282 research outputs found
Appliance design for pervasive computing
The First International Conference on Appliance Design offered the opportunity for computer scientists, electronic engineers, designers, architects, and business strategists to discuss and to blend all the perspectives of designâphysical, functional, interaction, graphical, and informationâof pervasive computing systems and infrastructures
Rapid evaluation of radial basis functions
Over the past decade, the radial basis function method has been shown to produce high quality solutions to the multivariate scattered data interpolation problem. However, this method has been associated with very high computational cost, as compared to alternative methods such as finite element or multivariate spline interpolation. For example. the direct evaluation at M locations of a radial basis function interpolant with N centres requires O(M N) floating-point operations. In this paper we introduce a fast evaluation method based on the Fast Gauss Transform and suitable quadrature rules. This method has been applied to the Hardy multiquadric, the inverse multiquadric and the thin-plate spline to reduce the computational complexity of the interpolant evaluation to O(M + N) floating point operations. By using certain localisation properties of conditionally negative definite functions this method has several performance advantages against traditional hierarchical rapid summation methods which we discuss in detail
A Stochastic Evolutionary Growth Model for Social Networks
We present a stochastic model for a social network, where new actors may join
the network, existing actors may become inactive and, at a later stage,
reactivate themselves. Our model captures the evolution of the network,
assuming that actors attain new relations or become active according to the
preferential attachment rule. We derive the mean-field equations for this
stochastic model and show that, asymptotically, the distribution of actors
obeys a power-law distribution. In particular, the model applies to social
networks such as wireless local area networks, where users connect to
access-points, and peer-to-peer networks where users connect to each other. As
a proof of concept, we demonstrate the validity of our model empirically by
analysing a public log containing traces from a wireless network at Dartmouth
College over a period of three years. Analysing the data processed according to
our model, we demonstrate that the distribution of user accesses is
asymptotically a power-law distribution.Comment: 15 pages, 1 figur
Enabling pervasive computing with smart phones
The authors discuss their experience with a number of mobile telephony projects carried out in the context of the European Union Information Society Technologies research program, which aims to develop mobile information services. They identify areas where use of smart phones can enable pervasive computing and offer practical advice in terms of lessons learned. To this end, they first look at the mobile telephone as * the end point of a mobile information service,* the control device for ubiquitous systems management and configuration,* the networking hub for personal and body area networks, and* identification tokens.They conclude with a discussion of business and practical issues that play a significant role in deploying research systems in realistic situations
Designing appliances for mobile commerce and retailtainment
In the emerging world of the new consumer and the `anytime, anywhere' mobile commerce, appliances are located at the collision point of the retailer and consumer agendas. The consequence of this is twofold: on the one hand appliances that were previously considered plain and utilitarian become entertainment devices and on the other, for the effective design of consumer appliances it becomes paramount to employ multidisciplinary expertise. In this paper, we discuss consumer perceptions of a retailtainment commerce system developed in collaboration between interactivity designers, information systems engineers, hardware and application developers, marketing strategists, product development teams, social scientists and retail professionals. We discuss the approached employed for the design of the consumer experience and its implications for appliance design
Towards a framework for investigating tangible environments for learning
External representations have been shown to play a key role in mediating cognition. Tangible environments offer the opportunity for novel representational formats and combinations, potentially increasing representational power for supporting learning. However, we currently know little about the specific learning benefits of tangible environments, and have no established framework within which to analyse the ways that external representations work in tangible environments to support learning. Taking external representation as the central focus, this paper proposes a framework for investigating the effect of tangible technologies on interaction and cognition. Key artefact-action-representation relationships are identified, and classified to form a structure for investigating the differential cognitive effects of these features. An example scenario from our current research is presented to illustrate how the framework can be used as a method for investigating the effectiveness of differential designs for supporting science learning
The effect of representation location on interaction in a tangible learning environment
Drawing on the 'representation' TUI framework [21], this paper reports a study that investigated the concept of 'representation location' and its effect on interaction and learning. A reacTIVision-based tangible interface was designed and developed to support children learning about the behaviour of light. Children aged eleven years worked with the environment in groups of three. Findings suggest that different representation locations lend themselves to different levels of abstraction and engender different forms and levels of activity, particularly with respect to speed of dynamics and differences in group awareness. Furthermore, the studies illustrated interaction effects according to different physical correspondence metaphors used, particularly with respect to combining familiar physical objects with digital--based table-top representation. The implications of these findings for learning are discussed
Public goods: using pervasive computing to inspire grassroots activism
Pervasive computing technology enables social mapping and sharing of local knowledge to create relationships beyond established social and cultural boundaries; it also enables the development of new practices around place, identity, and community. For more than a decade, the authors have explored the potential costs and benefits of using pervasive computing to facilitate codiscovery with communities across London, with the aim of supporting grassroots activities that help urban communities take action toward environmental sustainability. A core ingredient of these explorations is the making of artifacts to provide both the focus for communal experiences and a way to create public goods--that is, tangible representations of the intangible things we value most about our communities. Specific projects explore alternative material representations of stories, skills, games, songs, techniques, memories, hyper-local lore, and experiential knowledge of the environment. In this article, the authors present work that investigates how public goods can provide the focus for the development of grassroots community groups focused on hyper-local concerns. They also show how creating objects constructed to communicate the activist message of these communities in a tangible manner provides more affective and illustrative ways to facilitate the codiscovery of uncommon insights. This article is part of a special issue on pervasive analytics and citizen science
Presence analytics: density-based social clustering for mobile users
We demonstrate how social density-based clustering of WLAN traces can be utilised to detect granular social groups of mobile users within a university campus. Furthermore, the ability to detect such social groups, which can be linked to the learning activities taking place at target locations, provides an invaluable opportunity to understand the presence and movement of people within such an environment. For example, the proposed density-based clustering procedure, which we call Social-DBSCAN, has real potential to support human mobility studies such as the optimisation of space usage strategies. It can automatically detect the academic term period, the classes, and the attendance data. From a large Eduroam log of an academic site, we chose as a proof concept, selected locations with known capacity for the evaluation of our proposed method, which we successfully utilise to detect the regular learning activities at those locations, and to provide accurate estimates about the attendance levels over the academic term period
Presence analytics: discovering meaningful patterns about human presence using WLAN digital imprints
In this paper we illustrates how aggregated WLAN activity traces provide anonymous information that reveals invaluable insight into human presence within a university campus. We show how technologies supporting pervasive services, such as WLAN, which have the potential to generate vast amounts of detailed information, provide an invaluable opportunity to understand the presence and movement of people within such an environment. We demonstrate how these aggregated mobile network traces offer the opportunity for human presence analytics in several dimensions: social, spatial, temporal and semantic dimensions. These analytics have real potential to support human mobility studies such as the optimisation of space use strategies. The analytics presented in this paper are based on recent WLAN traces collected at Birkbeck College of University of London, one of the participants in the Eduroam network
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