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Online versus offline colour naming experiments
Get PDFOnline colour naming experiments are often criticised for the necessarily uncalibrated colour reproduction of different displays and the uncontrolled viewing environment. In contrast, laboratory-based (offline) experiments are criticised for not reproducing “real-world” monitor settings. In this study, we compare the performance of online and offline colour naming experiments in estimating colour naming functions
The dystopian counterfactual world and unreliable narration in The Sound of His Horn
Get PDFThe Sound of his Horn presents two worlds—the world that the protagonist Alan originates in (TAW1) and a counterfactual dystopian world that Alan travels to (TAW2). TAW1 is set between 1941 and 1946 and can be conceived as an epistemological extension of our actual world. TAW2 is set 102 years after Hitler wins the war and so far removed from a reader’s experience of the actual word, that it challenges readers’ conceptualisation of this world. The text further complicates this by presenting Alan as a potential unreliable narrator. In this chapter, I show how the concept of RK-worlds can be used to posit how readers determine the plausibility TAW2 and as such also decide whether or not Alan is unreliable. In doing so, I also explore how Possible Worlds Theory deals with unreliable narration to demonstrate the manner in which readers process multiple worlds with seemingly different ontological statuses created within a text
Magnates, Ritual and Commensality at Royal Assemblies: Bogo de Clare and Edward I’s Easter Parliament, 1285
No full textIn an influential article on the challenges of studying medieval ritual, Timothy Reuter reminded historians that ‘in the brief accounts of ritual and symbolic behaviour’ that we find in chronicles we ‘have only skeletons or abstractions of complete rituals, and we can often not be sure that we are being told everything’. The medieval historian's position can be compared to that of an art historian who only has access to ‘summary sketches and card indexes of iconography … all the originals having been destroyed by time’. It is certainly the case that chroniclers do not tell us everything. Almost invariably, the chronicler's gaze was drawn to the actions of the anointed monarch or the leading ecclesiastics at the heart of the ritual. The actions of the magnates, courtiers and commoners gathered to attend ceremonies remain shrouded in darkness. For much of the earlier Middle Ages, on the one hand, the chroniclers’ reports provide almost our only access to medieval ritual and attempts at exploring the aspects of ceremonies that did not attract their attention are beset with methodological difficulties. Historians of England in the central and latter Middle Ages, on the other hand, are in the rare position of being able to contrast and combine narrative sources with other sources of information, most importantly the voluminous documentary records. The gravitational pull of the royal archives has, however, often proved as irresistible to modern scholars as the sacrosanct majesty of the king was to their medieval forebears. Thus the recent explosion of studies of ritual in medieval England has revealed a wealth of detail about the importance of the saints, pilgrimages and relics, feasts, gifts and alms, monumental buildings and ceremony to the kings of England. This work has revealed that, contrary to older assumptions, the English kings did not lag behind their continental counterparts in utilising the sacred and numinous to underpin kingship. Nor does the increasing development of royal bureaucracy appear to have lessened the importance placed on ceremony. As Reuter pointed out in another article, the reverse might indeed be the case: the more states intervene in the lives of their subjects the greater their need for legitimation, and thus for the communication and demonstration of this legitimacy, which throughout the Middle Ages meant public spectacl
Use of the analytical hierarchy process to determine the steering direction for a powered wheelchair
No full textThe Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) is utilized to propose a driving course for a powered-wheelchair. A safe route for a wheelchair is proposed by a decision-making system that aims to avoid obstacles. Two ultrasonic transceivers are fitted onto a wheelchair. The area in front of a wheelchair is segmented to left and right zones. The system inputs are distance to an object from the midpoint of the chair, distance to an object from the left of the chair and distance to an object from the right of the chair. The resulting route is a blend between a provided direction from a user’s input device and a proposed direction from the decision-making system that steers a powered-wheelchair to safely avoid obstacles in the way of the wheelchair. The system helps a disabled user to navigate their wheelchair by deciding on a direction that is a compromise between a direction provided by the sensors and a direction desired by the driver. Sensitivity analysis investigates the effects of risk and uncertainty on the resulting directions. An appropriate direction is identified but a human driver can over-ride the decision if necessary
The role of geography in the complex diffusion of innovations
