Defining soldier equipment trade space: load effects on combat marksmanship and perception–action coupling

Soldier equipment compromises task performance as temporal constraints during critical situations and load increase inertial and interactive forces during movement. Methods are necessary to optimise equipment that relate task performance to underlying coordination and perception–action coupling. Employing ecological task analysis and methods from dynamical systems theory, equipment load and coordination was examined during two sub-tasks embedded in combat performance, threat discrimination and dynamic marksmanship. Perception–action coupling was degraded with load during threat discrimination, leading to delays in functional reaction time. Reduced speed and accuracy during dynamic marksmanship under load was related to disrupted segmental coordination and adaptability during postural transitions between targets. These results show how reduced performance under load relates to coordination changes and perception–action coupling. These changes in functional capability are directly related to soldier survivability in combat. The methods employed may aid equipment design towards more optimised performance by modifying equipment or its distribution on humans.     

Epistemology and conceptual resources for the development of learning technologies

Abstract   The issues raised by the design and development of technologies to enhance learning has led to a demand for an appropriate language and form of conceptualization. However, we are insufficiently familiar with the way in which different types of mediated tool use occur, to develop the theoretical models needed for the development of this language and form of conceptualization. In its absence a somewhat eclectic variety of concepts and research, such as the concept of affordance, are recruited in accounts of learning with new technologies. In looking briefly at the relevant area in philosophy this paper will consider whether or not the use of concepts such as affordance give adequate weight to social practice, meaning and knowledge in the design of educational technology. A fruitful source for work in this field which has not been sufficiently exploited is philosophy, particularly recent work in epistemology.     

Investigating haptic distance-to-break using linear and nonlinear materials in a simulated minimally invasive surgery task

Accurate detection of mediated haptic information in minimally invasive surgery (MIS) is critical for applying appropriate force magnitudes onto soft tissue with the aim of minimising tissue trauma. Force perception in MIS is a dynamic process, with surgeons’ administration of force into tissue revealing information about the remote surgical site which further informs the surgeons’ haptic interactions. The relationship between applied force and material deformation rate provides biomechanical information specifying the deformation distance remaining until a tissue will fail: which is termed distance-to-break (DTB). The current study demonstrates that observers can detect DTB while deforming simulated tissues and stop before reaching the tissues’ failure points. The design of training simulators, control devices and automated robotic systems for applications outside of MIS is discussed.

Practitioner Summary: In MIS, haptic information is critical for applying appropriate forces onto soft tissue to minimise tissue trauma. Observers used force information to detect how far they could deform a virtual tissue before it would break. The design of training simulators, control devices and automated robotic systems is discussed.     

Modeling Multimodal Expression of User’s Affective Subjective Experience

With the growing importance of information technology in our everyday life, new types of applications are appearing that require the understanding of information in a broad sense. Information that includes affective and subjective content plays a major role not only in an individual’s cognitive processes but also in an individual’s interaction with others. We identify three key points to be considered when developing systems that capture affective information: embodiment (experiencing physical reality), dynamics (mapping experience and emotional state with its label) and adaptive interaction (conveying emotive response, responding to a recognized emotional state). We present two computational systems that implement those principles: MOUE (Model Of User Emotions) is an emotion recognition system that recognizes the user’s emotion from his/her facial expressions, and from it, adaptively builds semantic definitions of emotion concepts using the user’s feedback; MIKE (Multimedia Interactive Environment for Kansei communication) is an interactive adaptive system that, along with the user, co-evolves a language for communicating over subjective impressions.     

