Search results for "representation"
showing 10 items of 1710 documents
Anomaly-free scale symmetry and gravity
2023
In this Letter, we address the question of whether the conformal invariance can be considered as a global symmetry of a theory of fundamental interactions. To describe Nature, this theory must contain a mechanism of spontaneous breaking of the scale symmetry. Besides that, the fundamental theory must include gravity, whereas all known extensions of the conformal invariance to the curved space-time suffer from the Weyl anomaly. We show that conformal symmetry can be made free from the quantum anomaly only in the flat space. The presence of gravity would reduce the global symmetry group of the fundamental theory to the scale invariance only. We discuss how the effective Lagrangian respecting …
Interactive map interface for controlling bridge crane automation A cognitive-affective approach
2016
This study outlines the development process of a new touch screen based user interface for controlling bridge crane automation in industrial environments. A user study of existing situation (n1 = 11) was used to develop an understanding of the cognitive and emotional design goals for crane operation. Conceptualization of these goals in the context of automation produced a set of requirements, which were used to develop a map-based touch screen user interface. Two field tests (n2 = 5, n3 = 5) revealed how bridge crane operators cognise and emotionally experience the increasing automation and how the user interface should be designed to support the operator’s spatial mental representation as …
How older and younger people see technology in Northern and Southern Europe : Closing the generation gap
2016
Background Mental representations of technology can be affected by many social and biological factors. The aim of this study was to test the effects of two of these factors, age and culture, on how people mentally represent and experience technologies by comparing the conceptions of old and young people in Spain and Finland. Both Spain and Finland are European countries, but they are historically, geographically, and culturally very different. Method The study is framed within the life-based design (LBD) paradigm, where culture and age interact to define particular forms of life in which technology might be used and perceived differently. We hypothesised that there are differences in the me…
A Stochastic Algorithm Based on Fast Marching for Automatic Capacitance Extraction in Non-Manhattan Geometries
2014
WOS:000346854900026 (Nº de Acesso Web of Science) We present an algorithm for two- and three-dimensional capacitance analysis on multidielectric integrated circuits of arbitrary geometry. Our algorithm is stochastic in nature and as such fully parallelizable. It is intended to extract capacitance entries directly from a pixelized representation of the integrated circuit (IC), which can be produced from a scanning electron microscopy image. Preprocessing and monitoring of the capacitance calculation are kept to a minimum, thanks to the use of distance maps automatically generated with a fast marching technique. Numerical validation of the algorithm shows that the systematic error of the algo…
Affective contents of cross-cultural audiovisual experience
2015
Audiovisual presentation of a product has a direct impact on the mental representation of an individual when interacting with a product. Companies produce audiovisual contents that can be used in different cultural environments as a way of having broader impact at a cheaper cost. But do video contents have the same impact in different countries? We addressed this question by using images and videos of Iittala products (Finnish design) with the goal of finding whether participants from two countries, Finland and Spain, appraised the designs similarly. We performed an experiment in which participants interacted with three audiovisual products depicting images/videos of the brand design. Throu…
Curvelet-based method for orientation estimation of particles
2013
A method based on the curvelet transform is introduced for estimating from two-dimensional images the orientation distribution of small anisotropic particles. Orientation of fibers in paper is considered as a particular application of the method. Theoretical aspects of the suitability of this method are discussed and its efficiency is demonstrated with simulated and real images of fibrous systems. Comparison is made with two traditionally used methods of orientation analysis, and the new curvelet-based method is shown to perform clearly better than these traditional methods.
Curvelet-based method for orientation estimation of particles from optical images
2014
A method based on the curvelet transform is introduced to estimate the orientation distribution from two-dimensional images of small anisotropic particles. Orientation of fibers in paper is considered as a particular application of the method. Theoretical aspects of the suitability of this method are discussed and its efficiency is demonstrated with simulated and real images of fibrous systems. Comparison is made with two traditionally used methods of orientation analysis, and the new curvelet-based method is shown to perform better than these tradi- tional methods. © The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Distribution or reproduction of th…
Diversity begets diversity: A global perspective on gender equality in scientific society leadership.
2018
Research shows that gender inequality is still a major issue in academic science, yet academic societies may serve as underappreciated and effective avenues for promoting female leadership. That is, society membership is often self-selective, and board positions are elected (with a high turnover compared to institutions)—these characteristics, among others, may thus create an environment conducive to gender equality. We therefore investigate this potential using an information-theoretic approach to quantify gender equality (male:female ratios) in zoology society boards around the world. We compare alternative models to analyze how society characteristics might predict or correlate with the …
Phantom/liminal fat and feminist theories of the body
2017
This article brings together two concepts, ‘phantom fat’ and ‘liminal fat’, which both aim to grasp how fat in contemporary culture becomes a kind of material immateriality, corporeality in suspension. Comparing the spheres of representation and experience, we examine the challenges and usefulness of these concepts, and feminist fat studies perspectives more broadly, to feminist scholarship on the body. We ask what connects and disconnects fat corporeality and fat studies from ways of theorising other embodied differences, like gender, ‘race’, disability, class and sexuality, especially when thinking through their perceived mutability or removability, and assumptions about their relevance …
Influence of the learning environment on the representational strategies of middle school music students: an intervention-based study
2015
The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a hypermedia learning environment on middle school students' meta-representational competence (MRC) in the domain of music. Particularly, we aimed at determining whether an educational intervention influenced the accuracy with which middle school students matched sounds (sonic fragments) to symbols (graphic representations). The students were randomly allocated to the experimental condition. An intervention was set up so that the experimental group students (E) were provided with scaffolding aimed at enhancing their use of constructive resources to generate representations and their critical capabilities to judge them. On the other han…