CSMC

The rise concern about mobile communication performance has driven the growing demand for the construction of mobile network signal maps which are widely utilized in network monitoring, spectrum management, and indoor/outdoor localization. Existing studies such as time-consuming and labor-intensive site surveys are difficult to maintain an update-to-date finegrained signal map within a large area. The mobile crowdsensing (MCS) paradigm is a promising approach for building signal maps because collecting large-scale MCS data is low-cost and with little extra-efforts. However, the dynamic environment and the mobility of the crowd cause spatio-temporal uncertainty and sparsity of MCS. In this work, we leverage MCS as an opportunity to conduct the city-wide mobile network signal map construction. We propose a fine-grained city-wide Cellular Signal Map Construction (CSMC) framework to address two challenges including (i) the problem of missing and unreliable MCS data; (ii) spatio-temporal uncertainty of signal propagation. In particular, CSMC captures spatio-temporal characteristics of signals from both inter- and intra- cellular base stations and conducts missing signal recovery with Bayesian tensor decomposition to build large-area fine-grained signal maps. Furthermore, CSMC develops a context-aware multi-view fusion network to make full use of external information and enhance signal map construction accuracy. To evaluate the performance of CSMC, we conduct extensive experiments and ablation studies on a large-scale dataset with over 200GB MCS signal records collected from Shanghai. Experimental results demonstrate that our model outperforms state-of-the-art baselines in the accuracy of signal estimation and user localization.

Permanent provisionality: The homes of mobile managerial professionals between temporariness and permanence

Nowadays, mobility and transience are no longer exclusively associated with the marginalized and socially excluded, such as homeless or displaced people. On the contrary, mobility and transience have become a constitutive pattern of the highly skilled postmodern workforce. Yet, how mobile professionals negotiate the meaning of their homes in ‘liquid times’ and what homemaking practices they use to deal with the temporal uncertainty of their homes are questions that still require further research. This article ‐ based on ethnographic research on German and American managers conducted in China, Germany and the United States between 2011 and 2014 ‐ contributes to this research question by examining how mobile professionals make sense of the transience of their current homes and how transience is reflected in their homemaking practices. The article argues that for mobile professionals the home becomes a critical place not only because of new multilocal spatialities but also because of new transient temporalities. Due to the corporate practice of giving successive temporary contracts, the mobile managers’ everyday life is characterized by a ‘permanent provisionality’, that is, an incongruence of the initially imagined and the actual time horizons of their mobility. This article shows how this ‘permanent provisionality’ is worked into the material and social textures of expatriate homes.

SYNTACTIC TIME AND POETIC TEXT

Монография Т.Е. Шаповаловой посвящена осмыслению категории синтаксическое время. Время как синтаксическая категория и обязательный компонент предикативности исследуется на материале поэтического текста, в котором все грамматические элементы преображаются. В частности, синтаксемы и субстантивные обороты – носители временнóй семантики получают дополнительные субъективно-модальные оттенки, событийные коннотации, сопутствующие созначения (пространственные, условные и др.). Рассматриваются также такие принципиальные для понимания синтаксической проблемы времени теоретические вопросы, как абсолютное и относительное время, временнáя определенность и временнáя неопределенность, предикативные свойства синтаксемы, субстантивного оборота и др. Monograph by prof. T.E. Shapovalova is devoted to understanding of the category of syntactic time. Time as a syntactic category and an obligatory component of predicativity is considered on the material of a poetic text, in which all grammatical elements are transformed - in particular syntaxemes as the carriers of temporal semantics receive additional subjective-modal shades, event connotations, and accompanying connotations (spatial, conditional, etc.). We also considered such fundamental for understanding of the syntactic problem of time as absolute and relative time, temporal definiteness and temporal uncertainty, predicative properties of substantive turnover, etc.

End-user Preference for and Understanding of Hurricane Forecast Graphs

Hurricane forecast graphics have the challenging task of communicating information about spatio-temporal uncertainty. This study assesses the impact of graph literacy and graph format on user preference and understanding. In a laboratory setting, we compared user responses to official National Hurricane Center advisory maps and alternative visualizations. Results indicate that prior experience with a visualization drives preference and that graph literacy, visualization format, and tropical cyclone characteristics, in combination, influence interpretations of hurricane forecast track. The findings from this study are expected to inform redesign efforts of hurricane risk communication products.

Rendezvous Under Temporal Uncertainty

Objective Three experiments sought to understand performance limitations in controlling a ship attempting to meet another moving ship that approached from various trajectories. The influence of uncertainty, resulting from occasional unpredictable delays in one’s own movement, was examined. Background Cognitive elements of rendezvous have been little studied. Related work such as the planning fallacy and bias toward underestimating time-to-contact imply a tendency toward late arrival at a rendezvous. Methods In a simplified simulation, participants controlled the speed and/or heading of their own ship once per scenario to try to rendezvous with another ship. Forty-five scenarios of approximately 30 s were conducted with different starting geometries and, in two of three experiments, with different frequencies and lengths of the unexpected delays. Results Perfect rendezvous were hard to obtain, with a general tendency to arrive late and pass behind the target vessel, although this was dependent on the angle of approach and relative speed. When occasional delays were introduced, less frequent but longer delays disrupted performance more than shorter but more frequent delays. Where delays were possible, but no delay occurred, there was no longer evidence of a general tendency to more frequently pass behind the target ship. Additionally, people did not wait to see if the unpredictable delays would occur before executing a course of action. Different control strategies were deployed and dual axis control was preferred. Conclusions The tendency to arrive late and the influence of the possibility of uncertain delays are discussed in relationship to control strategies.