Get PDFThe urban–rural divide is increasing in modern societies calling for geographical extensions of social influence modelling. Improved understanding of innovation diffusion across locations and through social connections can provide us with new insights into the spread of information, technological progress and economic development. In this work, we analyze the spatial adoption dynamics of iWiW, an Online Social Network (OSN) in Hungary and uncover empirical features about the spatial adoption in social networks. During its entire life cycle from 2002 to 2012, iWiW reached up to 300 million friendship ties of 3 million users. We find that the number of adopters as a function of town population follows a scaling law that reveals a strongly concentrated early adoption in large towns and a less concentrated late adoption. We also discover a strengthening distance decay of spread over the life-cycle indicating high fraction of distant diffusion in early stages but the dominance of local diffusion in late stages. The spreading process is modelled within the Bass diffusion framework that enables us to compare the differential equation version with an agent-based version of the model run on the empirical network. Although both model versions can capture the macro trend of adoption, they have limited capacity to describe the observed trends of urban scaling and distance decay. We find, however that incorporating adoption thresholds, defined by the fraction of social connections that adopt a technology before the individual adopts, improves the network model fit to the urban scaling of early adopters. Controlling for the threshold distribution enables us to eliminate the bias induced by local network structure on predicting local adoption peaks. Finally, we show that geographical features such as distance from the innovation origin and town size influence prediction of adoption peak at local scales in all model specifications
Critical History and Genealogy
Get PDFA number of commentators have supposed that what Nietzsche understands by ‘critical history’ and what he understands by ‘genealogy’ are significantly analogous. I question the supposed analogy. Critical history involves condemning the past, and sometimes supplanting the actual past with an invented fictive alternative; genealogy draws on the past for insight into the knotted history of the present. Instead I draw attention to a continuity that underlies the transition from the earlier project in which critical history is embedded to the later project in which genealogy figures. This is a concern on Nietzsche’s part, all too often given insufficient attention by commentators, with what ‘serves life’. Examining precisely what Nietzsche means by this in each case (the earlier and the later) shows up a different discontinuity. Each of the two projects is dependent on a particular conception of life. Each project is problematic: the earlier project because of its aspiration to have ‘life’, conceived as a ‘dark’ ineffable force, sit in judgement of the past; the later project because it both hinges on a detailed articulation of what life is, and fails to supply such an articulation
Capturing and Exploiting Citation Knowledge for the Recommendation of Scientific Publications
No full textWith the continuous growth of scientific literature, it is becoming increasingly challenging to discover relevant scientific publications from
the plethora of available academic digital libraries. Despite the current
scale, important efforts have been achieved towards the research and
development of academic search engines, reference management tools,
review management platforms, scientometrics systems, and recommender systems that help finding a variety of relevant scientific items,
such as publications, books, researchers, grants and events, among
others.
This thesis focuses on recommender systems for scientific publications. Existing systems do not always provide the most relevant
scientific publications to users, despite they are present in the recommendation space. A common limitation is the lack of access to the
full content of the publications when designing the recommendation
methods. Solutions are largely based on the exploitation of metadata
(e.g., titles, abstracts, lists of references, etc.), but rarely with the text
of the publications. Another important limitation is the lack of time
awareness. Existing works have not addressed the important scenario
of recommending the most recent publications to users, due to the
challenge of recommending items for which no ratings (i.e., user preferences) have been yet provided. The lack of evaluation benchmarks
also limits the evolution and progress of the field.
This thesis investigates the use of fine-grained forms of citation
knowledge, extracted from the full textual content of scientific pubiii
lications, to enhance recommendations: citation proximity, citation
context, citation section, citation graph and citation intention. We
design and develop new recommendation methods that incorporate
such knowledge, individually and in combination.
By conducting offline evaluations, as well as user studies, we show
how the use of citation knowledge does help enhancing the performance of existing recommendation methods when addressing two key
tasks: (i) recommending scientific publications for a given work, and
(ii) recommending recent scientific publications to a user. Two novel
evaluation benchmarks have also been generated and made available
for the scientific communit
Simple expert system for intelligent control and HCI for a wheelchair fitted with ultrasonic sensors
No full textUsing an expert system to make driving a powered-wheelchair less problematic is investigated. The system interprets sensor and joystick signals and then mixes them and improves that collaboration to control speed and direction. Ultrasonic sensors are used to identify hazardous circumstances and suggest a safer direction and speed. Results from drivers completing a series of timed routes are presented. Users completed tests using joysticks to control their chair with and then without a microcomputer and sensor system. A recent system is used to compare and contrast the results. This new system consistently performed quicker than the recent system. It also appears that the quantity of support provided by the sensors and microcomputer should be adjusted depending on situations and surroundings