Entertainment Areas Research Articles

Management of the Tourist & Entertainment Noise Using Noise Mapping Technique

In countries with strong orientation in tourism and entertainment, especially during summer months, noise problems are always present. This paper represents some applications of noise mapping techniques for the management of tourist & entertainment noise that were conducted in Croatia and Slovenia. The noise mapping techniques were applied for the prediction of noise levels on several places inside the cities of Varaždin and Pola (Croatia) including famous Roman amphitheatre, and in the city of Nova Gorica (Slovenia) especially during entertainment live‐shows (concerts, movie festival etc). Such approach enables the city authorities to prepare the base for the implementation of noise policy with introducing such a system that would represent background documents for providing criteria of setting out areas on one side intended to entertainment and quiet areas on the other. For the daily activities in areas that are the most attractive for tourists, noise‐modelling techniques have been used for predicting noise emitted from pubs and bars including terraces and loudspeakers. Such approaches have been used by city authorities to establish technique for "fixed quotas" that will be able to designate maximum area of terraces concerning number of seating places in relation with the type of bar/pub and noise emission.

Does Japan really have robot mania? Comparing attitudes by implicit and explicit measures

Japan has more robots than any other country with robots contributing to many areas of society, including manufacturing, healthcare, and entertainment. However, few studies have examined Japanese attitudes toward robots, and none has used implicit measures. This study compares attitudes among the faculty of a US and a Japanese university. Although the Japanese faculty reported many more experiences with robots, implicit measures indicated both faculties had more pleasant associations with humans. In addition, although the US faculty reported people were more threatening than robots, implicit measures indicated both faculties associated weapons more strongly with robots than with humans. Despite the media’s hype about Japan’s robot ‘craze,’ response similarities suggest factors other than attitude better explain robot adoption. These include differences in history and religion, personal and human identity, economic structure, professional specialization, and government policy. Japanese robotics offers a unique reference from which other nations may learn.

Writing about Ourselves: Jewish Autobiography, Modern and Premodern

Writing about Ourselves: Jewish Modern and Premodern Marcus Moseley. Being for Myself Alone: Origins of Jewish Autobiography. Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2006. Pp. xiii + 650.WE LIVE IN AN AGE of self-writing. It is barely conceivable that any high public official, successful business leader, or celebrity from any area of entertainment or the arts should pass up the chance to tell his or her story to the reading public. Genuine self-knowledge is the goal of few of these efforts, which attempt, instead, to advance careers, stir up scandal, create spin, secure a legacy, or, in the best of cases, to bear witness to historical events. Autobiography, as a phenomenon studied by literary scholars, is something else entirely. It is a historically defined genre that was initiated by Rousseau's Confessions in the eighteenth century and then branched out into the literatures of Europe, developing differently according to different norms and cultural pressures. The hallmark of this classic autobiography is a reticulated and sophisticated sense of introspection. The autobiographer attempts to account for who he or she has become at the present time of the writing by recalling and examining the succession of earlier selves, with emphasis, pace Rousseau, on the importance of childhood, the candid confession of shortcomings and shameful acts, and the formation of sentiments as well as ideas. The writings of Goethe, John Stuart Mill, Henry Adams, Cardinal Newman, Osip Mandelstam, Michel Leins, Simone de Beauvoir, Vladimir Nabokov, and many others made a strong case for the existence of a unique mode of writing, neither novel nor historical treatise, that demanded to be read on its own terms. It was not until the 1970s with the work of Philippe Lejeune m France and James Olney m America that an adequate theoretical framework for describing the poetics of autobiography was developed.Autobiography as an object of study, however, has refused to remain stable. In the past fifty years the genre has exploded in all directions. It is not a matter of high culture versus popular culture; for it seems as if all serious writers in every field, eepecially academic scholars, are writing about themselves. The issue is that they are often doing so, very unhelpfully for literary critics, in wanton disregard for the canons of the Rousseauean paradigm. The explosion has been retrojected as well. The problem is not just new writing but an ever-expanding conception of what constitutes autobiography in the past. Slave narratives, oral testimonies, diaries, and confessional texts of all sorts composed by subjects who never heard of Rousseau have stretched the category of autobiography to the point of meanmglessness. Racing to catch up, theorists of autobiography have essentially thrown in the towel and agreed to speak of autobiography not as a distinct genre but as vast map upon which a specific work can be located according to a variety of coordinates.The strongest challenge to the coherence of autobiography as a genre concerns the expectation of truthfulness. In what remains, to my mind, the most durable definition of the genre, Philippe Lejeune argued that a text is not so much for what is in it as for the expectations that readers bring to the reading of it. Fundamental to the reading of an autobiography, he proposed, is the existence of an implicit according to whose terms the autobiographer presents his or her work as a truthful presentation of experience and the readers agree to approach it as such. Although as readers we do not expect a novel to be factually loyal to the experience of a specific individual, this is exactly what we expect from an autobiography. Yet time after time we encounter autobiographies by prominent writers and intellectuals that have been exposed as containing mistruths, whether small or large, and we feel that the autobiographical compact has been abused in these cases and placed under suspicion generally. …

