Coffey and Virtalis team up to bring Virtual Reality to Mining: Exposibram 2009
A valuable insight into how two firms tackle a new industry, in promoting and pushing application of VR technologies, devoted to the mining and mineral extraction industry.

Contrast one of the Key Issues in Determining Both Avatar Facial Gender and Age
When it comes to an avatar face, how it is perceived by others is the most important detail. Surprisingly how the eyes process what they see and turn an androgynous face into one gender or another, or a young face into an aged one, depends to a surprisingly great deal on subtle contrast differences in a small number of facial features.

This book, written by a neuroscientist, proposes that use of technology such as social networking, where computer mediation rather than face to face communication is the order of the day, actively changes how our brains process information over time.

Embodiment: We React to Exposed Teeth Faster than Other Emotional Displays
Researchers from Germany have discovered strong evidence that with humans, picking faces out of a crowd has a lot less to do with the shape of the face, or the expression upon that face, and a lot more to do with whether the teeth are visible or not.

ACQUINE and Virtual Identity
In a handful of the more pioneering virtual environments, a system called FaceGen, along with other, similar systems, allows a user to photograph their face from front and side, and use that to put together a 3D model of their physical head, if they so desire, to use for the basis of their avatar presence online. Other technologies are just coming into use, that allow adjustments, based on attractiveness, of that face.

Processing an Avatar's Facial Colour
Researchers at Toyohashi University of Technology have discovered that the human bain processes the colour of a face separately to the features of that face. This is an interesting development, especially when placed in the context of crafting personalised avatar forms for AI sales agents and other interactive AI in virtual space.

The Minds Eye, Scanning, and Improving VR
If you are looking for someone in a crowded scene, whether a "where's Wally" book, or a crowded cafeteria, your eyes scan the room like a roving spotlight, moving from face to face? Researchers at Researchers at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory have found that you do. What's more there's something very much akin to a clock cycle controlling the speed at which you do so.

The Face is Not Enough to Convey Emotion
An interesting discovery has come out of a study by researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and at New York University and Princeton University. Namely, the discovery that the face is not the primary communicator of emotion. The rest of the body handles that. This is of course critical for our virtual environments and their avatars.

Large Image Display: Bicentennial Man: Aging Android
The concept of aging, or the appearance thereof, is a good one. It is an aspect of circumnavigating the uncanny valley that should never be forgotten: No matter how perfectly a human face, behaviour, mannerisms are recreated, unless the face, the body seems to change with time, the uncanny valley has not really been conquered.

The Numerati takes us into the deep dark world of data mining, a world familiar to any fan of cyberpunk novels, although all too real. A world where stray pieces of information, perhaps revealed by yourself over the net, are enough for someone to narrow down your home address.

(25/04/2005)
Laurentian University's MIRARCO Mining Innovation will be previewing virtual reality projection technology used within the Northern Advanced Visualization Network (NAVNet) at the Mining In Society Show in the Toronto Convention Centre from...

(27/08/2011)
Top scientists from companies such as Google and Yahoo are gathered alongside leading academics at the 17th Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD) in San Diego this week. They will ...

(25/07/2010)
To many big companies, you aren't just a customer, but are described by multiple "dimensions" of information within a computer database. Now, a University of Utah computer scientist has devised a new method for simpler, faster "data min...

(31/07/2009)
The dangers of posting sensitive personal information on social-networking sites are well known, but a researcher has now revealed how data mining these sites can dig up undisclosed personal information.

On Wednesday, in a pr...

(14/05/2009)
Office workers who make time to chat face to face with colleagues may be far more productive than those who rely on e-mail, the phone, or Facebook, suggests a study carried out by researchers at MIT and New York University.

T...