Objective evaluation of qualified viewing spaces for near‐to‐eye and autostereoscopic two‐view displays

Abstract— Virtual‐image (near‐to‐eye) and two‐view autostereoscopic (3‐D) displays share similar optical properties in the comfortable user position for viewing. In this paper, the definitions and criteria of qualified viewing space (QVS) and qualified stereoscopic viewing space (QSVS) are discussed. Due to the complex nature of these viewing spaces, the related presumptions and the required optical characteristics and their measurements are specified. The effects of different display and observer parameters, such as interpupillary distance, to the resulting viewing spaces are discussed. Finally, real measurement data of two autostereoscopic display devices are presented.     

Organizational impact of system quality,information quality,and service quality

Increased organizational dependence on information systems drives management attention towards improving information systems’ quality. A recent survey shows that “Improve IT quality” is one of the top concerns facing IT executives. As IT quality is a multidimensional measure, it is important to determine what aspects of IT quality are critical to organizations to help Chief Information Officers (CIOs) to devise effective IT quality improvement strategies. In this research, we model the relationship between information systems’ (IS) quality and organizational impact. We hypothesize greater organizational impact in situations in which system quality, information quality and service quality are high. We also hypothesize a positive relationship between system quality and information quality. We test our hypotheses using survey data. Our structural equation model exhibits a good fit with the observed data. Our results show that IS service quality is the most influential variable in this model (followed by information quality and system quality), thus highlighting the importance of IS service quality for organizational performance. This paper contributes theoretically to IS success models through the system quality-to-information quality and IS quality-to-organizational impact links. Implications of our results for practice and research are discussed.     

Quantitative analysis in a heuristic evaluation experiment

In usability context of interactive systems the heuristic evaluation method is widespread. In most applications the results tend to be qualitative, describing such aspects that require some improvement for the benefit of usability. However, these qualitative results do not allow us to determine how usable it is or how it becomes an interactive system. Hence the need for quantitative results may also be very necessary in order to determine the effort that would be needed to get a sufficiently usable system.This article describes, following the idea of the UsabAIPO Project, a new experiment to obtain quantitative results after a heuristic evaluation. This new experimentation has required some variation on the original idea, working with a set of different heuristic categories, while considering the use of the score depending on severity and frequency parameters.     

Evaluating ASP and Commercial Solvers on the CSPLib

This paper deals with four solvers for combinatorial problems: the commercial state-of-the-art solver ILOG oplstudio, and the research answer set programming (ASP) systems dlv, smodels and cmodels. The first goal of this research is to evaluate the relative performance of such systems when used in a purely declarative way, using a reproducible and extensible experimental methodology. In particular, we consider a third-party problem library, i.e., the CSPLib, and uniform rules for modelling and instance selection. The second goal is to analyze the marginal effects of popular reformulation techniques on the various solving technologies. In particular, we consider structural symmetry breaking, the adoption of global constraints, and the addition of auxiliary predicates. Finally, we evaluate, on a subset of the problems, the impact of numbers and arithmetic constraints on the different solving technologies. Results show that there is not a single solver winning on all problems, and that reformulation is almost always beneficial: symmetry-breaking may be a good choice, but its complexity has to be carefully chosen, by taking into account also the particular solver used. Global constraints often, but not always, help opl, and the addition of auxiliary predicates is usually worth, especially when dealing with ASP solvers. Moreover, interesting synergies among the various modelling techniques exist.     

Cooperation and Competition in ALIAS: A Logic Framework for Agents that Negotiate

This paper presents ALIAS, an agent architecture based on intelligent logic agents, where the main form of agent reasoning is abduction. The system is particularly suited for solving problems where knowledge is incomplete, where agents may need to make reasonable hypotheses about the problem domain and other agents, and where the raised hypotheses have to be consistent for the overall set of agents. ALIAS agents are pro-active, exhibiting a goal-directed behavior, and autonomous, since each one can solve problems using its own private knowledge base. ALIAS agents are also social, because they are able to interact with other agents, in order to cooperatively solve problems. The coordination mechanisms are modeled by means of LAILA, a logic-based language which allows to express intra-agent reasoning and inter-agent coordination. As an application, we show how LAILA can be used to implement inter-agent dialogues, e.g., for negotiation. In particular, LAILA is well-suited to coordinate the process of negotiation aimed at exchanging resources between agents, thus allowing them to execute the plans to achieve their goals.     

A Boy and Two Mothers: New Variations on an Old Theme or a New Story of Triangulation? Beginning Thoughts on the Psychosexual Development of Children in Nontraditional Families.

The author examines the ways in which a psychoanalytic perspective may illuminate the underlying developmental dynamics of children of lesbian parents. Families headed by gay and lesbian parents demand reconsideration of a theory of oedipal development based on heterosexual parents. If triangulation, the move from dyadic to triadic object relationships, depends on 2 primary processes--the child's acceptance of the immutability of generations and the child's recognition that children are excluded from the world of adult sexuality--parental gender or sexual orientation assumes less importance. The emergence of conscience from multifaceted processes of identification is consistent with this view of triangulation as a developmental phase. Children of gay and lesbian parents must be offered theories of healthy development that include them. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A Nonformal Interactive Therapeutic Multisensory Environment for People With Cerebral Palsy

A new multisensory system that aims at fostering the interaction of people with cerebral palsy is presented. This article describes the strategies and technologies used to provide people who have moderate to severe cerebral palsy with playful and fun activities designed according to their abilities. These activities are based on interactive systems that use computer vision and generate graphics and sounds in real time. The well-being that is achieved through the use of these activities is the result of gaining a significant degree of autonomy by the users. The presented system was first developed in the Cerebral Palsy Centre of Tarragona, Spain. Its motivation came from the low rate of users able to interact with computers. Although several assistive technology gadgets and special software applications (e.g., cause–effect and educational activities, simple navigation environments, etc.) were used, most users simply did not understand the interaction mechanisms. It was thought that a highly interactive activity (reinforced with sounds and images closely related with gestures) would be more accessible to most users in spite of their sensory, motor, and cognitive impairments. Tests with impaired users show that the proposal promotes participation, engagement, and play. In this article, the experimental methodology, the used and developed tools, and the results that were obtained are explained.     

An opinion on imaging challenges in phenotyping field crops

Almost all the world’s food is grown in open fields, where plant phenotypes can be very different from those observed in greenhouses. Geneticists and agronomists studying food crops routinely detect, measure, and classify a wide variety of phenotypes in fields that contain many visually distinct types of a single crop. Augmenting humans in these tasks by automatically interpreting images raises some important and nontrivial challenges for research in computer vision. Nonetheless, the rewards for overcoming these obstacles could be exceptionally high for today’s 7 billion people, let alone the 9.6 billion projected by 2050 (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, World Population Prospects: The 2012 Revision). To stimulate dialog between researchers in computer vision and those in genetics and agronomy, we offer our views on three computational challenges that are central to many phenotyping tasks. These are disambiguating one plant from another; assigning an individual plant’s organs to it; and identifying field phenotypes from those shown in archival images. We illustrate these challenges with annotated photographs of maize highlighting the regions of interest. We also describe some of the experimental, logistical, and photographic constraints on image collection and processing. While collecting the data sets needed for algorithmic experiments requires sustained collaboration and funding, the images we show and have posted should allow one to consider the problems, think of possible approaches, and decide on the next steps.