Tactile reasoning and adaptive architecture for intelligence sense-making

Visual analytics is the science of analytical facilitated by interactive visual interfaces [1]. Visual analytics combines automated analysis techniques with interactive visualizations to facilitate reasoning and making sense of large and complex data sets [2]. A key component of visual analytics is information visualisation, which is the communication of abstract data through visual representations that simplify, aggregate and reveal important relationships [3]. However, information visualisation is just one part of the equation that is visual analytics. The ability to manipulate the data directly and to query and initiate analytic processes through that manipulation with the resulting information is the other major component of visual analytics [1]. Together, interaction, visualisation, and analytics, combine to create powerful tools for supporting the analysis and reasoning with large, mix‐format, multi‐source data sets. We are interested in the application of tactile reasoning to visual analytics. We define tactile reasoning as an interaction technique that supports the analytical reasoning process by the direct manipulation of information objects in a graphical user interface (GUI). In a study by Maglio et al [4] they found that participants using scrabble pieces (individual alphabets on tiles) generated more words when they were allowed to manipulate the scrabble pieces than when they are not allowed to interact with the pieces. The act of tactile manipulation of the scrabble pieces, i.e. the ability to rearrange them, allowed the participants to form words that they could not form without interaction. Tactile reasoning, we therefore hypothesise, enables individuals to see patterns in visually presented data sets they might otherwise not see through the manipulation, rearrangement and other interaction with the information objects. In this paper we describe the concept of tactile reasoning in the context of visual analytics, and the adaptive architecture needed to support it during real‐time manipulation. We conduct our investigation through a lab prototype – INVISQUE – Interactive Visual Search and Query Environment [4,5]. INVISQUE provides an information visualisation interface coupled with a “reasoning workspace” that facilitates tactile reasoning. INVISQUE was funded by JISC to provide an alternative interface to improve information search and retrieval and sense‐making in electronic library resource discovery systems such as the Emerald and ISI electronic journal databases. We have developed an adaptive architecture which underlies INVISQUE and supports the sense‐making by providing the system with the capability to rapidly adapt to changing circumstances

The role of shared social identity in mutual support among refugees of conflict: An ethnographic study of Syrian refugees in Jordan

In the midst of an unprecedented refugee crisis and the shortfall of aid organization resources, a shift toward utilizing the capacity for collective resilience in refugee communities could be helpful. This paper explores experiences of psychosocial social support among a community of Syrian urban refugees in Jordan, especially the kind of support that helps them deal with secondary stressors. We were specifically interested in the role of shared social identity as a basis of support and the sources of such shared identity. We conducted an 8-month ethnography that included observations and semi-structured interviews with 13 refugees. We found many examples of support among refugees, on both personal and collective levels. Some of this support was based on sharing the identity of “refugee” that stemmed from a sense of common fate. This is similar to the process identified in the literature on disasters. Psychological membership in the refugee group is stigmatic, but it can also lead to positive outcomes in line with the social cure perspective. However, we also found examples of support that were value-based or based on pre-existing interpersonal networks. Implications of the findings for models of group processes in stressful situations and the practical question of refugee support are discussed

Remaking the world in our own image: vulnerability, resilience and adaptation as historical discourses

A warming climate and less predictable weather patterns, as well as an expanding urban infrastructure susceptible to geophysical hazards, make the world an increasingly dangerous place, even for those living in high‐income countries. It is an opportune moment, therefore, from the vantage point of the second decade of the twenty‐first century, to review the terms and concepts that have been employed regularly over the past 50 years to assess risk and to measure people's exposure to such events in the light of the wider geopolitical context. In particular, it is useful to examine ‘vulnerability’, ‘resilience’, and ‘adaptation’, the principal theoretical concepts that, from an historical perspective, have dominated disaster studies since the end of the Second World War. In addition, it is valuable to enquire as to the extent to which such discourses were ideological products of their time, which sought to explain societies and their environments from the stance of competing conceptual frameworks

Enhancing Europe’s global power: a scenario exercise with eight proposals

In the present context of intensifying competition between the major trading economies and potentially game-changing technological developments, the European Union is generally seen as the weaker party. Lacking the ‘hard power’ derived from military capabilities, it has laid claim to a ‘soft power’ of normative influence externally, yet even that is only partially utilised. Nor has Europe been able to exercise the power to coerce – ‘sharp power’ – commensurate with its economic weight as a trading bloc equivalent in size and reach to the US or China, its most prominent global competitors. How can Europe strengthen its position, and in what fields? Through a scenario exercise, we develop eight policy proposals aimed at countering Europe´s vulnerabilities and enabling it to assert its sharp and soft power more effectively. Specifically, we consider the feasibility, means and scope for their realisation. Together, they provide a transformative agenda for the EU’s position in the world

Status of international military headquarters set up pursuant to the North Atlantic treaty. Message from the President of the United States transmitting a Protocol on the status of international military headquarters set up pursuant to the North Atlantic treaty, signed at Paris on August 28, 1952

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Fractal geometry and analysis

xv, 472 p. : ill. ; 21x30 cm