ISPR Presence News

Monthly Archives: December 2011

Call: ARtSENSE Visual Aesthetic Interest Survey

From: Ute Kreplin (U.Kreplin@2011.LJMU.AC.UK)
Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2011
Subject: Research Study

Hi

Liverpool John Moores University invites you to take part in the ARtSENSE Visual Aesthetic Interest Survey. The survey asks you to give subjective ratings, i.e. your thoughts and feelings, towards artworks on a number of scales. The survey is part of the ARtSENSE project.

ARtSENSE tackles a very important problem in the modern usage of Information Communication Technology in cultural heritage domain. It aims to bridge the gap between the digital world with the physical in a highly flexible way in order to enable a novel and adaptive cultural experience in museums and galleries. For more information go to www.artsense.euread more. “Call: ARtSENSE Visual Aesthetic Interest Survey”

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Video captures lizard treating Ant Smasher screen ants as real

[From The Sydney Morning Herald, where the story features an additional 1:28 minute video report]

Aussie lizard has smartphone game licked

Asher Moses
December 16, 2011

When Australian Philip Gith realised his pet lizard was a better smartphone gamer than him, he didn’t euthanise it for embarrassing him – he whipped out his camera.

And now the female bearded dragon he calls Crunch has become an internet celebrity due to its fondness for the smartphone game Ant Smasher.

In the video Crunch is shown snapping up the on-screen ants and insects with her tongue to the tune of the Super Mario theme, and when the game stops the lizard looks up expectantly at its owner, angling for another round.… read more. “Video captures lizard treating Ant Smasher screen ants as real”

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Call: Computational Intelligence and Affective Computing (CIAC) at 2012 IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence

2012 IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence
Special Session on Computational Intelligence and Affective Computing (CIAC)
June 10-15, 2012, Brisbane, Australia
http://www-scf.usc.edu/~dongruiw/CIAC.html

Organizers:

Anton Nijholt, University of Twente, The Netherlands, anijholt@cs.utwente.nl
Dongrui Wu, GE Global Research, Niskayuna, NY, USA, drwu09@gmail.com

Aim and Scope:

Computational intelligence is a set of Nature-inspired computational methodologies and approaches to address complex real world problems to which traditional methodologies and approaches (first principles, probabilistic, black-box, etc.) are ineffective or infeasible. It includes neural networks, fuzzy logic systems, evolutionary computation, swarm intelligence, chaos theory, etc.

Affective computing is computing that relates to, arises from, or deliberately influences affects. It has been gaining popularity rapidly in the last decade because it has great potential in the next generation of human-computer interfaces. One goal of affective computing is to design a computer system that responds in a rational and strategic fashion to real-time changes in user affect (e.g.,… read more. “Call: Computational Intelligence and Affective Computing (CIAC) at 2012 IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence”

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Portable North Pole provides personalized Santa videos for children and others

[A press release from UgroupMedia (.pdf); a 1:30 minute teaser and other videos are available here]

Naughty or Nice? Watch What PNP’s Santa and His Elves Have to Say at: www.portablenorthpole.tv

MONTREAL, QUEBEC, Dec 04, 2011 — Thanks to Santa’s elves, PNP-Portable North Pole is back online for its fourth year! Create and send a magical, free, personalized video from Santa Claus to anyone you want. Santa will dazzle children and entertain friends, parents, and colleagues. This year, Santa even has a brand new Elf Machine to help him answer this very important question – have you been Naughty or Nice?

“The Portable North Pole console has made over 20 million people of all ages smile, since it was launched. Users just have to answer a few questions and provide some photos, and Santa Claus will prepare a unique video message for their loved ones,” says Alexandre Berard, president of UGroupMedia and co-designer of PNP, along with Santa’s Elves.… read more. “Portable North Pole provides personalized Santa videos for children and others”

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Job: Researcher at Ghent University – Games @ School (G@S) project

JOB OPENING: FULLTIME PROJECT RESEARCHER
in the field of new media and ICT

The IBBT research group for Media & ICT (IBBT-MICT) of the Department of Communication Studies, Ghent University, Belgium, seeks to fill a fulltime position as project researcher in the field of new media and ICT.

