Unmasking Hybridity in Popular Performance

This paper explores cultural hybridization in popular music and the eroticization of the exotic eastern aesthetic. Using musicology and anthropology as tools, the paper examines varying perspectives of the artists, audience and marginalized groups. Although cultural appropriation has been used recently as a blanket buzzword in mainstream dialogue, it does provide a platform to discuss complex issues on gender, race and sexuality that has been muddled by colonial mentalities

Human brain evolution and the "Neuroevolutionary Time-depth Principle:" Implications for the Reclassification of fear-circuitry-related traits in DSM-V and for studying resilience to warzone-related posttraumatic stress disorder.

The DSM-III, DSM-IV, DSM-IV-TR and ICD-10 have judiciously minimized discussion of etiologies to distance clinical psychiatry from Freudian psychoanalysis. With this goal mostly achieved, discussion of etiological factors should be reintroduced into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-V). A research agenda for the DSM-V advocated the "development of a pathophysiologically based classification system". The author critically reviews the neuroevolutionary literature on stress-induced and fear circuitry disorders and related amygdala-driven, species-atypical fear behaviors of clinical severity in adult humans. Over 30 empirically testable/falsifiable predictions are presented. It is noted that in DSM-IV-TR and ICD-10, the classification of stress and fear circuitry disorders is neither mode-of-acquisition-based nor brain-evolution-based. For example, snake phobia (innate) and dog phobia (overconsolidational) are clustered together. Similarly, research on blood-injection-injury-type-specific phobia clusters two fears different in their innateness: 1) an arguably ontogenetic memory-trace-overconsolidation-based fear (hospital phobia) and 2) a hardwired (innate) fear of the sight of one's blood or a sharp object penetrating one's skin. Genetic architecture-charting of fear-circuitry-related traits has been challenging. Various, non-phenotype-based architectures can serve as targets for research. In this article, the author will propose one such alternative genetic architecture. This article was inspired by the following: A) Nesse's "Smoke-Detector Principle", B) the increasing suspicion that the "smooth" rather than "lumpy" distribution of complex psychiatric phenotypes (including fear-circuitry disorders) may in some cases be accounted for by oligogenic (and not necessarily polygenic) transmission, and C) insights from the initial sequence of the chimpanzee genome and comparison with the human genome by the Chimpanzee Sequencing and Analysis Consortium published in late 2005. Neuroevolutionary insights relevant to fear circuitry symptoms that primarily emerge overconsolidationally (especially Combat related Posttraumatic Stress Disorder) are presented. Also introduced is a human-evolution-based principle for clustering innate fear traits. The "Neuroevolutionary Time-depth Principle" of innate fears proposed in this article may be useful in the development of a neuroevolution-based taxonomic re-clustering of stress-triggered and fear-circuitry disorders in DSM-V. Four broad clusters of evolved fear circuits are proposed based on their time-depths: 1) Mesozoic (mammalian-wide) circuits hardwired by wild-type alleles driven to fixation by Mesozoic selective sweeps; 2) Cenozoic (simian-wide) circuits relevant to many specific phobias; 3) mid Paleolithic and upper Paleolithic (Homo sapiens-specific) circuits (arguably resulting mostly from mate-choice-driven stabilizing selection); 4) Neolithic circuits (arguably mostly related to stabilizing selection driven by gene-culture co-evolution). More importantly, the author presents evolutionary perspectives on warzone-related PTSD, Combat-Stress Reaction, Combat-related Stress, Operational-Stress, and other deployment-stress-induced symptoms. The Neuroevolutionary Time-depth Principle presented in this article may help explain the dissimilar stress-resilience levels following different types of acute threat to survival of oneself or one's progency (aka DSM-III and DSM-V PTSD Criterion-A events). PTSD rates following exposure to lethal inter-group violence (combat, warzone exposure or intentionally caused disasters such as terrorism) are usually 5-10 times higher than rates following large-scale natural disasters such as forest fires, floods, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, and earthquakes. The author predicts that both intentionally-caused large-scale bioevent-disasters, as well as natural bioevents such as SARS and avian flu pandemics will be an exception and are likely to be followed by PTSD rates approaching those that follow warzone exposure. During bioevents, Amygdala-driven and locus-coeruleus-driven epidemic pseudosomatic symptoms may be an order of magnitude more common than infection-caused cytokine-driven symptoms. Implications for the red cross and FEMA are discussed. It is also argued that hospital phobia as well as dog phobia, bird phobia and bat phobia require re-taxonomization in DSM-V in a new "overconsolidational disorders" category anchored around PTSD. The overconsolidational spectrum category may be conceptualized as straddling the fear circuitry spectrum disorders and the affective spectrum disorders categories, and may be a category for which Pitman's secondary prevention propranolol regimen may be specifically indicated as a "morning after pill" intervention. Predictions are presented regarding obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) (e.g., female-pattern hoarding vs. male-pattern hoarding) and "culture-bound" acute anxiety symptoms (taijin-kyofusho, koro, shuk yang, shook yong, suo yang, rok-joo, jinjinia-bemar, karoshi, gwarosa, Voodoo death). Also discussed are insights relevant to pseudoneurological symptoms and to the forthcoming Dissociative-Conversive disorders category in DSM-V, including what the author terms fright-triggered acute pseudo-localized symptoms (i.e., pseudoparalysis, pseudocerebellar imbalance, psychogenic blindness, pseudoseizures, and epidemic sociogenic illness). Speculations based on studies of the human abnormal-spindle-like, microcephaly-associated (ASPM) gene, the microcephaly primary autosomal recessive (MCPH) gene, and the forkhead box p2 (FOXP2) gene are made and incorporated into what is termed "The pre-FOXP2 Hypothesis of Blood-Injection-Injury Phobia." Finally, the author argues for a non-reductionistic fusion of "distal (evolutionary) neurobiology" with clinical "proximal neurobiology," utilizing neurological heuristics. It is noted that the value of re-clustering fear traits based on behavioral ethology, human-phylogenomics-derived endophenotypes and on ontogenomics (gene-environment interactions) can be confirmed or disconfirmed using epidemiological or twin studies and psychiatric genomics

