We have traditionally used maps to provide information about space. We have fashioned a design, development, fabrication and consumption process (and associated procedures) that have enabled essential artifacts to be made available and for them to be used effectively and efficiently. However, with the use of non-traditional representational artefacts , whereby for example users can disassociate...

A ‘‘sense of humor’’ can be fractionated into appreciation (enjoying jokes), production fluency (making jokes), and production success (making funny jokes). There is scant research on how appreciation and production relate, and their relation to individual differences. Participants (N = 159) rated the humor of captioned cartoons and created captions for different cartoons. People who wrote funn...

Rolf Landauer has done more than anyone else to establish the physics of information processing as a serious subject of scientific inquiry. Here I will take a less serious approach, highlighting his contributions to this field with the help of cartoons and diagrams drawn by himself and others. Landauer has always believed that physics and mathematics are profoundly interdependent (Fig. 1): on t...

We introduce a novel example-based framework for reusing traditional cartoon drawings and animations. In contrast to previous approaches our aim is to design new characters and poses by combining fragments of the original artwork. Using standard image manipulation tool this task is tedious and time consuming. To reduce the amount of manual intervention we combine unsupervised image segmentation...

Our work focuses on the encoding of two–dimensional (2-D) graphics animated cartoons with MPEG-4. This stems from a need to stop encoding cartoons as videos and to start using methods more adapted to animated 2-D vector graphics sequences. We expected this could be an efficient coding with good versatility for various types of terminals. First, we present some technical specification for such c...

Through semiotic analysis of manifest and latent meanings in editorial cartoons, the author uncovers how cloning and stem cell research are represented in a popular mass medium. She identified 86 editorial cartoons published in the United States between 2001 and 2004 that referred to cloning and 20 that referred to stem cell research. Cartoonists portrayed people individually 224 times and 4 ti...

PURPOSE To evaluate the effect of animated cartoons with children's songs to increase compliance with ultrasonography (US) examination in young children. MATERIALS AND METHODS Animated cartoons with children's songs viewed on a cell phone were played just before the start of US examination when pediatric patients were agitated or irritable. The effect of this method was evaluated for initial ...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES The present study examined the relationship between social anxiety and the appreciation of specific types of humor. It was expected that social anxiety would hinder the enjoyment of jokes particularly if the resolution of incongruity involves processing social cues and assessing the (false) mental states of others. Fifty-six participants rated three types of cartoons a...