Systems, interactions and macrotheory

A significant proportion of early HCI research was guided by one very clear vision: that the existing theory base in psychology and cognitive science could be developed to yield engineering tools for use in the interdisciplinary context of HCI design. While interface technologies and heuristic methods for behavioral evaluation have rapidly advanced in both capability and breadth of application, progress toward deeper theory has been modest, and some now believe it to be unnecessary. A case is presented for developing new forms of theory, based around generic “systems of interactors.” An overlapping, layered structure of macro- and microtheories could then serve an explanatory role, and could also bind together contributions from the different disciplines. Novel routes to formalizing and applying such theories provide a host of interesting and tractable problems for future basic research in HCI

Rewriting the grammar of secondary schools: lessons in paradigm change from multi-age organisation

The author’s public works described below are systemic in style but embrace a multi-disciplinary perspective. They speak of incoherence in the traditional structure of schooling caused by same-age organization, more accurately, an incoherence in structuration, the duality of structure and agency described by Giddens (1979). The public works argue that as the complexity of social and learning demands on schools increase, the same-age structural form is increasingly unable to cope and that any attempt at an upgrade will not work. To mask this learning handicap, the school as an organization changes how it communicates, deploying semantics and linguistics to subvert the meaning of care, capacity, complexity, and collaboration. The public works argue that such an unconscious process negatively impacts both individual and organization learning besides being detrimental to participant wellbeing. Put simply, schools are using the wrong organizational system. The public works argue that the perpetuation of the traditional same-age organizational structure used in secondary schools accounts for the failure of reform and the apparent resistance of schools to change. Such a problem is exacerbated by the absence of a viable alternative form of organization, a systemic way of seeing that exposes organizational assumptions and frames of reference, what is happening at the level of policy reception in the everyday. The arrival of the vertical tutoring system provides such a lens and the means by which the two systems (same-age and multi-age) can understand and see each other. The thesis of the public works argues that the inability of schools to match their capacity to cope with system demand embeds an unconscious process (mindset) of reasoning, the “defensive routines” observed by Argyris and Schon and described by Dick and Dalmau (1990). The prolonged absence of a viable alternative exacerbates such unconscious self-deception. The public works have six broad intentions: 1. To describe a viable and alternative form of organization called the vertical tutoring system (VT) trialled by schools worldwide. 2. To use the VT model as a means of interrogating existing assumptions and frames of reference used in traditional same-age schools. 3. To illustrate the transformative learning challenges involved in such a paradigmatic shift. 4. To show how the “lines of inquiry” (described below, pp. 2-6) can be used to account for the failure of reform. 5. To show how and why age-group organization determines the grammar of schooling (the way schools work) 6. To explain how vertical integration (multi-age grouping) releases the agentic capacity needed for paradigmatic change

Using film cutting in interface design

It has been suggested that computer interfaces could be made more usable if their designers utilized cinematography techniques, which have evolved to guide the viewer through a narrative despite frequent discontinuities in the presented scene (i.e., cuts between shots). Because of differences between the domains of film and interface design, it is not straightforward to understand how such techniques can be transferred. May and Barnard (1995) argued that a psychological model of watching film could support such a transference. This article presents an extended account of this model, which allows identification of the practice of collocation of objects of interest in the same screen position before and after a cut. To verify that filmmakers do, in fact, use such techniques successfully, eye movements were measured while participants watched the entirety of a commerciall

Protecting the Dragon: Dutch Attempts at Limiting Access to Komodo Lizards in the 1920s and 1930s

Page range: 97-124In 1912, Dutch scientists announced the existence of large lizards on Komodo Island in the Dutch East Indies. By the 1920s, these large lizards became the focus of intense collecting efforts on behalf of zoos and natural history museums, which desired the publicity and status inherent in displaying such a “celebrity species.” This article focuses on Dutch attempts to limit access to a little understood animal, which was located on the margins of their authority. By the 1930s, this led to new understandings about the role of wildlife reserves in the colony and thus became vital in the development of early environmental conservation in Indonesia

