The Two Trends That Matter for Party Politics

We are working on a project that begins with two simple observations about the current state of party politics. The first is that the political arena is now dominated by what one of us has called “shadow parties”—nominally independent groups that are run by major party insiders and that perform functions that in the past were performed directly by the parties. We’re talking about groups like Organizing For Action (OFA), once run by Jim Messina, or the American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS groups run by Karl Rove. These groups are doing a lot more than buying a few independent ads. They’re also doing voter mobilization, maintaining comprehensive partisan voter databases, employing long-term campaign workers, testing messages, and strategizing about the party’s pitch and message in individual campaigns and across multiple races

Time-gated transillumination and reflection by biological tissues and tissuelike phantoms: simulation versus experiment

A numerical method is presented to solve exactly the time-dependent diffusion equation that describes light transport in turbid media. The simulation takes into account spatial variations of the scattering and absorption factors of the medium and the objects as well as random fluctuations of these quantities. The technique is employed to explore the possibility of locating millimeter-sized objects immersed in turbid media from time-gated measurements of the transmitted or reflected (near-infrared) light. The simulation results for tissue-like phantoms are compared with experimental transillumination data, and excellent agreement is found. Simulations of time-gated reflection experiments indicate that it may be possible to detect objects of 1-mm radius.

Sequential Deliberation for Social Choice

In large scale collective decision making, social choice is a normative study of how one ought to design a protocol for reaching consensus. However, in instances where the underlying decision space is too large or complex for ordinal voting, standard voting methods of social choice may be impractical. How then can we design a mechanism - preferably decentralized, simple, scalable, and not requiring any special knowledge of the decision space - to reach consensus? We propose sequential deliberation as a natural solution to this problem. In this iterative method, successive pairs of agents bargain over the decision space using the previous decision as a disagreement alternative. We describe the general method and analyze the quality of its outcome when the space of preferences define a median graph. We show that sequential deliberation finds a 1.208- approximation to the optimal social cost on such graphs, coming very close to this value with only a small constant number of agents sampled from the population. We also show lower bounds on simpler classes of mechanisms to justify our design choices. We further show that sequential deliberation is ex-post Pareto efficient and has truthful reporting as an equilibrium of the induced extensive form game. We finally show that for general metric spaces, the second moment of of the distribution of social cost of the outcomes produced by sequential deliberation is also bounded

TangiWheel: A widget for manipulating collections on tabletop displays supporting hybrid Input modality