Convergence Transforms Digital Home: Techno-Economic Impact

This paper discusses the past, the present, and the future of digital home and in particular, how convergence transforms home networking. It describes technology adoption-, consumer-, and behavioural-trends and discusses the business impact from consumer demand for "living in real-time" and from the convergence of applications, services, networks, and terminals. With the explosion of mobile and broadband usage with high Wi-Fi penetration at home and emerging trends such as online social networks, mashups, blogs, etc. will create unparalleled value to customers that will disrupt existing business models of fixed and mobile operators. Consumers expect access to applications and services instantaneously, irrespective of the location, place and all at real-time. Telco's and business are beginning to understand how those behavioural trends, and convergence could have major impact on their service offering, marketing, products, price, go-to-market and how they can leverage these trends to attract and seek global talents. Proliferation of IP enabled device and applications will lead to the development of IP-based home networking in the areas of personal communications, network entertainment, communications and monitoring & management. Finally, a new law was established that will drive the future development of digital home, E = mc3, where E equates to Entertainment experience, m for media (content) and c3 for convergence of communications, computing technologies and consumer electronics. Success of home networking will heavily depend on industries ability to hide networks and systems complexities from end-users where simplicity of the user interface is the key.

Planning algorithms for interactive storytelling

Interactive storytelling (IS) is an important research topic in the broader area of interactive digital entertainment. Research in IS focuses in the search for techniques that allow the creation of systems that can generate stories that change as a consequence of a player's actions. There have been numerous articles attempting to reach this goal by employing a planning algorithm as part of the solution, but they typically do not discuss in detail why a given planning algorithm was used. Given this reality, this article makes two main contributions. First, it proposes an initial set of criteria that can be used to evaluate how well a given planning algorithm fits IS systems. Second, on the basis of these criteria, it presents an analysis using available planning systems.

The poetics of augmented space

This article discusses how people experience spatial forms when they are filled in with dynamic and rich multimedia information; spaces such as shopping or entertainment areas or other spaces where various information can be accessed wirelessly. The author calls such spaces ‘augmented space’: the physical space overlaid with dynamically changing information, multimedia in form and localized for each user. The article asks whether this form becomes irrelevant and ‘invisible’ or if people end up with a new experience in which the spatial and information layers are equally important. The author also discusses the general dynamic between spatial form and information and how this might function differently in today’s computer culture. Throughout the article, augmentation is reconceptualized as an idea and cultural and aesthetic practice rather than as technology. Various practices in professional and vernacular architecture and built environments, cinema, 20th-century art and media art are discussed in terms of augmentation.

The complexity of the learning and teaching of EFL among Swedish‐minority students in bilingual Finland

In Finland, English is widely visible outside the school context, above all in the area of entertainment and mass media, and is no longer regarded as a foreign language in the old sense of the word. Among Swedish‐minority students in Finland, the dominant status of English in various mass media leads to positive attitudes towards English among students and provides strong motivation to acquire the language. This paper considers whether the incidental learning of English taking place outside the classroom results in the same kind of proficiency as that resulting from formal classroom learning.

