The development of Doppler Global Velocimetry as a flow diagnostic measurement sy s t em nece s s i t a t ed seve ra l innova t i ons to so l ve problems found during wind tunnel testing. These innovations ranged from ratioing a data image with a reference image to remove scattered light variations, dewarping the images to remove optical distortions, and to the use of virtual wind tunnels creat...

The Sensorama is the prototypical embodiment of a virtual environment (VE), conceived and implemented years before “VR” (or “virtual reality”) became a common term. Whereas VR has been often characterized as “goggles and gloves,” Heilig (1962) developed a truly multimodal display system that provided for stereoscopic vision, binaural audition, haptics (wind in the face; vibration or “jolts”), a...

The Met Office has developed the Virtual Met MastTM (VMM) tool for assessing the feasibility of potential wind farm sites. It provides site-specific climatological wind information for both onshore and offshore locations. The VMM relies on existing data from past forecasts from regional-scale numerical weather prediction (NWP) models, to which corrections are applied to account for local site c...

In this paper, we explore the problem of generating the optimal time path from an initial position and orientation to a final position and orientation in the two-dimensional plane for an aircraft with a bounded turning radius in the presence of a constant wind. Following the work of Boissonnat, we show using the Minimum Principle that the optimal path consists of periods of maximum turn rate or...

Understanding the functional significance of shelter for animal populations requires knowledge of the behavioural mechanisms that govern the dynamics of shelter use. Exploitation of shelters may be impeded by mutual interference, yet interference competition can be difficult to distinguish from exploitation competition. We used Bullheads (Cottus gobio) as a model system of mobile fish to invest...

Homelessness among families has become a growing social problem for communities, yet little is known about the types of daily survival strategies such families employ. This paper presents results of a qualitative study of the coping narratives of 64 mothers living in temporary emergency shelters with their children. The women reported using a variety of coping responses to daily stressful event...

• Computational steering: enabling interaction with simulations and to direct the solution of biomedical, chemical, and engineering time-critical problems. • Medical: investigate such complex systems as the human body with real-time, 3D computer images; visualising correlation between therapeutic targets and disease; surgical planning and simulation: virtual endoscopy; computer augmented surger...

This paper presents a method for animating and rendering an interactive natural scenery in real-time. It improves the prairie model of [11] by enabling the on-the-fly generation of blades of grass, at three different levels of detail, from user-specified density maps. A new animation function, the tread on grass, is defined to allow virtual objects or characters to crush the grass. The resultin...

earth-shelter construction is one of the aspects in architecture where the thermal mass of the earth behind the outer walls are applied in order to reduce heat loss and keep the internal temperature at human comfort range. in case of earth-shelter buildings, housing is especially important. as for its applicability the earth-shelter provides good housing. typological studies of earth-shelter co...

Shelterbelts are used for a variety of purposes in agricultural environments, primarily because of their ability to improve the downwind microclimate. Excessive evaporative losses from small, agricultural water supply reservoirs in semi-arid Western Australia motivated a combined numerical modelling and field investigation into the potential for using shelterbelts to reduce evaporation from the...