The Cowl - v.77 - n.18 - Mar 21, 2013

The Cowl - student newspaper of Providence College. Vol 77 - No. 18 - March 21, 2013. 28 pages

The suspension of disbelief in videogames

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel UniversityThis thesis explores the ways in which suspension of disbelief works in digital games. Primarily concerned with how players relate imaginatively to the often major dissonance between gameplay and narrative in digital games, this thesis questions how the literate players of games reconcile these complex texts imaginatively. Proposing that Samuel Taylor Coleridge's concept of suspension of disbelief is a complicated process often cited rhetorically rather than given its theoretical due, this thesis aims to rehabilitate the term and turn it into a useful, sharpened tool for games studies. Digital games themselves are also seen to be an intense new realm of possibilities for the suspension of disbelief, and textual analysis of games which approach the fourth wall or the suspension of disbelief on their own terms helps to make this clear. Beginning by defining the differences of games compared to other media, the thesis goes on to define suspension of disbelief in both its historical and modern contexts and see how it fits with games, isolating three key problems with uniting the concept with the medium. The three chapters which follow looked in more depth at the problems of the skilled reader, fundamental activity and dissonance through investigations into games’ textual construction, the mindsets they engender in players and their reformulation of the fourth wall. The final section looks at the conclusions working together to achieve the dual aims of proposing a new model for game reading which centres around a willed disavowal of presence on the part of the gamer combined with the gamer's taking up of a role offered by the game-text, and rehabilitating both the term and the concept of suspension of disbelief

Optimal synchronization deep in the quantum regime: resource and fundamental limit

We develop an analytical framework to study the synchronization of a quantum self-sustained oscillator to an external signal. Our unified description allows us to identify the resource on which quantum synchronization relies, and to compare quantitatively the synchronization behavior of different limit cycles and signals. We focus on the most elementary quantum system that is able to host a self-sustained oscillation, namely a single spin 1. Despite the spin having no classical analogue, we first show that it can realize the van der Pol limit cycle deep in the quantum regime, which allows us to provide an analytical understanding to recently reported numerical results. Moving on to the equatorial limit cycle, we then reveal the existence of an interference-based quantum synchronization blockade and extend the classical Arnold tongue to a snake-like split tongue. Finally, we derive the maximum synchronization that can be achieved in the spin-1 system, and construct a limit cycle that reaches this fundamental limit asymptotically.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figures, equivalent to published versio

