Creating an authentic aural experience in the digital songlines game engine: Part of a contextualised cultural heritage knowledge toolkit

Digital Songlines is an Australasian CRC for Interaction Design (ACID) project that is developing protocols, methodologies and toolkits to facilitate the collection, education and sharing of indigenous cultural heritage knowledge. The project explores the areas of effective recording, content management and virtual reality delivery capabilities that are culturally sensitive and involve the indigenous custodians, leaders and communities in remote areas of the Australian ‘outback’. It investigates how players in a serious gaming sense can experience Indigenous virtual heritage in a high fidelity fashion with culturally appropriate interface tools. This paper describes a 3D ambient audio quilt designed and implemented specifically for the Digital Songlines software, which is built using the Torque Game Engine. The audio quilt developed provides dynamic ambient fauna and flora sound effects to represent the varying audio environment of the landscape. This provides an authentic contextualised interesting aural experience that can be different each time a location is entered. This paper reports on completed and ongoing research in this area.

Clinical decision support system for point of care use: ontology driven design and software implementation

OBJECTIVES: The objective of this research was to design a clinical decision support system (CDSS) that supports heterogeneous clinical decision problems and runs on multiple computing platforms. Meeting this objective required a novel design to create an extendable and easy to maintain clinical CDSS for point of care support. The proposed solution was evaluated in a proof of concept implementation. METHODS: Based on our earlier research with the design of a mobile CDSS for emergency triage we used ontology-driven design to represent essential components of a CDSS. Models of clinical decision problems were derived from the ontology and they were processed into executable applications during runtime. This allowed scaling applications' functionality to the capabilities of computing platforms. A prototype of the system was implemented using the extended client-server architecture and Web services to distribute the functions of the system and to make it operational in limited connectivity conditions. RESULTS: The proposed design provided a common framework that facilitated development of diversified clinical applications running seamlessly on a variety of computing platforms. It was prototyped for two clinical decision problems and settings (triage of acute pain in the emergency department and postoperative management of radical prostatectomy on the hospital ward) and implemented on two computing platforms-desktop and handheld computers. CONCLUSIONS: The requirement of the CDSS heterogeneity was satisfied with ontology-driven design. Processing of application models described with the help of ontological models allowed having a complex system running on multiple computing platforms with different capabilities. Finally, separation of models and runtime components contributed to improved extensibility and maintainability of the system.

A utility model for volunteered service composition

Volunteered Service Composition (VSC) refers to the process of composing volunteered services and resources. These services are typically published to a pool of voluntary resources. The composition aims at satisfying some objectives (e.g. Utilizing storage and eliminating waste, sharing space and optimizing for energy, reducing computational cost etc.). In cases when a single volunteered service does not satisfy a request, VSC will be required. In this paper, we contribute to three approaches for composing volunteered services: these are exhaustive, naïve and utility-based search approach to VSC. The proposed new utility-based approach, for instance, is based on measuring the utility that each volunteered service can provide to each request and systematically selects the one with the highest utility. We found that the utility-based approach tend to be more effective and efficient when selecting services, while minimizing resource waste when compared to the other two approaches.

A Digital Library of Folklore Songs and Keyword-Based Search Engine

ACM Computing Classification System (1998): H3.3, H.5.5, J5.

Knowledge-based Virtual Reconstruction of Museum Artifacts

Within the framework of heritage preservation, 3D scanning and modeling for heritage documentation has increased significantly in recent years, mainly due to the evolution of laser and image-based techniques, modeling software, powerful computers and virtual reality. 3D laser acquisition constitutes a real development opportunity for 3D modeling based previously on theoretical data. The representation of the object information rely on the knowledge of its historic and theoretical frame to reconstitute a posteriori its previous states. This project proposes an approach dealing with data extraction based on architectural knowledge and Laser statement informing measurements, the whole leading to 3D reconstruction. The experimented Khmer objects are exposed at Guimet museum in Paris. The purpose of this digital modeling meets the need of exploitable models for simulation projects, prototyping, exhibitions, promoting cultural tourism and particularly for archiving against any likely disaster and as an aided tool for the formulation of virtual museum concept.

Eigenvalue communications in nonlinear fiber channels

Continuous progress in optical communication technology and corresponding increasing data rates in core fiber communication systems are stimulated by the evergrowing capacity demand due to constantly emerging new bandwidth-hungry services like cloud computing, ultra-high-definition video streams, etc. This demand is pushing the required capacity of optical communication lines close to the theoretical limit of a standard single-mode fiber, which is imposed by Kerr nonlinearity [1–4]. In recent years, there have been extensive efforts in mitigating the detrimental impact of fiber nonlinearity on signal transmission, through various compensation techniques. However, there are still many challenges in applying these methods, because a majority of technologies utilized in the inherently nonlinear fiber communication systems had been originally developed for linear communication channels. Thereby, the application of ”linear techniques” in a fiber communication systems is inevitably limited by the nonlinear properties of the fiber medium. The quest for the optimal design of a nonlinear transmission channels, development of nonlinear communication technqiues and the usage of nonlinearity in a“constructive” way have occupied researchers for quite a long time.

Data partitioning and replication management in distributed geographic information system (GIS) database

This research presents several components encompassing the scope of the objective of Data Partitioning and Replication Management in Distributed GIS Database. Modern Geographic Information Systems (GIS) databases are often large and complicated. Therefore data partitioning and replication management problems need to be addresses in development of an efficient and scalable solution. ^ Part of the research is to study the patterns of geographical raster data processing and to propose the algorithms to improve availability of such data. These algorithms and approaches are targeting granularity of geographic data objects as well as data partitioning in geographic databases to achieve high data availability and Quality of Service(QoS) considering distributed data delivery and processing. To achieve this goal a dynamic, real-time approach for mosaicking digital images of different temporal and spatial characteristics into tiles is proposed. This dynamic approach reuses digital images upon demand and generates mosaicked tiles only for the required region according to user's requirements such as resolution, temporal range, and target bands to reduce redundancy in storage and to utilize available computing and storage resources more efficiently. ^ Another part of the research pursued methods for efficient acquiring of GIS data from external heterogeneous databases and Web services as well as end-user GIS data delivery enhancements, automation and 3D virtual reality presentation. ^ There are vast numbers of computing, network, and storage resources idling or not fully utilized available on the Internet. Proposed "Crawling Distributed Operating System "(CDOS) approach employs such resources and creates benefits for the hosts that lend their CPU, network, and storage resources to be used in GIS database context. ^ The results of this dissertation demonstrate effective ways to develop a highly scalable GIS database. The approach developed in this dissertation has resulted in creation of TerraFly GIS database that is used by US government, researchers, and general public to facilitate Web access to remotely-sensed imagery and GIS vector information. ^

Becoming Other: Virtual Realities in Contemporary Science Fiction

The purpose of this thesis was to explore the boundary between human and other created by virtual worlds in contemporary science fiction novels. After a close reading of the three novels: Surface Detail, Existence, and Lady of Mazes, and the application of contemporary literary theories, the boundary presented itself and led to the discovery of where the human becomes other. The human becomes other when it becomes lost to the virtual world and no longer exists or interacts with material reality. Each of the primary texts exhibits both virtual reality and humanity in different ways, and each is explored to find where humanity falls apart. Overall, when these theories are applied to real life there is no real way to avoid the potential for fully immersive virtual worlds, but there are ways to avoid their alienating effects.