We present a new interpretation of the fingering phenomena of the thin liquid film layer through numerical investigations. The governing partial differential equation is h_t + (h²−h³)_x = −∇·(h³∇Δh), which arises in the context of thin liquid films driven by a thermal gradient with a counteracting gravitational force, where h = h(x, y, t) is the liquid film height. A robust and accurate finite difference method is developed for the thin liquid film equation. For the advection part (h²−h³)_x, we use an implicit essentially non­oscillatory (ENO)­type scheme and get a good stability property. For the diffusion part −∇·(h³∇Δh), we use an implicit Euler's method. The resulting nonlinear discrete system is solved by an efficient nonlinear multigrid method. Numerical experiments indicate that higher the film thickness, the faster the film front evolves. The concave front has higher film thickness than the convex front. Therefore, the concave front has higher speed than the convex front and this leads to the fingering phenomena. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Objective: Making a new ergonomic interface system based on camera vision system, which helps the handicapped in home environment. Background: Enabling the handicapped to manipulate the consumer electronics by the proposed interface system. Method: A wearable device for capturing the eye image using a near-infrared(NIR) camera and illuminators is proposed for tracking eye gaze position(Heo et al., 2011). A frontal viewing camera is attached to the wearable device, which can recognize the consumer electronics to be controlled(Heo et al., 2011). And the amount of user's eye fatigue can be measured based on eye blink rate, and in case that the user's fatigue exceeds in the predetermined level, the proposed system can automatically change the mode of gaze based interface into that of manual selection. Results: The experimental results showed that the gaze estimation error of the proposed method was 1.98 degrees with the successful recognition of the object by the frontal viewing camera(Heo et al., 2011). Conclusion: We made a new ergonomic interface system based on gaze tracking and object recognition Application: The proposed system can be used for helping the handicapped in home environment.

An image appearance model called iCAM06 was designed for high dynamic range (HDR) image rendering. The dynamic range of an HDR image needs to be mapped on output devices, which is called tone compression or tone mapping. The iCAM06, the representative HDR rendering algorithm, uses tone compression for image reproduction on the low dynamic range of output devices. However, color saturation reduction occurs during its tone compression process. We propose a saturation correction method using the inverse compensation in order to recover the saturation reduction in the iCAM06. Experimental results show that the proposed method has better performance than the iCAM06 from the viewpoint of saturation accuracy and rendering preference.

In this paper, we implemented an interactive emotional content communication system using a portable wireless biofeedback device to support convenient emotion recognition and immersive emotional content representation for users. The newly designed system consists of the portable wireless biofeedback device and a novel emotional content rendering system. The former performs the acquisition and transmission of three different physiological signals (photoplethysmography, skin temperature, and galvanic skin response) to the remote emotional content rendering system via Bluetooth links in real time. The latter displays video content concurrently manipulated using the feedback of the user¿s emotional state. The results of effectiveness of the system indicated that the response time of the emotional content communication system was nearly instant, the changes of between emotional contents and emotional states base on physiological signals was corresponded. The user¿s concentration was increased by watching the measuredemotion- based rendered visual stimuli. In the near future, the users of this proposed system will be able to create further substantial user-oriented content based on emotional changes.

We present a new computer interface that combines gaze tracking with brainwave measurements in an integrated head-mounted device. This interface is novel in the following four ways compared to previous works. First, because the system is designed as a single head-mounted device, both the brainwave data and eye images for gaze tracking can be acquired by wearing only one device that includes a sensing node and an eye image-capturing camera. Second, the noise in the brainwave data caused by blinking is red by a blink detection system in the eye camera. Third, the sensitivity of a gaze-based navigation speed is appropriately controlled on the basis of the level of attention estimated by analyzing the brainwave. Fourth, performance and usability of the interface are validated by objective evaluating and subjective surveys. From experimental results, we confirmed that the proposed system shows promising performance and usability as a new computer interface ¹ .