Towards an ecological account of media choice: a case study on pluralistic reasoning while choosing email

The discourse around media choice has generated a diverse array of media choice factors originating from both the media‐based and social interaction‐based approaches. The multitude of these factors hints at the adaptive nature of media choice. Alas, how a user engages with such factors and adaptively carries out media choice has remained understudied. We undertake a field study to explore the role of a plurality of choice factors and their interactions in shaping media choice processes and outcomes. In particular, we focus on how a user identifies relationships among plural choice factors while he or she works on his or her particular choice resulting in a similar outcome – email – given a large number of alternatives. Drawing upon a theory of affordances, we propose a systemic way of narrating the dynamics of media choice as a multi‐dimensional process where a user explores her or his surroundings – a niche – as to establish media affordances that will then help her or him achieve a communication goal. We identify five relational patterns of interactions among specific choice factors: reciprocity, emergence, complementarity, re‐exploration and actualisation. These patterns are shown to be emergent and highly interdependent. We conclude by reviewing future research avenues to formulate richer ‘ecological’ accounts of media choice.     

Immersive virtual reality in the age of the Metaverse: A hybrid-narrative review based on the technology affordance perspective

Immersive virtual reality (VR) that utilizes head-mounted displays (HMD) is one of the key emerging technologies of the 21st century and has drawn keen attention from consumers, practitioners, and scholars in various disciplines. Nevertheless, the information systems (IS) discipline has neglected immersive VR, given that only a handful of studies have been published in mainstream IS journals. However, the recent advancements in immersive VR technology provide new opportunities for organizations and IS researchers. In light of these points, we reviewed the immersive VR literature to provide a holistic view of opportunities and challenges for organizations and future research directions for the IS field. By examining the technical capabilities of immersive VR and the previous literature, we identified five affordances: embodiment, interactivity, navigability, sense-ability, and create-ability. Our review of the 151 studies from the IS and related fields synthesized how these affordances were utilized in various research domains. Guided by the affordance-actualization theory, we also identified the strategic opportunities and challenges that come with implementing VR. The actualization of immersive VR affordances in organizations is indeed a fruitful area for IS scholars as there are various venues to move the IS field as well as the VR research in the organizational context forward.     

Physiolytics at the workplace: Affordances and constraints of wearables use from an employee's perspective

Wearables paired with data analytics and machine learning algorithms that measure physiological (and other) parameters are slowly finding their way into our workplace. Several studies have reported positive effects from using such “physiolytics” devices and purported the notion that it may lead to significant workplace safety improvements or to increased awareness among employees concerning unhealthy work practices and other job‐related health and well‐being issues. At the same time, physiolytics may cause an overdependency on technology and create new constraints on privacy, individuality, and personal freedom. While it is easy to understand why organizations are implementing physiolytics, it remains unclear what employees think about using wearables at their workplace. Using an affordance theory lens, we, therefore, explore the mental models of employees who are faced with the introduction of physiolytics as part of corporate wellness or security programs. We identify five distinct user types each of which characterizes a specific viewpoint on physiolytics at the workplace: the freedom loving, the individualist, the cynical, the tech independent, and the balancer. Our findings allow for better understanding the wider implications and possible user responses to the introduction of wearable technologies in occupational settings and address the need for opening up the “user black box” in IS use research.     

Spine as an engine: effect of spine morphology on spine-driven quadruped locomotion

In quadruped animals, spinal movements contribute to locomotion in terms of controlling body posture and integrating limb and trunk actions. In this paper, we develop quadruped models with different numbers of spinal joints to demonstrate the spine-driven locomotion. Actuated spinal joint(s) are exclusively employed to these models with a minimalistic control strategy. We choose some typical individuals from two models and analyze them on gait properties. Results show that employing the spine morphology with two joints can greatly enhance the stability and speed of locomotion by readjusting the center of mass, increasing the stride length, and generating double flight phases similar to running cheetahs’ gait, which makes significant difference in the speed and the gait. Furthermore, we explore and compare models with more spinal joints. Results show that all gaits emerged from them can be categorized into three types (bounding, bounding with double flight phase, and stotting gaits). Overall, bounding gait with double flight phases is a more biologically inspired locomotive behavior; model with two spinal joints could be sufficient to emulate biological spine-driven locomotive behaviors.     

