Journal articles on the topic 'Inclusive Human-Machine Interfaces'

With the future availability of highly automated vehicles (AVs), vulnerable road users (VRUs) will encounter vehicles without human operators. To compensate for the lack of eye contact, realizing communication via external human-machine interfaces (eHMIs) is planned. The adequacy of this regarding people with intellectual disabilities (IDs) is, however, still unknown. This work compares eHMI concepts by their perceived user experience (UX) for people with and without ID to evaluate the inclusiveness of current eHMI concepts. We analyzed related work and derived two representative concepts for a visual and an auditory eHMI. Subsequently, a survey of N=120 participants (64 with, 56 without ID) was performed, comparing the perceived UX of the selected eHMI concepts for visual, auditory, and combined modalities, and a baseline without eHMI using videos of simulations. We then had them assessed using the modified user experience questionnaire - short (UEQ-S). We found that auditory eHMIs performed worse than visual or multi-modal ones, and multi-modal concepts performed worse for people with ID in terms of pragmatic quality and crossing decisions. Our insights can be taken by both industry and academia, to make AVs more inclusive.

The recruitment process in manufacturing industries is automated to become open and inclusive to provide equal opportunity to the job seeker and the job opening in the organization. Online recruitment is an electronic process format to hire suitable candidates using electronic devices and other social media networks through the Internet, reaching a massive population of job seekers and hire the best available talent at a cost-effective mode compared to the conventional recruitment process. The changes in the recruitment landscape are exciting, with the need to transition for a sustainable economy, handling geopolitical volatility and environmental impact are organizational drivers of change for automation in the recruitment process. Advancements in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and natural user interfaces make it possible to automate knowledge-based tasks of human orientations. To help manufacturing organisations meet these challenges and recruit the best talent, artificial intelligence strategizes are used to develop a cognate recruitment process taking account of candidate's perspective and reaches specified candidates with auto-generated messages, and bonds the best-fit candidates for the organization, delivering quality, quantity and quick to fulfill the organizational requirement of manpower. This paper covers all recent and relevant literature reviews in human resource recruitment and the application of artificial intelligence to reduce the time and effort of the experts in handling the right manpower requirement.

Environmental awareness and technological advancements for self-driving cars are close to making autonomous vehicles (AV) a reality in everyday scenarios and a part of smart cities’ transportation systems. The perception of safety and trust towards AVs of passengers and other agents in the urban scenario, being pedestrians, cyclists, scooter drivers or car drivers, is of primary importance and the theme of investigation of many research groups. Driver-to-driver communication channels as much as car-to-driver human–machine interfaces (HMI) are well established and part of normal training and experience. The situation is different when users must cope with driverless and autonomous vehicles, both as passengers and as agents sharing the same urban domain. This research focuses on the new challenges of connected driverless vehicles, investigating an emerging topic, namely the language of driving (LoD) between these machines and humans participating in traffic scenarios. This work presents the results of a field study conducted at Tallinn University Technology campus with the ISEAUTO autonomous driving shuttle, including interviews with 176 subjects communicating using LoD. Furthermore, this study combines expert focus group interviews to build a joint base of needs and requirements for AVs in public spaces. Based on previous studies and questionnaire results, we established the hypotheses that we can enhance physical survey results using experimental scenarios with VR/AR tools to allow the fast prototyping of different external and internal HMIs, facilitating the assessment of communication efficacy, evaluation of usability, and impact on the users. The aim is to point out how we can enhance AV design and LoD communications using XR tools. The scenarios were chosen to be inclusive and support the needs of different demographics while at the same time determining the limitations of surveys and real-world experimental scenarios in LoD testing and design for future pilots.

System Theoretic Process Analysis (STPA) is an extremely valuable methodology, especially when used early in a system’s concept phase, for effective and efficient development of safety requirements that address potential safety issues associated with human machine interactions. This paper outlines how STPA can be used to explore potential safety concerns associated with interactions between human operators and virtual buttons within graphical interfaces across the planned operational scenarios and expected system behaviors. Appropriately validated system safety requirements can be developed based on this exploratory effort. The paper shows how STPA includes drivers and operators as system elements within the control structure where these humans are expected to interact with a “system/feature of interest” by means of virtual buttons presented in a graphical interface. The inclusion of humans as elements of the control structure enables a representation of the human as a “human controller” and, as such, enables STPA evaluation techniques to be applied to them just as these techniques would be applied to any “control” element in a control structure.

With the evaluation of a next-generation human–machine interface (HMI) concept for excavators, this study aims to discuss the HMI quality measurement based on usability and user experience (UUX) metrics. Regarding the digital transformation of construction sites, future work environments will have to be capable of presenting various complex visual data and enabling efficient and safe interactivity while working. The evaluated HMI focused on introducing a touch display-based interface, providing advanced operation functions and different interaction modalities. The assessment of UUX should show whether the novel HMI can be utilised to perform typical tasks (usability) and how it is accepted and assessed in terms of non-instrumental qualities (user experience, UX). Using the collected data, this article also aims to contribute to the general discussion about the role of UX beyond usability in industrial applications and deepen the understanding of non-instrumental qualities when it comes to user-oriented process and machine design. The exploratory study examines insights into the application of elaborated UUX measuring tools like the User Experience Questionnaire (UEQ) on the interaction with industrial goods accompanied by their rating with other tools, namely System Usability Scale (SUS), Intuitive Interaction Questionnaire (INTUI) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Task Load Index (NASA-TLX). Four goals are pursued in this study. The first goal is to compare in-depth two different ways of interaction with the novel HMI—namely one by a control pad on the right joystick and one by touch. Therefore, a sample of 17 subjects in total was split into two groups and differences in UUX measures were tested. Secondly, the performances of both groups were tested over the course of trials to investigate possible differences in detail. The third goal is to interpret measures of usability and user experience against existing benchmark values. Fourth and finally, we use the data gathered to analyse correlations between measures of UUX. The results of our study show that the different ways of interaction did not impact any of the measures taken. In terms of detailed performance analysis, both groups yielded differences in terms of time per action, but not between the groups. The comparison of UUX measures with benchmark values yielded mixed results. The UUX measures show some relevant significant correlations. The participants mostly reported enjoying the use of the HMI concept, but several practical issues (e.g., efficiency) still need to be overcome. Once again, the study confirms the urge of user inclusion in product development. Especially in the course of digitalisation, as big scale advancements of systems and user interfaces bring uncertainty for many manufacturers regarding whether or how a feature should be integrated.

Language, speech and conversational behaviours reflect cognitive changes that may precede physiological changes and offer a much more cost-effective option for detecting preclinical cognitive decline. Artificial intelligence and machine learning have been established as a means to facilitate automated speech-based cognitive screening through automated recording and analysis of linguistic, speech and conversational behaviours. In this work, a scoping literature review was performed to document and analyse current automated speech-based implementations for cognitive screening from the perspective of human–computer interaction. At this stage, the goal was to identify and analyse the characteristics that define the interaction between the automated speech-based screening systems and the users, potentially revealing interaction-related patterns and gaps. In total, 65 articles were identified as appropriate for inclusion, from which 15 articles satisfied the inclusion criteria. The literature review led to the documentation and further analysis of five interaction-related themes: (i) user interface, (ii) modalities, (iii) speech-based communication, (iv) screening content and (v) screener. Cognitive screening through speech-based interaction might benefit from two practices: (1) implementing more multimodal user interfaces that facilitate—amongst others—speech-based screening and (2) introducing the element of motivation in the speech-based screening process.

Music therapy is an effective tool to slow down the progress of dementia since interaction with music may evoke emotions that stimulates brain areas responsible for memory. This therapy is most successful when therapists provide adequate and personalized stimuli for each patient. This personalization is often hard. Thus, Artificial Intelligence (AI) methods may help in this task. This paper brings a systematic review of the literature in the field of affective computing in the context of music therapy. We particularly aim to assess AI methods to perform automatic emotion recognition applied to Human-Machine Musical Interfaces (HMMI). To perform the review, we conducted an automatic search in five of the main scientific databases on the fields of intelligent computing, engineering, and medicine. We search all papers released from 2016 and 2020, whose metadata, title or abstract contains the terms defined in the search string. The systematic review protocol resulted in the inclusion of 144 works from the 290 publications returned from the search. Through this review of the state-of-the-art, it was possible to list the current challenges in the automatic recognition of emotions. It was also possible to realize the potential of automatic emotion recognition to build non-invasive assistive solutions based on human-machine musical interfaces, as well as the artificial intelligence techniques in use in emotion recognition from multimodality data. Thus, machine learning for recognition of emotions from different data sources can be an important approach to optimize the clinical goals to be achieved through music therapy.

Machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms can assist human decision making and analysis tasks. While such technology shows promise, willingness to use and rely on intelligent systems may depend on whether people can trust and understand them. To address this issue, researchers have explored the use of explainable interfaces that attempt to help explain why or how a system produced the output for a given input. However, the effects of meaningful and meaningless explanations (determined by their alignment with human logic) are not properly understood, especially with users who are non-experts in data science. Additionally, we wanted to explore how explanation inclusion and level of meaningfulness would affect the user’s perception of accuracy. We designed a controlled experiment using an image classification scenario with local explanations to evaluate and better understand these issues. Our results show that whether explanations are human-meaningful can significantly affect perception of a system’s accuracy independent of the actual accuracy observed from system usage. Participants significantly underestimated the system’s accuracy when it provided weak, less human-meaningful explanations. Therefore, for intelligent systems with explainable interfaces, this research demonstrates that users are less likely to accurately judge the accuracy of algorithms that do not operate based on human-understandable rationale.

Self-driving vehicles are the latest innovation in improving personal mobility and road safety by removing arguably error-prone humans from driving-related tasks. Such advances can prove especially beneficial for people who are blind or have low vision who cannot legally operate conventional motor vehicles. Missing from the related literature, we argue, are studies that describe strategies for vehicle design for these persons. We present a case study of the participatory design of a prototype for a self-driving vehicle human-machine interface (HMI) for a graduate-level course on inclusive design and accessible technology. We reflect on the process of working alongside a co-designer, a person with a visual disability, to identify user needs, define design ideas, and produce a low-fidelity prototype for the HMI. This paper may benefit researchers interested in using a similar approach for designing accessible autonomous vehicle technology.

Abstract Background Health dialog systems have seen increased adoption by patients, hospitals, and universities due to the confluence of advancements in machine learning and the ubiquity of high-performance hardware that supports real-time speech recognition, high-fidelity text-to-speech, and semantic understanding of natural language. Objectives This review seeks to enumerate opportunities to apply dialog systems toward the improvement of health outcomes while identifying both gaps in the current literature that may impede their implementation and recommendations that may improve their success in medical practice. Methods A search over PubMed and the ACM Digital Library was conducted on September 12, 2017 to collect all articles related to dialog systems within the domain of health care. These results were screened for eligibility with the main criteria being a peer-reviewed study of a system that includes both a natural language interface and either end-user testing or practical implementation. Results Forty-six studies met the inclusion criteria including 24 quasi-experimental studies, 16 randomized control trials, 2 case–control studies, 2 prospective cohort studies, 1 system description, and 1 human–computer conversation analysis. These studies evaluated dialog systems in five application domains: medical education (n = 20), clinical processes (n = 14), mental health (n = 5), personal health agents (n = 5), and patient education (n = 2). Conclusion We found that dialog systems have been widely applied to health care; however, most studies are not reproducible making direct comparison between systems and independent confirmation of findings difficult. Widespread adoption will also require the adoption of standard evaluation and reporting methods for health dialog systems to demonstrate clinical significance.

2054 Background: Systematic reviews that summarize the toxicity of Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) become outdated very soon after publication. Therefore, we reported results of a toxicity meta-analysis at 2019 ASCO meeting and informed the intent to create a living systematic review (LSR). LSRs combine human and machine effort and support rapid evidence synthesis and living clinical practice guidelines. Now, we report our experience maintaining a LSR on toxicity of ICIs. Methods: Steps include quarterly literature searches to identify new clinical trials reporting ICI-associated adverse events (AEs), AI-enabled screening of new citations which meet the inclusion criteria, automated cumulative meta-analysis and an online reporting platform. Standard data formats and protocols were designed for inputting text, tables and graphics. Software was written to interpret these data and output the information in the appropriate format, such as a forest plot and summary tables. Finally, a dynamic interface that enables user inputs and displays the associated output was designed. Results: The LSR is continuously updated incorporating toxicity data from new clinical trials as it becomes available. We have screened 8000 relevant citations and summarized the odds of Grade 3 or higher AEs and AEs of special interest in patient receiving ICIs. The results are updated on quarterly basis and are available online. The results are updated on quarterly basis and will be available on a website at the time of publication. Prototype with dummy data is available at this link . This interface can also be manipulated via user input to organize and sort data tables and forest plots by type of cancer, name or mechanism (PD-1 or PD-L1) of ICI agent, single agent or combination, type of control arm, line of treatment and several other clinically relevant filters. For example, a user can instantaneously generate a meta-analysis summarizing the risk of colitis or pneumonitis in metastatic lung cancer trials with pembrolizmuab. Conclusions: This LSR engine can prospectively synthesize toxicity data from ICI trials in an efficient manner providing accurate and timely information for advanced clinical decision support at point-of-care. Efforts are ongoing to improve efficiency of screening, improve AI-enabled processes for automated screening and data abstraction, and test across multiple clinical questions.