Works in progress - Gaming, fine art, and familiar strangers

For this issue's Works in Progress, we have six abstracts in the areas of pervasive gaming, interactive entertainment, and interpersonal interactions. Three of the abstracts cover gaming systems that combine physical and virtual environments. These discuss new development frameworks and toolkits, analyze how users interact in gaming environments, and evaluate new technology for these environments. Two abstracts discuss interactive digital art: a system that observes and interacts with dancers and a methodology, and a toolkit for designing new digital art systems. The final abstract describes a system for helping individuals better understand the subtle interactions that they have with the people around them ("familiar strangers").

The Development of Stadiums as Centers of Large Entertainment Areas. The Amsterdam ArenA Case

On August 14th 1996, the opening ceremony of the Amsterdam ArenA took place; the first stadium intended to be a multifunctional structure, a place where to host a wide variety of events, with a highway passing underneath the pitch and with a sliding roof. The Amsterdam ArenA case represents a successful example of private-public partnership. A win-win solution has brought benefits to both parties. In today’s competitive global markets, the event itself is no longer sufficient to motivate consumers to pay expensive tickets and parking fees. To be worthwhile, spectators expect to be immersed in an experience. AFC Ajax remains the stadium’s anchor tenant, Nevertheless the Amsterdam ArenA case also demonstrates the role that a stadium can play as a catalyst for urban renewal.

A new approach to control noise from entertainment facilities: Active control and measurement of amplified community noise

While traffic noise is perhaps the most pervasive of community noises, much of the contribution now comes from amplified sound: live music, discos, theme parks, and exercise studios. Those producing the sound or music want it loud and those not interested want to be protected against noise. Noise limits at the receiving or producing property line must be met for the minimum community acceptance. However the time‐, and perhaps the spatially‐, varying sound in entertainment facilities is often constantly modified (and maybe monitored) near the source of the sound. Hence it is hard to relate and to control the sound at the property line. This paper presents a unique noise control device. It is based on the octave band ‘‘transfer function’’ between the sound produced in the entertainment area and the noise received at the property line. The overall insulation can be measured and is input to the instrument. When a noise level limit is exceeded at the receiver, due to the amplified interior noise at the facility, the sound output of the device is automatically controlled to reduce the noise. The paper provides details of the design and possible abatement scenarios with examples.

The formation of space of Philippine Pubs and the social construction of representations of ethnicity

This paper argues the issue of female migrant workers who have been remarkable under the globalization, particularly paying attention to the condition of Filipino women, because the Republic of Philippines has been systematizing and promoting the exportation of manpower, and sending many Filipino female domestic workers to developed areas in Asia, the Middle East, and other western countries. However, Japan excludes domestic workers selectively through its strict immigration policy. As result, a great number of Filipino females who come to Japan are only entertainers like dancers and singers. In this context, Japan is unique compared with other countries. Most entertainers work at Philippine Pubs in different cities all over Japan. Therefore, the unique urban nightscapes of Philippine Pubs are built in local urban spaces.I explored the politics of space of Philippine Pubs, which is an important component of local urban space, and the politics of positioning Filipino female entertainers who work there, through a case study of Sakae Walk Street where many Philippine Pubs are located in Nagoya City.First, my study showed that the present location of Philippine Pubs in Sakae Walk Street used to be an entertainment area (Snack town) in the outskirt of downtown Sakae District. With the decline of this area, Philippine Pubs, where cheaper and younger entertainers are a main character, started to mushroom and eventually replaced the old entertainment town.Second, my study revealed that two agents concerning the formation of this space of Philippine Pubs in Sakae Walk Street have respectively constructed each representations of 'ethnicity' of the entertainers. Employers and talent agencies have constructed this 'ethnicity' showing imaginative geographies of exotic, sexual and southern countries, through the formation of space, particularly aspects of landscape-appearance, standing signboards, advertising boards-. Immigration/police have doubly constructed 'ethnicity' as 'victims' or 'wrongdoers' through the formation of space of control against this space of Philippine Pubs by executing the surveillance and exposure activities around Ikeda Park. Local inhabitants in Sakae Walk Street also support these activities.In conclusion, I hope to suggest that the politics of the formation of local space of Philippine Pubs, being mutually compositional with the politics of the social construction of representations about 'ethnicity', is one of the processes of othering entertainer. And also, the spaces, which two above-mentioned agents have formed, are mutually negotiative rather than parallel. This makes the politics of the formation of this space of Philippine Pubs and also the process of othering entertainers multidimensional.

