The pervasiveness of the Internet and smartphones enables individuals to participate in online social networks such Twitter and Facebook, besides the classic physical contact network. Such multi-layer network allows for feedback between networks / layers. For instance, the spread of a biological disease such as Ebola in a physical contact network may trigger the spreading of the information rel...

Most of the conventional approaches to mobile robot navigation avoid any kind of contact with the environment or with humans. However, most distance sensors have a limited field of view, so that collisions cannot be fully avoided in practical mobile robot applications. At the same time, direct physical contact also can be used as a means of intuitive communication between a robot and humans. We...

BACKGROUND Mathematical modelling of infectious diseases transmitted by the respiratory or close-contact route (e.g., pandemic influenza) is increasingly being used to determine the impact of possible interventions. Although mixing patterns are known to be crucial determinants for model outcome, researchers often rely on a priori contact assumptions with little or no empirical basis. We conduct...

Within the framework of a realist view of the physical world, there are two general theories of the nature of perception. The first is strong direct realism (SDR). This accepts a realist view of the physical world, and claims that our perceptual access to this world is psychologically direct. The second is the broad representative theory (BRT). This too accepts a realist view of the world, but ...

Adolescents’ Recollection of Early Physical Contact: Implications for Attachment and Intimacy

We provide a brief overview of the Discrete Element Method (DEM) for modeling large frictional contact problems in granular flow dynamics and quasi-static geomechanics applications. In terms of contact, DEM can be divided into two approaches: the Constraint Method (CM) or rigid-body approach, and the Penalty Method (PM) or soft-body approach. We give a detailed presentation of a DEM-PM contact ...

The dependence of contact resistance on current has been measured for a large number of ohmic contacts to quantized Hall resistors under quantum Hall effect conditioDS.Five different functional forms of current dependence are observed at low currents. The trend from best to worst quality can be correlated with the density of defects in the contact, regardless of the physical cause of the defect...

an agricultural waste and eco-friendly biosorbent i.e. rice husk has been used as a cheap adsorbentfor the removal of methylene blue dye from aqueous solutions. the physical properties of the developedadsorbent were characterized using ftir. the study was realized using batch experiments. the effectsof contact time, ph, initial dye concentration, biosorbent dose and temperature were investigate...

thermal contact conductance (tcc) between an exhaust valve and its seat is one of the important parameters to be estimated in an internal combustion engine. an experimental study presented here to acquire temperature in some interior points to be used as inputs to an inverse analysis. an actual exhaust valve and its seat are utilized in a designed and constructed setup. conjugate gradient metho...