Search results for "Virtual"

Variational approach to the mechanics of metal V-belt systems

2005

The mechanical behaviour of metal V-belt drives is strongly dependent on the elastic properties of both the belt and the pulley, which influence the belt penetration into the groove and the sliding on the pulley wall. The distribution of tension and penetration is quite different from the rubber belts, which may be dealt with in the assumption of perfectly rigid pulleys. The restoring effect of the centrifugal forces of the plate elements has also to be taken into account. The present analysis considers the combination of all those effects, choosing a three parameter deformation function to describe the plate bending and applying the principle of virtual work for the calculation of the unkn…

Computational identification of chemical compounds with potential anti-Chagas activity using a classification tree

2021

Chagas disease is endemic to 21 Latin American countries and is a great public health problem in that region. Current chemotherapy remains unsatisfactory; consequently the need to search for new drugs persists. Here we present a new approach to identify novel compounds with potential anti-chagasic action. A large dataset of 584 compounds, obtained from the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative, was selected to develop the computational model. Dragon software was used to calculate the molecular descriptors and WEKA software to obtain the classification tree. The best model shows accuracy greater than 93.4% for the training set; the tree was also validated using a 10-fold cross-validation p…

Ricostruzione virtuale delle crociere dell'aula della chiesa di San Domenico a Cagliari (XVI sec.)

2016

Il saggio affronta la ricostruzione virtuale delle crociere dell’aula della chiesa di San Domenico a Cagliari, distrutta nel 1943 dai bombardamenti alleati che colpirono la città. La ricostruzione virtuale, combinando gli strumenti dell’indagine storica e della rappresentazione digitale, è stata impiegata per comprendere il processo costruttivo della copertura dell’aula. Lo studio ha inoltre permesso di elaborare una più corretta interpretazione dei dettagli linguistici e delle caratteristiche costruttive delle crociere, consentendo di elaborare nuove ipotesi sulla fabbrica, attraverso la comparazione con architetture coeve. This paper focuses on the 3D virtual reconstruction of the star-sh…

The Cathedral of Palermo : from survey to historic interpretation

2013

The Cathedral of Palermo was built by the Norman Kings, in the place where a mosque had been erected by the muslim governors of Sicily. The church has many features recalling the norman churches in northern France and in England, whilst some others are due to the contamination of norman, muslim and byzantine culture, that is peculiar of the so-called “arab-norman” architecture of medieval Sicily. In the XVIth century the Cathedral has been enriched by additions that did not affect its medieval features: a portico and a sacristy on the southern front, a sculptural decoration in the main apse. It was at the end of the XVIIIth century that the church underwent huge and extensive transformation…

SAUCE: A Web-Based Automated Assessment Tool for Teaching Parallel Programming

2015

Many curricula for undergraduate studies in computer science provide a lecture on the fundamentals of parallel programming like multi-threaded computation on shared memory architectures using POSIX threads or OpenMP. The complex structure of parallel programs can be challenging, especially for inexperienced students. Thus, there is a latent need for software supporting the learning process. Subsequent lectures may cover more advanced parallelization techniques such as the Message Passing Interface (MPI) and the Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) languages. Unfortunately, the majority of students cannot easily access MPI clusters or modern hardware accelerators in order to effectivel…

Virtual reality in the treatment of claustrophobic fear: A controlled, multiple-baseline design

2000

The aim of this study was to determine the effectiveness of virtual reality (VR) exposure in the treatment of claustrophobic fear. We evaluated the intervention following a controlled, multiple-baseline design across 4 participants with claustrophobic fear who sought psychological help in our anxiety disorders clinic. The treatment consisted of 8 individual VR graded exposure sessions. Data were obtained at pretreatment, posttreatment, and 3-month follow-up on several clinical measures: Behavioral Avoidance Test, Self-Efficacy Toward Closed Spaces, Problem-Related Impairment Questionnaire, Beck Depression Inventory (Beck, 1978), and Anxiety Sensitivity Index (Peterson & Reiss, 1992). Result…

Comparative analysis of architectures for monitoring cloud computing infrastructures

2015

The lack of control over the cloud resources is one of the main disadvantages associated to cloud computing. The design of efficient architectures for monitoring such resources can help to overcome this problem. This contribution describes a complete set of architectures for monitoring cloud computing infrastructures, and provides a taxonomy of them. The architectures are described in detail, compared among them, and analysed in terms of performance, scalability, usage of resources, and security capabilities. The architectures have been implemented in real world settings and empirically validated against a real cloud computing infrastructure based on OpenStack. More than 1000 virtual machin…

Enhanced Spatial Navigation Skills in Sequence-Space Synesthetes

2018

Contains fulltext : 219554.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access) Individuals with sequence-space synesthesia (SSS) perceive sequences like months, days and numbers in certain spatial arrangements. Several cognitive benefits have been associated with SSS, such as enhanced mental rotation, more vivid visual imagery and an advantage in spatial processing. The current study aimed to further investigate these cognitive benefits, focusing on spatial navigation skills, to explore if their enhanced sensitivity to spatial relations is reflected in enhanced navigational performance. Synesthetes were distinguished from controls by means of a questionnaire, a consistency test and drawings. A virtu…

2018

This article explores promising points of contact between philosophy and the expanding field of virtual reality research. Aiming at an interdisciplinary audience, it proposes a series of new research targets by presenting a range of concrete examples characterized by high theoretical relevance and heuristic fecundity. Among these examples are conscious experience itself, “Bayesian” and social VR, amnestic re-embodiment, merging human-controlled avatars and virtual agents, virtual ego-dissolution, controlling the reality/virtuality continuum, the confluence of VR and artificial intelligence (AI) as well as of VR and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), VR-based social hallucinations…

Assessing Virtual Reality as a Tool for Support Imagination

2002

One of the major developments of the second year of human life is the emergence of the ability to pretend (Leslie, 1987). Many children with autism use no pretend play or are impoverished in the quality of their play (Baron-Cohen, 1989). The key factor of our Virtual Reality Software in relation to Pretend Play is the possibility to really show the object transformations we propose when pretending. We hope those technics to drive people with autism to a better understanding of pretense and to enable them to develop a play with more quality.