With the low price and increasing performance of commodity computer hardware, it is important to study the viability of using clusters of relatively inexpensive computers to produce a stable system, capable of the current demands for high performance massively parallel computing. A 192-processor cluster was installed to test and develop methods that would make the PC cluster a workable alternat...

In this paper, we briefly outline some of the early research in the field of digital games and education that attempted to answer the question of what and how people learn from playing games. We then turn to the recent revolution in gameplay controllers (from the classic controller to the touch screen, Wii wand, plastic guitars, microphones, minitennis racquets and plastic drums) to argue that ...

In 2000 the Eastside Access Partnership (EAP) was organized to identify barriers to enrollment in these neighborhoods and to develop strategies to reduce these barriers. EAP is part of a larger university-community partnership known as the Detroit Community-Academic Urban Research Center (URC). The URC brings together Detroit community organizations, the Detroit Health Department and the Univer...

⎯ A URC (Ubiquitous Robotic Companion) is a new concept for a network-based service robot. It allows the service robot to extend its functions and services by utilizing external sensor networks and remote computing servers. It also provides the robot’s services at any time and any place. The URC requires not only the hardware infrastructure such as ubiquitous networks or sensor networks and hig...

This study sought to quantify the energy expenditure and physical activity associated with playing the "new generation" active and nonactive console-based video games in 21 children ages 10-14 years. Energy expenditure (kcal) derived from oxygen consumption (VO2) was continuously assessed while children played nonactive and active console video games. Physical activity was assessed continuously...

In China, rapid development has prompted massive migration from rural to urban areas. Migrants’ participation in Urban Residents Committees (URCs) and other community organizations offers opportunities for the development of social capital and democracy in contemporary China. We use 2006 survey data from a stratified convenience sample of 3,024 migrant workers in 7 Chinese cities to examine ind...

To realize the vision of ubiquitous computing, it is important to develop a context-aware infrastructure which can help ubiquitous agents, services, and devices become aware of their contexts because such computational entities need to adapt themselves to changing situations. A context-aware infrastructure manages the context model representing contextual information and provides appropriate in...

Recent years have seen huge advancements in the methods available and used in neuroscience employing EEG or MEG. However, the standard approach is to average a large number of trials for experimentally defined conditions in order to reduce intertrial-variability, i.e., treating it as a source of "noise." Yet it is now more and more accepted that trial-to-trial fluctuations bear functional signi...

This system paper presents ULTRA, a light and compact system that applies augmented reality techniques to handheld PCs. ULTRA offers a comfortable and unobtrusive solution that integrates augmented reality functionalities with near-the-eye display, wireless connection and remote support over integrated mobile phone. The application areas of the ULTRA system span multiple domains such as the mai...