655 research outputs found
DOGeye: Controlling your Home with Eye Interaction
Nowadays home automation, with its increased availability, reliability and with its ever reducing costs is gaining momentum and is starting to become a viable solution for enabling people with disabilities to autonomously interact with their homes and to better communicate with other people. However, especially for people with severe mobility impairments, there is still a lack of tools and interfaces for effective control and interaction with home automation systems, and general-purpose solutions are seldom applicable due to the complexity, asynchronicity, time dependent behavior, and safety concerns typical of the home environment.
This paper focuses on user-environment interfaces based on the eye tracking technology, which often is the only viable interaction modality for users as such. We propose an eye-based interface tackling the specific requirements of smart environments, already outlined in a public Recommendation issued by the COGAIN European Network of Excellence. The proposed interface has been implemented as a software prototype based on the ETU universal driver, thus being potentially able to run on a variety of eye trackers, and it is compatible with a wide set of smart home technologies, handled by the Domotic OSGi Gateway. A first interface evaluation, with user testing sessions, has been carried and results show that the interface is quite effective and usable without discomfort by people with almost regular eye movement control
Primary cosmic ray spectrum in the 10 to the 12th power - 10 to the 16th power eV energy range from the NUSEX experiment
A primary cosmic ray spectrum was derived which fits both experimental multiple muon rates and the all-nucleon flux derived from the single muon intensities underground. In the frame of the interaction model developed by Gaisser, Elbert and Stanev, it is possible to reproduce NUSEX muon data with a primary composition in which the iron spectrum is only slightly flatter than the proton one. This result rules out the popular idea that the primary composition varies drastically with increasing energy, leading to the dominance of heavier nuclei at energies 10 to the 15th power to 10 to the 16th power eV
Muons enhancements at sea level in association with Swift-BAT and MILAGRO triggers
Recently, triggers occurring during high background rate intervals have been
reporter by Swift-BAT Gamma Ray Burst (GRB) detector. Among them, there were
two on January 24, two on January 25, and two on February 13, and 18, all in
2008. These Swift-BAT triggers in most cases are probably noise triggers that
occurred while Swift was entering the South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA). In fact, we
show that they happen during a plentiful precipitation of high energy particles
in the SAA, producing muons in the atmosphere detected by two directional
telescopes at sea level, inside the SAA region (Tupi experiment). They look
like sharp peaks in the muon counting rate. In the same category are two
triggers from MILAGRO ground based detector, on January 25 and 31, 2008
respectively. In addition, the trigger coordinates are close to (and, in two
cases, inside) the field of view of the telescopes. From an additional analysis
in the behavior of the muon counting rate, it is possible to conclude that the
events are produced by precipitation of high energy charged particles in the
SAA region. Thus, due to its localization, the Tupi experiment constitutes a
new sensor of high energy particle precipitation in the SAA, and it can be
useful in the identification of some triggers of Gamma Ray Burst detectors.Comment: 7pages, 5 figure
A blueprint for integrated eye-controlled environments
Eye-based environmental control requires innovative solutions for supporting effective user interaction, for allowing home automation and control, and for making homes more "attentive" to user needs. Several approaches have already been proposed, which can be seen as isolated attempts to address only partial issues and specific sub-sets of the general problem.
This paper aims at tackling gaze-based home automation as a whole, exploiting state of the art technologies and trying to integrate interaction modalities than are currently supported and that may supported in a near future. User-home interaction is sought through two, complementary, interaction patterns: direct interaction and mediated interaction. Integration between home appliances/devices and user interfaces is granted by a central
point of abstraction/harmonization called House Manager.