BackgroundImprovement of current prognosis biomarkers will enhance our ability to identify cancer patients at higher risk of recurrence and will further advance the personalization of patient monitoring and treatment. We hypothesized that the presence of a mutation alone is not sufficient to generate an immunogenic neoepitope, but that significant differences must exist between the Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA)- and/or T Cell Receptor (TCR)-interfaces of the neoepitope and its non-mutated form, or with other self-epitopes, in order to be recognized as non-self by the immune system. As such, cancer patient clinical outcomes may be better understood by neoepitope analyses that integrate these considerations.MethodsWe analyzed large scale (n=412) bladder cancer genomic data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) using Ancer, an automated machine-learning-based pipeline we designed for neoantigen screening and vaccine design. Ancer shares components with other commercial-grade screening platforms used routinely in immunogenicity assessments of biologics and infectious disease antigens, such as the EpiMatrix algorithm for HLA-I and HLA-II neoepitope identification, and the JanusMatrix algorithm for tolerated, tolerogenic, and cross-reactive T cell epitope identification. Evaluation of patient survival with Ancer was compared to other analyses employing tumor mutational burden (TMB) or neoepitopes identified with the commonly used NetMHCpan-4.0 and NetMHCIIpan-3.1 T cell epitope prediction tools.ResultsWe stratified bladder patients based on their Ancer HLA-I and HLA-II neoepitope burdens and observed significantly prolonged disease free and overall survival in patients whose tumor contained both high numbers of HLA-I and HLA-II neoepitopes compared to other individuals. Stratifications performed with Ancer were superior to comparative analyses performed with TMB or with NetMHCpan and NetMHCIIpan. In addition, we showed that Ancer’s precise filtering and characterization of mutated epitopes contributed to this increased association with survival, as showcased by gradual improvements in survival analyses performed after each of its filtering step. Multivariate survival analyses indicated that Ancer neoepitope content remained a significant factor in patient overall survival even when adjusted for TMB, and other clinical covariates such as age at diagnosis and disease stage, unlike analyses involving NetMHCpan and NetMHCIIpan neoepitopes.ConclusionsOur analysis suggests that enhanced presence of CD8, CD4 T cell epitopes, and limited inclusion of Treg epitopes in the tumor genome plays a key role in cancer survival. Ancer scoring provides a predictive method for predicting patient outcomes, by defining the number of true neoepitopes and by identifying Treg epitopes that would interfere with T cell-based immune activation and response to the tumor.

In 2013 the Editor of Journal of Vibration and Control and SAGE became aware of a peer review ring involving assumed and fabricated identities that appeared to centre around Peter Chen at National Pingtung University of Education, Taiwan (NPUE). SAGE and the Editor then began a complex investigation into the case during the rest of 2013 and 2014. Following an unsatisfactory response from Peter Chen, NPUE was notified. NPUE were serious in addressing the Journal and SAGE’s concerns. NPUE confirmed that the institution was investigating Peter Chen. SAGE subsequently uncovered a citation ring involving the above mentioned author and others. We regret that individual authors have compromised the academic record by perverting the peer review process and apologise to readers. On uncovering problems with peer review and citation SAGE immediately put steps in place to avoid similar vulnerability of the Journal to exploitation in the future. More information may be found at www.sagepub.co.uk/JVC_Statement_2014 . The Journal and SAGE understand from NPUE that Peter Chen has resigned his post at NPUE. The following articles are retracted because after thorough investigation evidence points towards them having at least one author or being reviewed by at least one reviewer who has been implicated in the peer review ring and/or citation ring. All authors have had an opportunity to respond to the allegations and proposed actions. OnlineFirst articles (these articles will not be published in an issue) Chen CY, Chen T-H, Chen Y-H, Yu S-E and Chung P-Y (2013) Information technology system modeling an integrated C-TAM-TPB model to the validation of ocean tidal analyses Journal of Vibration and Control Epub ahead of print 7 May 2013. doi: 10.1177/1077546312472924 Chang R-F, Chen CY, Su F-P and Lin H-C (2013) A two-step approach for broadband digital signal processing technique Journal of Vibration and Control Epub ahead of print 26 April 2013. doi: 10.1177/1077546312472925 Chen TH, Chang CJ, Yu SE, Chung PY and Liu C-K (2013) Nonlinear information analysis and system management technique: the influence of design experience and control complexity Journal of Vibration and Control Epub ahead of print 12 April 2013. doi: 10.1177/1077546312473321 Chen CY, Shih BY, Chen YH, Yu SE and Liu YC (2013) The exploration of a 3T flow model using vibrating NXT: II. Model validation Journal of Vibration and Control Epub ahead of print 10 April 2013. doi: 10.1177/1077546312470481 Chen CY, Shih BY, Chen YH, Yu SE and Liu YC (2013) The exploration of 3T flow model using vibrating NXT: I. model formulation Journal of Vibration and Control Epub ahead of print 6 February 2013. doi: 10.1177/1077546312467360 Lin M-L and Chen C-W (2013) Stability analysis of fuzzy-based NN modeling for ecosystems using fuzzy Lyapunov methods Journal of Vibration and Control Epub ahead of print 6 February 2013. doi: 10.1177/1077546312466687 Chen CY, Chen TH, Chen YH and Chiu J (2012) A multi-stage method for deterministic-statistical analysis: a mathematical case and measurement studies Journal of Vibration and Control Epub ahead of print 20 December 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312466579 Shih BY, Lin MC and Chen CY (2012) Autonomous navigation system for radiofrequency identification mobile robot e-book reader Journal of Vibration and Control Epub ahead of print 13 December 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312466578 Chang RF, Chen CY, Su FP, Lin HC and Lu C-K (2012) Multiphase SUMO robot based on an agile modeling-driven process for a small mobile robot Journal of Vibration and Control Epub ahead of print 13 December 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312464993 Shih B-Y, Lin Y-K, Cheng M-H, Chen C-Y and Chiu C-P (2012) The development of an application program interactive game-based information system Journal of Vibration and Control Epub ahead of print 12 December 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312464682 Chen C-Y, Chang C-J and Lin C-H (2012) On dynamic access control in web 2.0 and cloud interactive information hub: technologies Journal of Vibration and Control Epub ahead of print 12 December 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312464992 Shin BY, Chen CY and Hsu KH (2012) Robot cross platform system using innovative interactive theory and selection algorithms for Android application Journal of Vibration and Control Epub ahead of print 13 November 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312463757 Articles published in an issue Chen C-W (2014) Applications of neural-network-based fuzzy logic control to a nonlinear time-delay chaotic system Journal of Vibration and Control 20 (4): 589-605. Epub ahead of print 5 November 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312461370 Chen C-W (2014) A review of intelligent algorithm approaches and neural-fuzzy stability criteria for time-delay tension leg platform systems Journal of Vibration and Control 20 (4): 561-575. Epub ahead of print 5 November 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312463759 Chen C-Y, Chang C-J and Lin C-H (2014) On dynamic access control in web 2.0 and cloud interactive information hub: trends and theories Journal of Vibration and Control 20 (4): 548-560. Epub ahead of print 5 November 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312463762 Lin M-L and Chen C-W (2014) Stability conditions for ecosystem modeling using the fuzzy Lyapunov method Journal of Vibration and Control 20 (2): 290-302. Epub ahead of print 23 October 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312451301 Chen C-H, Kuo C-M, Hsieh S-H and Chen C-Y (2014) Highly efficient very-large-scale integration (VLSI) implementation of probabilistic neural network image interpolator Journal of Vibration and Control 20 (2): 218-224. Epub ahead of print 22 October 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312458822 Chen C-Y (2014) Wave vibration and simulation in dissipative media described by irregular boundary surfaces: a mathematical formulation Journal of Vibration and Control 20 (2): 191-203. Epub ahead of print 22 October 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312464258 Chen C-H, Yao T-K, Dai J-H and Chen C-Y (2014) A pipelined multiprocessor system- on-a-chip (SoC) design methodology for streaming signal processing Journal of Vibration and Control 20 (2): 163-178. Epub ahead of print 16 October 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312458821 Lin M-L and Chen C-W (2014) Fuzzy neural modeling for n-degree ecosystems using the linear matrix inequality approach Journal of Vibration and Control 20 (1): 82-93. Epub ahead of print 8 October 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312458533 Chen C-H, Wu W-X and Chen C-Y (2013) Ant-inspired collective problem-solving systems Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (16): 2481-2490. Epub ahead of print 18 September 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312456231 Chen C-H, Yao T-K, Kuo C-M and Chen C-Y (2013) Evolutionary design of constructive multilayer feedforward neural network Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (16): 2413-2420. Epub ahead of print 12 September 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312456726 Chen C-W (2013) Applications of the fuzzy-neural Lyapunov criterion to multiple time-delay systems Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (13): 2054-2067. Epub ahead of print 16 August 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312451034 Chung P-Y, Chen Y-H, Walter L and Chen C-Y (2013) Influence and dynamics of a mobile robot control on mechanical components Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (13): 1923-1935. Epub ahead of print 20 July 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312452184 Chen C-W (2013) Neural network-based fuzzy logic parallel distributed compensation controller for structural system Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (11): 1709-1727. Epub ahead of print 22 June 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312442233 Chen C-W, Yeh K, Yang H-C, Liu KFR and Liu C-C (2013) A critical review of structural system control by the large-scaled neural network linear-deferential-inclusion-based criterion Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (11): 1658-1673. Epub ahead of print 18 June 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312443377 Chen C-H, Kuo C-M, Chen C-Y and Dai J-H (2013) The design and synthesis using hierarchical robotic discrete-event modeling Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (11): 1603-1613. Epub ahead of print 27 June 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312449645 Chang CJ, Chen CY and Chou I-T (2013) The design of information and communication technologies: telecom MOD strength machines Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (10): 1499-1513. Epub ahead of print 27 June 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312449644 Shih B-Y, Chen C-Y, Li K-H, Wu T-Y, Chen G-Y (2013) A novel NXT control method for implementing force sensing and recycling in a training robot Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (10): 1443-1459. Epub ahead of print 1 June 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312446361 Chen C-W, Chen P-C and Chiang W-L (2013) Modified intelligent genetic algorithm-based adaptive neural network control for uncertain structural systems Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (9): 1333-1347. Epub ahead of print 31 May 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312442232 Chen C-Y, Shih B-Y, Shih C-H and Wang L-H (2013) Enhancing robust and stability control of a humanoid biped robot: system identification approach. Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (8): 1199-1207. Epub ahead of print 26 April 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312442947 Chang C-J, Chen C-Y and Huang C-W (2013) Applications for medical recovery using wireless control of a bluetooth ball with a hybrid G-sensor and human-computer interface technology Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (8): 1139-1151. Epub ahead of print 24 April 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312442948 Hsu W-K, Chiou D-J, Chen C-W, Liu M-Y, Chiang W-L and Huang P-C (2013) Sensitivity of initial damage detection for steel structures using the Hilbert-Huang transform method Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (6): 857-878. Epub ahead of print 29 February 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546311434794 Chen C-Y, Shih B-Y, Shih C-H and Wang L-H (2013) Human–machine interface for the motion control of humanoid biped robots using a graphical user interface Motion Editor Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (6): 814-820. Epub ahead of print 23 February 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312437804 Chen C-Y (2013) Internal wave transport, nonlinear manifestation, and mixing in a stratified shear layer - technical briefs Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (3): 429-438. Epub ahead of print 18 January 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546311429337 Chen C-W (2013) Delay independent criterion for multiple time-delay systems and its application in building structure control systems Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (3): 395-414. Epub ahead of print 17 January 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546311429341 Chen C-Y, Shih B-Y, Shih C-H and Wang L-H (2013) Design, modeling and stability control for an actuated dynamic walking planar bipedal robot Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (3): 376-384. Epub ahead of print 17 January 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546311429476 Liu K-C, Liu Y-W, Chen C-Y and Huang W-C (2013) Nonlinear vibration of structural deterioration in reinforced concrete columns: experimental and theoretical investigation Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (3): 323-335. Epub ahead of print 17 January 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546311429477 Chen C-Y, Shih B-Y and Ma J-m (2013) Development for low-cost and cross-platform robot control environment Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (2): 228-233. Epub ahead of print 11 January 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546311430107 Shih B-Y, Chang H and Chen C-Y (2013) Path planning for autonomous robots – a comprehensive analysis by a greedy algorithm Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (1): 130-142. Epub ahead of print 17 January 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546311429841 Liu T-Y, Chiang W-L, Chen C-W, Hsu W-K, Lin C-W, Chiou D-J and Huang P-C (2012) Structural system identification for vibration bridges using the Hilbert–Huang transform Journal of Vibration and Control 18 (13): 1939-1956. Epub ahead of print 14 December 2011. doi: 10.1177/1077546311428347 Chen C-W (2012) Applications of the fuzzy Lyapunov linear matrix inequality criterion to a chaotic structural system Journal of Vibration and Control 18 (13): 1925-1938. Epub ahead of print 14 December 2011. doi: 10.1177/1077546311428346 Chen C-W (2012) Applications of linear differential inclusion-based criterion to a nonlinear chaotic system: a critical review Journal of Vibration and Control 18 (12): 1886-1899. Epub ahead of print 14 December 2011. doi: 10.1177/1077546311428345 Shih B-Y, Chen C-Y and Chou W (2012) An enhanced obstacle avoidance and path correction mechanism for an autonomous intelligent robot with multiple sensors Journal of Vibration and Control 18 (12): 1855-1864. Epub ahead of print 14 December 2011. doi: 10.1177/1077546311426734 Chen C-W, Yeh K, Liu KFR and Lin M-L (2012) Applications of fuzzy control to nonlinear time-delay systems using the linear matrix inequality fuzzy Lyapunov method Journal of Vibration and Control 18 (10): 1561-1574. Epub ahead of print 18 October 2011. doi: 10.1177/1077546311410765 Chen C-Y (2012) A critical review of internal wave dynamics. Part 2 – Laboratory experiments and theoretical physics Journal of Vibration and Control 18 (7): 983-1008. Epub ahead of print 21 September 2011. doi: 10.1177/1077546310397561 Chen C-Y and Huang P-H (2012) Review of an autonomous humanoid robot and its mechanical control Journal of Vibration and Control 18 (7): 973-982. Epub ahead of print 21 September 2011. doi: 10.1177/1077546310395974 Shih B-Y, Chen C-Y, Chang H and Ma J-m (2012) Dynamics and control for robotic manipulators using a greedy algorithm approach Journal of Vibration and Control 18 (6): 859-866. Epub ahead of print 25 August 2011. doi: 10.1177/1077546311407649 Yeh K, Chen C-W, Lo DC and Liu KFR (2012) Neural-network fuzzy control for chaotic tuned mass damper systems with time delays Journal of Vibration and Control 18 (6): 785-795. Epub ahead of print 15 August 2011. doi: 10.1177/1077546311407538 Chen C-Y, Shih B-Y, Shih C-H and Chou W-C (2012) The development of autonomous low-cost biped mobile surveillance robot by intelligent bricks Journal of Vibration and Control 18 (5): 577-586. Epub ahead of print 21 April 2011. doi: 10.1177/1077546310371349 Chen C-Y (2012) A critical review of internal wave dynamics. Part 1 – Remote sensing and in-situ observations Journal of Vibration and Control 18 (3): 417-436. Epub ahead of print 13 July 2011. doi: 10.1177/1077546310395971 Tseng C-P, Chen C-W and Liu KFR (2012) Risk control allocation model for pressure vessels and piping project Journal of Vibration and Control 18 (3): 385-394. Epub ahead of print 13 July 2011. doi: 10.1177/1077546311403182 Lin M-L and Chen C-W (2011) Stability analysis of community and ecosystem hierarchies using the Lyapunov method Journal of Vibration and Control 17 (13): 1930-1937. Epub ahead of print 9 December 2010. doi: 10.1177/1077546310385737 Chen C-Y, Shih B-Y, Chou W-C, Li Y-J and Chen Y-H (2011) Obstacle avoidance design for a humanoid intelligent robot with ultrasonic sensors Journal of Vibration and Control 17 (12): 1798-1804. Epub ahead of print 26 November 2010. doi: 10.1177/1077546310381101 Chen C-W (2011) Fuzzy control of interconnected structural systems using the fuzzy Lyapunov method Journal of Vibration and Control 17 (11): 1693-1702. Epub ahead of print 23 November 2010. doi: 10.1177/1077546310379625 Shih B-Y, Chen C-Y and Chou W-C (2011) Obstacle avoidance using a path correction method for autonomous control of a biped intelligent robot Journal of Vibration and Control 17 (10): 1567-1573. Epub ahead of print 22 November 2010. doi: 10.1177/1077546310372004 Tang J-P, Chiou D-J, Chen C-W, Chiang W-L, Hsu W-K, Chen C-Y and Liu T-Y (2011) A case study of damage detection in benchmark buildings using a Hilbert-Huang Transform-based method Journal of Vibration and Control 17 (4): 623-636. Epub ahead of print 8 November 2010. doi: 10.1177/1077546309360053 Liu TY, Chiang WL, Chen CW, Hsu WK, Lu LC and Chu TJ (2011) Identification and monitoring of bridge health from ambient vibration data Journal of Vibration and Control 17 (4): 589-603. Epub ahead of print 12 November 2010. doi: 10.1177/1077546309360049 Lin JW, Huang CW, Shih CH and Chen CY (2011) Fuzzy Lyapunov Stability Analysis and NN Modeling for Tension Leg Platform Systems Journal of Vibration and Control 17 (1): 151-158. Epub ahead of print 25 August 2010. doi: 10.1177/1077546309350477 Lee WI, Chen CY, Kuo HM and Sui YC (2010) The Development of Half-circle Fuzzy Numbers and Application in Fuzzy Control Journal of Vibration and Control 16 (13): 1977-1987. Epub ahead of print 22 April 2010. doi: 10.1177/1077546309349849