Influence mechanism of icon semantics on visual search performance: Evidence from an eye-tracking study

Explicit icon semantics can reduce the difficulty of understanding complex visual information. Optimizing the icon semantics and text semantics of icons can effectively improve the cognitive performance of digital interfaces. This paper adopts visual search tasks to study the effects of different combinations of icon semantic familiarity and the presence or absence of text on icon search performance under horizontal and vertical layouts. The behavioral experiment results show that under two layouts: 1. The main effect of icon semantics is significant, and the search performance increases with the increase of semantic familiarity. 2. The main effect of text is significant, and the search performance is negatively correlated with the addition of text. The eye movement experiment found that the semantic familiarity of icons had a significant impact on average fixation time. Furthermore, the number of fixation points changed significantly after the text variable was added. Therefore, there was no significant difference in the number of fixation points in the horizontal layout, and icon semantics was the main influencing factor in visual search. In the vertical layout, there was no significant difference in average fixation time, and text was the main influencing factor of visual search. The results show that the semantic familiarity of icons and different combinations with or without text significantly affect visual search performance in horizontal and vertical layouts. This paper provides a theoretical reference for the combination of icons and text in interface design.     

Towards cognitive evaluation of computer-drawn sketches

This paper seeks to raise visual comparisons beyond subjective opinions into evidence-based visual reasoning. It provides an informal deductive analysis of the marks in sketches derived with two competing line-filtering algorithms. This prompted the novel speculation that the visual system might be placing some types of anomalies in the foreground of mental 3D space, where they can be ignored. A brief survey is provided to encourage informed debate. Although the proposed cognitive computation was not automated, it justified the rejection of the Douglas–Peucker algorithm in favour of Visvalingam's algorithm in subsequent research within the Cartographic Information Systems Research Group (CISRG).     

Towards an algebraic theory of information integration

Information integration systems provide uniform interfaces to varieties of heterogeneous information sources. For query answering in such systems, the current generation of query answering algorithms in local-as-view (source-centric) information integration systems all produce what has been thought of as “the best obtainable” answer, given the circumstances that the source-centric approach introduces incomplete information into the virtual global relations. However, this “best obtainable” answer does not include all information that can be extracted from the sources because it does not allow partial information. Neither does the “best obtainable” answer allow for composition of queries, meaning that querying a result of a previous query will not be equivalentto the composition of the two queries. In this paper, we provide a foundation for information integration, based on the algebraic theory of incomplete information. Our framework allows us to define the semantics of partial facts and introduce the notion of the exact answer—that is the answer that includes partial facts. We show that querying under the exact answer semantics is compositional. We also present two methods for actually computing the exact answer. The first method is tableau-based, and it is a generalization of the “inverse-rules” approach. The second, much more efficient method, is a generalization of the rewriting approach, and it is based on partial containment mappings introduced in the paper.     

Towards an American Sign Language interface

In this paper, we present two major parts of an interface for American Sign Language (ASL) to computer applications currently under work; a hand tracker and an ASL-parser. The hand tracker extracts information about handshape, position and motion from image sequences. As an aid in this process, the signer wears a pair of gloves with colour-coded markers on joints and finger tips. We also present a computational model of American Sign Language. This model is realized in an ASL-parser which consists of a DCG-grammar and a non-lexical component that records non-manual and spatial information over an ASL-discourse.     

Towards the construction of an eigenvalue engine

In this paper a new algorithm for the computation of the eigenvalues of real symmetric matrices is presented. The algorithm may be expressed in terms of a collection of communicating process and is suitable for implementation as a dedicated engine constructed from a network of transputers. However, it can also be efficiently implemented on a multiprocessor supercomputer such as the CRAY X-MP or on a set of interconnected SIMD machines.     