Innovative points can be identified in the wide flexibility of the approach
which allows on one side to integrate virtually all home devices having a
communication interface, and, on the other side, mixes-up direct and mediated user interaction exploiting the advantages of both. A complete discussion about interaction and accessibility issues is provided, justifying the presented approach from the point of view of human-environment interaction
Beam test calibration of the balloon-borne imaging calorimeter for the CREAM experiment
CREAM (Cosmic Ray Energetics And Mass) is a multi-flight balloon mission
designed to collect direct data on the elemental composition and individual
energy spectra of cosmic rays. Two instrument suites have been built to be
flown alternately on a yearly base. The tungsten/Sci-Fi imaging calorimeter for
the second flight, scheduled for December 2005, was calibrated with electron
and proton beams at CERN. A calibration procedure based on the study of the
longitudinal shower profile is described and preliminary results of the beam
test are presented.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures. To be published in the Proceedings of 29th
International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC 2005), Pune, India, August 3-10,
200
Study of single muons with the Large Volume Detector at Gran Sasso Laboratory
The present study is based on the sample of about 3 mln single muons observed
by LVD at underground Gran Sasso Laboratory during 36500 live hours from June
1992 to February 1998. We have measured the muon intensity at slant depths from
3 km w.e. to 20 km w.e. Most events are high energy downward muons produced by
meson decay in the atmosphere. The analysis of these muons has revealed the
power index of pion and kaon spectrum: 2.76 \pm 0.05. The reminders are
horizontal muons produced by the neutrino interactions in the rock surrounding
LVD. The value of this flux is obtained. The results are compared with Monte
Carlo simulations and the world data.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication in "Physics of Atomic
Nuclei
Upper Limit on the Prompt Muon Flux Derived from the LVD Underground Experiment
We present the analysis of the muon events with all muon multiplicities
collected during 21804 hours of operation of the first LVD tower. The measured
depth-angular distribution of muon intensities has been used to obtain the
normalization factor, A, the power index, gamma, of the primary all-nucleon
spectrum and the ratio, R_c, of prompt muon flux to that of pi-mesons - the
main parameters which determine the spectrum of cosmic ray muons at the sea
level. The value of gamma = 2.77 +/- 0.05 (68% C.L.) and R_c < 2.0 x 10^-3 (95%
C.L.) have been obtained. The upper limit to the prompt muon flux favours the
models of charm production based on QGSM and the dual parton model.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, RevTex. To appear in Phys. Rev.
Muon `Depth -- Intensity' Relation Measured by LVD Underground Experiment and Cosmic-Ray Muon Spectrum at Sea Level
We present the analysis of the muon events with all muon multiplicities
collected during 21804 hours of operation of the first LVD tower. The measured
angular distribution of muon intensity has been converted to the `depth --
vertical intensity' relation in the depth range from 3 to 12 km w.e.. The
analysis of this relation allowed to derive the power index, , of the
primary all-nucleon spectrum: . The `depth -- vertical
intensity' relation has been converted to standard rock and the comparison with
the data of other experiments has been done. We present also the derived
vertical muon spectrum at sea level.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, to be published on Phys. Rev.
The primary cosmic ray composition between 10**15 and 10**16 eV from Extensive Air Showers electromagnetic and TeV muon data
The cosmic ray primary composition in the energy range between 10**15 and
10**16 eV, i.e., around the "knee" of the primary spectrum, has been studied
through the combined measurements of the EAS-TOP air shower array (2005 m
a.s.l., 10**5 m**2 collecting area) and the MACRO underground detector (963 m
a.s.l., 3100 m w.e. of minimum rock overburden, 920 m**2 effective area) at the
National Gran Sasso Laboratories. The used observables are the air shower size
(Ne) measured by EAS-TOP and the muon number (Nmu) recorded by MACRO. The two
detectors are separated on average by 1200 m of rock, and located at a
respective zenith angle of about 30 degrees. The energy threshold at the
surface for muons reaching the MACRO depth is approximately 1.3 TeV. Such muons
are produced in the early stages of the shower development and in a kinematic
region quite different from the one relevant for the usual Nmu-Ne studies. The
measurement leads to a primary composition becoming heavier at the knee of the
primary spectrum, the knee itself resulting from the steepening of the spectrum
of a primary light component (p, He). The result confirms the ones reported
from the observation of the low energy muons at the surface (typically in the
GeV energy range), showing that the conclusions do not depend on the production
region kinematics. Thus, the hadronic interaction model used (CORSIKA/QGSJET)
provides consistent composition results from data related to secondaries
produced in a rapidity region exceeding the central one. Such an evolution of
the composition in the knee region supports the "standard" galactic
acceleration/propagation models that imply rigidity dependent breaks of the
different components, and therefore breaks occurring at lower energies in the
spectra of the light nuclei.Comment: Submitted to Astroparticle Physic
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