In 2013 the Editor of Journal of Vibration and Control and SAGE became aware of a peer review ring involving assumed and fabricated identities that appeared to centre around Peter Chen at National Pingtung University of Education, Taiwan (NPUE). SAGE and the Editor then began a complex investigation into the case during the rest of 2013 and 2014. Following an unsatisfactory response from Peter Chen, NPUE was notified. NPUE were serious in addressing the Journal and SAGE’s concerns. NPUE confirmed that the institution was investigating Peter Chen. SAGE subsequently uncovered a citation ring involving the above mentioned author and others. We regret that individual authors have compromised the academic record by perverting the peer review process and apologise to readers. On uncovering problems with peer review and citation SAGE immediately put steps in place to avoid similar vulnerability of the Journal to exploitation in the future. More information may be found at www.sagepub.co.uk/JVC_Statement_2014 . The Journal and SAGE understand from NPUE that Peter Chen has resigned his post at NPUE. The following articles are retracted because after thorough investigation evidence points towards them having at least one author or being reviewed by at least one reviewer who has been implicated in the peer review ring and/or citation ring. All authors have had an opportunity to respond to the allegations and proposed actions. OnlineFirst articles (these articles will not be published in an issue) Chen CY, Chen T-H, Chen Y-H, Yu S-E and Chung P-Y (2013) Information technology system modeling an integrated C-TAM-TPB model to the validation of ocean tidal analyses Journal of Vibration and Control Epub ahead of print 7 May 2013. doi: 10.1177/1077546312472924 Chang R-F, Chen CY, Su F-P and Lin H-C (2013) A two-step approach for broadband digital signal processing technique Journal of Vibration and Control Epub ahead of print 26 April 2013. doi: 10.1177/1077546312472925 Chen TH, Chang CJ, Yu SE, Chung PY and Liu C-K (2013) Nonlinear information analysis and system management technique: the influence of design experience and control complexity Journal of Vibration and Control Epub ahead of print 12 April 2013. doi: 10.1177/1077546312473321 Chen CY, Shih BY, Chen YH, Yu SE and Liu YC (2013) The exploration of a 3T flow model using vibrating NXT: II. Model validation Journal of Vibration and Control Epub ahead of print 10 April 2013. doi: 10.1177/1077546312470481 Chen CY, Shih BY, Chen YH, Yu SE and Liu YC (2013) The exploration of 3T flow model using vibrating NXT: I. model formulation Journal of Vibration and Control Epub ahead of print 6 February 2013. doi: 10.1177/1077546312467360 Lin M-L and Chen C-W (2013) Stability analysis of fuzzy-based NN modeling for ecosystems using fuzzy Lyapunov methods Journal of Vibration and Control Epub ahead of print 6 February 2013. doi: 10.1177/1077546312466687 Chen CY, Chen TH, Chen YH and Chiu J (2012) A multi-stage method for deterministic-statistical analysis: a mathematical case and measurement studies Journal of Vibration and Control Epub ahead of print 20 December 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312466579 Shih BY, Lin MC and Chen CY (2012) Autonomous navigation system for radiofrequency identification mobile robot e-book reader Journal of Vibration and Control Epub ahead of print 13 December 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312466578 Chang RF, Chen CY, Su FP, Lin HC and Lu C-K (2012) Multiphase SUMO robot based on an agile modeling-driven process for a small mobile robot Journal of Vibration and Control Epub ahead of print 13 December 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312464993 Shih B-Y, Lin Y-K, Cheng M-H, Chen C-Y and Chiu C-P (2012) The development of an application program interactive game-based information system Journal of Vibration and Control Epub ahead of print 12 December 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312464682 Chen C-Y, Chang C-J and Lin C-H (2012) On dynamic access control in web 2.0 and cloud interactive information hub: technologies Journal of Vibration and Control Epub ahead of print 12 December 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312464992 Shin BY, Chen CY and Hsu KH (2012) Robot cross platform system using innovative interactive theory and selection algorithms for Android application Journal of Vibration and Control Epub ahead of print 13 November 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312463757 Articles published in an issue Chen C-W (2014) Applications of neural-network-based fuzzy logic control to a nonlinear time-delay chaotic system Journal of Vibration and Control 20 (4): 589-605. Epub ahead of print 5 November 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312461370 Chen C-W (2014) A review of intelligent algorithm approaches and neural-fuzzy stability criteria for time-delay tension leg platform systems Journal of Vibration and Control 20 (4): 561-575. Epub ahead of print 5 November 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312463759 Chen C-Y, Chang C-J and Lin C-H (2014) On dynamic access control in web 2.0 and cloud interactive information hub: trends and theories Journal of Vibration and Control 20 (4): 548-560. Epub ahead of print 5 November 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312463762 Lin M-L and Chen C-W (2014) Stability conditions for ecosystem modeling using the fuzzy Lyapunov method Journal of Vibration and Control 20 (2): 290-302. Epub ahead of print 23 October 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312451301 Chen C-H, Kuo C-M, Hsieh S-H and Chen C-Y (2014) Highly efficient very-large-scale integration (VLSI) implementation of probabilistic neural network image interpolator Journal of Vibration and Control 20 (2): 218-224. Epub ahead of print 22 October 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312458822 Chen C-Y (2014) Wave vibration and simulation in dissipative media described by irregular boundary surfaces: a mathematical formulation Journal of Vibration and Control 20 (2): 191-203. Epub ahead of print 22 October 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312464258 Chen C-H, Yao T-K, Dai J-H and Chen C-Y (2014) A pipelined multiprocessor system- on-a-chip (SoC) design methodology for streaming signal processing Journal of Vibration and Control 20 (2): 163-178. Epub ahead of print 16 October 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312458821 Lin M-L and Chen C-W (2014) Fuzzy neural modeling for n-degree ecosystems using the linear matrix inequality approach Journal of Vibration and Control 20 (1): 82-93. Epub ahead of print 8 October 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312458533 Chen C-H, Wu W-X and Chen C-Y (2013) Ant-inspired collective problem-solving systems Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (16): 2481-2490. Epub ahead of print 18 September 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312456231 Chen C-H, Yao T-K, Kuo C-M and Chen C-Y (2013) Evolutionary design of constructive multilayer feedforward neural network Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (16): 2413-2420. Epub ahead of print 12 September 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312456726 Chen C-W (2013) Applications of the fuzzy-neural Lyapunov criterion to multiple time-delay systems Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (13): 2054-2067. Epub ahead of print 16 August 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312451034 Chung P-Y, Chen Y-H, Walter L and Chen C-Y (2013) Influence and dynamics of a mobile robot control on mechanical components Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (13): 1923-1935. Epub ahead of print 20 July 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312452184 Chen C-W (2013) Neural network-based fuzzy logic parallel distributed compensation controller for structural system Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (11): 1709-1727. Epub ahead of print 22 June 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312442233 Chen C-W, Yeh K, Yang H-C, Liu KFR and Liu C-C (2013) A critical review of structural system control by the large-scaled neural network linear-deferential-inclusion-based criterion Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (11): 1658-1673. Epub ahead of print 18 June 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312443377 Chen C-H, Kuo C-M, Chen C-Y and Dai J-H (2013) The design and synthesis using hierarchical robotic discrete-event modeling Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (11): 1603-1613. Epub ahead of print 27 June 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312449645 Chang CJ, Chen CY and Chou I-T (2013) The design of information and communication technologies: telecom MOD strength machines Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (10): 1499-1513. Epub ahead of print 27 June 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312449644 Shih B-Y, Chen C-Y, Li K-H, Wu T-Y, Chen G-Y (2013) A novel NXT control method for implementing force sensing and recycling in a training robot Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (10): 1443-1459. Epub ahead of print 1 June 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312446361 Chen C-W, Chen P-C and Chiang W-L (2013) Modified intelligent genetic algorithm-based adaptive neural network control for uncertain structural systems Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (9): 1333-1347. Epub ahead of print 31 May 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312442232 Chen C-Y, Shih B-Y, Shih C-H and Wang L-H (2013) Enhancing robust and stability control of a humanoid biped robot: system identification approach. Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (8): 1199-1207. Epub ahead of print 26 April 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312442947 Chang C-J, Chen C-Y and Huang C-W (2013) Applications for medical recovery using wireless control of a bluetooth ball with a hybrid G-sensor and human-computer interface technology Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (8): 1139-1151. Epub ahead of print 24 April 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312442948 Hsu W-K, Chiou D-J, Chen C-W, Liu M-Y, Chiang W-L and Huang P-C (2013) Sensitivity of initial damage detection for steel structures using the Hilbert-Huang transform method Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (6): 857-878. Epub ahead of print 29 February 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546311434794 Chen C-Y, Shih B-Y, Shih C-H and Wang L-H (2013) Human–machine interface for the motion control of humanoid biped robots using a graphical user interface Motion Editor Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (6): 814-820. Epub ahead of print 23 February 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312437804 Chen C-Y (2013) Internal wave transport, nonlinear manifestation, and mixing in a stratified shear layer - technical briefs Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (3): 429-438. Epub ahead of print 18 January 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546311429337 Chen C-W (2013) Delay independent criterion for multiple time-delay systems and its application in building structure control systems Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (3): 395-414. Epub ahead of print 17 January 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546311429341 Chen C-Y, Shih B-Y, Shih C-H and Wang L-H (2013) Design, modeling and stability control for an actuated dynamic walking planar bipedal robot Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (3): 376-384. Epub ahead of print 17 January 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546311429476 Liu K-C, Liu Y-W, Chen C-Y and Huang W-C (2013) Nonlinear vibration of structural deterioration in reinforced concrete columns: experimental and theoretical investigation Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (3): 323-335. Epub ahead of print 17 January 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546311429477 Chen C-Y, Shih B-Y and Ma J-m (2013) Development for low-cost and cross-platform robot control environment Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (2): 228-233. Epub ahead of print 11 January 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546311430107 Shih B-Y, Chang H and Chen C-Y (2013) Path planning for autonomous robots – a comprehensive analysis by a greedy algorithm Journal of Vibration and Control 19 (1): 130-142. Epub ahead of print 17 January 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546311429841 Liu T-Y, Chiang W-L, Chen C-W, Hsu W-K, Lin C-W, Chiou D-J and Huang P-C (2012) Structural system identification for vibration bridges using the Hilbert–Huang transform Journal of Vibration and Control 18 (13): 1939-1956. Epub ahead of print 14 December 2011. doi: 10.1177/1077546311428347 Chen C-W (2012) Applications of the fuzzy Lyapunov linear matrix inequality criterion to a chaotic structural system Journal of Vibration and Control 18 (13): 1925-1938. Epub ahead of print 14 December 2011. doi: 10.1177/1077546311428346 Chen C-W (2012) Applications of linear differential inclusion-based criterion to a nonlinear chaotic system: a critical review Journal of Vibration and Control 18 (12): 1886-1899. Epub ahead of print 14 December 2011. doi: 10.1177/1077546311428345 Shih B-Y, Chen C-Y and Chou W (2012) An enhanced obstacle avoidance and path correction mechanism for an autonomous intelligent robot with multiple sensors Journal of Vibration and Control 18 (12): 1855-1864. Epub ahead of print 14 December 2011. doi: 10.1177/1077546311426734 Chen C-W, Yeh K, Liu KFR and Lin M-L (2012) Applications of fuzzy control to nonlinear time-delay systems using the linear matrix inequality fuzzy Lyapunov method Journal of Vibration and Control 18 (10): 1561-1574. Epub ahead of print 18 October 2011. doi: 10.1177/1077546311410765 Chen C-Y (2012) A critical review of internal wave dynamics. Part 2 – Laboratory experiments and theoretical physics Journal of Vibration and Control 18 (7): 983-1008. Epub ahead of print 21 September 2011. doi: 10.1177/1077546310397561 Chen C-Y and Huang P-H (2012) Review of an autonomous humanoid robot and its mechanical control Journal of Vibration and Control 18 (7): 973-982. Epub ahead of print 21 September 2011. doi: 10.1177/1077546310395974 Shih B-Y, Chen C-Y, Chang H and Ma J-m (2012) Dynamics and control for robotic manipulators using a greedy algorithm approach Journal of Vibration and Control 18 (6): 859-866. Epub ahead of print 25 August 2011. doi: 10.1177/1077546311407649 Yeh K, Chen C-W, Lo DC and Liu KFR (2012) Neural-network fuzzy control for chaotic tuned mass damper systems with time delays Journal of Vibration and Control 18 (6): 785-795. Epub ahead of print 15 August 2011. doi: 10.1177/1077546311407538 Chen C-Y, Shih B-Y, Shih C-H and Chou W-C (2012) The development of autonomous low-cost biped mobile surveillance robot by intelligent bricks Journal of Vibration and Control 18 (5): 577-586. Epub ahead of print 21 April 2011. doi: 10.1177/1077546310371349 Chen C-Y (2012) A critical review of internal wave dynamics. Part 1 – Remote sensing and in-situ observations Journal of Vibration and Control 18 (3): 417-436. Epub ahead of print 13 July 2011. doi: 10.1177/1077546310395971 Tseng C-P, Chen C-W and Liu KFR (2012) Risk control allocation model for pressure vessels and piping project Journal of Vibration and Control 18 (3): 385-394. Epub ahead of print 13 July 2011. doi: 10.1177/1077546311403182 Lin M-L and Chen C-W (2011) Stability analysis of community and ecosystem hierarchies using the Lyapunov method Journal of Vibration and Control 17 (13): 1930-1937. Epub ahead of print 9 December 2010. doi: 10.1177/1077546310385737 Chen C-Y, Shih B-Y, Chou W-C, Li Y-J and Chen Y-H (2011) Obstacle avoidance design for a humanoid intelligent robot with ultrasonic sensors Journal of Vibration and Control 17 (12): 1798-1804. Epub ahead of print 26 November 2010. doi: 10.1177/1077546310381101 Chen C-W (2011) Fuzzy control of interconnected structural systems using the fuzzy Lyapunov method Journal of Vibration and Control 17 (11): 1693-1702. Epub ahead of print 23 November 2010. doi: 10.1177/1077546310379625 Shih B-Y, Chen C-Y and Chou W-C (2011) Obstacle avoidance using a path correction method for autonomous control of a biped intelligent robot Journal of Vibration and Control 17 (10): 1567-1573. Epub ahead of print 22 November 2010. doi: 10.1177/1077546310372004 Tang J-P, Chiou D-J, Chen C-W, Chiang W-L, Hsu W-K, Chen C-Y and Liu T-Y (2011) A case study of damage detection in benchmark buildings using a Hilbert-Huang Transform-based method Journal of Vibration and Control 17 (4): 623-636. Epub ahead of print 8 November 2010. doi: 10.1177/1077546309360053 Liu TY, Chiang WL, Chen CW, Hsu WK, Lu LC and Chu TJ (2011) Identification and monitoring of bridge health from ambient vibration data Journal of Vibration and Control 17 (4): 589-603. Epub ahead of print 12 November 2010. doi: 10.1177/1077546309360049 Lin JW, Huang CW, Shih CH and Chen CY (2011) Fuzzy Lyapunov Stability Analysis and NN Modeling for Tension Leg Platform Systems Journal of Vibration and Control 17 (1): 151-158. Epub ahead of print 25 August 2010. doi: 10.1177/1077546309350477 Lee WI, Chen CY, Kuo HM and Sui YC (2010) The Development of Half-circle Fuzzy Numbers and Application in Fuzzy Control Journal of Vibration and Control 16 (13): 1977-1987. Epub ahead of print 22 April 2010. doi: 10.1177/1077546309349849

