This work offers a comparative analysis between the constructs of sense of presence and mindfulness performed along dimensions such as awareness, attention and non-judgemental acceptance. Related constructs such as flow and absorption are also included in the analysis.

The estimation of rainfall rate and other parameters from radar scattering volume is heavily affected by the presence of intense sea and ground clutter and echoes which appears in anomalous propagation condition. To deal with these non meteorological echoes we present a new clutter removal algorithm which combines the results of previous works. The algorithm fully exploits both the Doppler and ...

We investigate the role of presence in a serious game for intercultural communication and negotiation skills by comparing two interfaces: a 3D version with animated virtual humans and sound against a 2D version using text-only interactions with static images and no sound. Both versions provide identical communicative action choices and are driven by the same underlying simulation engine. In a s...

This paper presents systems which enable eye contact in leisure video conferencing. The proposed solutions include a software based and a hardware based approach. Two experiments were conducted to test the performance of the systems by measuring the users’ sense of presence. The results showed that both solutions succeeded in establishing eye contact but there was no direct indication of an inc...

Large displays are becoming ubiquitous and one important property of large displays is that they afford larger visual angles and physically larger screen sizes. However, there has been little investigation of the effects of large displays on users; furthermore, few studies have employed physiological measures, nor isolated the effects on presence and emotional responses of large visual angle an...

Technologies such as Virtual Reality (VR) that induce presence in a virtual, but still external, perceived world, have great power to evoke emotional experiences that can lead to psychotherapeutically valuable changes in the individual. This reflects the power of presence – seen as the feeling of being located in a perceived, external world – in developing and affecting psychological wellbeing....

The effective actions of a scalar and massless spin-half field are determined as functions of the deformation of a symmetrically squashed three-sphere. The extreme oblate case is particularly examined as per-tinant to a high temperature statistical mechanical interpretation that may be relevant for the holographic principle. Interpreting the squashing parameter as a temperature, we find that th...

The impetus for this field comes from a number of directions. Firstly, as the amount of processing power available for rendering has increased, it has now become feasible to devote a little of it to aspects of a VE beyond visual realism. However visually appealing a VE is, if it is static and empty of change and behaviour, the immersive experience is of limited interest. Cities without people c...

Students in grades four through twelve from fourteen schools learned to build their own immersive virtual environments (VEs). This required them to decide on the theme of their VE, to determine what objects to place in it and what behaviors these objects would exhibit, to model their objects using CAD software, to specify the form and function of the VE for professional programmers to use as th...