Engaging with books you cannot touch: interactive multimedia to explore library treasures

Interactivity has proved a successful way to engage visitors of science museums. However it is not a common practice when the objects to exhibit are artefacts or, as in the case of this paper, books. A study was set up to investigate the driving criteria for the “The Life and Work of William Butler Yeats” exhibition at the National Library of Ireland and compare those with the visitors’ opinion. Books, notebooks and personal belongings of the poet have been digitized and used to create a rich and varied exhibition that used both interactivity and multimedia. The result of visitors’ survey showed that the variety was a key factor for the success of the exhibition: different people engaged with different contents and different medium to different degrees. The design of the ambience is critical: dim lights and the use of audio as a medium have to be carefully planned to avoid annoying instead of engaging

Safety considerations in the design and operation of large wind turbines

The engineering and safety techniques used to assure the reliable and safe operation of large wind turbine generators utilizing the Mod 2 Wind Turbine System Program as an example is described. The techniques involve a careful definition of the wind turbine's natural and operating environments, use of proven structural design criteria and analysis techniques, an evaluation of potential failure modes and hazards, and use of a fail safe and redundant component engineering philosophy. The role of an effective quality assurance program, tailored to specific hardware criticality, and the checkout and validation program developed to assure system integrity are described

Policy-based autonomic control service

Recently, there has been a considerable interest in policy-based, goal-oriented service management and autonomic computing. Much work is still required to investigate designs and policy models and associate meta-reasoning systems for policy-based autonomic systems. In this paper we outline a proposed autonomic middleware control service used to orchestrate selfhealing of distributed applications. Policies are used to adjust the systems autonomy and define self-healing strategies to stabilize/correct a given system in the event of failures

Direct measurement of the maximum tunnel rate in a radio frequency single electron transistor operated as a microwave mixer

By operating the radio frequency single electron transistor (rf-SET) as a mixer we present measurements in which the RC roll-off of the tunnel junctions is observed at high frequencies. Our technique makes use of the non-linear rf-SET transconductance to mix high frequency gate signals and produce difference-frequency components that fall within the bandwidth of the rf-SET. At gate frequencies >15GHz the induced charge on the rf-SET island is altered on time-scales faster than the inverse tunnel rate, preventing mixer operation. We suggest the possibility of utilizing this technique to sense high frequency signals beyond the usual rf-SET bandwidth.Comment: Submitted to Applied Physics Letters. Comments always very welcome, email:[email protected] (New version contains extra data and new figs

Elastomer coated filler and composites thereof comprising at least 60% by weight of a hydrated filler and an elastomer containing an acid substituent

The impact resistance of flame retardant composites, especially thermoplastic molding: compounds containing over 60% hydrated mineral filler such as Al(OH)3 or Mg(OH)2 as improved by coating the filler with 1 to 20% of an elastomer. The composite will fail by crazing or shearing rather than by brittle fracture. A well bonded elastomeric interphase resulted by utilizing acidic substituted resins such as ethyl-hexyl acrylate-acrylic acid copolymers which bond to and are cross-linked by the basic filler particles. Further improvement in impact resistance was provided by incorporating 1 to 10% of a resin fiber reinforcement such as polyvinyl alcohol fibers that decompose to yield at least 30% water when heated to decomposition temperature

A deliberative model for self-adaptation middleware using architectural dependency

A crucial prerequisite to externalized adaptation is an understanding of how components are interconnected, or more particularly how and why they depend on one another. Such dependencies can be used to provide an architectural model, which provides a reference point for externalized adaptation. In this paper, it is described how dependencies are used as a basis to systems' self-understanding and subsequent architectural reconfigurations. The approach is based on the combination of: instrumentation services, a dependency meta-model and a system controller. In particular, the latter uses self-healing repair rules (or conflict resolution strategies), based on extensible beliefs, desires and intention (EBDI) model, to reflect reconfiguration changes back to a target application under examination

Re-matching, Information and Sequencing Effects in Posted Offer Markets

This paper evaluates the effects of some standard procedural variations on outcomes in posted offer oligopoly experiments. Variations studied include the presence or absence of market information, the use of re-matching or fixed seller pairs and alterations in the order of sequencing. Experimental results indicate that such variations can have first order effects on outcomes. For this reason, we recommend that results in oligopoly experiments be carefully interpreted in light of the procedures selected.Market Experiments, Oligopoly, Re-Matching, Information, Market Concentration

Cooperation without Coordination: Signaling, Types and Tacit Collusion in Laboratory Oligopolies

We study the effects of price signaling activity and underlying propensities to cooperate on tacit collusion in posted offer markets. The primary experiment consists of an extensively repeated baseline sequence and a 'forecast' sequence that adds to the baseline a forecasting game that allows identification of signaling intentions. Forecast sequence results indicate that signaling intentions considerably exceed those that are counted under a standard signal measure based on previous period prices. Nevertheless, we find essentially no correlation between either measure of signal volumes and collusive efficiency. A second experiment demonstrates that underlying seller propensities to cooperate more clearly affect collusiveness.Experiments, Tacit Collusion, Price Signaling, TypesExperiments, Tacit Collusion, Price Signaling, Types