The word 3D is defined as three dimensional models that display a picture or item in a form that appears to be physically present with a designated structure. Three-dimensional (3D), can also describe any object that occurs on a three-axis Cartesian coordinate system, a Cartesian system is basically a fancy way of describing the X and Y axes which are horizontal and vertical axis, but the inclusive of the third axis Z which is make it to be 3D of which the Z axis represent the depth.3D interaction is a form of human-machine interaction where users are able to move and perform interaction in 3D space. Both human and machine process information where the physical position of elements in 3D space. The main features of these 3D applications are immersion, interactivity, and involvement. Immersion holds the user’s attention. Interactivity is related to how responsive the application is to user actions and Involvement has to do with engaging the user’s interest in the underlying activity.3D interaction techniques are selection and manipulation, navigation, system control and symbolic inputs. Its application is in the area of Exploring Complex Data, Visualizations with the Cubic Mouse, Multimodal Interfaces in VEs Multimodal interaction, and VEs for Design Education Architectural design. KEYWORDS:interaction,cartesian,information,application,interface,virtual,physical,technique,immersion,involvement,design,navigation and data.

One of the major challenges in system neurosciences consists in developing techniques for estimating the cognitive information content in brain activity. This has an enormous potential in different domains spanning from clinical applications, cognitive enhancement to a better understanding of the neural bases of cognition. In this context, the inclusion of machine learning techniques to decode different aspects of human cognition and behavior and its use to develop brain–computer interfaces for applications in neuroprosthetics has supported a genuine revolution in the field. However, while these approaches have been shown quite successful for the study of the motor and sensory functions, success is still far from being reached when it comes to covert cognitive functions such as attention, motivation and decision making. While improvement in this field of BCIs is growing fast, a new research focus has emerged from the development of strategies for decoding neural activity. In this review, we aim at exploring how the advanced in decoding of brain activity is becoming a major neuroscience tool moving forward our understanding of brain functions, providing a robust theoretical framework to test predictions on the relationship between brain activity and cognition and behavior.

Abstract Motivation Timetrees depict evolutionary relationships between species and the geological times of their divergence. Hundreds of research articles containing timetrees are published in scientific journals every year. The TimeTree project has been manually locating, curating, and synthesizing timetrees from these articles for almost two decades into a TimeTree of Life, delivered through a unique, user-friendly web interface (timetree.org). The manual process of finding articles containing timetrees is becoming increasingly expensive and time-consuming. So, we have explored the effectiveness of text-mining approaches and developed optimizations to find research articles containing timetrees automatically. Results We have developed an optimized machine learning (ML) system to determine if a research article contains an evolutionary timetree appropriate for inclusion in the TimeTree resource. We found that BERT classification fine-tuned on whole-text articles achieved an F1 score of 0.67, which we increased to 0.88 by text-mining article excerpts surrounding the mentioning of figures. The new method is implemented in the TimeTreeFinder tool, TTF, which automatically processes millions of articles to discover timetree-containing articles. We estimate that the TTF tool would produce twice as many timetree-containing articles as those discovered manually, whose inclusion in the TimeTree database would potentially double the knowledge accessible to a wider community. Manual inspection showed that the precision on out-of-distribution recently-published articles is 87%. This automation will speed up the collection and curation of timetrees with much lower human and time costs. Availability https://github.com/marija-stanojevic/time-tree-classification Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

The human dynamic clamp (HDC) is a human–machine interface designed on the basis of coordination dynamics for studying realistic social interaction under controlled and reproducible conditions. Here, we propose to probe the validity of the HDC as a psychometric instrument for quantifying social abilities in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and neurotypical development. To study interpersonal synchrony with the HDC, we derived five standardized scores following a gradient from sensorimotor and motor to higher sociocognitive skills in a sample of 155 individuals (113 participants with ASD, 42 typically developing participants; aged 5 to 25 years; IQ > 70). Regression analyses were performed using normative modeling on global scores according to four subconditions (HDC behavior “cooperative/competitive,” human task “in-phase/anti-phase,” diagnosis, and age at inclusion). Children with ASD had lower scores than controls for motor skills. HDC motor coordination scores were the best candidates for stratification and diagnostic biomarkers according to exploratory analyses of hierarchical clustering and multivariate classification. Independently of phenotype, sociocognitive skills increased with developmental age while being affected by the ongoing task and HDC behavior. Weaker performance in ASD for motor skills suggests the convergent validity of the HDC for evaluating social interaction. Results provided additional evidence of a relationship between sensorimotor and sociocognitive skills. HDC may also be used as a marker of maturation of sociocognitive skills during real-time social interaction. Through its standardized and objective evaluation, the HDC not only represents a valid paradigm for the study of interpersonal synchrony but also offers a promising, clinically relevant psychometric instrument for the evaluation and stratification of sociomotor dysfunctions.

ObjectiveAutomated syndromic surveillance using mobile devices is an emerging public health focus that has a high potential for enhanced disease tracking and prevention in areas with poor infrastructure. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory sought to develop an Android mobile application for syndromic biosurveillance that would i) use the phone camera to take images of human faces to detect individuals that are sick through a machine learning (ML) model and ii) collect image data to increase training data available for ML models. The initial prototype use case is for screening and tracking the health of soldiers for use by the Department of Defense’s Disease Threat Reduction Agency.IntroductionInfectious diseases present with multifarious factors requiring several efforts to detect, prevent, and break the chain of transmission. Recently, machine learning has shown to be promising for automated surveillance leading to rapid and early interventions, and extraction of phenotypic features of human faces [3, 5]. In addition, mobile devices have become a promising tool to provide on-the-ground surveillance, especially in remote areas and geolocation mapping [4].Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) combines machine learning with mobile technology to provide a groundbreaking prototype of disease surveillance without the need for internet, just a camera. In this android application, VisionDx, a machine learning algorithm analyses human face images and within milliseconds notifies the user with confidence level whether or not the person is sick. VisionDx comes with two modes, photo and video, and additional features of history, map, and statistics. This application is the first of its kind and provides a new way to think about the future of syndromic surveillance.MethodsData. Human healthy (n = 1096) and non-healthy (n = 1269) facial images met the criteria for training the Machine Learning model after preprocessing them. The healthy images were obtained from the Chicago face database [6] and California Institute of Technology [2]. There are no known collections of disease facial images. Using open source image collection/curation services, images were identified by a variety of keywords, including specific infectious diseases. The criteria for image inclusion was 1. a frontal face was identified using OpenCV library [1], and 2. the image contained signs of disease through visual inspection (e.g., abnormal color, texture, swelling).Model. To identify a sick face from a healthy one, we used transfer machine learning and experimented with various pretrained Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) from Google for mobile and embedded vision applications. Using MobileNet, we trained the final model with our data and deployed it to our prototype mobile app. Google Mobile Vision API and TensorFlow mobile were used to detect human faces and run predictions in the mobile app.Mobile Application. The Android app was built using Android Studio to provide an easily navigable interface that connects every action between tabbed features. The app features (i.e., Map, Camera, History, and Statistics) are in tab view format. The custom-made camera is the main feature of the app, and it contains face detection capability. A real-time health status detection function gives a level of confidence based the algorithm results found on detected faces in the camera image.ResultsPNNL's prototype Android application, VisionDx, was built with user-friendly tab views and functions to take camera images of human faces and classify them as sick or healthy through an inbuilt ML model. The major functions of the app are the camera, map, history, and statistics pages. The camera tab has a custom-made camera with face detection algorithm and classification model of sick or healthy. The camera has image or video mode and results of the algorithm are updated in milliseconds. The Statistics view provides a simple pie chart on sick/healthy images based on user selected time and location. The Map shows pins representing all labeled images stored, and the History displays all the labeled images. Clicking on an image in either view shows the image with metadata, i.e., model confidence levels, geolocation, and datetime.The CNN model prediction accuracy has ~98% validation accuracy and ~96% test accuracy. High model performance shows the possibility that deep learning could be a powerful tool to detect sickness. However, given the limited dataset, this high accuracy also means the model is most likely overfit to the data. The training set is limited: a. the number of training images is small compared to the variability in facial expressions and skin coloring, and b. the sick images only contained overt clinical signs. If trained on a larger, diverse set of data, this prototype app could prove extremely useful in surveillance efforts of individual to large groups of people in remote areas, e.g., to identify individuals in need of medical attention or get an overview of population health. In effort to improve the model, VisionDx was developed as a data collection tool to build a more comprehensive dataset. Within the tool, users can override the model prediction, i.e., false positive or false negative, with a simple toggle button. Lastly, the app was built to protect privacy so that other phone aps can't access the images unless shared by a user.ConclusionsDeveloped at PNNL for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, VisionDx is a novel, camera-based mobile application for real-time biosurveillance and early warning in the field without internet dependency. The prototype mobile app takes pictures of faces and analyzes them using a state-of-the-art machine learning model to give two confidence levels of likelihood of being sick and healthy. With further development of a labeled dataset, such as by using the app as a data collection too, the results of the algorithm will quickly improve leading to a ground-breaking approach to public health surveillance.References1. Bradski G. (n.d.) The OpenCV Library. Retrieved Sept 30, 2018 at http://www.drdobbs.com/open-source/the-opencv-library/1844043192. Computational Vision: Archive. (1999). Retrieved Sept 22, 2018 at http://www.vision.caltech.edu/html-files/archive.html3. Ferry Q, Steinberg J, Webber C, et al (2014). Diagnostically relevant facial gestalt information from ordinary photos. ELife, 3, e02020.4. Fornace KM, Surendra H, Abidin TR, et al (2018). Use of mobile technology-based participatory mapping approaches to geolocate health facility attendees for disease surveillance in low resource settings. International Journal of Health Geographics, 17(1), 21. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12942-018-0141-05. Lopez DM, de Mello FL, G Dias, CM, et al (2017). Evaluating the Surveillance System for Spotted Fever in Brazil Using Machine-Learning Techniques. Frontiers in Public Health, 5. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2017.003236. Ma DS, Correll J, Wittenbrink B. (2015) The Chicago face database: A free stimulus set of faces and norming data. Behavior Research Methods, 47(4), 1122–1135. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-014-0532-5

