Rituals of Royalty and the Elaboration of Ceremony in Oman: View from the Edge

Ceremonial and elaborate protocols are commonly associated with kingship, authority and power and imbued with a sense of an ancient past. Yet traditions, particularly as pertaining to European practices, are often made up, choreographed and then formally instituted in a matter of a few years. Throughout Europe and the developing world, traditions have been, and continue to be, invented and kingship, oligarchy, and other institutions are set up, supported and occasionally simply maintained by such ceremony. Once established these rituals tend to take on a life of their own, sometimes thriving in an inverse relationship to the actual realities of power and authority. In the Middle East few studies exist which examine the study of royal rituals - invented and derived. Morocco, perhaps more than any other state, has been the focus of a number of such studies a few others considered aspects of ceremonial and monarchy in Jordan. In the case of Oman, however, there are no studies at present which consider the relationship between created ceremonial in the consolidation of power and authority in the perception of the citizens of that state. This article will briefly explore the creation and elaboration of ceremonial and court ritual in the Sultanate of Oman after the accession of Sultan Qaboos bin Said in 1970. It will attempt to show that while the creation of rituals of royalty were important for building a sense of national belonging among even the most remote communities in the country, these same ceremonials and created traditions developed lives of their own, stultifying courtly behaviour, and contributing little to the organic sense of Omani citizenship.

Improving users’ comprehension of changes with animation and sound: an empirical assessment

Animation or sound is often used in user interfaces as an attempt to improve users' perception and comprehension of evolving situations and support them in decision-making. However, empirical data establishing their real effectiveness on the comprehension of changes are still lacking. We have carried out an experiment using four combinations of visual and auditory feedback in a split attention task. The results not only confirm that such feedback improves the perception of changes, but they also demonstrate that animation and sound used alone or combined bring major improvements on the comprehension of a changing situation. Based on these results, we propose design guidelines about the most efficient combinations to be used in user interfaces

Gendered vulnerability and forced conscription in the war in Syria

This paper was presented at a workshop on ‘The Long-term Challenges of Forced Migration: Local and Regional Perspectives from Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq’ organised by the LSE Middle East Centre in June 2016. It was published as part of a collected papers volume available in English and Arabic

Los efectos del clima sobre las sociedades trashumantes

Omán y Mongolia son un reflejo de los retos climáticos y sociales modernos de los medios de vida propios de los trashumantes

The Syrian humanitarian disaster: Understanding perceptions and aspirations in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey

This paper was presented at a workshop on ‘The Long-term Challenges of Forced Migration: Local and Regional Perspectives from Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq’ organised by the LSE Middle East Centre in June 2016. It was published as part of a collected papers volume available in English and Arabic

Formulating the design rationale of visual representation

8pWhen designing a representation, a designer implicitly formulates a method required to understand and use the representation effectively. This paper aims at making the method explicit, in order to help designers elicit their design choices. In particular, we present a set of concepts to systematically analyze what a user must theoretically do visually to find information. The analysis consists in a decomposition of the activity of scanning into elementary visualization operations. We show how the analysis applies on various existing representation, and how expected benefits can be expressed in terms of elementary operations. The decomposition highlights the challenges encountered by a user when figuring out a representation, and helps designer to exhibit possible flaws in their design.The set of elementary operations form the basis of a shared, common language for representation designers

A descriptive model of visual scanning

International audienceWhen designing a representation, a designer implicitly formulates a sequence of visual tasks required to understand and use the representation effectively. This paper aims to make the sequence of visual tasks explicit, in order to help designers eliciting their design choices. In particular, we present a set of concepts to systematically analyze what a user must theoretically do to decipher representation. The analysis consists of a decomposition of the activity of scanning into elementary visualization operations. We show how the analysis applies to various existing representations, and how expected benefits can be expressed in terms of elementary operations. The set of elementary operations form the basis of a shared, common language for representation designers. The decomposition highlights the challenges encountered by a user when deciphering a representation, and helps designers to exhibit possible flaws in their design, justify their choices, and compare designs

Tracking team mental workload by multimodal measurements in the operating room

Mental workload and its effects on surgical performance are underexplored topics, despite their importance for operating room (OR) efficiency and patient safety. We developed a multimodal platform that can simultaneously collect data from EEG, heart rate and breathing rate, tool handle pressure, and eye tracker from mobile subjects. We performed experiments using the Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Surgery model, with 22 subjects of varying skill levels ranging from nonsurgeon to expert. The results indicated significant modulations of the measurements depending on pupil size, heart rate variability, P300 response, tool pressure, task difficulty, time-on-task, and skill level. These provide evidence that physiology based metrics can be used in automated classification of fine gradations of skill, the assessment and certification of surgery trainees, developing real-time flags and warnings for the OR, and validating new OR technology

L'évolution de Linux vers les nouvelles formes d'ordinateurs personnels

Les tablettes tactiles représentent une première étape dans l'évolution de la forme des ordinateurs depuis le poste de travail graphique vers une plus grande variété. Il faut adapter les systèmes d'exploitation à une plus grande variabilité des moyens d'entrée, et à la remise en cause d'hypothèses de base telles que la présence d'un clavier ou d'un unique pointeur de désignation. Cela demande donc de multiples évolutions dans Linux, qui doit continuer à faire fonctionner les applications existantes. La gestion des entrées, dans le noyau et le serveur X, est modifiée pour tenir compte de flux d'information plus complexes. La reconnaissance de gestes est introduite, tant pour simuler le clavier ou la souris que pour proposer de nouveaux styles d'interaction. De nouvelles conventions d'interaction adaptées aux tablettes sont en cours de définition dans la distribution Ubuntu. Des modifications plus profondes de la gestion des entrées pour préparer les prochaines évolutions sont à l'étude

Supporting air traffic control collaboration with a tabletop system

International audienceCollaboration is key to safety and efficiency in Air Traffic Control. Legacy paper-based systems enable seamless and non-verbal collaboration, but trends in new software and hardware for ATC tend to separate controllers more and more, which hinders collaboration. This paper presents a new interactive system designed to support collaboration in ATC. We ran a series of interviews and workshops to identify collaborative situations in ATC. From this analysis, we derived a set of requirements to support collaboration: support mutual awareness, communication and coordination, dynamic task allocation and simultaneous use with more than two people. We designed a set of new interactive tools to fulfill the requirements, by using a multi-user tabletop surface, appropriate feedthrough, and reified and partially-accomplishable actions. Preliminary evaluation shows that feedthrough is important, users benefit from a number of tools to communicate and coordinate their actions, and the tabletop is actually usable by three people both in tightly coupled tasks and parallel, individual activities. At a higher level, we also found that co-location is not enough to generate mutual awareness if users are not engaged in meaningful collaboration