Book Reviews

Book Reviews: Ha'ena: Through the Eyes of the Ancestors by Carlos Andrade ; Ben: A Memoir, From Street Kid to Governor by Benjamin J. Cayetano ; Asian Settler Colonialism: From Local Governance to the Habits of Everyday Life in Hawai'i edited by Candace Fujikane and Jonathan Y. Okamura ; Encyclopedia of Islands edited by Rosemary G. Gillespie and David A. Clague ; The Healthy Ancestor: Embodied Inequality and the Revitalization of Native Hawaiian Health by Juliet McMullin ; Alexander Cartwright: The Life Behind the Baseball Legend by Monica Nucciarone ; Island World: A History of Hawai'i and the United States by Gary Y. Okihiro ; A Japanese Robinson Crusoe by Jenichiro Oyabe and edited by Greg Robinson and Yujin Yaguchi ; A Tragedy of Democracy: Japanese Confinement in North America by Greg Robinso

Chitin Research Revisited

Two centuries after the discovery of chitin, it is widely accepted that this biopolymer is an important biomaterial in many aspects. Numerous studies on chitin have focused on its biomedical applications. In this review, various aspects of chitin research including sources, structure, biosynthesis, chitinolytic enzyme, chitin binding protein, genetic engineering approach to produce chitin, chitin and evolution, and a wide range of applications in bio- and nanotechnology will be dealt with

A Study of the Tuition of Middle Schools in Prwear Tokyo Prefecture

The purpose of this paper is to clarifying the tuition in middle schools at the prewar Tokyo prefecture. The tuition differed between the public schools and the private schools. In the 1890s, most expenses required for management of middle schools was provided with tuition in both private amd public schools. At this time, the tuition of public schools was higher than the private schools. After 1900 tuition of public schools became cheaper than private schools. As expenses of public schools, it was begun to allot many prefectural citizen taxes in 1900 and afterwards. Although public schools tuition also went up, the rise of private schools tuition was more rapid than that. Both tuition was reversed. The number of private schools increased rapidly at the time when tuition of private schools is cheaper than tuiton of public schools. It is considered to be a reason which caused private schools rapid increase that tuition was cheap

Displaying readable object-space text in a head tracked, stereoscopic virtual environment

Object space text, although desirable for its correct occlusion behavior, often appears blurry or “shimmery” due to rapidly alternating text thickness when used with head tracked binocular stereo viewing. Text thickness tends to vary because it depends on scan conversion, which in turn depends on the user’s location in a head tracked environment, and the user almost never stays perfectly still. This paper describes a simple method of eliminating such blurriness for object space text that need not have a fixed location in the virtual environment, such as menu system and annotation text. Our approach positions text relative to the user’s view frustums (one frustum per eye), adjusting the 3D position of each piece of text as the user moves, so that the text occupies a constant place in each of the view frustums and projects to the same pixels regardless of the user’s location

May 19, 2004 17:24

In this paper we describe the textual annotation system we have implemented in CHaMUE, our Collaborative Haptic MarkUp Environment software. This head tracked, stereoscopic virtual environment for design review allows remote participants to critique and refine product design ideas in real time, both by drawing on 3D virtual representations of the objects and by placing textual annotations linked to specific object features. Each textual annotation is displayed in a floating note with a 3D line path connecting the note with the point being referenced on the object geometry. The exact note positions and the 3D paths are automatically adjusted on a per-user basis according to each user's current viewing position, balancing the ease of associating each note with its reference point on the object and the occlusion of both paths and the object under discussion. We discuss evaluation criteria for judging well placed notes and well chosen paths, and address the challenges posed by stereoscopic vision and head tracking to optimal note placement and path generation