Based on the analysis of the general patterns of development of automated control systems, the main patterns of the development of aviation aiming and navigation systems (AANS) in the directions of their integration, automation, optimization and unification are considered. The prospects for the development of AANS in the indicated directions are determined. The aim of the article is to develop a concept for the construction of advanced integrated interactive aviation sighting and navigation systems. Integrated interactive AANS operate under conditions of a priori uncertainty and in the process of functioning automatically adapt to unforeseen changes in the structure and properties of AANS and the external environment. The integrated interactive AANS provides for operational adaptation to changing the composition of information sources, as well as ensuring the unification of algorithmic support for both various tasks solved by the AANS, and different classes of AANS installed on various types of aircraft (AC). This is a fertile ground for building highly reliable AANS that provide the required aiming accuracy. A holistic concept has been developed for the construction of advanced integrated interactive aviation sighting and navigation systems. The proposed concept is a set of interrelated principles based on the methodology of system analysis and synthesis, modern achievements in the field of aviation science, engineering, technology, including: new principles of AANS integration, based on integration not only at the level of onboard equipment and algorithms, but also at the level control tasks for aircraft and weapons as a single purposeful multi-stage dynamic system with a variable structure; new principles of building integrated interactive AANS, implementing the concept of optimal automation; new principles for organizing the use of AANS, based on the optimal choice of weapons in an attack and the distribution of combat functions between the aircraft and weapons; new principles for constructing a unified algorithmic support for AANS, based on the use of methods of the theory of multistage dynamical systems, the theory of systems with a random structure, observation control methods, methods of statistical analysis and synthesis of algorithms for optimal control and filtering, taking into account the errors of their implementation in the BCVS; new principles for determining the structure of the computing system and organizing the solution of problems based on the optimal planning of the computing process in multiprocessor BCVS; new principles of building a human-machine interface based on a rational combination of natural and artificial intelligence; new principles of ensuring the reliability and survivability of systems based on methods for constructing fault-tolerant algorithms, optimal control of the state of the system and its dynamic reconfiguration; new principles of forming the appearance of the AANS, based on the optimization of its structure and parameters within the generalized system «object − environment», and on this basis the presentation of requirements for information, executive and computing subsystems. The title of the concept contains key words that reflect two fundamental concepts that underlie the formation of the appearance of the AANS of promising aircraft − integration and interactivity (mutual activity of a person and the «aircraft − weapon» system). Integration is manifested in the integration of tasks, in the complex receipt and processing of information, in the integration of algorithms and aircraft onboard equipment. The active inclusion of human intelligence in the aircraft and weapons control system, the optimal distribution of functions between the crew and the AANS, the creation of a new man-machine interface − this is the second main direction in the development of promising AANS. The central place in the considered concept is occupied by the principle of system analysis and synthesis of AANS application processes. The implementation of this principle provides a methodologically correct choice of a system of performance criteria for the analysis and synthesis of the AANS, an agreed system of mathematical models for describing the processes of its functioning, a reasonable justification of tactical and technical requirements. The use of modern AANS is carried out in intensive fire, information and maneuvering enemy countermeasures. In these conditions, the effective execution of tasks will be possible if their algorithmic support is built taking into account the principle of adaptation and resistance to resistance. The theoretical basis for the implementation of the above principles and the concept as a whole are fundamental and applied results obtained in recent years. First of all, these should include: the theory of multistage dynamic systems and methods for controlling the final state of the «aircraft − weapons» system; theory of systems with a random structure and methods of algorithmic protection of AANS from functional disorders; methods of optimization of the computational process in multiprocessor BCVS and numerical methods for accelerated solution of combat missions; theory and methods of optimization of the structure of information management systems; methods of optimal automation of information and control systems; mathematical methods and models for evaluating the effectiveness and optimization of conditions for the combat use of aircraft weapons systems. The practical significance lies in the fact that the implementation of the concept of building integrated interactive AANS makes it possible to successfully solve many problems of creating and mastering new generations of aviation equipment at all stages of the life cycle, since these AANS allow: to significantly expand the range of conditions for using aircraft; provide a comprehensive optimization of estimates of the phase coordinates of the aircraft and the attacked target; significantly reduce the time, material and labor costs for the operation of the AANS (docking, tuning, adjustment); significantly increase the survivability of the AANS in conditions of possible combat damage due to functional redundancy. The proposed concept of building integrated interactive AANS is focused on the creation of so-called open architecture systems that are well adapted to all stages of the life cycle. At the same time, the most important property is laid in the created system already at the initial stages of development − the possibility of modernization during operation.

Of Motivational Art “Live to be outstanding.” What is new media in the age of the ‘rock ‘n’ roll life coach’ Anthony Robbins? There is no need to be ‘spectacular’ anymore. The Situationist critique of the ‘spectacle’ has worn out. That would be my assessment of the Robbins Age we now live in. Audiences are no longer looking for empty entertainment; they need help. Art has to motivate, not question but assist. Today’s aesthetic experience ought to awaken the spiritual side of life. Aesthetics are not there for contemplation only. Art has to become (inter)active and take on the role of ‘coaching.’ In terms of the ‘self mastery’ discourse, the 21st Century artist helps to ‘unleash the power from within.’ No doubt this is going to be achieved with ‘positive energy.’ What is needed is “perverse optimism” (Tibor Kalman). Art has to create, not destroy. A visit to the museum or gallery has to fit into one’s personal development program. Art should consult, not criticize. In order to be a true Experience, the artwork has to initiate through a bodily experience, comparable to the fire walk. It has to be passionate, and should shed its disdain for the viewer, along with its postmodern strategies of irony, reversal and indifference. In short: artists have to take responsibility and stop their silly plays. The performance artist’s perfect day-job: the corporate seminar, ‘trust-building’ and distilling the firm’s ‘core values’ from its ‘human resources’. Self-management ideology builds on the 80s wave of political correctness, liberated from a critical negativism that only questioned existing power structures without giving guidance. As Tony says: “Live with passion!” Emotions have to flow. People want to be fired up and ‘move out of their comfort zone.’ Complex references to intellectual currents within art history are a waste of time. The art experience has to fit in and add to the ‘personal growth’ agenda. Art has to ‘leverage fears’ and promise ‘guaranteed success.’ Part therapist, part consultant, art no longer compensates for a colourless life. Instead it makes the most of valuable resources and is aware of the ‘attention economy’ it operates in. In order to reach such higher plains of awareness it seems unavoidable to admit and celebrate one’s own perverse Existenz. Everyone is a pile of shit and has got dirty hands. Or as Tibor Kalman said: “No one gets to work under ethically pure conditions.” (see Rick Poynor’s <http://www.undesign.org/tiborocity/>). It is at that Zizekian point that art as a counseling practice comes into being. Mapping the Limits of New Media To what extent has the ‘tech wreck’ and following scandals affected our understanding of new media? No doubt there will also be cultural fall-out. Critical new media practices have been slow to respond to both the rise and the fall of dotcommania. The world of IT firms and their volatile valuations on the world’s stock markets seemed light years away from the new media arts galaxy. The speculative hey-day of new media culture was the early-mid 90s, before the rise of the World Wide Web. Theorists and artists jumped eagerly at not-yet-existing and inaccessible technologies such as virtual reality. Cyberspace generated a rich collection of mythologies. Issues of embodiment and identity were fiercely debated. Only five years later, with Internet stocks going through the roof, not much was left of the initial excitement in intellectual and artistic circles. Experimental technoculture missed out on the funny money. Over the last few years there has been a steady stagnation of new media culture, its concepts and its funding. With hundreds of millions of new users flocking onto the Net, the arts could no longer keep up and withdrew to their own little world of festivals, mailing lists and workshops. Whereas new media arts institutions, begging for goodwill, still portray artists as working at the forefront of technological developments, collaborating with state of the art scientists, the reality is a different one. Multi-disciplinary goodwill is at an all time low. At best, the artist’s new media products are ‘demo design’ as described by Peter Lunenfeld in Snap to Grid. Often it does not even reach that level. New media art, as defined by its few institutions, rarely reaches audiences outside of its own subculture. What in positive terms could be described as the heroic fight for the establishment of a self-referential ‘new media arts system’ through a frantic differentiation of works, concepts and traditions, may as well be classified as a dead-end street. The acceptance of new media by leading museums and collectors will simply not happen. Why wait a few decades anyway? The majority of the new media art works on display at ZKM in Karlsruhe, the Linz Ars Electronica Center, ICC in Tokyo or the newly opened Australian Centre for the Moving Image are hopeless in their innocence, being neither critical nor radically utopian in approach. It is for that reason that the new media arts sector, despite its steady growth, is getting increasingly isolated, incapable of addressing the issues of today’s globalized world. It is therefore understandable that the contemporary (visual) arts world is continuing the decades old silent boycott of interactive new media works in galleries, biennales and shows such as Documenta. A critical reassessment of the role of arts and culture within today’s network society seems necessary. Let’s go beyond the ‘tactical’ intentions of the players involved. This is not a blame game. The artist-engineer, tinkering away on alternative human-machine interfaces, social software, or digital aesthetics has effectively been operating in a self-imposed vacuum. Over the last few decades both science and business have successfully ignored the creative community. Even worse, artists have actively been sidelined in the name of ‘usability’. The backlash movement against web design, led by usability guru Jakob Nielsen, is a good example of this trend. Other contributing factors may have been fear of corporate dominance by companies such as AOL/Time Warner and Microsoft. Lawrence Lessig argues that innovation of the Internet itself is in danger. In the meanwhile the younger generation is turning its back from new media arts questions and operates as anti-corporate activists, if at all engaged. Since the crash the Internet has rapidly lost its imaginative attraction. File swapping and cell phones can only temporarily fill the vacuum. It would be foolish to ignore this. New media have lost their magic spell; the once so glamorous gadgets are becoming part of everyday life. This long-term tendency, now in a phase of acceleration, seriously undermines the future claim of new media altogether. Another ‘taboo’ issue in new media is generationalism. With video and expensive interactive installations being the domain of the ‘68 baby boomers, the generation of ‘89 has embraced the free Internet. But the Net turned out to be a trap for them. Whereas real assets, positions and power remains in the hands of the ageing baby boomers, the gamble of its predecessors on the rise of new media did not materialize. After venture capital has melted away, there is still no sustainable revenue system in place for the Internet. The slow working education bureaucracies have not yet grasped the new media malaise. Universities are still in the process of establishing new media departments. But that will come to a halt at some point. The fifty-something tenured chairs and vice-chancellors must feel good about their persistent sabotage. ‘What’s so new about new media anyway? Technology was hype after all, promoted by the criminals of Enron and WorldCom. It’s enough for students to do a bit of email and web surfing, safeguarded within a filtered and controlled intranet…’ It is to counter this cynical reasoning that we urgently need to analyze the ideology of the greedy 90s and its techno-libertarianism. If we don’t disassociate new media quickly from that decade, if we continue with the same rhetoric, the isolation of the new media sector will sooner or later result in its death. Let’s transform the new media buzz into something more interesting altogether – before others do it for us.The Will to Subordinate to Science The dominant wing of Western ‘new media arts’ lacks a sense of superiority, sovereignty, determination and direction. One can witness a tendency towards ‘digital inferiority’ at virtually every cyber-event. Artists, critics and curators have made themselves subservient to technology – and ‘life science’ in particular. This ideological stand has grown out of an ignorance that cannot be explained easily. We’re talking here about a subtle mentality, almost a taboo. The cult practice between ‘domina’ science and its slaves the new media artists is taking place in backrooms of universities and art institutions, warmly supported by genuinely interested corporate bourgeois elements – board members, professors, science writers and journalists – that set the technocultural agenda. Here we’re not talking about some form of ‘techno celebration.’ New media art is not merely a servant to corporate interests. If only it was that simple. The reproach of new media arts ‘celebrating’ technology is a banality, only stated by outsiders; and the interest in life sciences can easily be sold as a (hidden) longing to take part in science’s supra-human ‘triumph of logos,’ but I won’t do that here. Scientists, for their part, are disdainfully looking down at the vaudeville interfaces and well-meant weirdness of biotech art. Not that they will say anything. But the weak smiles on their faces bespeak a cultural gap light years wide. An exquisite non-communication is at hand here. Performance artist Coco Fusco recently wrote a critique of biotech art on the Nettime mailinglist (January 26, 2003). “Biotech artists have claimed that they are redefining art practice and therefore the old rules don't apply to them.” For Fusco bioart’s “heroic stance and imperviousness to criticism sounds a bit hollow and self-serving after a while, especially when the demand for inclusion in mainstream art institutions, art departments in universities, art curricula, art world money and art press is so strong.” From this marginal position, its post-human dreams of transcending the body could better be read as desires to transcend its own marginality, being neither recognized as ‘visual arts’ nor as ‘science.’ Coco Fusco: “I find the attempts by many biotech art endorsers to celebrate their endeavor as if it were just about a scientific or aesthetic pursuit to be disingenuous. Its very rhetoric of transcendence of the human is itself a violent act of erasure, a master discourse that entails the creation of ‘slaves’ as others that must be dominated.” OK, but what if all this remains but a dream, prototypes of human-machine interfaces that, like demo-design, are going nowhere? The isolated social position of the new media arts in this type of criticism is not taken into consideration. Biotech art has to be almighty in order for the Fusco rhetoric to function. Coco Fusco rightly points at artists that “attend meetings with ‘real’ scientists, but in that context they become advisors on how to popularize science, which is hardly what I would call a critical intervention in scientific institutions.” Artists are not ‘better scientists’ and the scientific process is not a better way of making art than any other, Fusco writes. She concludes: “Losing respect for human life is certainly the underbelly of any militaristic adventure, and lies at the root of the racist and classist ideas that have justified the violent use of science for centuries. I don't think there is any reason to believe that suddenly, that kind of science will disappear because some artists find beauty in biotech.” It remains an open question where radical criticism of (life) science has gone and why the new media (arts) canon is still in such a primitive, regressive stage. Links http://www.undesign.org/tiborocity/ Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Lovink, Geert. "Fragments on New Media Arts and Science" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0308/10-fragments.php>. APA Style Lovink, G. (2003, Aug 26). Fragments on New Media Arts and Science. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0308/10-fragments.php>

