Generative adversarial network in medical imaging: A review.

Several years ago I saw Peter Sellers in the movie Being There. In a most convincing manner he personified a gardener tending the garden of a huge mansion. His only contact with the world outside was a Television and its remote control. His garden was real, the world beyond a metaphor. Culture, to him, was indeed the original latin cultura derived from the verb colo 'to plough; to till; to tend'. The soil, the seeds, the seasons and their harvest were his paradigm. The moment his master died he strolled into a universe he did not know; but he continued to measure even this human environment by the standards of his ecological pragmatism. His inversion of social reasoning was embraced as 'in-depth-understanding' cast into stunningly simple, lucid metaphors. For instance, he answered questions on economic recession calmly in the logic of his garden: after summer come fall and winter followed again by spring. Decay and seeming barrenness are absolutely necessary for the renewal of nature. His answer was simple: being there, you'll understand: you'll understand what happens, you'll understand what is necessary to do; it made him president. The thrust of the argument is the observation that culture is a matter of 'being there', 'know-how', 'familiarity', 'acting skillfully and strategically'; it equals digging into the soil, planting the seeds, watching the weather, inferring the necessary and tending the processes of growth and fruition. Culture is a process, an ongoing con cern, a praxis that takes its meaning only in application, in practices that chisel the presence of culture. Human culture, the object of cultural anthropology, is such a praxis, rooted in practice and interaction as conditions for the fruition of human knowledge. In a kind of 'radical hermeneutics'1 the humanities are cultivated in the open, among fellow human beings, taking as their vehicle the four dimensions of shared presence that unite time and place. Human time and human space, man-made presence, are the only rift into 'general, physical time' and 'general, physical space' that opens up to us. All that we can achieve or know, we perform in that 'clearing'; it constitutes our garden, our stage, our opportunity. This performance is the praxis of human culture.

Anthropology as Performance

https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1525/aa.1985.87.3.02a00320

General/Theoretical Anthropology: From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play

In the last two decades, Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs) have emerged as a new interface type that interlinks the digital and physical worlds. Drawing upon users' knowledge and skills of interaction with the real non-digital world, TUIs show a potential to enhance the way in which people interact with and leverage digital information. However, TUI research is still in its infancy and extensive research is required in order to fully understand the implications of tangible user interfaces, to develop technologies that further bridge the digital and the physical, and to guide TUI design with empirical knowledge.

This monograph examines the existing body of work on Tangible User Interfaces. We start by sketching the history of tangible user interfaces, examining the intellectual origins of this field. We then present TUIs in a broader context, survey application domains, and review frameworks and taxonomies. We also discuss conceptual foundations of TUIs including perspectives from cognitive sciences, psychology, and philosophy. Methods and technologies for designing, building, and evaluating TUIs are also addressed. Finally, we discuss the strengths and limitations of TUIs and chart directions for future research.

/pdf/tangible-user-interfaces-past-present-and-future-directions-lls26rwvhk.pdf

Tangible User Interfaces: Past, Present and Future Directions

A method of processing a digital image using face detection within the image achieves one or more desired image processing parameters. A group of pixels is identified that correspond to an image of a face within the digital image. Default values are determined of one or more parameters of at least some portion of the digital image. Values are adjusted of the one or more parameters within the digitally-detected image based upon an analysis of the digital image including the image of the face and the default values.

Digital Image Processing Using Face Detection Information

Contrast in image processing is usually defined as a ratio between the darkest and the brightest spots of an image. In this paper we introduce a different contrast definition. The newly introduced Global Contrast Factor (GCF) corresponds closer to the human perception of contrast. GCF uses contrasts at various resolution levels in order to compute overall contrast. Experiments were conducted in order to find weight factors needed to calculate GCF. GCF measures richness of detail as perceived by a human observer, and as such can be used in various application areas like rendering, tone mapping, volume visualization, and lighting design.

/pdf/global-contrast-factor-a-new-approach-to-image-contrast-4soayayfc0.pdf

Global contrast factor - a new approach to image contrast

AR puppet is a hierarchical animation framework for augmented reality agents, which is a research area combining augmented reality (AR), sentient computing and autonomous animated agents into a single coherent human-computer interface paradigm. While sentient computing systems use the physical environment as an input channel, AR outputs virtual information superimposed on real world objects. To enhance man-machine communication with more natural and efficient information presentation, this framework adds animated agents to AR applications that make autonomous decisions based on their perception of the real environment. These agents are able to turn physical objects into interactive, responsive entities collaborating with both anthropomorphic and non-anthropomorphic virtual characters, extending AR with a previously unexplored output modality. AR puppet explores the requirements for context-aware animated agents concerning visualization, appearance, behavior, in addition to associated technologies and application areas. A demo application with a virtual repairman collaborating with an augmented LEGO/spl reg/ robot illustrates our concepts.

/pdf/agents-that-talk-and-hit-back-animated-agents-in-augmented-ps1yxc1gsn.pdf

Agents That Talk And Hit Back: Animated Agents in Augmented Reality

The paper describes the design story of the ColorTable, a tangible user interface in support of urban planners and diverse stakeholders collaboratively envisioning urban change, which was developed in an iterative process of design-evaluation-feedback-redesign in a series of workshops with users in the context of real urban planning projects. It seeks to clarify a number of more general design issues related to tangible user interfaces -- how to make use of material and spatial properties in designing both, physical interface and multiple and simultaneous interactions; how to handle the complexity of urban projects while keeping interfaces and interactions simple and transparent.

/pdf/the-colortable-a-design-story-3c8319q3ps.pdf

The ColorTable: a design story

This paper addresses design agendas in Human-Computer Interaction and neighbouring fields motivated by the mixing of areas that were mostly kept separate until recently, such as media studies, performing arts, computing, and ubiquitous or tangible interfaces Referring to new developments in this interdisciplinary research area, and moving from three specific design cases, this paper proposes a critical design agenda that pragmatically joins: concepts from media studies, tangible or ubiquitous media design concerns, anthropological perspectives to performance and practices of theatre performance

/pdf/a-manifesto-for-the-performative-development-of-ubiquitous-1djubmdg70.pdf

A manifesto for the performative development of ubiquitous media

In many environments, the landscape of space and artefacts is evolving and changing with the tasks at hand. Integrating digital media and computation in these environments has to take into account the fact that people will configure space functions and tools according to the situation, organising use in unexpected ways. In this article, we present and discuss how the issue of configurability is dealt with, in a series of field trials with design students. The aim of these trials was to construct, for architecture and interaction design students, a mixed-media environment for inspirational learning. The results include physical infrastructure in space and in furniture as integral parts of the interaction technology and the creation of composite representations called "mixed objects`', which blend digital and non-digital media in one design artefact. Configurability has to be supported at different levels (infrastructures, artefacts, functions) and across the physical and digital realms.

Thomas Psik

Papers

Global contrast factor - a new approach to image contrast

Agents That Talk And Hit Back: Animated Agents in Augmented Reality

The ColorTable: a design story

A manifesto for the performative development of ubiquitous media

Supporting configurability in a mixed-media environment for design students