Relationship between electrical and acoustical characteristics of amplification systems and reduced auditory sensitivity

Current methods of selection of amplification are not readily applicable to children, and relatively few alternatives have been explored. Consequently, the audiologist must make a number of rather arbitrary judgements with little concrete information to support his recommendation of a given instrument. He has limited means of clinically determining the sustainability of the instrument for the child. This study was designed to explore the relationship between several factors which may add to the existing body of data related to the problems of amplification in children. In brief, the problem was to determine the various electrical and acoustical characteristics of hearing aids worn by children under study. A comparison of this information with hearing loss data would be studied to aid in understanding what relationships (if any) exist between the two measures. If in fact there is a relationship between the factors of hearing loss and hearing aid characteristics, this information may provide a more comprehensive and precise means of examining a given hearing aid in view of the hearing loss specific to each child. While this information may be preliminary in nature, it has application in the development of ongoing programs of evaluation and maintenance of hearing aids. A brief comparison of the present performance of the instrument with both the original performance levels and the child’s current needs would appear to be an integral part of such a program

Recontextualizing Neglected Space in Community

Neglected areas are everywhere. They are seen as foreclosed homes, commercial properties, rundown lots and even small spaces like broken signage and over-sized potholes. My investigation, Abandonment ex-plores how graphic design can be used to identify neglected areas and add meaning that challenges exist-ing perceptions of these areas. This becomes a way to suggest revitalization without actually redesigning a specific space. Abandonment matches carefully designed phrases, inspired by first hand research of community members, with neglected urban environments of Atlanta. The camouflaged environmental graphics, created by means of DOT signs, chalk drawings, and blackboards recontextualize environments to softly build curiosity, activate new thinking, and potentially spark reinvention. Perhaps if citizens ques-tion these neglected spaces, they may begin to imagine new purposes for these spaces and reclaim them? The investigation is thoroughly documented and will continue to mature over time. To follow the project online, visit urbanartatlanta.com

Player Perception of Delays and Jitter in Character Responsiveness

Response lag in digital games is known to negatively affect a player’s game experience. Particularly with networked multiplayer games, where lag is typically unavoidable, the impact of delays needs to be well understood so that its effects can be mitigated. In this paper, we investigate two aspects of lag independently: latency (constant delay) and jitter (varying delay). We evaluate how latency and jitter each affect a player’s enjoyment, frustration, performance, and experience as well as the extent to which players can adjust to such delays after a few minutes of gameplay. We focus on a platform game where the player controls a virtual character through a world. We find that delays up to 300ms do not impact the players’ experience as long as they are constant. When jitter was added to a delay of 200ms, however, the lag was noticed by participants more often, hindered players’ ability to improve with practice, increased how often they failed to reach the goal of the game, and reduced the perceived motion quality of the character

Stochastic Activity Authoring With Direct User Control

Crowd activities are often randomized to create the appearance of heterogeneity. However, the parameters that control randomization are frequently hard to tune because it is unclear how changes at the character level affect the high-level appearance of the crowd. We propose a method for computing randomization parameters that supports direct animator control. Given details about the environment, available activities, timing information and the desired highlevel appearance of the crowd, we model the problem as a graph, formulate a convex optimization problem, and solve for a set of stochastic transition rates which satisfy the constraints. Unlike the use of heuristics for adding randomness to crowd activities, our approach provides guarantees on convergence to the desired result, allows for decentralized simulation, and supports a variety of constraints. In addition, because the rates can be pre-computed, no additional runtime processing is needed during simulation

How Responsiveness Affects Players\u27 Perception in Digital Games

Digital games with realistic virtual characters have become very popular. The ability for players to promptly control their character is a crucial feature of these types of games, be it platform games, first-person shooters, or role-playing games. Controller latencies, meaning delays in the responsiveness of a player’s character, for example due to extensive computations or to network latencies, can considerably reduce the player’s enjoyment of a game. In this paper, we present a thorough analysis of the consequences of such delays on the player’s experience across three parts of a game with different levels of difficulty. We investigate the effects of responsiveness on the player’s enjoyment, performance, and perception of the game, as well as the player’s adaptability to delays. We find that responsiveness is very important for the player as delays affect the player’s enjoyment of the game as well as the player’s performance. A quick responsiveness becomes essential for more challenging tasks

Egress Online: Towards Leveraging Massively, Multiplayer Environments for Evacuation Studies

Large datasets of real human behaviors are of huge benefit across numerous domains, including evacuation safety, urban planning, marketing, and ergonomics. However, because large-scale experiments involving real human subjects are expensive and prohibitively difficult to organize, such datasets are scarce. Thus in this paper, we propose the use of massively multiplayer online (MMO) communities as an inexpensive and innovative way to capture datasets of large numbers of people under different conditions. We describe our implementation of an online data collection system, based on games, inside the popular massively multiplayer, online environment of Second Life. We evaluate the use of this system for performing evacuation experiments using a mix of Second Life residents and players recruited on campus. Our system was able to draw online participants, support data collection needs, and provide potential insights into high-level evacuation behaviors such as the choices of exit, effects of building debris, and the use-patterns of a building. Through experiments performed using our system, we found that Second Life residents found the game controls and environment to be significantly more compelling than lab participants; that players unfamiliar with our office building tended to evacuate primarily via the front entrance; and that in-game debris significantly increased the numbers of participants who failed to exit a building safely

VIBE: The Practical Benefits of an Interactive E-Book for Art Education in Egypt

The Art Education subject in Middle school in Egypt has been somewhat neglected, without receiving adequate focus for its development in line with the modern demands of the current era. One of the primary sources of education for students in schools is textbooks. The existing school Art Education textbook lacks content, presentation, and design, requiring substantial improvement. The "Visual Interactive Book for Art Education” (VIBE) project aims to revolutionize the way Egyptian Art is taught in middle school classrooms. By transforming the content of the traditional Art Education textbook into an interactive electronic book, VIBE offers a more engaging, accessible, and effective learning tool for students seeking to develop their artistic sensibilities. VIBE showcases the works of renowned Egyptian artists and highlight their artistic techniques to enhance students' artistic abilities while improving accessibility and convenience for learning the material through expanded ways for communicating the knowledge. Through the incorporation of high-quality images, videos, and games, VIBE provides a dynamic and immersive learning experience.This paper offers a comparative analysis of the visual elements of the original printed textbook and VIBE to illustrate the research and design process. VIBE provides a better learning experience, accessible and intuitive design to navigate for middle school kids than the printed textbook. By leveraging cutting-edge technology and innovative design, VIBE offers a more engaging and effective learning tool for students to develop their artistic sensibilities and to foster cultural appreciation through art education topics. Plus, this solution costs less to produce and distribute, making it an easily adoptable solution for schools and educators to take on. Keywords: Art Education in Egypt, Interactive Learning, Gamification DOI: 10.7176/ADS/108-03 Publication date:October 31st 202