Black hole hunting in the Andromeda Galaxy

We present a new technique for identifying stellar mass black holes in low mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs), and apply it to XMM-Newton observations of M31. We examine X-ray time series variability seeking power density spectra (PDS) typical of LMXBs accreting at a low accretion rate (which we refer to as Type A PDS); these are very similar for black hole and neutron star LMXBs. Galactic neutron star LMXBs exhibit Type A PDS at low luminosities (~10^36--10^37 erg/s) while black hole LMXBs can exhibit them at luminosities >10^38 erg/s. We propose that Type A PDS are confined to luminosities below a critical fraction of the Eddington limit, $l_c$ that is constant for all LMXBs; we have examined asample of black hole and neutron star LMXBs and find they are all consistent with $l_c$ = 0.10+/-0.04 in the 0.3--10 keV band. We present luminosity and PDS data from 167 observations of X-ray binaries in M31 that provide strong support for our hypothesis. Since the theoretical maximum mass for a neutron star is \~3.1 M_Sun, we therefore assert that any LMXB that exhibits a Type A PDS at a 0.3--10 keV luminosity greater than 4 x 10^37 erg/s is likely to contain a black hole primary. We have found eleven new black hole candidates in M31 using this method. We focus on XMM-Newton observations of RX J0042.4+4112, an X-ray source in M31 and find the mass of the primary to be 7+/-2 M_Sun, if our assumptions are correct. Furthermore, RX J0042.4+4112 is consistently bright in \~40 observations made over 23 years, and is likely to be a persistently bright LMXB; by contrast all known Galactic black hole LMXBs are transient. Hence our method may be used to find black holes in known, persistently bright Galactic LMXBs and also in LMXBs in other galaxies.Comment: 6 Pages, 6 figures. To appear in the conference proceedings of "Interacting Binaries: Accretion, Evolution and Outcomes" (Cefalu, July 4-10 2004

Hijacking User Uploads to Online Persistent Data Repositories for Covert Data Exfiltration

As malware has evolved over the years, it has gone from harmless programs that copy themselves into other executables to modern day botnets that perform bank fraud and identity theft. Modern malware often has a need to communicate back to the author, or other machines that are also infected. Several techniques for transmitting this data covertly have been developed over the years which vary significantly in their level of sophistication. This research creates a new covert channel technique for stealing information from a network by piggybacking on user-generated network traffic. Specifically, steganography drop boxes and passive covert channels are merged to create a novel covert data exfiltration technique. This technique revolves around altering user supplied data being uploaded to online repositories such as image hosting websites. It specifically targets devices that are often used to generate and upload content to the Internet, such as smartphones. The reliability of this technique is tested by creating a simulated version of Flickr as well as simulating how smartphone users interact with the service. Two different algorithms for recovering the exfiltrated data are compared. The results show a clear improvement for algorithms that are user-aware. The results continue on to compare performance for varying rates of infection of mobile devices and show that performance is proportional to the infection rate

Alfred E. Eaton - Father of modern classification of mayflies, late 1800\u27s

This is the only known photograph of Rev. Alfred E. Eaton. It is provided by P. Barnard. The Eatonia newsletter is named after Rev. Alfred E. Eaton who studied mayflies in England in the late 1800’s and is considered the “father” of the modern classification of mayflies

Cumulative luminosity functions of the X-ray point source population in M31

We present preliminary results from a detailed analysis of the X-ray point sources in the XMM-Newton survey of M31. These sources are expected to be mostly X-ray binaries. We have so far studied 225 of the 535 sources found by automated source detection. Only sources which were present in all three EPIC images were considered. X-ray binaries are identified by their energy spectrum and power density spectrum. Unlike in other surveys we have obtained source luminosities from freely fit emission models. We present uncorrected luminosity functions of the sources analysed so far.Comment: 2 pages, 1 figure. To appear in proceedings of IAUS23

Identifying a black hole X-ray transient in M31 with XMM-Newton and Chandra

Stochastic variability in two out of four XMM-Newton observations of XMMU J004303+4115 along with its power spectra and X-ray luminosities suggest a low-mass X-ray binary (LMXB) with a black hole primary. However, Chandra observations resolve the object into two point sources. We use data from 35 Chandra observations to analyse the contributions of each source, and attribute the variability to CXOM31 J004303.2+411528 (known as r2-3), which varies in intensity by a factor of ~100 between observations. We assume that the power density spectra of LMXBs are governed by the luminosity, and that the transition between types of power density spectra occurs at some critical luminosity in Eddington units, l_c, that applies to all LMXBs. We use results from these XMM-Newton observations and past results from the available literature to estimate this transition luminosity, and find that all results are consistent with l_c ~0.1 in the 0.3--10 keV band. CXOM31 J004303.2+411528 exhibits a low accretion rate power density spectrum at a 0.3--10 keV luminosity of (5.3+/-0.6)x10^{37} erg/s. Known stellar mass black holes have masses of 4--15 M_{\odot}; hence our observations of CXOM31 J004303.2+411528 are consistent with l_c ~0.1 if it has a black hole primary.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&A; 9 pages, 4 figure