The portability of touch-sensitive screen tablets provides high usability under various circumstances, and such tablets are increasingly utilized in the education and other fields. Meanwhile, the design of the graphical user interface (GUI) of such tablets requires careful consideration in order not to lose tablet operability in such diverse situations. In this study, we conduct an experiment to investigate the effect that touch-sensitive screen button size and spacing have on operability, while considering the influence of the angle that the forefinger makes when touching the screen. As a result, we could determine the conditions required for the size and spacing of buttons to allow fast and accurate operation independent of contact angle. Furthermore, we could reveal the relationship between contact angle and area, and investigate the impact of the contact angle when touching smaller buttons.

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The solid texturing technique is used to express grain in computer graphics. However, it cannot currently express the variety of annual tree ring patterns. To solve this issue, we propose an accurate model for the fluctuations of annual ring patterns. We first analyzed the fluctuations of natural pine. Based on this analysis, we designed a fluctuation generation model that combines three elements: disordering of the skeletal axis, disordering of annual ring intervals, and disordering of the circumference. We compared grain texture images created using our fluctuation generation model with images created using the existing method. Our results confirm that the proposed method produced more realistic images.

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We detected the cerebral activity region under clothing pressure by a waist belt using near-infrared spectroscopy as basic research in order to create a method for evaluation of clothing comfort. The measured items were near-infrared spectroscopy, electrocardiogram, finger skin blood flow and sensory test. As a result, the clothing pressure on the abdomen activated the following brain activity areas: “the prefrontal area”, “the lateral sulcus side area traversing the premotor area, motor area and somatosensory area” and “the parietal area across the motor area and somatosensory area”. In the somatotopic map of the postcentral gyrus by Penfield and Rasmussen, trunk sensations are located near the parietal region and intra-abdominal sensations are located near the lateral sulcus. It is presumed that the results of this experiment correspond to the somatotopic map. These results are useful to evaluate the influence that clothing pressure imparts to brain activity.

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Ultra-high definition (4K) imaging allows us to achieve considerably higher image quality than would high definition (HD) imaging. The present study examined how 4K and HD imaging could influence subjective impressions of movies differently, in association with the quantities of motion and fields of view of these movies. We found that stronger impressions regarding comfort and impact were evoked for 4K movies with smaller quantities of motion and medium field of view. Stronger perceptions of impact occurred for HD movies with larger quantities of motion and larger field of view. HD movies also gave stronger impression regarding dynamics regardless of motion quantities. Additionally, HD movies down-converted from 4K movies tended to induce higher impressions regarding evaluation and comfort in some situations. These results suggest that subjective impressions of movies are influenced by the differences in resolution images, as well as interactions between imaging types and characteristics of movie contents.

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The purpose of this study is to reveal the bedding influence degree to quality of sleep. This bedding utilized Phase Change Materials (PCM). We carried out two experiments. Firstly, we experimentally confirmed thermal properties of the PCM. Secondly, we carried out overnight sleep experiment in hot and cold environment. We prepared the PCM bedding and normal bedding that is commercially-supplied. Consequently, the PCM had been the property of cold tactile sensation rather than the normal bedding. From overnight sleep experiment, we found that subjects fell asleep earlier by using the PCM bedding. In cold environment, subjects' skin humidity was low and felt bad after sleep in the PCM bedding sleep. We concluded the PCM has a special endothermic property to deprive the temperature of skin surface.

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Pictograms attract attention in supporting the non-verbal communication and using of interface icon. The existing pictograms are basically painted in monochrome. It was clarified from existing studies that we could clear the mean of pictograms using color expression. However, there were few studies which analyzed the relation between comprehensibility and color express of pictograms and few useful design indexes when painting colors of the pictogram. Then, this study aims to analyze comprehensibility of the pictograms using color expression and to abstract the visual languages. The visual languages are visual elements that composing the design of pictograms communicating information visually. Concretely, we clarified typical colors and color combinations of morphological elements in 20 pictograms conveying meanings of verbs. On the basis of this result, we investigated the relation between comprehensibility and color expression of pictograms by experimental design method. And, we abstracted the visual languages for painting colors of the pictogram and verified its usefulness. As a result, we have clarified the usefulness of some visual languages. However, the comprehensibility of some pictograms was decreased by colorization, we considered characteristics of those color expression.