IntroductionNew digital technologies hold promise for equalising access to information and communication for the Deaf community. SMS technology, for example, has helped to equalise deaf peoples’ access to information and made it easier to communicate with both deaf and hearing people (Tane Akamatsu et al.; Power and Power; Power, Power, and Horstmanshof; Valentine and Skelton, "Changing", "Umbilical"; Harper). A wealth of anecdotal evidence and some recent academic work suggests that new media technology is also reshaping deaf peoples’ sense of local and global community (Breivik "Deaf"; Breivik, Deaf; Brueggeman). One focus of research on new media technologies has been on technologies used for point to point communication, including communication (and interpretation) via video (Tane Akamatsu et al.; Power and Power; Power, Power, and Horstmanshof). Another has been the use of multimedia technologies in formal educational setting for pedagogical purposes, particularly English language literacy (e.g. Marshall Gentry et al.; Tane Akamatsu et al.; Vogel et al.). An emphasis on the role of multimedia in deaf education is understandable, considering the on-going highly politicised contest over whether to educate young deaf people in a bilingual environment using a signed language (Swanwick & Gregory). However, the increasing significance of social and participatory media in the leisure time of Westerners suggests that such uses of Web 2.0 are also worth exploring. There have begun to be some academic accounts of the enthusiastic adoption of vlogging by sign language users (e.g. Leigh; Cavander and Ladner) and this paper seeks to add to this important work. Web 2.0 has been defined by its ability to, in Denise Woods’ word, “harness collective intelligence” (19.2) by providing opportunities for users to make, adapt, “mash up” and share text, photos and video. As well as its well-documented participatory possibilities (Bruns), its re-emphasis on visual (as opposed to textual) communication is of particular interest for Deaf communities. It has been suggested that deaf people are a ‘visual variety of the human race’ (Bahan), and the visually rich presents new opportunities for visually rich forms of communication, most importantly via signed languages. The central importance of signed languages for Deaf identity suggests that the visual aspects of interactive multimedia might offer possibilities of maintenance, enhancement and shifts in those identities (Hyde, Power and Lloyd). At the same time, the visual aspects of the Web 2.0 are often audio-visual, such that the increasingly rich resources of the net offer potential barriers as well as routes to inclusion and community (see Woods; Ellis; Cavander and Ladner). In particular, lack of captioning or use of Auslan in video resources emerges as a key limit to the accessibility of the visual Web to deaf users (Cahill and Hollier). In this paper we ask to what extent contemporary digital media might create moments of permeability in what Krentz has called “the hearing line, that invisible boundary separating deaf and hearing people”( 2)”. To provide tentative answers to these questions, this paper will explore the use of participatory digital media by a group of young Deaf people taking part in a small-scale digital moviemaking project in Sydney in 2009. The ProjectAs a starting point, the interdisciplinary research team conducted a video-making course for young deaf sign language users within the Department of Media, Music and Cultural Studies at Macquarie University. The research team was comprised of one deaf and four hearing researchers, with expertise in media and cultural studies, information technology, sign language linguistics/ deaf studies, and signed language interpreting. The course was advertised through the newsletter of partner organization the NSW Deaf Society, via a Sydney bilingual deaf school and through the dense electronic networks of Australian deaf people. The course attracted fourteen participants from NSW, Western Australia and Queensland ranging in age from 10 to 18. Twelve of the participants were male, and two female. While there was no aspiration to gather a representative group of young people, it is worth noting there was some diversity within the group: for example, one participant was a wheelchair user while another had in recent years moved to Sydney from Africa and had learned Auslan relatively recently. Students were taught a variety of storytelling techniques and video-making skills, and set loose in groups to devise, shoot and edit a number of short films. The results were shared amongst the class, posted on a private YouTube channel and made into a DVD which was distributed to participants.The classes were largely taught in Auslan by a deaf teacher, although two sessions were taught by (non-deaf) members of Macquarie faculty, including an AFI award winning director. Those sessions were interpreted into Auslan by a sign language interpreter. Participants were then allowed free creative time to shoot video in locations of their choice on campus, or to edit their footage in the computer lab. Formal teaching sessions lasted half of each day – in the afternoons, participants were free to use the facilities or participate in a range of structured activities. Participants were also interviewed in groups, and individually, and their participation in the project was observed by researchers. Our research interest was in what deaf young people would choose to do with Web 2.0 technologies, and most particularly the visually rich elements of participatory and social media, in a relatively unstructured environment. Importantly, our focus was not on evaluating the effectiveness of multimedia for teaching deaf young people, or the level of literacy deployed by deaf young people in using the applications. Rather we were interested to discover the kinds of stories participants chose to tell, the ways they used Web 2.0 applications and the modalities of communication they chose to use. Given that Auslan was the language of instruction of the course, would participants draw on the tradition of deaf jokes and storytelling and narrate stories to camera in Auslan? Would they use the format of the “mash-up”, drawing on found footage or photographs? Would they make more filmic movies using Auslan dialogue? How would they use captions and text in their movies: as subtitles for Auslan dialogue? As an alternative to signing? Or not at all? Our observations from the project point to the great significance of the visual dimensions of Web 2.0 for the deaf young people who participated in the project. Initially, this was evident in the kind of movies students chose to make. Only one group – three young people in their late teens which included both of the young women in the class - chose to make a dialogue heavy movie, a spoof of Charlie’s Angels, entitled Deaf Angels. This movie included long scenes of the Angels using Auslan to chat together, receiving instruction from “Charlie” in sign language via videophone and recruiting “extras”, again using Auslan, to sign a petition for Auslan to be made an official Australian language. In follow up interviews, one of the students involved in making this film commented “my clip is about making a political statement, while the other [students in the class] made theirs just for fun”. The next group of (three) films, all with the involvement of the youngest class member, included signed storytelling of a sort readily recognisable from signed videos on-line: direct address to camera, with the teller narrating but also taking on the roles of characters and presenting their dialogue directly via the sign language convention of “role shift” - also referred to as constructed action and constructed dialogue (Metzger). One of these movies was an interesting hybrid. The first half of the four minute film had two young actors staging a hold-up at a vending machine, with a subsequent chase and fight scene. Like most of the films made by participants in the class, it included only one line of signed dialogue, with the rest of the narrative told visually through action. However, at the end of the action sequence, with the victim safely dead, the narrative was then retold by one of the performers within a signed story, using conventions typically observed in signed storytelling - such as role shift, characterisation and spatial mapping (Mather & Winston; Rayman; Wilson).The remaining films similarly drew on action and horror genres with copious use of chase and fight scenes and melodramatic and sometimes quite beautiful climactic death tableaux. The movies included a story about revenging the death of a brother; a story about escaping from jail; a short story about a hippo eating a vet; a similar short comprised of stills showing a sequence of executions in the computer lab; and a ghost story. Notably, most of these movies contained very little dialogue – with only one or two lines of signed dialogue in each four to five minute video (with the exception of the gun handshape used in context to represent the object liberally throughout most films). The kinds of movies made by this limited group of people on this one occasion are suggestive. While participants drew on a number of genres and communication strategies in their film making, the researchers were surprised at how few of the movies drew on traditions of signed storytelling or jokes– particularly since the course was targeted at deaf sign language users and promoted as presented in Auslan. Consequently, our group of students were largely drawn from the small number of deaf schools in which Auslan is the main language of instruction – an exceptional circumstance in an Australian setting in which most deaf young people attend mainstream schools (Byrnes et al.; Power and Hyde). Looking across the Hearing LineWe can make sense of the creative choices made by the participants in the course in a number of ways. Although methods of captioning were briefly introduced during the course, iMovie (the package which participants were using) has limited captioning functionality. Indeed, one student, who was involved in making the only clip to include captioning which contextualised the narrative, commented in follow-up interviews that he would have liked more information about captioning. It’s also possible that the compressed nature of the course prevented participants from undertaking the time-consuming task of scripting and entering captions. As well as being the most fun approach to the projects, the use of visual story telling was probably the easiest. This was perhaps exacerbated by the lack of emphasis on scriptwriting (outside of structural elements and broad narrative sweeps) in the course. Greater emphasis on that aspect of film-making would have given participants a stronger foundational literacy for caption-based projectsDespite these qualifications, both the movies made by students and our observations suggest the significance of a shared visual culture in the use of the Web by these particular young people. During an afternoon when many of the students were away swimming, one student stayed in the lab to use the computers. Rather than working on a video project, he spent time trawling through YouTube for clips purporting to show ghost sightings and other paranormal phenomena. He drew these clips to the attention of one of the research team who was present in the lab, prompting a discussion about the believability of the ghosts and supernatural apparitions in the clips. While some of the clips included (uncaptioned) off-screen dialogue and commentary, this didn’t seem to be a barrier to this student’s enjoyment. Like many other sub-genres of YouTube clips – pranks, pratfalls, cute or alarmingly dangerous incidents involving children and animals – these supernatural videos as a genre rely very little on commentary or dialogue for their meaning – just as with the action films that other students drew on so heavily in their movie making. In an E-Tech paper entitled "The Cute Cat Theory of Digital Activism", Ethan Zuckerman suggests that “web 1.0 was invented to allow physicists to share research papers and web 2.0 was created to allow people to share pictures of cute cats”. This comment points out both the Web 2.0’s vast repository of entertaining material in the ‘funny video’genre which is visually based, dialogue free, entertaining material accessible to a wide range of people, including deaf sign language users. In the realm of leisure, at least, the visually rich resources of Web 2.0’s ubiquitous images and video materials may be creating a shared culture in which the line between hearing and deaf people’s entertainment activities is less clear than it may have been in the past. The ironic tone of Zuckerman’s observation, however, alerts us to the limits of a reliance on language-free materials as a route to accessibility. The kinds of videos that the participants in the course chose to make speaks to the limitations as well as resources offered by the visual Web. There is still a limited range of captioned material on You Tube. In interviews, both young people and their teachers emphasised the central importance of access to captioned video on-line, with the young people we interviewed strongly favouring captioned video over the inclusion on-screen of simultaneous signed interpretations of text. One participant who was a regular user of a range of on-line