Modeling the early stages of a user-centered process in architectural design through adaptation of the methodologies of New Product Design

In order to reach a degree of quality in architectural buildings that is likely to lead to user satisfaction, architectural design relies on integrating user-related information even before generation of building concepts. However, integrating such information may be seen as a hindrance to architectural creation. It therefore seems necessary to propose a methodological approach that allows integration of a user-centred point of view as well as generation of creative architectural concepts. Our research proposes to apply a collaborative process of New Product Design (NPD) in order to further enrich the traditional process of architectural design. We will present some experimental work carried out as part of an architectural project for the design of emergency shelters, as an alternative to more usual habitats. We will then discuss the possibility of adapting NPD methodology to architectural design, and what potential this offers to improve the integration of user-related information within architectural creativity

Character attachment in team-based first person shooter game with respect to the role in the combat among Korean young gamers

Character attachment have been studied thoroughly from the view of psychology and media researches. In game playing, the player-avatar relationship is a form of character attachment and affects a good game design as well as management systems such as character customizing and in game purchasing policy. In this paper, we investigate such player-avatar relationship on the theme of team-based FPS where in general the attachment is not expected to be high. However, from the online survey for Tom Clancy’s Rainbow 6 Siege mania groups, we find that there are different character attachment patterns with respect to the role of players in the team–attacker, defender, and supporter. It shows that attackers think avatar as an ‘object, but the defenders show more ‘avatar as others’ than the attackers. The supporters show high responsibility for the avatar and their play style is most like ‘avatar as symbiote’ manner

Control of electron energy distributions and plasma characteristics of dual frequency, pulsed capacitively coupled plasmas sustained in Ar and Ar/CF 4 /O 2

The fluxes of radicals and ions to the wafer during plasma processing of microelectronics devices determine the quality of the etch or deposition. These fluxes are largely controlled by controlling the electron energy distribution function f ( ε ) which determines the dissociation patterns of feedstock gases. In quasi-steady state operation, an equilibrium condition for f ( ε ) results from a real time balance between electron sources and sinks. Using pulsed power, electron sources and sinks do not need to instantaneously balance—they only need to balance over the longer pulse period. This provides additional leverage to customize f ( ε ). In this paper, the f ( ε ) in a two-frequency, pulsed capacitively coupled plasma sustained in Ar and Ar/CF 4 /O 2 mixtures are discussed with results from a two-dimensional plasma hydrodynamics model. The f ( ε ) are obtained from a Monte Carlo simulation which includes electron–electron collisions. We found that the f ( ε ) and rate coefficients can be controlled by pulse repetition frequency (PRF) and duty cycle (DC) of the pulsed power in a manner not otherwise easily attainable using continuous excitation. The tail of the f ( ε ) is enhanced with smaller PRF and DC in order to compensate for the electron losses during the power-off portion of the cycle.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/98613/1/0963-0252_21_5_055028.pd

Fully automatic segmentation of intima/adventitia of the vessel using Bezier curve from intravascular ultrasound

Although medical image segmentation field is regarded as one of most established fields, still fully automatic segmentation to extract target object with high accuracy from intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) is very active area of research. In this paper, we propose a fully automatic morphological approach using Bezier curve in interpolating the boundaries of intima/adventitia of the vessel from IVUS with careful binarization algorithms. In experiment with 800 IVUS images, the proposed method is as good as fuzzy C-means based approach in comparison with human expert’s result with 84.4% satisfaction and better than other morphological method in all performance indices of curve fitting with 97.02% in accuracy and 58.19% in precision

Modeling the early stages of a user-centered process in architectural design through adaptation of the methodologies of New Product Design

In order to reach a degree of quality in architectural buildings that is likely to lead to user satisfaction, architectural design relies on integrating user-related information even before generation of building concepts. However, integrating such information may be seen as a hindrance to architectural creation. It therefore seems necessary to propose a methodological approach that allows integration of a user-centred point of view as well as generation of creative architectural concepts. Our research proposes to apply a collaborative process of New Product Design (NPD) in order to further enrich the traditional process of architectural design. We will present some experimental work carried out as part of an architectural project for the design of emergency shelters, as an alternative to more usual habitats. We will then discuss the possibility of adapting NPD methodology to architectural design, and what potential this offers to improve the integration of user-related information within architectural creativity

Intelligent Automatic Extraction of Canine Cataract Object with Dynamic Controlled Fuzzy C-Means based Quantization

Canine cataract is developed with aging and can cause the blindness or surgical treatment if not treated timely. Since the pet owner do not have professional knowledge nor professional equipment, there is a growing need of providing pre-diagnosis software that can extract cataract-suspicious regions from simple photographs taken by cellular phones for the sake of preventive public health. In this paper, we propose a software that is highly successful for that purpose. The proposed software uses dynamic control of FCM clusters in quantification and trapezoid membership function in fuzzy stretching in order to enhance the intensity contrast from such rough photograph input. Through experiment, the proposed system demonstrates sufficiently enough accuracy in extraction (successful in 42 out of 45 cases) with better quality comparing with previous attempt

Control of Plasma Kinetics for Microelectronics Fabrication.

The fluxes of radicals and ions to the wafer during plasma processing of microelectronics devices determine the quality of the etch or deposition. These fluxes are largely controlled by controlling the electron energy distribution (EED) which determines the dissociation patterns of feedstock gases. Also, the quality of the process is in large part determined by the ability to control the ion energy distribution (IED) onto the wafer. In this thesis, the possibilities of controlling EED and IED are modeled using a two-dimensional plasma equipment model. The techniques to control the EED include a magnetic field, beam electrons and a pulsed power source. Due to the magnetic confinement, the EED varies with position of the chamber depending on the pressure and power. Using beam electrons also provides a possibility to customize EED by delivering the energy to the bulk electrons through the e-e collisions. In dual frequency capacitively coupled plasmas (DF-CCP), the pulsed power is one technique being investigated to provide additional degrees of freedom to control the EED and IED. By using pulsed power, electron sources and sinks do not need to instantaneously balance – they only need to balance over the longer pulse period. This provides additional leverage to customize EED and IED. As an application, the etching properties were also investigated in the DF-CCP using pulsed power. In the pulsed operation, there are typically two phases; deposition and etching. As a result, using pulse power provides one with the ability to control the balance between the etching and deposition, which enables us to manipulate the etching profile. It was found that sidewall bowing can be suppressed by pulsing.PHDNuclear Engineering & Radiological SciencesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/108809/1/ssongs_1.pd