Big changes in direction at the Tokyo International Robot Exhibition 2001

Describes recent developments at the Tokyo bi‐annual International Robot Exhibition. More exhibitors were present than in previous years, however very few new innovative technologies /products were observed. In the middle of the depressed economy Japanese industrial robot manufacturers are struggling to reduce cost, reshuffle business structure and try everything to survive. A total solution approach and strategic alliances were evident. On the other hand there is a sign of emerging non‐manufacturing market, especially in the entertainment area.

Learning within the Community, Learning from the Community

It's Saturday morning and a middle-aged teacher has walked into her classroom and begun to greet her students. As she sorted through her handouts and overheads, more learners strolled in, finding seats, and greeting each other. Finally, she began her lecture on The Impact of Aging on Memory by asking the class, you have difficulty remembering things that just happened moments ago? Do you feel the older you get, the poorer your memory is? Many laughed while nodding their heads seriously. As her lecture proceeded, the learners listened attentively and some started to take notes. This particular class was held at Evergreen Academy, an educational institute particularly tailored to older Taiwanese and Chinese immigrants. Every Saturday morning, the academy offers a morning course followed by lunch, a business meeting and two afternoon courses including ones on contemporary issues, medical and health care, arts and crafts, and English as a second language (ESL). All classes are taught in the students' native language by expert members of the community. These offerings reflect the Academy's intention to respond to the demands of the community by satisfying the senior learners' needs in the areas of personal enrichment, health care, and entertainment. In addition to regular semester courses, the Academy arranges field trips, singing contests, and birthday parties to facilitate social relationships among the community of learners. Beginning with an enrollment of 40 students, the Academy doubled in size within weeks of its inception. Evergreen Academy is only one of the countless adult ethnic schools, located within immigrant communities nationwide. While the concept of an ethnic school is not a recent invention, they only recently came into the public eye. The majority were organized to preserve a cultural heritage in order to pass it down to the younger generation. Many children, especially those of first generation immigrants, were encouraged to attend weekend programs sponsored by Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Greek, Jewish, and other ethnic communities. These ethnic schools provided courses in ethnic literacy skills, history, and sometimes religion, with supplementary extra-curricular activities. In addition to these academic subjects, ethnic schools often reinforce participants' cultural identity and enhance social cohesiveness within the ethnic community (Sone, 1994). While the primary participants of the early ethnic schools were children, today many communities have extended their efforts to include adult immigrants. Like many grassroots, community-based organizations that have contributed significantly to adult education, the discussion regarding the organization and development of adult ethnic schools has rarely been incorporated in the mainstream adult education literature (Briscoe & Ross, 1991). As adult ethnic schools become more successful and popular within immigrant communities, it is important for adult educators to pay attention to the ways in which these schools function among immigrant communities. Adult ethnic schools operate in a variety of formats; some are community-based organizations while others take the form of book clubs or forums, depending on available resources and the needs of the participants. Regardless of the structure, the characteristics of most adult ethnic schools parallel the properties of community-based organizations. These schools are primarily community based and controlled in that the programs and services are initiated, planned, decided on, and implemented by members of the neighborhood. Given its participatory mode of operation, the curriculum of adult ethnic schools usually reflect the needs, values, and experiences of the community. As a result, these programs are characterized as learner-centered, community-oriented, and self-reliant (Hamilton, 1992). Shared language is one unique attribute of adult ethnic schools; most programs delivered by immigrant communities are either bilingual or taught in the learner's native language. …

Prevalence of human papillomavirus infection and its correlation with cervical lesions in commercial-sex workers in Japan.

