Information processing,evaluation, and utilization: The role of academic libraries in research and development (R & D) in Zambia

The study attempts to apply J.R. Bettman's consumer choice theory to the concept of information processing, evaluation and utilization within the present and future Zambian context. Central to this is the belief that information is a marketable commodity and is one that is critically essential in all activities relating to research and development (R & D) in Zambia. However, the author argues that unless there are discernible changes in the traditional attitudes and cultural values among Zambians, information processed and organized by academic libraries in Zambia will never be fully utilized even in research and development activities.     

The Galileo Affair from John Milton to John Paul II: Problems and Prospects

In an attempt to lay the groundwork for systematically studying the controversy generated by Galileo's trial in 1633, I begin by distinguishing the original 20-year episode from the subsequent 350-year controversy, and the historical aftermath of the original episode from the reflective commentary about it. The historical aftermath is sketched by a periodization into five phases, and the reflective commentary by defining and illustrating several historiographical types: surface-structural, deep-structural, evaluatively overcharged, pro- and anti-clerical, pro- and anti-Galilean, circumstantial, principled, one-dimensional, and multi-dimensional. Finally, I examine in somewhat greater detail Milton's comment in the Areopagitica (1644) and Pope John Paul II's alleged rehabilitation of Galileo (1979–1992).     

ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST: MEDIEVALIST AND MODERNIST IDEAS IN EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH AND PRACTICE

Sitting on a fence is a dangerous course:

You might even get a bullet from a peace‐keeping force.

How're you going to know best,

Once upon a time in the West?

Dire Straits

     

Colour-based rigid body tracking using three-dimensional graphics models

This paper introduces the first stage of a new model-based approach to three-dimensional (3D) human movement tracking. A ‘generate-and-test’ matching procedure was adopted by matching rendered images of a 3D computer graphics model of the human body to target images of rigid body motion. The set of pixels to be compared were just those corresponding to the model of the body in the rendered images. The matching criterion to optimize model position and orientation was based on the minimisation of the RGB (red-green-blue) colour difference between generated model images and associated target images. The method was able to track synthetic image sequences of a half twisting somersault accurately with root-mean-square (rms) errors of less than 5 mm and 0.3∘ for position and orientation estimates respectively. The suitability of the proposed approach for rigid body motion tracking was supported by additional tracking experiments on video image sequences of ‘wooden cross’ trajectories. Comparisons of tracked estimates against manual digitizing estimates returned relatively small rms difference values on both side somersault and twisting somersault movements. The proposed approach has the potential to track video images of a human torso using a rigid body model and hence to track articulated movements by successively adding segments to the model in a hierarchical manner.