In this paper we present TangiWheel, a collection manipulation widget for tabletop displays. Our implementation is flexible, allowing either multi-touch or interaction, or even a hybrid scheme to better suit user choice and convenience. Different TangiWheel aspects and features are compared with other existing widgets for collection manipulation. The study reveals that TangiWheel is the first proposal to support a hybrid input modality with large resemblance levels between touch and tangible interaction styles. Several experiments were conducted to evaluate the techniques used in each input scheme for a better understanding of tangible surface interfaces in complex tasks performed by a single user (e.g., involving a typical master-slave exploration pattern). The results show that tangibles perform significantly better than fingers, despite dealing with a greater number of interactions, in situations that require a large number of acquisitions and basic manipulation tasks such as establishing location and orientation. However, when users have to perform multiple exploration and selection operations that do not require previous basic manipulation tasks, for instance when collections are fixed in the interface layout, touch input is significantly better in terms of required time and number of actions. Finally, when a more elastic collection layout or more complex additional insertion or displacement operations are needed, the hybrid and tangible approaches clearly outperform finger-based interactions.. ©2012 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC & Science Press, ChinaThe work is supported by the Ministry of Education of Spain under Grant No. TSI2010-20488. Alejandro Catala is supported by an FPU fellowship for pre-doctoral research staff training granted by the Ministry of Education of Spain with reference AP2006-00181.Catalá Bolós, A.; García Sanjuan, F.; Jaén Martínez, FJ.; Mocholi Agües, JA. (2012). TangiWheel: A widget for manipulating collections on tabletop displays supporting hybrid Input modality. Journal of Computer Science and Technology. 27(4):811-829. doi:10.1007/s11390-012-1266-4S811829274Jordà S, Geiger G, Alonso M, Kaltenbrunner M. The reacTable: Exploring the synergy between live music performance and tabletop tangible interfaces. In Proc. TEI 2007, Baton Rouge, LA, USA, Feb. 15-17, 2007, pp.139–146.Vandoren P, van Laerhoven T, Claesen L, Taelman J, Raymaekers C, van Reeth F. IntuPaint: Bridging the gap between physical and digital painting. In Proc. TABLETOP2008, Amterdam, the Netherlands, Oct. 1-3, 2008, pp.65–72.Schöning J, Hecht B, Raubal M, Krüger A, Marsh M, Rohs M. Improving interaction with virtual globes through spatial thinking: Helping users ask “why?”. In Proc. IUI 2008, Canary Islans, Spain, Jan. 13-16, 2008, pp.129–138.Fitzmaurice GW, BuxtonW. An empirical evaluation of graspable user interfaces: Towards specialized, space-multiplexed input. In Proc. CHI 1997, Atlanta, USA, March 22-27, 1997, pp.43–50.Tuddenham P, Kirk D, Izadi S. Graspables revisited: Multitouch vs. tangible input for tabletop displays in acquisition and manipulation tasks. In Proc. CHI 2010, Atlanta, USA, April 10-15, 2010, pp.2223–2232.Lucchi A, Jermann P, Zufferey G, Dillenbourg P. An empirical evaluation of touch and tangible interfaces for tabletop displays. In Proc. TEI 2010, Cambridge, USA, Jan. 25-27, 2010, pp.177–184.Fitzmaurice G W, Ishii H, Buxton W. Bricks: Laying the foundations for graspable user interfaces. In Proc. CHI 1995, Denver, USA, May 7-11, 1995, pp.442–449.Ishii H, Ullmer B. Tangible bits: Towards seamless interfaces between people, bits and atoms. In Proc. CHI 1997, Atlanta, USA, March 22-27, 1997, pp.234–241.Ullmer B, Ishii H, Glas D. mediaBlocks: Physical containers, transports, and controls for online media. In Proc. SIGGRAPH1998, Orlando, USA, July 19-24, 1998, pp.379–386.Shen C, Hancock M S, Forlines C, Vernier F D. CoR2Ds: Context-rooted rotatable draggables for tabletop interaction. In Proc. CHI 2005, Portland, USA, April 2-7, 2005, pp.1781–1784.Lepinski G J, Grossman T, Fitzmaurice G. The design and evaluation of multitouch marking menus. In Proc. CHI 2010, Atlanta, USA, April 10-15, 2010, pp.2233–2242.Accot J, Zhai S. Beyond Fitts’ law: Models for trajectorybased HCI tasks. In Proc. CHI 1997, Atlanta, USA, March 22-27, 1997, pp.295–302.Song H, Kim B, Lee B, Seo J. A comparative evaluation on tree visualization methods for hierarchical structures with large fan-outs. In Proc. CHI 2010, Atlanta, USA, April 10-15, 2010, pp.223–232.Bailly G, Lecolinet E, Nigay L. Wave menus: Improving the novice mode of hierarchical marking menus. In Proc. INTERACT2007, Río de Janeiro, Brazil, Sept. 10-14, 2007, pp.475–488.Zhao S, Agrawala M, Hinckley K. Zone and polygon menus: Using relative position to increase the breadth of multi-stroke marking menus. In Proc. CHI 2006, Montreal, Canada, April 24-27, 2006, pp.1077–1086.Patten J, Recht B, Ishii H. Interaction techniques for musical performance with tabletop tangible interfaces. In Proc. ACE2006, Hollywood, USA, Jun. 14-16, 2006, Article No.27.Weiss M, Wagner J, Jansen Y, Jennings R, Khoshabeh R, Hollan J D, Borchers J. SLAP widgets: Bridging the gap between virtual and physical controls on tabletops. In Proc. CHI 2009, Boston, USA, April 4-9, 2009, pp.481–490.Hancock M, Hilliges O, Collins C, Baur D, Carpendale S. Exploring tangible and direct touch interfaces for manipulating 2D and 3D information on a digital table. In Proc. ITS 2009, Banff, Canada, Nov. 23-25, pp.77–84.Hilliges O, Baur D, Butz A. Photohelix: Browsing, sorting and sharing digital photo collections. In Proc. Horizontal Interactive Human-Computer Systems (TABLETOP2007), Newport, Rhode Island, USA, Oct. 10-12, 2007, pp.87–94.Hesselmann T, Flöring S, Schmidt M. Stacked half-Pie menus: Navigating nested menus on interactive tabletops. In Proc. ITS 2009, Banff, Canada, Nov. 23-25, 2009, pp.173–180.Gallardo D, Jordà S. Tangible jukebox: Back to palpable music. In Proc. TEI 2010, Boston, USA, Jan. 25-27, 2010, pp.199–202.Fishkin K. A taxonomy for and analysis of tangible interfaces. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 2004, 8(5): 347–358.Catala A, Jaen J, Martinez-Villaronga A A, Mocholi J A. AGORAS: Exploring creative learning on tangible user interfaces. In Proc. COMPSAC 2011, Munich, Germany, July 18-22, 2011, pp.326–335.Catala A, Garcia-Sanjuan F, Azorin J, Jaen J, Mocholi J A. Exploring direct communication and manipulation on interactive surfaces to foster novelty in a creative learning environment. IJCSRA, 2012, 2(1): 15–24.Catala A, Jaen J, van Dijk B, Jord`a S. Exploring tabletops as an effective tool to foster creativity traits. In Proc. TEI 2012, Kingston, Canada, Feb. 19-22, 2012, pp.143–150.Hopkins D. Directional selection is easy as pie menus. In: The Usenix Association Newsletter, 1987, 12(5): 103.Microsoft Surface User Experience Guidelines. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff318692.aspx , May 2011.Maydak M, Stromer R, Mackay H A, Stoddard L T. Stimulus classes in matching to sample and sequence production: The emergence of numeric relations. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 1995, 16(3): 179–204