To investigate the prevalence of the human papillomavirus (HPV) infection and its correlation with cervical lesions in commercial-sex workers (CSWs) who attended a sexually transmitted disease (STD) clinic in an entertainment area in Tokyo. Surveys were conducted on 546 prostitutes and 233 control subjects. In all subjects, HPV detection was performed by the hybrid capture method. A cervical cytological examination was performed on 247 prostitutes and 233 control subjects. The HPV-positive rates in the two periods of study were higher (p < 0.01) in CSWs than in the control subjects. When the cytological grades were examined according to HPV-positive rates, the proportion of cytologic Class IIIa to Class IV was significantly higher (p < 0.01) in the HPV-positive CSWs than in the HPV-negative CSWs or in the normal subjects. The high frequencies of HPV infection and cervical dysplasia in the CSWs in the present series might predict a higher risk of cervical cancer in this group of subjects.

Outside-In Strategic Modeling

The roots of good strategic decision making are in cultural and organizational norms and patterns. One principle, which we call the outside-in strategic perspective, is essential for excellent strategy. This perspective led a company to recognize that its current strategy was counterproductive and that it must make almost a 180-degree turn. While many companies start with themselves and project market shares, earnings, and so forth out into the environment, the outside-in strategic perspective reverses this to start with the environment and work inwards to the company. In this case, we used a framework that starts with consumer spending in various entertainment areas and divided revenues along a simple value chain of retailers, wholesalers, and producers. An influence-diagram-based model led to counter-intuitive insights about the most valuable segments.

From toys to brain: Virtual reality applications in neuroscience

While many virtual reality (VR) applications have emerged in the areas of entertainment, education, military training, physical rehabilitation, and medicine, only recently have some research projects begun to test the possibility of using virtual environments (VEs) for research in neuroscience, neurosurgery and for the study and rehabilitation of human cognitive and functional activities. Virtual reality technology could have a strong impact on neuroscience. The key characteristic of VEs is the high level of control of the interaction with the tool without the constraints usually found in computer systems. VEs are highly flexible and programmable. They enable the therapist to present a wide variety of controlled stimuli and to measure and monitor a wide variety of responses made by the user. However, at this stage, a number of obstacles exist which have impeded the development of active research. These obstacles include problems with acquiring funding for an almost untested new treatment modality, the lack of reference standards, the non-interoperability of the VR systems and, last but not least, the relative lack of familiarity with the technology on the part of researchers in these fields.

Reducing violence in licensed venues through community safety action projects: the Queensland experience

Community-based safety action projects, replications of the model developed in Surfers Paradise designed to reduce violence and disorder in licensed environments in city entertainment areas, were implemented in three diverse North Queensland cities (Cairns, Townsville and Mackay). The change model is based on prior experience with community interventions, the theory of situational crime prevention, and the theory of responsive regulation. The interventions took place in each city during 1995 and early 1996. The results are based on unobtrusive direct observations by patron-observers of aggression, drinking, and management practices in licensed venues in September 1994 and October 1996. There was a decline of 56% in all aggressive and violent incidents, and a decline of at least 75% in physical assaults, but conclusions concerning direct causality cannot be drawn. These declines, which did not differ significantly between cities, coincided with marked improvements in host responsibility practices and a decline in male drunkenness.

Can training bar staff in responsible serving practices reduce alcohol‐related harm?

A responsible service training programme aimed at reducing alcohol-related harm was implemented in a popular entertainment area over several months in 1992-93. Another popular entertainment area provided a control site. A number of evaluation measures were used: breath tests on 872 patrons from selected venues; drink driving data; risk assessments; the use of 'pseudo patrons'; and knowledge and attitude changes among trained bar staff (n = 88). Compared to control sites the intervention sites showed an immediate pre- to post-test reduction in patrons rated by researchers as extremely drunk and an eventual reduction from pre-test to follow-up in patrons with blood alcohol levels > = 0.08. There was also a small but significant increase in knowledge among bar staff. There was no significant reduction in patrons with blood alcohol levels > = 0.15 or in the number of drink driving offences from intervention sites during the study period. Pseudo drunk patrons were rarely refused service, identification was rarely checked and non-photographic identification was accepted on most occasions. The less than satisfactory outcome is attributed to poor implementation of the training and a lack of support among managers. The positive results from one venue, whose manager embraced the programme, served to highlight the importance of management support. It is suggested that mandatory training and routine enforcement of licensing laws are essential if the goals of responsible serving are to be met.

