Virtual Trip to 1964 World's Fair Is a "Back to See the Future" Opportunity

from an article by Barb Abney, Office of Reseach and Commercialization. Photo by Jacque Brund. Read the complete story HERE.

From the engineering marvel of the Unisphere to the struggle over civil rights, IST researchers are recreating the sights, sounds and sensations of the 1964-65 New York Worlds Fair.
  The computer simulation project will give students and history and technology buffs a free virtual ticket to a historic event that provided a first look at todays technology. Visitors were told, for example, that the handful of satellites then circling the planet would one day revolutionize weather forecasting and that small satellite dishes would become a household fixture.
  World’s Fairs were calling cards to the future, said project leader Lori Walters, a historian and researcher with IST’s Media Convergence Lab.  "We need to have kids understand that the roots of what they have today can be traced back to that fair," she said.

The National Science Foundation is providing up to $1.4 million for the project, titled Interconnections:  Revisiting the Future, largely because of its potential for using technology to deliver significant science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) content to underrepresented populations.  Because Queens was named the most ethnically diverse county in the country in the 2000 U.S. Census, the fair, which was held in that New York suburb, seemed a natural fit.
  "That fair represented the hub of everything that occurred in the 60s," Walters said. 
  In 2007, Walters received a $30,000 grant from National Endowment for the Humanities to recreate one of the fair’s themed zones: transportation.
  Charlie Hughes, a professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and director of the Media Convergence Lab at IST, and Eileen Smith, the lab’s associate director and experiential learning researcher, worked with Walters to collect historical data.
  Using thousands of photographs supplied by World’s Fair enthusiasts and others purchased on eBay, they carefully scanned and documented in precise detail every dimension of the displays and then called upon the memories of historians and attendees to ensure authenticity of the virtual environment they created.
  The NSF grant, received in partnership with the Queens Museum of Art and the New York Hall of Science, will allow them to expand the original project to include all of the fair’s more than 140 pavilions.
  Participants will be able to view movies, photos and documents at each venue. In addition, Hughes, Smith and the media team are building virtual experiments, where visitors can watch and conduct research, such as creating nylon fibers or building a heat-resistant material for a space capsule heat shield.
  The project will also capture the history of the time, including the civil rights protests that took place at the fairs opening.
  "The fair represents a point of time: 1964 and 1965," Smith said. "What we want to do is get people immersed in that time, see what came of the future as predicted 44 years ago and inspire students to use that as a stepping-off point to look at the next 40 years."
  Walters had earlier worked with Media Convergence Lab researchers on a virtual re-creation of Cape Canaverals Launch Complex 14, the site of John Glenns historic launch. She was passionate about using similar techniques on a larger scale.
  "We had proven that the concept works—and we wanted to expand to a topic that would allow total immersion in a historical period," she said.
  Hughes said that one of the greatest challenges with the project, pieces of which will be offered for free on the internet beginning this fall, is capturing the historical perspective in a format that can compete with the best the commercial world can offer.
  "You can have great content, but if no one cares to interact with it, or if youre not competitive with the game world, then people are going to walk away from it," he said.
  Walters and her team are accepting submissions of photos, documents or any other information pertaining to the fair.
  For more information about the project and how to contribute, go to the project Web site , where—soon—you can link to a beta version of the World's Fair fly-through.

UCF to Help NASA Train Astronaut Teams for Trip to Mars

IST/UCF research professors will help prepare astronauts for a voyage to Mars.
   NASA awarded the three-year, $1.2 million grant to Drs. Eduardo Salas, and Stephen Fiore, IST, and Kimberly Smith-Jentsch Deptartment of Psychology. The grant will support research on the health and teamwork of astronauts during extended space exploration missions.
  Salas is Human Systems Integration Research program director at IST and a psychology professor. Stephen Fiore is the director of IST’s Cognitive Sciences Laboratory and Assistant Professor of Cognitive Sciences, Department of Philosophy and Smith-Jentsch is an associate professor of industrial and organizational psychology.
   A journey to Mars takes about 18 months. Salas said that it will take special coping skills to maintain team cohesion and operational proficiency during that long period of close quarters and isolation.
   “Without cohesion, without teamwork, performance will deteriorate,” Salas said. “Through these teamwork strategies, we hope to minimize errors and help the astronauts accomplish their mission successfully.”
   Salas’s and Smith-Jentsch’s research will build on work they performed for the U.S. Navy before coming to the university. Some of the techniques stem from training Navy personnel to recognize others’ and their own problems—and take steps to fix them.
   Astronaut team training for this kind of mission is without precedent.
“We’ll be investigating teamwork issues that are unique to teams that are isolated and together for long periods of time,” said Smith-Jentsch.
   A mission’s success will weigh heavily on proper self-correction training, according to Salas.
   Self-correction, said Salas, is critical when you have no place else to go for help. In space, you have to know how to self-correct. “Out there you can’t just say you want to get off the bus,” Salas said.
 “One mistake can be catastrophic,” said Smith-Jentsch. “If we can give these astronauts tools to prevent a catastrophic event, even preventing one accident would pay for the value of the grant.”