Given the enormous number of stars in the universe and the number of confirmed and postulated planets in our galaxy, it is generally agreed that our home planet Earth is not likely to be unique (e.g., Sagan, 1980; Bignami et al., 2005; Hawking and Mlodinow, 2010). But is it? Although the number of known extrasolar planets grows almost by the day, observational bias caused by the technological c...

Silver and Behn (Reports, 4 January 2008, p. 85) proposed that intermittent plate tectonics may resolve a long-standing paradox in Earth's thermal evolution. However, their analysis misses one important term, which subsequently brings their main conclusion into question. In addition, the Phanerozoic eustasy record indicates that the claimed effect of intermittency is probably weak.

Executive coaching can focus on personal behavior change, enhancing leadership effectiveness, fostering stronger relationships, personal development, and/or work–family integration or specific performance issues on the job. K. M. Wasylyshyn (2003a) and H. Levinson (personal communication, 2003) suggested that executive coaching reaches for a deeper level of clinical and therapeutic intervention...

Authoring embodied, highly interactive virtual agents (IVAs) for robust experiences is an extremely difficult task. Current architectures for creating those agents are so complex that it takes enormous amounts of effort to craft even short experiences, with lengthier, polished experiences (e.g., Facade, Ada and Grace) often requiring person-years of effort by expert authors. However, each archi...

The Simple Query Interface (SQI) is a query transport standard that is becoming widely used within the e-learning community. Thanks to a common WSDL binding, SQI-compliant repositories of learning resources can query each other. This common binding directly maps the SQI specification. As a consequence, many remote calls (known to present an important latency) are necessary to query a repository...

Possible geodynamic regimes that may have prevailed in the Archean are investigated by back-tracking the thermal history of Earth from the present-day conditions. If the temporal evolution of plate-tectonic convection is modulated by strong depleted lithosphere created at mid-ocean ridges, more sluggish plate tectonics is predicted when the mantle was hotter, contrary to commonly believed, more...

This paper presents an approach to the reading of the architectural semantics of drawings. Topological constraints on objects are used to represent various types of groups where the groups produce repeating patterns. A process model of visual rhythm discovery is developed. Discovery of visual rhythms in an architectural facade is demonstrated.

The Bukchon area in Seoul boasts a high density of Hanok, the traditional Korean architecture representing region. Because Hanok facade plays vital role streetscape formation, we must record it terms social, cultural, historical, artistic, and scenic values. However, recording an existing building through drawing or image information is time consuming labor intensive, therefore costly. Further,...