Relevant Perceptual Factors in Stereoscopic Displays: Image Disparity, Convergence Distance, and Focus Length

Traditionally, visually relevant factors in stereoscopic displays have been investigated within a performance-oriented framework, focusing on the veridicality of depth perception. However, for some applications, most notably in the areas of broadcasting and entertainment, an appreciation-oriented approach seems to be more relevant. Within this framework, we investigated the influence of image disparity, convergence distance, and focus length on the subjective assessment of depth, naturalness of depth, and quality of depth (or preference). Twelve observers with normal or corrected-to-normal vision and good stereopsis viewed a fully randomised presentation of stereoscopic still images that varied systematically in image disparity (six levels of camera base difference: 0, 4, 8, 12, 16, and 24 cm), convergence distance (two levels: 1.30 m and 2.60 m) and focus length (two levels: 10 mm and 20 mm). Each observer was asked to rate, in separate counterbalanced sessions, his/her impression of depth, naturalness of depth, and quality of depth. The results indicate that observers prefer a stereoscopic presentation of images over a monoscopic presentation. A clear optimum was found at 4 cm image disparity for subjective judgments of naturalness and of quality. Depth judgements increased up to an image disparity of 12 cm, a result that is in line with earlier psychophysical literature. There was an effect of focus length only at extreme image disparities. An effect of convergence distance was also found that can be adequately explained by rescaling to match the effective visual disparities. Although there was a strong linear correlation between naturalness and quality (r = 0.96), a small but systematic deviation could be observed. This deviation was best modelled by a linear quality model that incorporates both naturalness and depth.

Basics of stereoscopic video, new compression results with MPEG-2 and a proposal for MPEG-4

Abstract Many current as well as emerging applications in areas of entertainment, remote operations, manufacturing industry and medicine can benefit from the depth perception offered by stereoscopic video systems which employ two views of a scene imaged under the constraints imposed by the human visual system. Among the many challenges to be overcome for practical realization and widespread use of 3D/stereoscopic systems are good systems for 3D video capture, display and efficient techniques for digital compression of enormous amounts of data while maintaining compatibility with normal video decoding and display systems. After a brief introduction to the basics of 3D/stereo including issues of depth perception, imaging and display, we present a brief overview of portions of the MPEG-2 video standard that are relevant to our discussion on compression of stereoscopic video. Next, we outline the various approaches for compression of stereoscopic video and then focus on compatible stereoscopic video coding using MPEG-2 Temporal scalability concepts. Compatible coding employing two different types of prediction structures become potentially possible, disparity compensated prediction and combined disparity and motion compensated predictions. To further improve coding performance and display quality, gain and offset preprocessing for reducing mismatch between the two views forming stereoscopic video is considered. We then introduce the various considerations in coding of stereoscopic video at lower bit-rates for the ongoing MPEG-4 standard. A method is proposed that builds on the proven framework of MPEG-2 like coding but introduces additional coding flexibilities to achieve reasonable performance at lower bit-rates for MPEG-4. Next, results of experiments are presented for a variety of combinations of MPEG-2 based coding methods for the left and the right views while employing TV resolution video for a number of sequences and for various bit-rates. The combined disparity and motion-compensated prediction is found to offer the best performance among combinations tested. These results indicate that compression of both views of stereoscopic video of normal TV resolution appears feasible with good quality in a total of 6–8 Mbit/s. Further, results are presented at much lower bit-rates based on the coding method proposed for MPEG-4 on two long test sequences. We then discuss multi-viewpoint video applications, the ongoing efforts towards a multi-viewpoint profile in MPEG-2 and expected direction of multi-viewpoint video coding in MPEG-4.