Rethinking ‘Advanced Search’: A New Approach to Complex Query Formulation

Knowledge workers such as patent agents, recruiters and media monitoring professionals undertake work tasks where search forms a core part of their duties. In these instances, the search task often involves the formulation of complex queries expressed as Boolean strings. However, creating effective Boolean queries remains an ongoing challenge, often compromised by errors and inefficiencies. In this demo paper, we present a new approach to query formulation in which concepts are expressed on a two-dimensional canvas and relationships are articulated using direct manipulation. This has the potential to eliminate many sources of error, makes the query semantics more transparent, and offers new opportunities for query refinement and optimisatio

Pre-Sleep Low Glycemic Modified Starch Does Not Improve Next Morning Running Performance in Endurance Athletes

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Enabling Secure Secret Updating for Unidirectional Key Distribution in RFID-Enabled Supply Chains

A*Star SERC in Singapore5927/2009</p

Public engagement on global health challenges

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Experience with public engagement activities regarding the risks and benefits of science and technology (S&T) is growing, especially in the industrialized world. However, public engagement in the developing world regarding S&T risks and benefits to explore health issues has not been widely explored.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>This paper gives an overview about public engagement and related concepts, with a particular focus on challenges and benefits in the developing world. We then describe an Internet-based platform, which seeks to both inform and engage youth and the broader public on global water issues and their health impacts. Finally, we outline a possible course for future action to scale up this and similar online public engagement platforms.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The benefits of public engagement include creating an informed citizenry, generating new ideas from the public, increasing the chances of research being adopted, increasing public trust, and answering ethical research questions. Public engagement also fosters global communication, enables shared experiences and methodology, standardizes strategy, and generates global viewpoints. This is especially pertinent to the developing world, as it encourages previously marginalized populations to participate on a global stage. One of the core issues at stake in public engagement is global governance of science and technology. Also, beyond benefiting society at large, public engagement in science offers benefits to the scientific enterprise itself.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Successful public engagement with developing world stakeholders will be a critical part of implementing new services and technologies. Interactive engagement platforms, such as the Internet, have the potential to unite people globally around relevant health issues.</p