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The objectives of this research are to implement the examination and the analysis of the utterances that accompany movements, and to elucidate whether these utterances are likely to be applied as movement-support technology. In the first phase of the field survey, we studied changes in the rate of vocal output with changes in the height of a platform to stand on; then, in the second phase of the survey, we investigated the influence exerted by vocal output or the absence thereof on walking ease and Maximum Walking Speed (MWS). In the analytical study, we observed excitation levels of spinal motor cells in healthy adults using H-wave. It is suggested by the results that (1) the rate of vocalization changes, (2) MWS is not improved, (3) the ease of walking is affected, and (4) the level of stimulation of spinal cord motor cells is increased.

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This paper discusses the changes of magazines which women read according to the age using figures of the network, which we got from the answers to questionnaire of women's junior college students. The link of the network expresses frequent combinations of magazines read in the same period or frequent changes of magazines which women read. This paper covers fashion magazines, comic magazines and animation magazines. At first, it is found that the combination of magazines with a similar property are read in the same period. Next, changes of magazines which women read is clarified. 51.22%, 28.66%, and 19.51% of the college students read “Chao,” “Ribon,” and “Nakayoshi” in their childhood, respectively. Readers of “Chao” and those of “Ribbon” come to read fashion magazines or boys' comics for teenagers, and then street fashion or girly fashion magazines. “Nakayoshi” readers, however, tend to continue reading comic magazines sequentially.

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We produced the average face by combining forty-one facial images of female college students in order to investigate how the facial impression changes depending on distance between eyes and eyebrows. Furthermore, we produced ten experiment samples by shortening or widening distance between them of the average face in five steps respectively. These images were presented individually to ninety college students, and they were asked to evaluate them using twenty adjective pairs. Consequently, the average face received high evaluations about likability-related impressions, while the faces with shorter distance between eyes and eyebrow got high evaluations about activity-related impressions. Moreover, two principal component (“degree of refinement” and “femininity”) were extracted as a result of principal component analysis to evaluation scores. It was found that degree of refinement was likely to be affected by the perceived size of the eyes, and femininity was defined by distance between eyes and eyebrow.

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In the field of marketing, a questionnaire is one of the most important approaches in order to research the market or to design a marketing strategy. On the other hand, people have a variety of individuality recently, then respondents have various impressions to evaluation objects. In the analysis of collected questionnaire data, it is important not only to analyze overall trends but also to discover local groups which have strong impressions but are different from general groups. It is, however, difficult to extract local groups with high similarity by conventional cluster analysis applied to questionnaire data, because they generally aim at extracting general groups or making a rough clustering. In this paper, we propose the extraction method of local groups with high similarity in questionnaire data using the spectral clustering method which considers local similarity and extracts the clusters having less connection to general groups.

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In this study, I propose that a local event can be considered as a “system for information transmission”. Such a system has three functions, namely, “information”, “production”, and “acceptability”. This study provides a conceptual diagram for depicting a local event as a system for information transmission. Though local events can be classified in different ways, they are represented using a specific image in the conceptual diagram. Furthermore, in order to understand the current local events, I compare these events to those that occurred during the Japanese bubble economy.

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An item characteristic chart (ICC) is a tool to investigate the functioning of multiple-choice items. Drawing trace lines (TLs) for distractors, in addition to a correct option, visualizes the propensity of incorrect responses and facilitates error analysis. However, TLs for distractors tend to have similar shapes and overlap with each other. This tendency often reduces the visibility of uniquely-shaped, thus informative, TLs. One approach to this problem is to combine similar TLs on the basis of hypothesis constructed from the error analysis to reduce the number of lines in the chart. Although this approach seems straightforward, no widely accepted criterion to evaluate the similarity of TLs is available in the literature. In this paper, we proposed a method to calculate AIC and BIC for the ICC, and investigated its performance. The results of the study indicate that the proposed method can verify the hypothesis derived from error analysis.

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