Job description

  • You conduct research into the experience and effectiveness of learning games within the interdisciplinary Games @ School (G@S) project
read more. “Job: Researcher at Ghent University – Games @ School (G@S) project”
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NIH grant funding development of immersive, touch-sensitive “virtual operating room”

[A press release from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute]

“Virtual Operating Room” To Sharpen Surgeons’ Smarts and Skills

Engineers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Awarded $2.7 Million NIH Grant To Develop Immersive, Touch-Sensitive Virtual Reality Tools To Replicate the High-Stress Environment of an Operating Room

Published December 13, 2011

Even for highly trained physicians and surgeons, there’s no teacher like experience.

This is the reason engineering researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute are working to develop a virtual reality operating room. Similar to how fledgling pilots train on flight simulators before ever leaving the ground in an aircraft, the virtual operating room will allow budding surgeons to experience the stresses and nuances of the operating room before they ever perform a procedure on a live patient.

Earlier this year, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded a new $2.7 million grant to Rensselaer Professor Suvranu De to create, test, and validate a virtual reality simulator that seeks to replicate—as closely as possible—the environment of an operating room.… read more. “NIH grant funding development of immersive, touch-sensitive “virtual operating room””

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Call: AISB Symposium on Computing and Philosophy: The Question of Bio-Machine Hybrids

The 4th AISB Symposium on Computing and Philosophy:
Computing, Philosophy and the Question of Bio-Machine Hybrids

July 2nd to 6th, 2012

University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

As part of the AISB/IACAP World Congress 2012 in honour of Alan Turing

Organised by

Website: http://extranet.smuc.ac.uk/events-conferences/AISB-symposium-computing-philosophy/Pages/default.aspx

Poster: http://extranet.smuc.ac.uk/events-conferences/AISB-symposium-computing-philosophy/Documents/AISB-Symposium-2012-Poster.pdf

Symposium Overview

Turing’s famous question ‘can machines think?’ raises parallel questions about what it means to say of us humans that we think. More broadly, what does it mean to say that we are thinking beings? In this way we can see that Turing’s question about the potential of machines raises substantial questions about the nature of human identity. ‘If’, we might ask, ‘intelligent human behaviour could be successfully imitated, then what is there about our flesh and blood embodiment that need be regarded as exclusively essential to either intelligence or human identity?’.… read more. “Call: AISB Symposium on Computing and Philosophy: The Question of Bio-Machine Hybrids”

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Ad agency turns Google Maps into first-person-shooter game

[From The Gadget Helpline blog, which includes a 0:46 minute video; other coverage indicates that the game included sound effects and that Google has now blocked use of Google Maps for the game]

Creative Ad Agency Turns Google Maps Into First-Person-Shooter Game

An act of genius – or genuinely disturbing?

Posted by Jay
December 13, 2011

Creative advertising agency Pool Worldwide utilised the immersive Google Maps location and tour guide with photographic Street View and provided its worldly travellers with a M4A1 assault rifle turning it into a first-person-shooter called Google Shoot View.… read more. “Ad agency turns Google Maps into first-person-shooter game”

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Call: eLearning and Software for Education (eLSE) 2012 conference

eLSE 2012
eLearning and Software for Education Conference

Important Dates

Submission of abstracts: December 16th
Full paper submission: March 1
Decision notification: March 20
Conference date: April 26-27th

Website: http://www.elseconference.eu/

We are pleased to announce that ELSE 2012 will be held from April 26-27, 2012 at Bucharest.

The Call for Proposals is now open; the deadline for is December 16th, 2011.

To submit a proposal, please use the submission form found at www.elseconference.euread more. “Call: eLearning and Software for Education (eLSE) 2012 conference”

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Virtual assistants raise new issues of phone etiquette

[From The New York Times]

Oh, for the Good Old Days of Rude Cellphone Gabbers

By Nick Wingfield
Published: December 2, 2011

Is talking to a phone the same as talking on it?

The sound of someone gabbing on a cellphone is part of the soundtrack of daily life, and most of us have learned when to be quiet — no talking in “quiet cars” on trains, for example.

But the etiquette of talking to a phone — more precisely, to a “virtual assistant” like Apple’s Siri, in the new iPhone 4S — has not yet evolved. And eavesdroppers are becoming annoyed.… read more. “Virtual assistants raise new issues of phone etiquette”

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