Crappy New Year : evaluation, stance and drinking stories

This thesis is an examination of drinking stories and how authors, through linguistic means, achieve narrative, social, and cultural goals. Language is a biological fact of Homo sapiens and narrative is a universal method by which humans make sense of their world. Humans’ primeval relationship with alcohol is an expression of the innate desire to achieve altered states of consciousness. To study drinking stories is to study a manifestation of the essence of humanity. This research employs the narrative theories of Labov (1997) and Labov and Waletzky (1967) combined with Du Bois’s (2007) model of stance. I focus on the linguistic techniques of authors as they attempt three basic narrative goals of drinking stories: the construction of a believable and tellable narrative; production of satisfactory accounts for transgressive behaviors; and self-presentation of an identity as a competent drinker. Through Du Bois’s (2007) model of stance I detail how narrators strategically deploy language as they invoke and assign cultural value; manage alignment with interlocutors and their stances; and position themselves in relation to evaluated entities and their utterances. I find that the structure and content of the drinking stories examined is shaped by cultural expectations about the genre of drinking stories, dominant discourses about drinking, the specifics of narrated events, the narrators’ experience of intoxication, and authorial decisions about methods to achieve narrative goals. Furthermore, both stories examined contained a variety of stance and discourse markers, grammatical constructions, valenced lexical tokens, reconstructed dialogue, and causal arguments. I conclude that an appreciation and understanding of context is critical at all levels of discourse analysis; drinking stories are maximally intelligible only when considered with regards to the context of events described, the context of production, surrounding cultural discourses, and narrator goals. Finally, the virtual absence of literature on drinking stories per se demands further research

Coupling ideality of integrated planar high-Q microresonators

Chipscale microresonators with integrated planar optical waveguides are useful building blocks for linear, nonlinear and quantum optical devices. Loss reduction through improving fabrication processes has resulted in several integrated micro resonator platforms attaining quality (Q) factors of several millions. However only few studies have investigated design-dependent losses, especially with regard to the resonator coupling section. Here we investigate design-dependent parasitic losses, described by the coupling ideality, of the commonly employed microresonator design consisting of a microring resonator waveguide side-coupled to a straight bus waveguide. By systematic characterization of multi-mode high-Q silicon nitride microresonator devices, we show that this design can suffer from low coupling ideality. By performing full 3D simulations to numerically investigate the resonator to bus waveguide coupling, we identify the coupling to higher-order bus waveguide modes as the dominant origin of parasitic losses which lead to the low coupling ideality. Using suitably designed bus waveguides, parasitic losses are mitigated, and a nearly unity ideality and strong overcoupling (i.e. a ratio of external coupling to internal resonator loss rate > 9) are demonstrated. Moreover we find that different resonator modes can exchange power through the coupler, which therefore constitutes a mechanism that induces modal coupling, a phenomenon known to distort resonator dispersion properties. Our results demonstrate the potential for significant performance improvements of integrated planar microresonators, achievable by optimized coupler designs.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, 1 tabl

Eye-Tracking-Based Classification of Information Search Behavior Using Machine Learning: Evidence from Experiments in Physical Shops and Virtual Reality Shopping Environments

Classifying information search behavior helps tailor recommender systems to individual customers’ shopping motives. But how can we identify these motives without requiring users to exert too much effort? Our research goal is to demonstrate that eye tracking can be used at the point of sale to do so. We focus on two frequently investigated shopping motives: goal-directed and exploratory search. To train and test a prediction model, we conducted two eye-tracking experiments in front of supermarket shelves. The first experiment was carried out in immersive virtual reality; the second, in physical reality—in other words, as a field study in a real supermarket. We conducted a virtual reality study, because recently launched virtual shopping environments suggest that there is great interest in using this technology as a retail channel. Our empirical results show that support vector machines allow the correct classification of search motives with 80% accuracy in virtual reality and 85% accuracy in physical reality. Our findings also imply that eye movements allow shopping motives to be identified relatively early in the search process: our models achieve 70% prediction accuracy after only 15 seconds in virtual reality and 75% in physical reality. Applying an ensemble method increases the prediction accuracy substantially, to about 90%. Consequently, the approach that we propose could be used for the satisfiable classification of consumers in practice. Furthermore, both environments’ best predictor variables overlap substantially. This finding provides evidence that in virtual reality, information search behavior might be similar to the one used in physical reality. Finally, we also discuss managerial implications for retailers and companies that are planning to use our technology to personalize a consumer assistance system

VRpursuits: Interaction in Virtual Reality Using Smooth Pursuit Eye Movements

Gaze-based interaction using smooth pursuit eye movements (Pursuits) is attractive given that it is intuitive and overcomes the Midas touch problem. At the same time, eye tracking is becoming increasingly popular for VR applications. While Pursuits was shown to be effective in several interaction contexts, it was never explored in-depth for VR before. In a user study (N=26), we investigated how parameters that are specific to VR settings influence the performance of Pursuits. For example, we found that Pursuits is robust against different sizes of virtual 3D targets. However performance improves when the trajectory size (e.g., radius) is larger, particularly if the user is walking while interacting. While walking, selecting moving targets via Pursuits is generally feasible albeit less accurate than when stationary. Finally, we discuss the implications of these findings and the potential of smooth pursuits for interaction in VR by demonstrating two sample use cases: 1) gaze-based authentication in VR, and 2) a space meteors shooting game

Universal temperature dependence of optical excitation life-time and band-gap in chirality assigned semiconducting single-wall carbon nanotubes

The temperature dependence of optical excitation life-time, Gamma, and transition energies, E_ii, were measured for bucky-papers of single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) and inner tubes in double-wall carbon nanotubes (DWCNTs) using resonant Raman scattering. The temperature dependence of Gamma and E_ii is the same for both types of samples and is independent of tube chirality. The data proves that electron-phonon interaction is responsible for temperature dependence of E_ii(T). The temperature independent inhomogeneous contribution to Gamma is much larger in the SWCNT samples, which is explained by the different SWCNT environment in the two types of samples. Gamma of the inner tubes for the bucky-paper DWCNT sample is as low as \sim 30 meV, which is comparable to that found for individual SWCNTs

ACCEPTANCE OF IMAGINED VERSUS EXPERIENCED VIRTUAL REALITY SHOPPING ENVIRONMENTS: INSIGHTS FROM TWO EXPERIMENTS

As first Virtual Reality (VR) shopping environments have begun to appear on the market, the question arises whether users will adopt them for doing their shopping. However, the evaluation of systems that have not yet diffused the market is potentially challenging because it requires bringing larger samples of respondents into a VR laboratory. Therefore, by conducting two experimental studies we shed light on the research question of whether evaluating the acceptance requires that respondents experience the immersive and interactive shopping environment. Our results reveal that particularly the hedonic variable perceived enjoyment as well as the VR specific variable perceived telepresence are underestimated when participants only imagine (based on a video) being in a VR shopping environment while there is no difference with respect to the behavioral intention to use the system. In addition, we show that particularly the hedonic variable perceived enjoyment and the utilitarian variable perceived usefulness influence the intention to use the shopping environment in the future. Overall, we conclude that experiencing the VR shopping environment is essential for users to be able to evaluate the respective technology