social networking commented that if she really liked the look of a particular movie which was uncaptioned, she would sometimes contact its maker and ask them to add captions to it. Interestingly, two student participants emphasised in interviews that signed video should also include captions so hearing people could have access to signed narratives. These students seemed to be drawing on ideas about “reverse discrimination”, but their concern reflected the approach of many of the student movies - using shared visual conventions that made their movies available to the widest possible audience. All the students were anxious that hearing people could understand their work, perhaps a consequence of the course’s location in the University as an overwhelmingly hearing environment. In this emphasis on captioning rather than sign as a route to making media accessible, we may be seeing a consequence of the emphasis Krentz describes as ubiquitous in deaf education “the desire to make the differences between deaf and hearing people recede” (16). Krentz suggests that his concept of the ‘hearing line’ “must be perpetually retested and re-examined. It reveals complex and shifting relationships between physical difference, cultural fabrication and identity” (7). The students’ movies and attitudes emphasised the reality of that complexity. Our research project explored how some young Deaf people attempted to create stories capable of crossing categories of deafness and ‘hearing-ness’… unstable (like other identity categories) while others constructed narratives that affirmed Deaf Culture or drew on the Deaf storytelling traditions. This is of particular interest in the Web 2.0 environment, given that its technologies are often lauded as having the politics of participation. The example of the Deaf Community asks reasonable questions about the validity of those claims, and it’s hard to escape the conclusion that there is still less than appropriate access and that some users are more equal than others.How do young people handle the continuing lack of material available to the on the Web? The answer repeatedly offered by our young male interviewees was ‘I can’t be bothered’. As distinct from “I can’t understand” or “I won’t go there” this answer, represented a disengagement from demands to identify your literacy levels, reveal your preferred means of communication; to rehearse arguments about questions of access or expose attempts to struggle to make sense of texts that fail to employ readily accessible means of communicating. Neither an admission of failure or a demand for change, CAN’T-BE-BOTHERED in this context offers a cool way out of an accessibility impasse. This easily-dismissed comment in interviews was confirmed in a whole-group discussions, when students came to a consensus that if when searching for video resources on the Net they found video that included neither signing nor captions, they would move on to find other more accessible resources. Even here, though, the ground continues to shift. YouTube recently announced that it was making its auto-captioning feature open to everybody - a machine generated system that whilst not perfect does attempt to make all YouTube videos accessible to deaf people. (Bertolucci).The importance of captioning of non-signed video is thrown into further significance by our observation from the course of the use of YouTube as a search engine by the participants. Many of the students when asked to research information on the Web bypassed text-based search engines and used the more visual results presented on YouTube directly. In research on deaf adolescents’ search strategies on the Internet, Smith points to the promise of graphical interfaces for deaf young people as a strategy for overcoming the English literacy difficulties experienced by many deaf young people (527). In the years since Smith’s research was undertaken, the graphical and audiovisual resources available on the Web have exploded and users are increasingly turning to these resources in their searches, providing new possibilities for Deaf users (see for instance Schonfeld; Fajardo et al.). Preliminary ConclusionsA number of recent writers have pointed out the ways that the internet has made everyday communication with government services, businesses, workmates and friends immeasurably easier for deaf people (Power, Power and Horstmanshof; Keating and Mirus; Valentine and Skelton, "Changing", "Umbilical"). The ready availability of information in a textual and graphical form on the Web, and ready access to direct contact with others on the move via SMS, has worked against what has been described as deaf peoples’ “information deprivation”, while everyday tasks – booking tickets, for example – are no longer a struggle to communicate face-to-face with hearing people (Valentine and Skelton, "Changing"; Bakken 169-70).The impacts of new technologies should not be seen in simple terms, however. Valentine and Skelton summarise: “the Internet is not producing either just positive or just negative outcomes for D/deaf people but rather is generating a complex set of paradoxical effects for different users” (Valentine and Skelton, "Umbilical" 12). They note, for example, that the ability, via text-based on-line social media to interact with other people on-line regardless of geographic location, hearing status or facility with sign language has been highly valued by some of their deaf respondents. They comment, however, that the fact that many deaf people, using the Internet, can “pass” minimises the need for hearing people in a phonocentric society to be aware of the diversity of ways communication can take place. They note, for example, that “few mainstream Websites demonstrate awareness of D/deaf peoples’ information and communication needs/preferences (eg. by incorporating sign language video clips)” ("Changing" 11). As such, many deaf people have an enhanced ability to interact with a range of others, but in a mode favoured by the dominant culture, a culture which is thus unchallenged by exposure to alternative strategies of communication. Our research, preliminary as it is, suggests a somewhat different take on these complex questions. The visually driven, image-rich approach taken to movie making, Web-searching and information sharing by our participants suggests the emergence of a certain kind of on-line culture which seems likely to be shared by deaf and hearing young people. However where Valentine and Skelton suggest deaf people, in order to participate on-line, are obliged to do so, on the terms of the hearing majority, the increasingly visual nature of Web 2.0 suggests that the terrain may be shifting – even if there is still some way to go.AcknowledgementsWe would like to thank Natalie Kull and Meg Stewart for their research assistance on this project, and participants in the course and members of the project’s steering group for their generosity with their time and ideas.ReferencesBahan, B. "Upon the Formation of a Visual Variety of the Human Race. In H-Dirksen L. Baumann (ed.), Open Your Eyes: Deaf Studies Talking. London: University of Minnesota Press, 2007.Bakken, F. “SMS Use among Deaf Teens and Young Adults in Norway.” In R. Harper, L. Palen, and A. Taylor (eds.), The Inside Text: Social, Cultural and Design Perspectives on SMS. Netherlands: Springe, 2005. 161-74. Berners-Lee, Tim. Weaving the Web. London: Orion Business, 1999.Bertolucci, Jeff. “YouTube Offers Auto-Captioning to All Users.” PC World 5 Mar. 2010. 5 Mar. 2010 < http://www.macworld.com/article/146879/2010/03/YouTube_captions.html >.Breivik, Jan Kare. Deaf Identities in the Making: Local Lives, Transnational Connections. Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press, 2005.———. “Deaf Identities: Visible Culture, Hidden Dilemmas and Scattered Belonging.” In H.G. Sicakkan and Y.G. Lithman (eds.), What Happens When a Society Is Diverse: Exploring Multidimensional Identities. Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2006. 75-104.Brueggemann, B.J. (ed.). Literacy and Deaf People’s Cultural and Contextual Perspectives. Washington, DC: Gaudellet University Press, 2004. Bruns, Axel. Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life and Beyond: From Production to Produsage. New York: Peter Lang, 2008.Byrnes, Linda, Jeff Sigafoos, Field Rickards, and P. Margaret Brown. “Inclusion of Students Who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing in Government Schools in New South Wales, Australia: Development and Implementation of a Policy.” Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 7.3 (2002): 244-257.Cahill, Martin, and Scott Hollier. Social Media Accessibility Review 1.0. Media Access Australia, 2009. Cavender, Anna, and Richard Ladner. “Hearing Impairments.” In S. Harper and Y. Yesilada (eds.), Web Accessibility. London: Springer, 2008.Ellis, Katie. “A Purposeful Rebuilding: YouTube, Representation, Accessibility and the Socio-Political Space of Disability." Telecommunications Journal of Australia 60.2 (2010): 1.1-21.12.Fajardo, Inmaculada, Elena Parra, and Jose J. Canas. “Do Sign Language Videos Improve Web Navigation for Deaf Signer Users?” Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 15.3 (2009): 242-262.Harper, Phil. “Networking the Deaf Nation.” Australian Journal of Communication 30.3 (2003): 153-166.Hyde, M., D. Power, and K. Lloyd. "W(h)ither the Deaf Community? Comments on Trevor Johnston’s Population, Genetics and the Future of Australian Sign Language." Sign Language Studies 6.2 (2006): 190-201. Keating, Elizabeth, and Gene Mirus. “American Sign Language in Virtual Space: Interactions between Deaf Users of Computer-Mediated Video.” Language in Society 32.5 (Nov. 2003): 693-714.Krentz, Christopher. Writing Deafness: The Hearing Line in Nineteenth-Century Literature. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.Leigh, Irene. A Lens on Deaf Identities. Oxford: Oxford UP. 2009.Marshall Gentry, M., K.M. Chinn, and R.D. Moulton. “Effectiveness of Multimedia Reading Materials When Used with Children Who Are Deaf.” American Annals of the Deaf 5 (2004): 394-403.Mather, S., and E. Winston. "Spatial Mapping and Involvement in ASL Storytelling." In C. Lucas (ed.), Pinky Extension and Eye Gaze: Language Use in Deaf Communities. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press, 1998. 170-82.Metzger, M. "Constructed Action and Constructed Dialogue in American Sign Language." In C. Lucas (ed.), Sociolinguistics in Deaf Communities. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press, 1995. 255-71.Power, Des, and G. Leigh. "Principles and Practices of Literacy Development for Deaf Learners: A Historical Overview." Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 5.1 (2000): 3-8.Power, Des, and Merv Hyde. “The Characteristics and Extent of Participation of Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Students in Regular Classes in Australian Schools.” Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 7.4 (2002): 302-311.Power, M., and D. Power “Everyone Here Speaks TXT: Deaf People Using SMS in Australia and the Rest of the World.” Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 9.3 (2004). Power, M., D. Power, and L. Horstmanshof. “Deaf People Communicating via SMS, TTY, Relay Service, Fax, and Computers in Australia.” Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 12.1 (2007): 80-92. Rayman, J. "Storytelling in the Visual Mode: A Comparison of ASL and English." In E. Wilson (ed.), Storytelling & Conversation: Discourse in Deaf Communities. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press, 2002. 59-82.Schonfeld, Eric. "ComScore: YouTube Now 25 Percent of All Google Searches." Tech Crunch 18 Dec. 2008. 14 May 2009 < http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/18/comscore-YouTube-now-25-percent-of-all-google-searches/?rss >.Smith, Chad. “Where Is It? How Deaf Adolescents Complete Fact-Based Internet Search Tasks." American Annals of the Deaf 151.5 (2005-6).Swanwick, R., and S. Gregory (eds.). Sign Bilingual Education: Policy and Practice. Coleford: Douglas McLean Publishing, 2007.Tane Akamatsu, C., C. Mayer, and C. Farrelly. “An Investigation of Two-Way Text Messaging Use with Deaf Students at the Secondary Level.” Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 11.1 (2006): 120-131.Valentine, Gill, and Tracy Skelton. “Changing Spaces: The Role of the Internet in Shaping Deaf Geographies.” Social and Cultural Geography 9.5 (2008): 469-85.———. “‘An Umbilical Cord to the World’: The Role of the Internet in D/deaf People’s Information and Communication Practices." Information, Communication and Society 12.1 (2009): 44-65.Vogel, Jennifer, Clint Bowers, Cricket Meehan, Raegan Hoeft, and Kristy Bradley. “Virtual Reality for Life Skills Education: Program Evaluation.” Deafness and Education International 61 (2004): 39-47.Wilson, J. "The Tobacco Story: Narrative Structure in an ASL Story." In C. Lucas (ed.), Multicultural Aspects of Sociolinguistics in Deaf Communities. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press, 1996. 152-80.Winston (ed.). Storytelling and Conversation: Discourse in Deaf Communities. Washington, D.C: Gallaudet University Press. 59-82.Woods, Denise. “Communicating in Virtual Worlds through an Accessible Web 2.0 Solution." Telecommunications Journal of Australia 60.2 (2010): 19.1-19.16YouTube Most Viewed. Online video. YouTube 2009. 23 May 2009 < http://www.YouTube.com/browse?s=mp&t=a >.

