The development of computer technology has created artifacts that have more complex and intelligent functions. Such artifacts need more sophisticated interfaces than primitive artifacts. In this paper, we discuss which characteristics are appropriate for interfaces with artifacts and propose a concept of active affordance. We describe an autonomous mobile chair that we built as a test bed for a...

These networks are experiencing an exponential rise in the number and activity of users in recent years, leading to problems of scalability and increasing spam. Most OSNs currently impose restrictions on the number of social links that a user can have, in order to reduce strain on the OSN infrastructure and to prevent spammers from contacting large number of users indiscriminately. However, suc...

This is an account of the subjective experiences of some two years of Vipassana or Insight meditation. During the first year this comprised an average of approximately one hour per day and during the second was increased to about two hours, as well as some six weeks of intensive meditation retreats, usually of two weeks duration. These retreats comprised about 18to 20 hours daily of continuous ...

Previous research has shown that computer-based tasks can motivate people with autism and encourage learning. As a computer-based medium, Virtual Environments (VEs) offer a potentially useful tool for social skills training for people with autistic spectrum disorders (ASDs). However, there are some concerns over whether people with ASDs can understand, use and interpret the technology appropria...

Statistical Treatment Choice: An Application to Active Labour Market Programmes Choosing among a number of available treatments the most suitable for a given subject is an issue of everyday concern. A physician has to choose an appropriate drug treatment or medical treatment for a given patient, based on a number of observed covariates X and prior experience. A case worker in an unemployment of...

Recently, object affordances have moved into the focus of researchers in computer vision. Affordances describe how an object can be used by a specific agent. This additional information on the purpose of an object is used to augment the classification process. With the herein proposed approach we aim at bringing affordances and object classification closer together by proposing fine-grained aff...

RXTE and other high-energy observatories continue to probe the properties of stellar-size black holes and the physics of accretion using bright X-ray transients in the Galaxy. Progress has been made in recognizing that the three states of active accretion are related to different physical elements that may contribute radiation: the accretion disk, a jet, and a compact and radio-quiet corona. Ea...

[Purpose] To investigate the effects of erect sitting, slouched posture with cross-legged sitting, and erect posture with cross-legged sitting on the lumbar and pelvic angles, and gluteal pressure. [Subjects] For the experiments, 17 healthy women were recruited. [Methods] All subjects were asked to perform three sitting postures: erect sitting, slouched posture with cross-legged sitting, and er...

Active aging, that is the idea that policy encourage and enable people to participate actively in social, political and economic life, is a political backwater in Europe. Since demographic aging affects may different policy domains in different ways, the institutional landscapes in which aging and active aging policy takes place are fragmented. This means that two distinct and countervailing in...