Advances in Robot Navigation

Robot navigation includes different interrelated activities such as perception - obtaining and interpreting sensory information; exploration - the strategy that guides the robot to select the next direction to go; mapping - the construction of a spatial representation by using the sensory information perceived; localization - the strategy to estimate the robot position within the spatial map; path planning - the strategy to find a path towards a goal location being optimal or not; and path execution, where motor actions are determined and adapted to environmental changes. This book integrates results from the research work of authors all over the world, addressing the abovementioned activities and analyzing the critical implications of dealing with dynamic environments. Different solutions providing adaptive navigation are taken from nature inspiration, and diverse applications are described in the context of an important field of study: social robotics

Vesica: using Neolithic British ritual art and architecture as a model for making contemporary art

Merged with duplicate record 10026.1/646 on 08.03.2017 by CS (TIS)Can the creative practices of British Neolithic art and architecture be used in the making of contemporary art? This dissertation describes my practice making works of art based on the Neolithic model, presented in a gallery setting and occasionally in the landscape. The creative process is grounded on research into prehistoric British art and ritual architecture and records my process of understanding the work of ancient Britons as a framework for the concurrent process of making new objects for display. Without extensive research and direct experience of the Neolithic art and architecture I would not have been able to create the responsive work that has grown from it. I visited dozens of sites in England, Scotland, and Ireland, immersing myself as much as possible within them, on them and around them; I breathed the damp air and sheltered from the rain under their roofs; I ate in them, I touched, measured and aligned them. I visited them in daylight and at night; summer and winter; on solstices and ordinary days; sometimes by car but mostly on foot. I read copious texts by academic archaeologists in my effort to get into the minds of the people who made these places and got to know the archaeological scene well enough to deliver a paper at the Theoretical Archaeology Group Conference in 2005, taking questions from distinguished Professors Julian Thomas and Mike Parker Pearson. My research included the types of space that remain and explores patterns that exist within the structures, interpreting, based on the archaeology, how the places Neolithic people made might have been used in ritual; in addition it includes an exploration of the decoration and phenomena of the spaces. The process of understanding the Neolithic shaped and transformed my creative practice and profoundly affected my practice of making art and introducing a shamanic theme into the way I share it. The work I make is therefore a response to the ancient practices of the men and women, a collection of objects that a Neolithic artist might make today. Finally the thesis is concerned with identifying three strategies used by contemporary artists; Reconstructing, "Artefacting", and Responding to Neolithic spaces, then documents how these three strategies are used as models in the creation of the practical work that corresponds with the written work. Issues of presentation are explored at some length, born of the dilemmas I experienced when making decisions of where and how to show people what I had made.Dartington College of Art

Automated Discovery of Candidate Simulation Models for Steering Behavior Simulation

Steering behavior of autonomous agents plays important roles in many simulation applications, such as simulation of pedestrian crowds, simulation of evacuation scenarios, simulation of ecosystems, simulation of autonomous robots, and simulation of artificial life in virtual environments used in computer games. It is desirable to have an approach that can automatically discover multiple candidate models for steering behavior simulation besides manual approach (trial-and-error fashion) and data-driven approach. Towards this goal, this work presents an approach that searches for candidate models of steering behavior in an automated way. The proposed framework includes two components. A model space specification provides a formal specification for a general structure from which various models can be constructed, and a search method to search for a set of candidate models based on requirements. To support more complex scenarios, we further add three major extensions including: (1) Activation component assign dynamic priorities for behaviors depending on surround environments. (2) Multiple search stages are provided to assist the evolutionary search algorithm to distribute computational resources better. (3) A special type of entity called space entity to assist agents receive information not only from other entities (agents, obstacles), but also from surrounding empty space. The approach is able to discover multiple candidate models for three basic steering behaviors including the leader- following ( Bleader_following), personal space maintenance ( Bpersonal_space), and mobile obstacle avoidance ( Bobstacle_avoidance). The results show that different possibilities of steering behavior support modelers to have a better understanding of the problem under study, hence assist modelers to develop more advanced models by testing different combinations of the basic steering behaviors. We evaluate all combinations between three basic steering behaviors including: (1) Bleader_following + Bobstacle_avoidance, (2) Bobstacle_avoidance + Bpersonal_space, (3) Bleader_following + Bpersonal_space, and (4) Bleader_following + Bobstacle_avoidance + Bpersonal_space. We further test the approach with two variations of scenario 4: (5) The leader surrounding + Bpersonal_space, (6) Hall-way evacuation with an obstacle in the middle. The results show that the framework is also able to discover multiple models for each of these composite steering behaviors, and several of them have good scalability and robustness