Social Network Analysis

Hand movement data acquisition is used in many engineering applications ranging from the analysis of gestures to the biomedical sciences. Glove-based systems represent one of the most important efforts aimed at acquiring hand movement data. While they have been around for over three decades, they keep attracting the interest of researchers from increasingly diverse fields. This paper surveys such glove systems and their applications. It also analyzes the characteristics of the devices, provides a road map of the evolution of the technology, and discusses limitations of current technology and trends at the frontiers of research. A foremost goal of this paper is to provide readers who are new to the area with a basis for understanding glove systems technology and how it can be applied, while offering specialists an updated picture of the breadth of applications in several engineering and biomedical sciences areas.

A Survey of Glove-Based Systems and Their Applications

Introducing a new hobby for other people may inspire them to join with you. Reading, as one of mutual hobby, is considered as the very easy hobby to do. But, many people are not interested in this hobby. Why? Boring is the reason of why. However, this feel actually can deal with the book and time of you reading. Yeah, one that we will refer to break the boredom in reading is choosing the myth of the paperless office as the reading material.

The Myth of the Paperless Office

Background Researchers in environmental psychology, health studies and urban design are interested in the relationship between the environment, behaviour settings and emotions. In particular, happiness, or the presence of positive emotional mindsets, broadens an individual’s thought-action repertoire with positive benefits to physical and intellectual activities, and to social and psychological resources. This occurs through play, exploration or similar activities. In addition, a body of restorative literature focuses on the potential benefits to emotional recovery from stress offered by green space and ‘soft fascination’. However, access to the cortical correlates of emotional states of a person actively engaged within an environment has not been possible until recently. This study investigates the use of mobile electroencephalography (EEG) as a method to record and analyse the emotional experience of a group of walkers in three types of urban environment including a green space setting. Methods Using Emotiv EPOC, a low-cost mobile EEG recorder, participants took part in a 25 min walk through three different areas of Edinburgh. The areas (of approximately equal length) were labelled zone 1 (urban shopping street), zone 2 (path through green space) and zone 3 (street in a busy commercial district). The equipment provided continuous recordings from five channels, labelled excitement (short-term), frustration, engagement, long-term excitement (or arousal) and meditation. Results A new form of high-dimensional correlated component logistic regression analysis showed evidence of lower frustration, engagement and arousal, and higher meditation when moving into the green space zone; and higher engagement when moving out of it. Conclusions Systematic differences in EEG recordings were found between three urban areas in line with restoration theory. This has implications for promoting urban green space as a mood-enhancing environment for walking or for other forms of physical or reflective activity.

http://static.squarespace.com/static/5128153ce4b000d46396eea9/t/5160526ee4b080e511730972/1365267054886/Aspinall%20et%20al.,%202013__EEG.pdf

The urban brain: analysing outdoor physical activity with mobile EEG

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.

The trouble with computers: Usefulness, usability and productivity

This tutorial book presents an augmented selection of the material presented at the GI-Dagstuhl Research Seminar on Human-Centered Visualization Environments, HCVE 2006, held in Dagstuhl Castle, Ge ...

Human-Centered Visualization Environments

In the course of the project Virtual Try-On new VR technologies have been developed, which form the basis for a realistic, three dimensional, (real-time) simulation and visualization of individualized garments put on by virtual counterparts of real customers. To provide this cloning and dressing of people in VR, a complete process chain is being build up starting with the touch-less 3-dimensional scanning of the human body up to a photo-realistic 3-dimensional presentation of the virtual customer dressed in the chosen pieces of clothing. The emerging platform for interactive selection and configuration of virtual garments, the "virtual shop", will be accessible in real fashion boutiques as well as over the internet, thereby supplementing the conventional distribution channels.

Virtual Try-On : Topics in Realistic, Individualized Dressing in Virtual Reality

The accelerating evolution of information visualization research in the last few years has led to several specific system implementations. The obvious drawbacks of this development are highly dependent software systems, which are only available for a restricted number of users. Today, due to the remarkable advances in hardware and software technologies, not only very expensive graphics workstations, but also low-cost PCs are capable of running computational demanding visualization systems. Furthermore, the rapid development of the medium World Wide Web along with state-of-the-art Internet programming techniques has led to a trend toward more generally usable visualization systems. In this paper, we propose a functional developer's framework for general Web-based visualization systems which makes intelligent use of application specific software and hardware components on the server side, as well as Java's benefits on the client side. To demonstrate the framework's abilities, we have applied it to two practical visualization tasks and report on our experience concerning practicability and pitfalls.

A functional framework for Web-based information visualization systems

Insight represents a special element of knowledge building. From the beginning of their lives, humans experience moments of insight in which a certain idea or solution becomes as clear to them as never before. Especially in the field of visual representations, insight has the potential to be at the core of comprehension and pattern recognition. Still, one problem is that this moment of clarity is highly unpredictable and complex in nature, and many scientists have investigated different aspects of its generation process in the hope of capturing the essence of this eureka (Greek, for “I have found”) moment. In this paper, we look at insight from the spectrum of information visualization. In particular, we inspect the possible correlation between epiphanies and emotional responses subjects experience when having an insight. In order to check the existence of such a connection, we employ a set of initial tests involving the EPOC mobile electroencephalographic (EEG) headset for detecting emotional responses generated by insights. The insights are generated by open-ended tasks that take the form of visual riddles and visualization applications. Our results suggest that there is a strong connection between insight and emotions like frustration and excitement. Moreover, measuring emotional responses via EEG during an insight-related problem solving results in non-intrusive, nearly automatic detection of the major Aha! moments the user experiences. We argue that this indirect detection of insights opens the door for the objective evaluation and comparison of various visualizations techniques.

/pdf/detecting-insight-and-emotion-in-visualization-applications-14wzk6kghb.pdf

Detecting Insight and Emotion in Visualization Applications with a Commercial EEG Headset

In recent years, high-resolution displays have become increasingly important to decision makers and scientists because large screens combined with a high pixel count facilitate content rich, simultaneous display of computer-generated imagery and high-definition video data from multiple sources. Tiled displays are attractive due to their extended screen real estate, scalability, and low cost. LCD panels are usually preferred over projectors because of their superior resolution. One of the drawbacks of LCD-based tiled displays is the fact that users sometimes get distracted by the screens' bezels, which cause discontinuities in rendered images, animations, or videos. Most conventional solutions either ignore the bezels and display all pixels, causing objects to become distorted, or eliminate the pixels that would normally fall under the bezels, causing pixels to be missing in the display of static images. In animations, the missing pixels will eventually reappear when the object moves, providing an experience that is similar to looking through a French window. In this paper, we present a new scalable approach that leads neither to discontinuities nor to significant loss of information. By projecting onto the bezels, we demonstrate that a combination of LCD-based tiled displays and projection significantly reduces the bezel problem. Our technique eliminates ambiguities that commonly occur on tiled displays in the fields of information visualization, visual data analysis, human-computer interaction, and scientific data display. It improves the usability of multimonitor systems by virtually eliminating the bezels. We describe a setup and provide results from an evaluation experiment conducted on a 3 times 3 and on a 10 times 5 tiled display wall.

Achim Ebert

Papers

Human-Centered Visualization Environments

Virtual Try-On : Topics in Realistic, Individualized Dressing in Virtual Reality

A functional framework for Web-based information visualization systems

Detecting Insight and Emotion in Visualization Applications with a Commercial EEG Headset

Tiled++: An Enhanced Tiled Hi-Res Display Wall