From Archive,to Access,to Experience––Historical Documents as a Basis for Immersive Experiences

Libraries have been the key to preserving culture and historic legacy for centuries. One such treasure cataloged in The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) Libraries is a collection of over 33,000 Sanborn? Fire Insurance Maps. Originally kept safe in metal drawers, the library has embarked on a journey to digitize this abundance of information, combine it with other media such as photographs, and make it accessible through a web interface. Inspired by these efforts, we accessed this information and took it to the next level. Using state of the art 3D modeling and immersive technologies, we created a historic 3D model and immersive experiences of Penn State, exemplarily for the 1922 campus. The resulting experiences can be accessed through the web but also through head mounted displays (HMDs) and mobile phones in combination with VR viewers such as the Google Cardboard. Additionally, they can be used anywhere in the world or on the campus itself as a way to enable remote and in situ experiences and learning. Immersive experiences let us connect to the past, the present and the future, and as such offer value to digital cultural heritage efforts.     

Doors to diversity: The first amendment implications of telephone company video options under the telecommunications act of 1996

Video market entry options available to telephone companies under the Telecommunications Act of 1996 have First Amendment implications that will affect the constitutional value of telephone video. These entry options impose regulatory constraints upon providers and differ in potentials for provider speech, speaker access, and content diversity. The author concludes that the Act's open video system option best advances First Amendment interests in increased diversity of and access to speech.     

Comment on Dissociation between running economy and running performance in elite Kenyan distance runners

Mooses and colleagues suggest that running economy alone does not explain superior distance running performance in elite Kenyan runners. Whilst we agree with the multi-factorial hypothesis for Kenyan running success, we do not believe that running economy can be overlooked to the extent that it was based on this particular study. Based on the methods used and the range of athletes tested, in this response letter we question whether this study provides any basis for downplaying the influence of running economy or suggesting that other factors compensate for it to enable superior performance.     

Elite wheelchair rugby: a quantitative analysis of chair configuration in Australia

Limited recommendations of wheelchair configurations for court sports have been identified in the published literature. To accommodate the wide range of impairments in wheelchair rugby, players are given a point score that reflects their impairment. Players have regularly been grouped as high-, mid-, or low-point players in research, with high-point players having greater levels of muscle function compared with other classifications. This research documented the wheelchair configurations of elite Australian wheelchair rugby players across classification groups. Significant differences (p < 0.05) were found for increased seat height and decreased seat depth for high-point players compared with low- and mid-point groups, respectively. Low-point players displayed reduced wheelchair mass compared with high- and mid-point players, as well as increased frame length. Camber angles showed no significant differences across the classification groups. The incorporation of anthropometric measures, such as the elbow angle at the top dead center, was also investigated. While elbow angle showed no significant differences, seat height-to-total arm length ratio was higher for high-point players. Participants also completed surveys detailing their perception of the effect of altering wheelchair configurations. It is suggested that wheelchair configurations should consider an individual’s anthropometrics, impairment, training history, and court role to promote optimal performance, with predictive modeling having the potential to reduce the associated time and cost.     

Using computer generated images and text for the whole of an undergraduate course

Computer generated images are being used to provide text and diagrams for lectures. These images are then openly available to first year undergraduates in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Manufacturing Systems at the University of Northumbria. A large lecture theatre is fitted with a computer-driven overhead projector and is used to display the files to over one hundred students. The image files and a text file commentary are provided, via automated routines on department computers, for students to copy onto their own discs.
The images are produced in a compressed and self displaying form, allowing all the material for the course to be contained on a single 1.4Mb floppy disc. All the material associated with these lectures is held on magnetic media.
This paper describes the method used, comments on some of the practical problems of using the method, and gives some of the student reaction to it.     

Perseveration of associative strength in rabbit nictitating membrane response conditioning following ISI shifts

The present experiment determined whether associative strength based upon 15 CS-US pairings at various interstimulus intervals (ISIs) could survive shifts of the ISI to influence the subsequent acquisition of the nictitating membrane (NM) CR. The choice of 15 preshift pairings was based upon previous work, which had shown that this training level produced substantial associative strength without NM CR acquisition. Consequently, this experiment, by shifting the ISI before the beginning of CR acquisition, served as an extension to traditional ISI-shift studies that have imposed the manipulation after CR acquisition. The findings of the experiment indicated that 15 preshift pairings in Stage 1 at ISIs from 250 to 4,000 msec were as effective as 15 pairings at a 500-msec ISI in determining the number of trials to the first NM CR in Stage 2 in which the training ISI was 500 msec. Moreover, 15 pairings in Stage 1 at ISIs from 250 to 2,000 msec were equivalent to 15 pairings at 500 msec in controlling the number of trials to 10 successive NM CRs in Stage 2. These outcomes demonstrate that, within a large ISI range, the associative strength based upon relatively few pairings is preserved despite various shifts of the ISI. Therefore, these results suggest that the reductions in CR performance, which have been consistently observed in traditional studies following ISI shifts, are not due to the loss of associative strength.