Assessing haptic properties for data representation

This paper describes the results of a series of forced choice design experiments investigating the discrimination of material properties using a PHANToM haptic device. Research has shown that the PHANToM is effective at displaying graphical information to blind people, but the techniques used so far have been very simple. Our experiments showed that subjects' discrimination of friction was significantly better than that of stiffness or the spatial period of sinusoidal textures, over the range of stimuli investigated. Thus, it is proposed that graphical data could be made more easily accessible to blind users by scaling the data values to friction rather than shape or size, as in traditional bar charts

Writer Identification Using Inexpensive Signal Processing Techniques

We propose to use novel and classical audio and text signal-processing and otherwise techniques for "inexpensive" fast writer identification tasks of scanned hand-written documents "visually". The "inexpensive" refers to the efficiency of the identification process in terms of CPU cycles while preserving decent accuracy for preliminary identification. This is a comparative study of multiple algorithm combinations in a pattern recognition pipeline implemented in Java around an open-source Modular Audio Recognition Framework (MARF) that can do a lot more beyond audio. We present our preliminary experimental findings in such an identification task. We simulate "visual" identification by "looking" at the hand-written document as a whole rather than trying to extract fine-grained features out of it prior classification.Comment: 9 pages; 1 figure; presented at CISSE'09 at http://conference.cisse2009.org/proceedings.aspx ; includes the the application source code; based on MARF described in arXiv:0905.123

Tac-tiles: multimodal pie charts for visually impaired users

Tac-tiles is an accessible interface that allows visually impaired users to browse graphical information using tactile and audio feedback. The system uses a graphics tablet which is augmented with a tangible overlay tile to guide user exploration. Dynamic feedback is provided by a tactile pin-array at the fingertips, and through speech/non-speech audio cues. In designing the system, we seek to preserve the affordances and metaphors of traditional, low-tech teaching media for the blind, and combine this with the benefits of a digital representation. Traditional tangible media allow rapid, non-sequential access to data, promote easy and unambiguous access to resources such as axes and gridlines, allow the use of external memory, and preserve visual conventions, thus promoting collaboration with sighted colleagues. A prototype system was evaluated with visually impaired users, and recommendations for multimodal design were derived

Gravitational waves from quasi-spherical black holes

A quasi-spherical approximation scheme, intended to apply to coalescing black holes, allows the waveforms of gravitational radiation to be computed by integrating ordinary differential equations.Comment: 4 revtex pages, 2 eps figure

Sonically enhanced interface toolkit

This paper describes an on-going research project investigating the design of a user-interface toolkit composed of sonically enhanced widgets. The motivation for this work is the same that motivated the creation of graphical interface toolkits, which was to simplify their construction, allowing designers who are not experts to create such interfaces; to ensure the sonically enhanced widgets are effective and improve usability; and to ensure the widgets use sound in a clear and consistent way across the interface

Sound in the interface to a mobile computer

No abstract available

Atheistic teleology

Wesley Salmon and Michael Martin argue that scientific considerations about the order in the universe justify atheism. After sketching Salmon’s argument, I examine the nature of begging the question and argue that Martin takes a sufficient condition of that fallacy to be a necessary condition. After a pragmatic account to the fallacy is recommended, I point out how Salmon’s and Martin’s beg the question against all save those who already adhere to atheism and that the crucial considerations that they take to be distinctly scientific are really extra-scientific considerations, giving a specious impression that they are uncontroversial to all who accept mainstream science

Social and economic influences on restructuring rural landscapes for biodiversity conservation: Remnant vegetation in the West Australian wheatbelt as a case study

In Australia, biodiversity loss is a national concern, especially in agricultural landscapes such as the West Australian wheatbelt. Landscape restructuring offers a means of ameliorating such losses. If restructuring is to occur, the associated actions must match the ‘triple bottom line’, they must be economically gainful, socially adoptable and ecologically possible. This paper addresses one component of this bottom line, social influences. To further focus this discussion, remnant vegetation conservation, one important element of managing for biodiversity, is explored on private lands in the WA wheatbelt. The social influences on the landscapes of the WA wheatbelt are cultural, political and economic. History and attitudes can be considered key elements of culture. Historically, the WA wheatbelt has experienced a number of ‘waves’ of clearing of remnant vegetation, generally directed toward improving the nation’s agricultural production as well as populating rural areas. In terms of attitudes, the majority of landholders in the wheatbelt talk positively about nature conservation. Unfortunately, however, results from research in Australia and elsewhere indicates that the links between attitudes and behaviour are tenuous. In Australian agricultural areas behaviour is better predicted and influenced by landholders’ perceptions of environmental problems, the financial constraints they face, and the farming subculture to which they belong. Politically in Australia, the character of rural landscapes is predominantly influenced by state governments. In terms of economic influences, if a change is not economically viable, rural landholders will not make it. In Australia as elsewhere, governments seek to restructure rural landscapes through applying policy instruments. These are tools, generally used by government, to change how people behave. Instruments available to conserve remnant vegetation on private lands include motivational ones (eg, education, partnerships), financial (eg, subsidies), market-based (eg, tradeable rights), self-regulatory (eg, codes of practice) and regulatory (eg, regulations). Most are voluntary with current trends favouring such approaches. In particular, policy makers are interested in market-based and self-regulatory instruments, as both are perceived as righting current market failures. A question vexing policy makers and others is selecting the ‘best’ policy instrument(s) to achieve biodiversity conservation. Principles can be derived to help answer this question. Of central importance is selecting more than one instrument and making sure the instrument mix is complementary. Clearly identifying the property rights associated with remnant vegetation on private lands, and therefore who pays for and receives the associated costs and benefits, is also important. Crucial too is matching the policy instrument with the appropriate institution, whether it is Commonwealth, state or local government, industry, a community group or individual. And last, because regions and their landscapes have different legal, social and environmental features, different landscapes will require different policy mixes

A list of websites and reading materials on strategy & complexity

The list has been developed based on a broad interpretation of the subject of ‘strategy & complexity’. Resources will therefore more, or less directly relate to ‘being strategic in the face of complexity’. Many of the articles and reports referred to in the attached bibliography can be accessed and downloaded from the internet. Most books can be found at amazon.com where you will often find a number of book reviews and summaries as well. Sometimes, reading the reviews will suffice and will give you the essence of the contents of the book after which you do not need to buy it. If the book looks interesting enough, buying options are easy

'I slept with 40 boys in three months' teenage sexuality in the media: too much too young?

No abstract available