PURPOSE. The contraction and dilation of the iris muscle that controls the amount of light entering the retina causes pupil accommodation. In this study, experiments were performed and two of the three factors that influence pupil accommodation were analyzed: lighting conditions and depth fixations. The psychological benefits were not examined, because they could not be quantified. METHODS. A head-wearable eyeglasses-based, eye-capturing device was designed to measure pupil size. It included a near-infrared (NIR) camera and an NIR light-emitting diode. Twenty-four subjects watched two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) stereoscopic videos of the same content, and the changes in pupil size were measured by using the eye-capturing device and image-processing methods: RESULTS. The pupil size changed with the intensity of the videos and the disparities between the left and right images of a 3D stereoscopic video. There was correlation between the pupil size and average intensity. The pupil diameter could be estimated as being contracted from approximately 5.96 to 4.25 mm as the intensity varied from 0 to 255. Further, from the changes in the depth fixation for the pupil accommodation, it was confirmed that the depth fixation also affected accommodation of pupil size. CONCLUSIONS. It was confirmed that the lighting condition was an even more significant factor in pupil accommodation than was depth fixation (significance ratio: approximately 3.2:1) when watching 3D stereoscopic video. Pupil accommodation was more affected by depth fixation in the real world than was the binocular convergence in the 3D stereoscopic display.

The problem of evacuating pedestrians from a room or channel under panic conditions is of obvious importance in daily life. In recent years, several computer models have been developed to simulate pedestrian dynamics. Understanding evacuation dynamics can allow for the design of more comfortable and safe pedestrian facilities. However, these models do not take into account the type and state of mind of pedestrians. They deal with pedestrians as particles and the state of mind as a social force, which is represented by conservative and long-range interactions between individuals. In this study, I used the lattice model proposed in my previous study to explore the evacuation behavior of pedestrians with morality. In this model, three types of pedestrians are considered: adults, children, and injured people. Collisions between adults and children result in injured people. When the number of injured people continuously in contact with each other reaches a given value k, the injured people are red from the lattice space. This situation is the same as that in which pedestrians start stepping over injured people. This behavior was interpreted as the morality of pedestrians. Simulations showed that the evacuation showed down and eventually became jammed owing to the injured people acting as "obstacles" in relation to the morality k.

무선 센서 & 액터 네트워크에서 긴 네트워크의 수명을 유지하면서 다양한 지연시간을 요구하는 응용 프로그램들을 동시에 서비스하는 라우팅 방법이 요구되고 있다. 하지만 트리 기반 라우팅에서 네트워크 수명과 패킷 전송시의 평균 홉 수는 상충관계가 있다는 사실이 알려져 있다. 본 논문은 상충관계에 있는 두 가지 목적을 최적화하는 라우팅 트리들의 파레토 집합을 찾고자 파레토 개미 집단 최적화 알고리즘을 제시한다. 응용 프로그램이 요구하는 지연 시간에 따라 적절한 트리를 선택하여 라우팅에 사용할 수 있도록 함으로써 다양한 응용 프로그램의 요구 조건을 만족시킬 뿐 아니라 긴 네트워크의 수명을 보장한다. 그리고 모의실험을 통해 구해진 트리들이 대표적인 라우팅 트리인 최소신장트리 보다 파레토 최적에 근접한 트리들로 구성됨을 보인다.

Routing schemes that service applications with various delay times, maintaining the long network life time are required in wireless sensor & actor networks. However, it is known that network lifetime and hop count of trees used in routing methods have the tradeoff between them. In this paper, we propose a Pareto Ant Colony Optimization algorithm to find the Pareto tree set such that it optimizes these both tradeoff objectives. As it enables applications which have different delay times to select appropriate routing trees, not only satisfies the requirements of various multiple applications but also guarantees long network lifetime. We show that the Pareto tree set found by proposed algorithm consists of trees that are closer to the Pareto optimal points in terms of hop count and network lifetime than minimum spanning tree which is a representative routing tree.

In rivers and streams, biofilms are thin layers of greenish-brown slime attached to rocks, plants, and other surfaces. Biofilms play key roles in primary production and cycling of nutrients, water quality remediation, suspended sediment removal, and energy flow to higher trophic levels. In the present study, we developed a two-dimensional cellular automata model to simulate mixed biofilms of toxin-sensitive and toxin-producing species in hydrodynamic flow. The flow was generated by a stochastic process for uniform flow and by using the Navier-Stokes equation for non-uniform flow. Minimized local rules governing reproduction and mortality of the species were executed in the self-organizing processes to elucidate interactions between toxin-producing and toxin-sensitive species in competition over nutrients. We briefly discuss the morphology of the simulated biofilm under different flow conditions.