Mixed Reality Architecture: Concept, Construction, Use

Mixed Reality Architecture (MRA) dynamically links and overlays physical and virtual spaces. This paper investigates the topology of and the relationships between the components of MRA. As a phenomenon, MRA takes its place in a long history of technologies that have influenced conditions for social interaction as well as the environment we build around us. However, by providing a flexible spatial topology spanning physical and virtual environments it presents new opportunities for social interaction across electronic media. An experimental MRA is described that allowed us to study some of the emerging issues in this field. It provided material for the development of a framework describing virtual and physical spaces, the links between those and the types of mixed reality structure that we can envisage it being possible to design using these elements. We propose that by re-introducing a level of spatiality into communication across physical and virtual environments MRA will support everyday social interaction, and may convert digital communication media from being socially conservative to a more generative form familiar from physical space

The Efficacy of Group Selection is Increased by Coexistence Dynamics within Groups

Selection on the level of loosely associated groups has been suggested as a route towards the evolution of cooperation between individuals and the subsequent formation of higher-level biological entities. Such group selection explanations remain problematic, however, due to the narrow range of parameters under which they can overturn within-group selection that favours selfish behaviour. In principle, individual selection could act on such parameters so as to strengthen the force of between-group selection and hence increase cooperation and individual fitness, as illustrated in our previous work. However, such a process cannot operate in parameter regions where group selection effects are totally absent, since there would be no selective gradient to follow. One key parameter, which when increased often rapidly causes group selection effects to tend to zero, is initial group size, for when groups are formed randomly then even moderately sized groups lack significant variance in their composition. However, the consequent restriction of any group selection effect to small sized groups is derived from models that assume selfish types will competitively exclude their more cooperative counterparts at within-group equilibrium. In such cases, diversity in the migrant pool can tend to zero and accordingly variance in group composition cannot be generated. In contrast, we show that if within-group dynamics lead to a stable coexistence of selfish and cooperative types, then the range of group sizes showing some effect of group selection is much larger

How to Incorporate Reading Strategies in Religion and Why that is Crucial to Student Learning

Now, more than ever, young people are being bombarded with a secular worldview that promotes ideas contrary to the Bible. As Christian educators we know that our work of education is also a work of redemption. Showing our students a Saviour who cares, loves, and died for them should be at the pinnacle of our curriculum. What better way is there to show them than for them to read it for themselves! This poster presentation focus will be on techniques and creative strategies to integrate reading into Bible classrooms. Come and find out how you can lead your students, through reading, to the foot of the Cross

S. Penn Jr. letter to Moses Dawson, L. Day, C. R. Ramsay

Letter from Penn (Louisville, Kentucky) to Dawson (Cincinnati, Ohio) regarding the question of the Bank of the United States; is the Bank is dead or only changed from Federal to State with a continuance of all its evils; Louisville businessmen desire a branch bank; people are convinced of Bank\u27s evils; and opinions on Andrew Jackson.https://www.exhibit.xavier.edu/dawson_correspondence/1218/thumbnail.jp

An empirical study on applying community detection methods in defining spatial housing submarkets in London

Housing submarkets can be defined as a set of dwellings that are reasonably close substitutes with one another, but poor substitutes between other submarkets. This research argues similarities within submarkets are not only captured by its building and location characteristics but also in how each dwelling is inter-connected within its local area and embedded to the rest of the system. This research conjectures that spatial network local-areas as defined by community detection methods can be used to identify spatial housing submarkets. In order to test this conjecture, the hedonic approach will be used as an empirical strategy on the case study of London. The study found spatial network local areas correspond with planned known local area boundaries and that greater house price similarity is found within spatial network local-areas than between. The study also found that spatial network local area as defined by community detection technique can be used to identify spatial housing submarkets to explain house price. The contribution of this research is it represents a proof of concept in the use of community detection techniques in the definition of spatial housing submarket. Importantly it illustrates the significance in how spatial configuration influences housing market not just in terms of accessibility (Law et al. 2013) but also in terms of housing submarket. Further research will be carried out to study the spatial configuration of the spatial network local areas in understanding severances and connectivity between them. By understanding cities through multiple spatial representations will allow more informed policies at the local-area level

The architectural adaptation of urban economic life: Location, use and form of the commercial-residential building in Cardiff

Revisiting Jane Jacob's notion of locality knowledge, this paper argues that combining commercial space and dwelling fosters social, economic and architectural processes that come about by factors of local urban economies. The mixing of uses merges the relation of 'what one does' and 'where one lives' in a particular building whereby urban and architectural scale effects come into place. Comparisons of commercial-residential buildings in two local districts of contrasting morphologies in the city of Cardiff are studied in the context of their urban-architectural design scales. From an urban scale analysis, attention is given to the distribution of commercial-residential buildings in relation to spatial centrality; from an architectural perspective, it examines the way residential building adapts commercial additions, defining how different functions associate distinctive adaptable typologies depending on the building's urban location. By using syntactical and morphological approaches, the paper combines Depth Distance analysis with patterns of use and building form, drawing two reportable findings: The identification of corner shops located within one turn of direction from main high streets within gridiron urban forms, while activities combining retail or local office businesses with residential functions are located in corner blocks along streets within radial urban morphologies. These spatial attributes of location combine the adaptability of local property markets to mixed use with advantages in accessibility to produce an urban building that can flexibly accommodate innovation that is both a reflection of new skills and knowledge contributing to a local diversity

Visibility analysis, spatial experience and EEG recordings in virtual reality environments: The experience of ‘knowing where one is’ and isovist properties as a means to assess the related brain activity

Virtual Reality environments in combination with brain activity recordings using electroencephalography (EEG) offer a fruitful method to investigate the emergence of specific experiential events in response to the built environment. However, real-world experimental settings involve dynamic and complex conditions which are difficult to be controlled in order to test specific hypothesis that are related to neurophysiology. We discuss here several factors that should be taking into account when designing ecological EEG experiments such as a reflective approach on the human spatial experience, consideration of first-person perspectives and a quantitative analysis of the spatial context. The focus of this paper is to propose a methodology that may facilitate the design of virtual reality EEG experiments that aim to investigate the human experience and cognition within and of the built environment. A pilot virtual reality case study is presented to illustrate how the experience of 'suddenly knowing where one is' could be approached. In this case the isovist measurements of area and revelation along participants' paths offer a useful 'tool' that allows us to isolate and study with further analysis of the EEG signal, the moment that this experience might be manifested as neuronal firing patterns in the human brain