The influence of familiarity,trust and norms of reciprocity on an experienced sense of community: an empirical analysis based on social online services

The growing use of social online services raises the question of what encourages members to participate actively and maintain accumulated social capital. Our research has particularly become aware of the relevance of familiarity, trust and reciprocity in understanding the members' sense of a virtual community (VC). Familiarity and trust are efficient criteria to assess and determine the extent to which one should engage in a virtual relationship. Furthermore, the effort of sharing experiences and knowledge must be based on the expectation of receiving certain returns. A structural equation modelling, specifically partial least squares, is proposed to assess the relationships between the constructs. Overall, the empirical results provided strong support for the hypotheses. Familiarity and trust lead the member to develop a growing perceived community support (PCS) and significantly influence the sense of a VC. Norms of reciprocity directly influence affective trust and PCS. Higher familiarity does not moderate the impact of affective trust on PCS, however. The results of this study could thus help social online service providers to create a successful business model and to determine the main drivers of the members' sense of a VC.     

Information and meaning: foundations for an intersubjective account

Abstract. Information is fundamental to the discipline of information systems, yet there is little agreement about even this basic concept. Traditionally, information has been seen as 'processed data,' while more recently soft, interpretive approaches have taken information to be 'data plus meaning.' This paper provides a coherent and consistent analysis of data, information, meaning and their interrelations. It is particularly concerned with the semantic and pragmatic dimensions of information, and integrates the work of Maturana and Habermas into a framework provided by Dretske's theory of semantic information. The results show that meaning is generated from the information carried by signs. Information is objective, but inaccessible to humans, who exist exclusively in a world of meaning. Meaning is intersubjective — that is, based on shared agreement and understanding — rather than purely subjective. Information, and information processing systems, exist within the wider context of meaning or sense-making and the IS discipline needs take account of this.     

IT managers’ vs. IT auditors’ perceptions of risks: An actor–observer asymmetry perspective

With the growing role of information technology (IT), many organizations struggle with IT-related risks. Both IT managers and IT auditors are involved in assessing, monitoring, and reporting IT risks, but this does not necessarily mean that they share the same views. In this study, we draw upon the actor–observer asymmetry perspective to understand differences in IT managers’ vs. IT auditors’ perceptions of risks. Through a quasi-experiment with 76 employees of a financial institution, we found that IT managers and IT auditors showed the expected actor–observer differences. Implications for both research and practice are discussed.     

Towards an ontology-based retrieval of UML Class Diagrams

Context

Software Reuse has always been an important area amongst software companies in order to increase their productivity and the quality of their products, but code reuse is not the only answer for this. Nowadays, reuse techniques proposals include software designs or even software specifications. Therefore, this research focuses on software design, specifically on UML Class Diagrams. A semantic technology has been applied to facilitate the retrieval process for an effective reuse.

Objective

This research proposes an ontology-based retrieval technique by semantic similarity in order to support effective retrieval process for UML Class Diagrams. Since UML Class Diagrams are a de facto standard in the design stages of a Software Development Process, a good technique is needed to reuse them, i.e. reusing during the design stage instead of just the coding stages.

Method

An application ontology modeled using UML specifications was designed to compare UML Class Diagram element types. To measure their similarity, a survey was conducted amongst UML experts. Query expansion was improved by a domain ontology supporting the retrieval phase. The calculus of minimal distances in ontologies was solved using a shortest path algorithm.

Results

The case study shows the domain ontology importance in the UML Class Diagram retrieval process as well as the importance of an element type expansion method, such as an application ontology. A correlation between the query complexity and retrieved elements has been identified, by analyzing results. Finally, a positive Return of Investment (ROI) was estimated using Poulin’s Model.

Conclusion

Because Software Reuse has not to be limited to the coding stage, approaches to reuse design stage must be developed, i.e. UML Class Diagrams reuse. This approach proposes a technique for UML Class Diagrams retrieval, which is one important step towards reuse. Semantic technology combined with information retrieval improves the retrieval results.