordings can be used to estimate a participant's awareness of the current situation and to predict ability to respond effectively to challenging situations. Results show that a multimodal approach is more accurate than a unimodal one. By combining body posture, visual attention and emotion, the multimodal approach can reach up to 93% of accuracy when determining player's chess expertise while unimodal approach reaches 86%. Finally this experiment validates the use of our equipment as a general and reproducible tool for the study of participants engaged in screen-based interaction and/or problem solving

BEYOND GATEWAY CITIES: ECONOMIC RESTRUCTURING AND POVERTY AMONG MEXICAN IMMIGRANT FAMILIES AND CHILDREN

Our main objective is to better understand how new residential patterns have reshaped patterns of poverty among America's growing Mexican-origin population. We use data from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Samples (IPUMS) to document recent changes in poverty rates among native-born and foreign-born Mexicans living in the Southwest and in new regions where many Mexican families have resettled. Our analysis focuses on how changing patterns of employment (e.g., in construction and food processing industries) have altered the risk of poverty among Mexican families and children. We demonstrate that the Mexican population dispersed widely throughout the United States during the 1990s. Perhaps surprisingly, Mexican workers, especially new immigrants, had much lower rates of poverty in the new destination regions and rural areas than their counterparts that remained in traditional areas of population concentration - the Southwest. As we show in this study, the dispersion of America's Mexican native-born and immigrant populations raises questions and hopes about their economic and political incorporation into American society.Food Security and Poverty,

A CubeSAT Orbital Test Platform for an Electrothermal Plasma Micro-Thruster

As the viability and capability of CubeSats increases, a demand for propulsion systems is becoming apparent. The limitations put forth in the ``CubeSat Design Specifications and the additional difficulties of low available Size, Weight and Power (SWaP) for propulsion systems aboard CubeSats have left a technological gap that many are trying to fill. One class of propulsion, micro-propulsion systems, fills this gap nicely as they generally have low size and weight with a reasonable amount of power draw. Many can function for reasonable lifetime scales utilizing pressure vessels under one atmosphere and less then 100 watt-hours of stored chemical energy as stipulated by the CubeSat standards. Micro-thruster systems can provide station keeping to extend mission life, a method to de-orbit, or possibly even bulk position change capabilities to CubeSats, thus increasing their ever growing usage potential. Many promising micro-propulsion systems have low Technology Readiness Level (TRL) and have limited-to-no space flight heritage, making their selection for a CubeSat mission more risky. A rapid, low cost, development and demonstration platform for advanced micro-propulsion systems is needed to increase TRL of promising technologies and provide them with space flight heritage, thus making them low risk options for future mission planners. CubeSats themselves represent an interesting test bed platform for emerging propulsion technologies as they are relatively inexpensive and less risk adverse than traditional space systems. This endeavor strives to analyze the efficacy of using CubeSats as a micro-propulsion demonstration platform to be built by students of the California Polytechnic State University\u27s PolySat Team. This thesis will baseline the use of Pocket Rocket, an electrothermal plasma micro-thruster, originally developed by the Australian National University. The thruster has seen continued development with the PolySat team, and the PolySat version\u27s performance and form factor is used in the following analyses. However, the platform proposed herein would not be inherently limited to this specific micro-propulsion technology. The following analyses shows that a sun pointing control law utilizing additional deployable panels is necessary for the power budget to close. The necessary area is equal to a 2 x 3U surface of panels, which will be comprised of one 1 x 3U face and two 1/2 x 3 U deployable panels. It is also apparent that the thermal environment requires intervention to be survivable. More details will be provided in the design of an extremely SWaP efficient passive thermal management system. It also highlights the viability of the of utilizing two thrusters to impose a tumble that is easily measured. It highlights the additional complexity involved by an increasingly unbalanced craft, and the need to know the inertia tensor of the craft to accurately predict the flight functionality of the thruster. Two 1 milliNewton thrusters firing for a period of 20 seconds results in a tumble across the intended axis of about .18 hZ. This is easily measurable and also recoverable based on the selected reaction wheel bundle

Working Through The Past: Labor and Authoritorian Legacies in Comparative Perspective

[Excerpt] Democratization in the developing and post-communist world has yielded limited gains for labor. Explanations for this phenomenon have focused on the effect of economic crisis and globalization on the capacities of unions to become influential political actors and to secure policies that benefit their members. In contrast, the contributors to Working through the Past highlight the critical role that authoritarian legacies play in shaping labor politics in new democracies, providing the first cross-regional analysis of the impact of authoritarianism on labor, focusing on East and Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America. Legacies from the predemocratic era shape labor’s present in ways that both limit and enhance organized labor’s power in new democracies. Assessing the comparative impact on a variety of outcomes relevant to labor in widely divergent settings, this volume argues that political legacies provide new insights into why labor movements in some countries have confronted the challenges of neoliberal globalization better than others

Diverse Magmatic Evolutionary Trends of the Northern Andes Unraveled by Paleocene to Early Eocene Detrital Zircon Geochemistry

The Paleocene-early Eocene continental magmatic arc (PECMA) in the Northern Andes is an example of arc magmatism following a major collisional event. This arc formed after the arc-continent collision between the Caribbean Plate and the South American continental margin at ca. 72 Ma. We used detrital zircon LA-ICP-MS and CA-ID-TIMS geochronology and geochemistry to complement the limited plutonic record of the PECMA and better characterize the PECMA\u27s magmatic evolution. Zircon geochronology and their respective trace element geochemistry were analyzed from Paleocene-early Eocene strata of the Bogotá Formation in the foreland region. Our results show that after the collision of the Caribbean Plate, the magmas in the PECMA differentiated under a thick continental crust with limited subduction input at ca. 66 Ma. By 62–50 Ma, scattered patterns of Hf, U, U/Yb, and Yb/Gd ratios in detrital zircons suggest the existence of contrasting magmatic inputs attributed to different depths of crustal fractionation, varied temperatures of crystallization, and significant mantle and subduction inputs. These diverse magmatic patterns reflect the evolution of the continental crust. We proposed that oblique convergence and strike-slip tectonics favored contrasting crustal architectures along the continental margin while local lithosphere dripping from a previously thickened crust promoted the formation of hot magmas under a thick continental crust