In the last months of his life, 86-year-old Albert Facey became a best-selling author and revered cultural figure following the publication of his autobiography, A Fortunate Life. Released on Anzac Day 1981, it was praised for its “plain, unembellished, utterly sincere and un-self-pitying account of the privations of childhood and youth” (Semmler) and “extremely powerful description of Gallipoli” (Dutton 16). Within weeks, critic Nancy Keesing declared it an “Enduring Classic.” Within six months, it was announced as the winner of two prestigious non-fiction awards, with judges acknowledging Facey’s “extraordinary memory” and “ability to describe scenes and characters with great precision” (“NBC” 4). A Fortunate Life also transformed the fortunes of its publisher. Founded in 1976 as an independent, not-for-profit publishing house, Fremantle Arts Centre Press (FACP) might have been expected, given the Australian average, to survive for just a few years. Former managing editor Ray Coffey attributes the Press’s ongoing viability, in no small measure, to Facey’s success (King 29). Along with Wendy Jenkins, Coffey edited Facey’s manuscript through to publication; only five months after its release, with demand outstripping the capabilities, FACP licensed Penguin to take over the book’s production and distribution. Adaptations soon followed. In 1984, Kerry Packer’s PBL launched a prospectus for a mini-series, which raised a record $6.3 million (PBL 7–8). Aired in 1986 with a high-rating documentary called The Facey Phenomenon, the series became the most watched television event of the year (Lucas). Syndication of chapters to national and regional newspapers, stage and radio productions, audio- and e-books, abridged editions for young readers, and inclusion on secondary school curricula extended the range and influence of Facey’s life writing. Recently, an option was taken out for a new television series (Fraser).A hundred reprints and two million readers on from initial publication, A Fortunate Life continues to rate among the most appreciated Australian books of all time. Commenting on a reader survey in 2012, writer and critic Marieke Hardy enthused, “I really loved it [. . .] I felt like I was seeing a part of my country and my country’s history through a very human voice . . .” (First Tuesday Book Club). Registering a transformed reading, Hardy’s reference to Australian “history” is unproblematically juxtaposed with amused delight in an autobiography that invents and embellishes: not believing “half” of what Facey wrote, she insists he was foremost a yarn spinner. While the work’s status as a witness account has become less authoritative over time, it seems appreciation of the author’s imagination and literary skill has increased (Williamson). A Fortunate Life has been read more commonly as an uncomplicated, first-hand account, such that editor Wendy Jenkins felt it necessary to refute as an “utter mirage” that memoir is “transferred to the page by an act of perfect dictation.” Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson argue of life narratives that some “autobiographical claims [. . .] can be verified or discounted by recourse to documentation outside the text. But autobiographical truth is a different matter” (16). With increased access to archives, especially digitised personnel records, historians have asserted that key elements of Facey’s autobiography are incorrect or “fabricated” (Roberts), including his enlistment in 1914 and participation in the Gallipoli Landing on 25 April 1915. We have researched various sources relevant to Facey’s early years and war service, including hard-copy medical and repatriation records released in 2012, and find A Fortunate Life in a range of ways deviates from “documentation outside of the text,” revealing intriguing, layered storytelling. We agree with Smith and Watson that “autobiographical acts” are “anything but simple or transparent” (63). As “symbolic interactions in the world,” they are “culturally and historically specific” and “engaged in an argument about identity” (63). Inevitably, they are also “fractured by the play of meaning” (63). Our approach, therefore, includes textual analysis of Facey’s drafts alongside the published narrative and his medical records. We do not privilege institutional records as impartial but rather interpret them in terms of their hierarchies and organisation of knowledge. This leads us to speculate on alternative readings of A Fortunate Life as an illness narrative that variously resists and subscribes to dominant cultural plots, tropes, and attitudes. Facey set about writing in earnest in the 1970s and generated (at least) three handwritten drafts, along with a typescript based on the third draft. FACP produced its own working copy from the typescript. Our comparison of the drafts offers insights into the production of Facey’s final text and the otherwise “hidden” roles of editors as transformers and enablers (Munro 1). The notion that a working man with basic literacy could produce a highly readable book in part explains Facey’s enduring appeal. His grandson and literary executor, John Rose, observed in early interviews that Facey was a “natural storyteller” who had related details of his life at every opportunity over a period of more than six decades (McLeod). Jenkins points out that Facey belonged to a vivid oral culture within which he “told and retold stories to himself and others,” so that they eventually “rubbed down into the lines and shapes that would so memorably underpin the extended memoir that became A Fortunate Life.” A mystique was thereby established that “time” was Albert Facey’s “first editor” (Jenkins). The publisher expressly aimed to retain Facey’s voice, content, and meaning, though editing included much correcting of grammar and punctuation, eradication of internal inconsistencies and anomalies, and structural reorganisation into six sections and 68 chapters. We find across Facey’s drafts a broadly similar chronology detailing childhood abandonment, life-threatening incidents, youthful resourcefulness, physical prowess, and participation in the Gallipoli Landing. However, there are also shifts and changed details, including varying descriptions of childhood abuse at a place called Cave Rock; the introduction of (incompatible accounts of) interstate boxing tours in drafts two and three which replace shearing activities in Draft One; divergent tales of Facey as a world-standard athlete, league footballer, expert marksman, and powerful swimmer; and changing stories of enlistment and war service (see Murphy and Nile, “Wounded”; “Naked”).Jenkins edited those sections concerned with childhood and youth, while Coffey attended to Facey’s war and post-war life. Drawing on C.E.W. Bean’s official war history, Coffey introduced specificity to the draft’s otherwise vague descriptions of battle and amended errors, such as Facey’s claim to have witnessed Lord Kitchener on the beach at Gallipoli. Importantly, Coffey suggested the now famous title, “A Fortunate Life,” and encouraged the author to alter the ending. When asked to suggest a title, Facey offered “Cave Rock” (Interview)—the site of his violent abuse and humiliation as a boy. Draft One concluded with Facey’s repatriation from the war and marriage in 1916 (106); Draft Two with a brief account of continuing post-war illness and ultimate defeat: “My war injuries caught up with me again” (107). The submitted typescript concludes: “I have often thought that going to War has caused my life to be wasted” (Typescript 206). This ending differs dramatically from the redemptive vision of the published narrative: “I have lived a very good life, it has been very rich and full. I have been very fortunate and I am thrilled by it when I look back” (412).In The Wounded Storyteller, Arthur Frank argues that literary markets exist for stories of “narrative wreckage” (196) that are redeemed by reconciliation, resistance, recovery, or rehabilitation, which is precisely the shape of Facey’s published life story and a source of its popularity. Musing on his post-war experiences in A Fortunate Life, Facey focuses on his ability to transform the material world around him: “I liked the challenge of building up a place from nothing and making a success where another fellow had failed” (409). If Facey’s challenge was building up something from nothing, something he could set to work on and improve, his life-writing might reasonably be regarded as a part of this broader project and desire for transformation, so that editorial interventions helped him realise this purpose. Facey’s narrative was produced within a specific zeitgeist, which historian Joy Damousi notes was signalled by publication in 1974 of Bill Gammage’s influential, multiply-reprinted study of front-line soldiers, The Broken Years, which drew on the letters and diaries of a thousand Great War veterans, and also the release in 1981 of Peter Weir’s film Gallipoli, for which Gammage was the historical advisor. The story of Australia’s war now conceptualised fallen soldiers as “innocent victims” (Damousi 101), while survivors were left to “compose” memories consistent with their sacrifice (Thomson 237–54). Viewing Facey’s drafts reminds us that life narratives are works of imagination, that the past is not fixed and memory is created in the present. Facey’s autobiographical efforts and those of his publisher to improve the work’s intelligibility and relevance together constitute an attempt to “objectify the self—to present it as a knowable object—through a narrative that re-structures [. . .] the self as history and conclusions” (Foster 10). Yet, such histories almost invariably leave “a crucial gap” or “censored chapter.” Dennis Foster argues that conceiving of narration as confession, rather than expression, “allows us to see the pathos of the simultaneous pursuit and evasion of meaning” (10); we believe a significant lacuna in Facey’s life writing is intimated by its various transformations.In a defining episode, A Fortunate Life proposes that Facey was taken from Gallipoli on 19 August 1915 due to wounding that day from a shell blast that caused sandbags to fall on him, crush his leg, and hurt him “badly inside,” and a bullet to the shoulder (348). The typescript, however, includes an additional but narratively irreconcilable date of 28 June for the same wounding. The later date, 19 August, was settled on for publication despite the author’s compelling claim for the earlier one: “I had been blown up by a shell and some 7 or 8 sandbags had fallen on top of me, the day was the 28th of June 1915, how I remembered this date, it was the day my brother Roy had been killed by a shell burst.” He adds: “I was very ill for about six weeks after the incident but never reported it to our Battalion doctor because I was afraid he would send me away” (Typescript 205). This account accords with Facey’s first draft and his medical records but is inconsistent with other parts of the typescript that depict an uninjured Facey taking a leading role in fierce fighting throughout July and August. It appears, furthermore, that Facey was not badly wounded at any time. His war service record indicates that he was removed from Gallipoli due to “heart troubles” (Repatriation), which he also claims in his first draft. Facey’s editors did not have ready access to military files in Canberra, while medical files were not released until 2012. There existed, therefore, virtually no opportunity to corroborate the author’s version of events, while the official war history and the records of the State Library of Western Australia, which were consulted, contain no reference to Facey or his war service (Interview). As a consequence, the editors were almost entirely dependent on narrative logic and clarifications by an author whose eyesight and memory had deteriorated to such an extent he was unable to read his amended text. A Fortunate Life depicts men with “nerve sickness” who were not permitted to “stay at the Front because they would be upsetting to the others, especially those who were inclined that way themselves” (350). By cross referencing the draft manuscripts against medical records, we can now perceive that Facey was regarded as one of those nerve cases. According to Facey’s published account, his wounds “baffled” doctors in Egypt and Fremantle (353). His medical records reveal that in September 1915, while hospitalised in Egypt, his “palpitations” were diagnosed as “Tachycardia” triggered by war-induced neuroses that began on 28 June. This suggests that Facey endured seven weeks in the field in this condition, with the implication being that his debility worsened, resulting in his hospitalisation. A diagnosis of “debility,” “nerves,” and “strain” placed Facey in a medical category of “Special Invalids” (Butler 541). Major A.W. Campbell noted in the Medical Journal of Australia in 1916 that the war was creating “many cases of little understood nervous and mental affections, not only where a definite wound has been received, but in many cases where nothing of the sort appears” (323). Enlisted doctors were either physicians or surgeons and sometimes both. None had any experience of trauma on the scale of the First World War. In 1915, Campbell was one of only two Australian doctors with any pre-war experience of “mental diseases” (Lindstrom 30). On staff at the Australian Base Hospital at Heliopolis throughout the Gallipoli campaign, he claimed that at times nerve cases “almost monopolised” the wards under his charge (319). Bearing out Facey’s description, Campbell also reported that affected men “received no sympathy” and, as “carriers of psychic contagion,” were treated as a “source of danger” to themselves and others (323). Credentialed by royal colleges in London and coming under British command, Australian medical teams followed the practice of classifying men presenting “nervous or mental symptoms” as “battle casualties” only if they had also been wounded by “enemy action” (Loughran 106). By contrast, functional disability, with no accompanying physical wounds, was treated as unmanly and a “hysterical” reaction to the pressures of war. Mental debility was something to be feared in the trenches and diagnosis almost invariably invoked charges of predisposition or malingering (Tyquin 148–49). This shifted responsibility (and blame) from the war to the individual. Even as late as the 1950s, medical notes referred to Facey’s condition as being “constitutional” (Repatriation).Facey’s narrative demonstrates awareness of how harshly sufferers were treated. We believe that he defended himself against this with stories of physical injury that his doctors never fully accepted and that he may have experienced conversion disorder, where irreconcilable experience finds somatic expression. His medical diagnosis in 1915 and later life writing establish a causal link with the explosion and his partial burial on 28 June, consistent with opinion at the time that linked concussive blasts with destabilisation of the nervous system (Eager 422). Facey was also badly shaken by exposure to the violence and abjection of war, including hand-to-hand combat and retrieving for burial shattered and often decomposed bodies, and, in particular, by the death of his brother Roy, whose body was blown to pieces on 28 June. (A second brother, Joseph, was killed by multiple bayonet wounds while Facey was convalescing in Egypt.) Such experiences cast a different light on Facey’s observation of men suffering nerves on board the hospital ship: “I have seen men doze off into a light sleep and suddenly jump up shouting, ‘Here they come! Quick! Thousands of them. We’re doomed!’” (350). Facey had escaped the danger of death by explosion or bayonet but at a cost, and the war haunted him for the rest of his days. On disembarkation at Fremantle on 20 November 1915, he was admitted to hospital where he remained on and off for several months. Forty-one other sick and wounded disembarked with him (HMAT). Around one third, experiencing nerve-related illness, had been sent home for rest; while none returned to the war, some of the physically wounded did (War Service Records). During this time, Facey continued to present with “frequent attacks of palpitation and giddiness,” was often “short winded,” and had “heart trouble” (Repatriation). He was discharged from the army in June 1916 but, his drafts suggest, his war never really ended. He began a new life as a wounded Anzac. His dependent and often fractious relationship with the Repatriation Department ended only with his death 66 years later. Historian Marina Larsson persuasively argues that repatriated sick and wounded servicemen from the First World War represented a displaced presence at home. Many led liminal lives of “disenfranchised grief” (80). Stephen Garton observes a distinctive Australian use of repatriation to describe “all policies involved in returning, discharging, pensioning, assisting and training returned men and women, and continuing to assist them throughout their lives” (74). Its primary definition invokes coming home but to repatriate also implies banishment from a place that is not home, so that Facey was in this sense expelled from Gallipoli and, by extension, excluded from the myth of Anzac. Unlike his two brothers, he would not join history as one of the glorious dead; his name would appear on no roll of honour. Return home is not equivalent to restoration of his prior state and identity, for baggage from the other place perpetually weighs. Furthermore, failure to regain health and independence strains hospitality and gratitude for the soldier’s service to King and country. This might be exacerbated where there is no evident or visible injury, creating suspicion of resistance, cowardice, or malingering. Over 26 assessments between 1916 and 1958, when Facey was granted a full war pension, the Repatriation Department observed him as a “neuropathic personality” exhibiting “paroxysmal tachycardia” and “neurocirculatory asthenia.” In 1954, doctors wrote, “We consider the condition is a real handicap and hindrance to his getting employment.” They noted that after “attacks,” Facey had a “busted depressed feeling,” but continued to find “no underlying myocardial disease” (Repatriation) and no validity in Facey’s claims that he had been seriously physically wounded in the war (though A Fortunate Life suggests a happier outcome, where an independent medical panel finally locates the cause of his ongoing illness—rupture of his spleen in the war—which results in an increased war pension). Facey’s condition was, at times, a source of frustration for the doctors and, we suspect, disappointment and shame to him, though this appeared to reduce on both sides when the Repatriation Department began easing proof of disability from the 1950s (Thomson 287), and the Department of Veteran’s Affairs was created in 1976. This had the effect of shifting public and media scrutiny back onto a system that had until then deprived some “innocent victims of the compensation that was their due” (Garton 249). Such changes anticipated the introduction of Post-Traumatic Shock Disorder (PTSD) to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 1980. Revisions to the DSM established a “genealogy of trauma” and “panic disorders” (100, 33), so that diagnoses such as “neuropathic personality” (Echterling, Field, and Stewart 192) and “soldier’s heart,” that is, disorders considered “neurotic,” were “retrospectively reinterpreted” as a form of PTSD. However, Alberti points out that, despite such developments, war-related trauma continues to be contested (80). We propose that Albert Facey spent his adult life troubled by a sense of regret and failure because of his removal from Gallipoli and that he attempted to compensate through storytelling, which included his being an original Anzac and seriously wounded in action. By writing, Facey could shore up his rectitude, work ethic, and sense of loyalty to other servicemen, which became necessary, we believe, because repatriation doctors (and probably others) had doubted him. In 1927 and again in 1933, an examining doctor concluded: “The existence of a disability depends entirely on his own unsupported statements” (Repatriation). We argue that Facey’s Gallipoli experiences transformed his life. By his own account, he enlisted for war as a physically robust and supremely athletic young man and returned nine months later to life-long anxiety and ill-health. Publication transformed him into a national sage, earning him, in his final months, the credibility, empathy, and affirmation he had long sought. Exploring different accounts of Facey, in the shape of his drafts and institutional records, gives rise to new interpretations. In this context, we believe it is time for a new edition of A Fortunate Life that recognises it as a complex testimonial narrative and theorises Facey’s deployment of national legends and motifs in relation to his “wounded storytelling” as well as to shifting cultural and medical conceptualisations and treatments of shame and trauma. ReferencesAlberti, Fay Bound. Matters of the Heart: History, Medicine, and Emotions. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2010. Butler, A.G. Official History of the Australian Medical Services 1814-1918: Vol I Gallipoli, Palestine and New Guinea. 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