Beyond representations: towards an action-centric perspective on tangible interaction

In the light of theoretical as well as concrete technical development, we discuss a conceptual shift from an information-centric to an action-centric perspective on tangible interactive technology. We explicitly emphasise the qualities of shareable use, and the importance of designing tangibles that allow for meaningful manipulation and control of the digital material. This involves a broadened focus from studying properties of the interface, to instead aim for qualities of the activity of using a system, a general tendency towards designing for social and sharable use settings and an increased openness towards multiple and subjective interpretations. An effect of this is that tangibles are not designed as representations of data, but as resources for action. We discuss four ways that tangible artefacts work as resources for action: (1) for physical manipulation; (2) for referential, social and contextually oriented action; (3) for perception and sensory experience; (4) for digitally mediated action

Tuning Gravitationally Lensed Standard Sirens

Gravitational waves emitted by chirping supermassive black hole binaries could in principle be used to obtain very accurate distance determinations. Provided they have an electromagnetic counterpart from which the redshift can be determined, these standard sirens could be used to build a high redshift Hubble diagram. Errors in the distance measurements will most likely be dominated by gravitational lensing. We show that the (de)magnification due to inhomogeneous foreground matter will increase the scatter in the measured distances by a factor ~10. We propose to use optical and IR data of the foreground galaxies to minimize the degradation from weak lensing. We find that the net effect of correcting the estimated distances for lensing is comparable to increasing the sample size by a factor of three when using the data to constrain cosmological parameters.Comment: 21 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Ap

Setting the stage – embodied and spatial dimensions in emerging programming practices.

In the design of interactive systems, developers sometimes need to engage in various ways of physical performance in order to communicate ideas and to test out properties of the system to be realised. External resources such as sketches, as well as bodily action, often play important parts in such processes, and several methods and tools that explicitly address such aspects of interaction design have recently been developed. This combined with the growing range of pervasive, ubiquitous, and tangible technologies add up to a complex web of physicality within the practice of designing interactive systems. We illustrate this dimension of systems development through three cases which in different ways address the design of systems where embodied performance is important. The first case shows how building a physical sport simulator emphasises a shift in activity between programming and debugging. The second case shows a build-once run-once scenario, where the fine-tuning and control of the run-time activity gets turned into an act of in situ performance by the programmers. The third example illustrates the explorative and experiential nature of programming and debugging systems for specialised and autonomous interaction devices. This multitude in approaches in existing programming settings reveals an expanded perspective of what practices of interaction design consist of, emphasising the interlinking between design, programming, and performance with the system that is being developed

Exact Sequences for the Homology of the Matching Complex

Building on work by Bouc and by Shareshian and Wachs, we provide a toolbox of long exact sequences for the reduced simplicial homology of the matching complex $M_n$, which is the simplicial complex of matchings in the complete graph $K_n$. Combining these sequences in different ways, we prove several results about the 3-torsion part of the homology of $M_n$. First, we demonstrate that there is nonvanishing 3-torsion in $H_d(M_n;Z)$ whenever \nu_n \le d \le (n-6}/2, where $\nu_n= \lceil (n-4)/3 \rceil$. By results due to Bouc and to Shareshian and Wachs, $H_{\nu_n}(M_n;Z)$ is a nontrivial elementary 3-group for almost all $n$ and the bottom nonvanishing homology group of $M_n$ for all $n \neq 2$. Second, we prove that $H_d(M_n;Z)$ is a nontrivial 3-group whenever $\nu_n \le d \le (2n-9)/5$. Third, for each $k \ge 0$, we show that there is a polynomial $f_k(r)$ of degree 3k such that the dimension of $H_{k-1+r}(M_{2k+1+3r};Z_3)$, viewed as a vector space over $Z_3$, is at most $f_k(r)$ for all $r \ge k+2$.Comment: 31 page

SensibleSleep: A Bayesian Model for Learning Sleep Patterns from Smartphone Events

We propose a Bayesian model for extracting sleep patterns from smartphone events. Our method is able to identify individuals' daily sleep periods and their evolution over time, and provides an estimation of the probability of sleep and wake transitions. The model is fitted to more than 400 participants from two different datasets, and we verify the results against ground truth from dedicated armband sleep trackers. We show that the model is able to produce reliable sleep estimates with an accuracy of 0.89, both at the individual and at the collective level. Moreover the Bayesian model is able to quantify uncertainty and encode prior knowledge about sleep patterns. Compared with existing smartphone-based systems, our method requires only screen on/off events, and is therefore much less intrusive in terms of privacy and more battery-efficient

Five-Torsion in the Homology of the Matching Complex on 14 Vertices

J. L. Andersen proved that there is 5-torsion in the bottom nonvanishing homology group of the simplicial complex of graphs of degree at most two on seven vertices. We use this result to demonstrate that there is 5-torsion also in the bottom nonvanishing homology group of the matching complex $M_{14}$ on 14 vertices. Combining our observation with results due to Bouc and to Shareshian and Wachs, we conclude that the case $n=14$ is exceptional; for all other $n$, the torsion subgroup of the bottom nonvanishing homology group has exponent three or is zero. The possibility remains that there is other torsion than 3-torsion in higher-degree homology groups of $M_n$ when $n \ge 13$ and $n \neq 14$.Comment: 11 page