Merging realities in space and time

The rapid developments in online technology have provided young people with instant communication with each other and highly interactive and engaging visual game playing environments. The traditional ways of presenting museum and heritage assets no longer, therefore, hold their attention and provide them with an exciting and dynamic visitor experience. There is considerable interest in the use of augmented reality to allow visitors to explore worlds that are not immediately accessible to them and relating them to the real worlds around them. These are very effective in providing much needed contextual information, but appear rather static when compared with multi-player games environments where players interact with each other and robotic characters (non-player characters) in real time. By fusing these technologies, the authors postulate a new type of conceptually-led environment (cyber museum) that fuses real (physical), virtual worlds and cyber-social spaces into a single dynamic environment that provides a unique experience of exploring both worlds simultaneously

Comparison of crash dynamics of articulated and non-articulated trains

This paper presents a comparison of impact dynamic performance between articulated trains and non-articulated trains. This is carried out by investigation of the characteristics of the two trains types and analysis of their effects on impact dynamics. The analysis shows that the differences in bogie support positions on the carbody and coupling devices lead to differences in several structural and compositional characteristics. These characteristics result in different impact responses for the two types of train and are directly related to their impact stablity. Articulated trains have stiff connection and integral performance in collisions but with less capability for absorbing impact energy between carriages, whereas non-articulated trains show loose connection and scattered performance in collisions but with more options for energy absorber installation between carriages

Positioning Teacher Candidates as Self-Regulated, Critically Thinking Learners and Teachers in an Elementary Writing Course With a Tutoring Component

Few interventions attempt to foster teacher candidates\u27 self-regulated learning and teaching roles concurrently. This chapter explores 12 education majors\u27 development of self-regulated, critical thinking skills related to learning and teaching as they participated in an elementary writing methods course with a tutoring component. The instructor of the course devised and offered a four-step model of intervention to stimulate the teacher candidates\u27 self-regulatory dispositions. The teacher candidates perceived their responses to context-specific questions created by the instructor as most beneficial to their development of self-regulated attributes