News from MIT Press ------------------- PRESENCE: THE FIRST SCHOLARLY JOURNAL ON TELEOPERATORS AND VIRTUAL REALITY, FORTHCOMING IN MARCH To promote intelligent understanding of major teleoperation and virtual environment developments in electromechanical and computer science, MIT Press Journals is publishing PRESENCE: TELEOPERATORS AND VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS, the first quarterly for serious investigators of either or both types of systems. The journal will premiere in March. Until now, scientists, engineers, psychologists, architects, executives, artists, and philosophers [who's left out -- football players? -- B.J.] had no authoritative publication they could turn to for vital research, ideas, and applications pertinent to teleoperators *and* virtual environments. PRESENCE will offer understandings and design for these types of systems. In the first issue, one paper proposes arhitectures for high performance, flexible, and concurrent event-coordinated virtual worlds. "Free Style" provides a lesson on choreographing human-robot dance, and even includes a short story about the lack of presence you get from telephone answering machines. "Transforming Human Hand Motion for Telemanipulation" and "Virtual Reality, Art and Entertainment" further illustrate what the pages of PRESENCE will deliver: multiperspective, penetrating explorations into the mental and physical faculties of people and machines; stimulating analyses of the impact transformed presence can have on aesthetics and culture. The journal will have an initial circulation of approximately 2,000, including electrical and mechanical engineers concerned with teleoperators; computer scientists, high-tech artists, and media people interested in virtual environments; and (3) psychologists involved in the study of human-machine interfaces and senorimotor/ cognitive behavior. EDITORIAL BOARD Co-Editor-in-Chief, Tom Sheridan, Director, MIT Human-Machine Sytems Laboratory Co-Editor-in-Chief, Tom Furness, Director, HIT Lab, Seattle Managing Editor, Nathaniel Durlach, Director, MIT Virtual Environment and Teleoperator Research Consortium Associate Editor, William Bricken, University of Washington Associate Editor, Blake Hanniford, University of Washington Associate Editor, Warren Robinett, University of North Carolina Associate Editor, J. Kenneth Salisbury, Jr., MIT Associate Editor, Robert Welch, NASA Ames Research Center Associate Editor, David Zeltzer, MIT Editorial Advisors (partial list) Michael MacGreevy, NASA Ames Research Center Elizabeth Wenzel, NASA Ames Research Center Jaron Lanier, VPL Research Inc. Myron Krueger, Artificial Reality Corporation Michael Benedikt, University of Texas, Austin Brenda Laurel, Telepresence Research Scott Fisher, Telepresence Research International Editorial Advisors Massimo Bergamesco, Scuolo Superiore, Italy Jens Blauert, Ruhr-Universitat Bochum, Germany John M. Hollerbach, McGill University, Canada Ian W. Hunter, McGill University, Canada Lynette A. Jones, McGill University, Canada Susan Lederman, Queen's University, Canada Robert J. Stone, National Advanced Robotics Research Centre, UK Susumu Tachi, University of Tokyo, Japan Quarterly, Volume 1 forthcoming in March. 96 pp. per issue, illustrated. 8-1/2 x 11. Annual subscription rates: Individual, $ 50 Institution, $120 Student/Retired, $ 20 (ID required) Outside USA, add $14 postage and handling. Canada, add additional 7% GST. Prepayment is required. Send check drawn against a U.S. bank, Mastercard, or VISA number to: MIT Press Journals 55 Hayward Street Cambridge, MA 02142-1399 USA +1-617-253-2889 phone +1-617-258-6779 fax