Telepresence is the future of multimedia systems and will allow participants to share professional and private experiences, meetings, games, parties. The concepts of Distributed Virtual Environments are a key technology to implement this telepresence. Using Virtual Humans within the shared environment is a essential supporting tool for presence. Real-time realistic 3D avatars will be essential ...

Influenza epidemics exhibit a strongly seasonal pattern, with winter peaks that occur with similar timing across temperate areas of the Northern Hemisphere. This synchrony could be influenced by population movements, environmental factors, host immunity, and viral characteristics. The historical isolation of Iceland and subsequent increase in international contacts make it an ideal setting to s...

Environmental and biotic factors regulate species abundance and the composition of ecological communities. However, it is diicult to demonstrate principles of community assembly in nature due to observational limitations and historical eeects. Numerical simulation can be used to evaluate whether hypothesized mechanisms produce a pattern seen in natural communities. Most models of many-species c...

Task-specific training in immersive virtual reality environments (IVREs) can provide practice for skills that are transferred to real-world settings. The present study examined skill acquisition and retention of a non-injured population performing a complex, sensorimotor navigation task in the Computer Assisted Rehabilitation Environment (CAREN). Seventeen subjects participated twice weekly for...

A big city visual analysis platform based on Web Virtual Reality Geographical Information System (WEBVRGIS) is presented. Extensive model editing functions and spatial analysis functions are available, including terrain analysis, spatial analysis, sunlight analysis, traffic analysis, population analysis and community analysis.

Although community technology centers (CTCs) provide a host of services that may have economic consequences, few studies have attempted to empirically assess the impact of CTCs on local communities. Controlling for broadband availability and demographics, this study found that there is a small but positive and significant impact of CTC quality on median household income, at the county level. In...

This paper presents the Mário Schenberg Spaceship, a Virtual Reality (VR) based collaborative learning environment for Astronomy, Science and Physics learning. The installation has a spaceshiplike scenario, where a group of learners experiment an adventure in space. Learners interact with six workstations to play a collaborative but not competitive game. The goal of the game is to complete a mi...

There is abundant literature regarding virtual reality as a technology of interest in the present age. However, there are few comprehensive studies on strategies that can improve the level of urban design research using this technique. To investigate the issue, this paper first reviews the concept of virtual reality. Next, the opinions of experts in the field of virtual reality technology are s...

As research on virtual worlds gains increasing attention in educational, commercial, and military domains, a consideration of how player populations are ‘reassembled’ through social scientific data is a timely matter for communication scholars. This paper describes a large-scale study of virtual worlds in which participants were recruited at public gaming events, as opposed to through online me...