Animating Unpredictable Effects

Uncanny computer-generated animations of splashing waves, billowing smoke clouds, and characters’ flowing hair have become a ubiquitous presence on screens of all types since the 1980s. This Open Access book charts the history of these digital moving images and the software tools that make them. Unpredictable Visual Effects uncovers an institutional and industrial history that saw media industries conducting more private R&D as Cold War federal funding began to wane in the late 1980s. In this context studios and media software companies took concepts used for studying and managing unpredictable systems like markets, weather, and fluids and turned them into tools for animation. Unpredictable Visual Effects theorizes how these animations are part of a paradigm of control evident across society, while at the same time exploring what they can teach us about the relationship between making and knowing

Brand personality complementarity:its effects on evaluations of extremely incongruent extensions

Prior research on brand extension has provided little evidence on enhancing the evaluation of extremely incongruent extension. Adopting the theoretical framework of schema congruity theory, the author posits that evaluations can be improved if brand personality impressions of both parent brand and extension are complementary. The author coins this as the brand personality complementarity (BPC) principle. Prior to examining BPC effect, cultural-specific brand personality scale was developed to identify universal and indigenous brand personality dimensions. The reason is BPC requires a reliable and valid brand personality scale in order to detect its effect. Following successful identification of the cultural-specific brand personality scale, a total of three experimental studies were done to investigate BPC effect. Specifically, one experimental study identified complementary levels amongst brand personality dimensions, whereas two experimental studies investigated the moderating effect of BPC. Findings from the scale development study reveal that Malaysian brand personality (MBP) scale is a second higher-order factor reflected by first higher-order factors of sophistication, youth, competence, and sincerity. Most importantly, findings from the experimental studies revealed; 1) different BPC levels amongst all possible pairs of MBP dimensions, 2) significant interaction effect of brand extension congruity x BPC, and 3) significant mediation effect of complementarity resolution. Specific findings indicated that when iv text-based stimuli were used to form brand personality impression, even low BPC level improves the evaluations of extremely incongruent extension. However, when visualbased stimuli were used, low BPC level worsen the extension evaluation compared those of the control condition (i.e. without brand personality impression). Implications for both academician and practitioner are discussed

Synthesizing Diversity and Pluralism in Information Systems: Forging a Unique Disciplinary Subject Matter for the Information Systems Field

The issues of diversity, pluralism and the subject matter of the information systems (IS) field are critically analyzed using the philosophical works of Michel Foucault and studies in disciplinarity. This essay argues for the IS field to forge its own unique disciplinary subject matter by synthesizing the diverse discourses of its reference disciplines and not by merely drawing from them. Using examples of other established disciplines with equally multidisciplinary origins, this paper analyzes the history of the IS field to uncover the field\u27s subject matter. The proposed subject matter maintains the IS field\u27s richness and diversity without losing its unique identity

Stigma described by attempt survivors with diverse gender and sexual identities in their suicide stories: a hermeneutic phenomenological dissertation.

Suicide is a profoundly impactful issue across societies. Gender and sexually diverse (GSD) populations exhibit rates of suicidal ideation and behavior far greater than those of cisgender heterosexual populations. Stigma impacts health outcomes among GSD populations through stress exposure and response processes. Compound stigma is experienced when individuals occupy positions in multiple stigmatized identity groups and can have multiplicative effects on adverse outcomes. Further, opportunities for positive social support and resilience building may be limited due to the narrow convergence of stigmatized identity groups. Stigma among GSD suicide attempt survivors (GSDAS) is an important phenomenon to explore in order to understand nuanced differences and similarities between experiences, sources, and interactions with stigma within stories of suicide. Using data from the Live Through This advocacy project, hermeneutic phenomenological processes were utilized to explore the lived experience of stigma among GSDAS. The larger study sample was divided into two groups: those with nonheterosexual sexually diverse identities only (n=37) and those with noncisgender gender diverse identities (n=11). Findings from this dissertation indicate a complex web of factors that exist within a pervasive environment of stigma and interact to shape social experiences of GSDAS. This study contributes to our understanding of stigma within the context of suicide stories for GSDAS and can help inform individual and social suicide prevention efforts with an overarching goal to decrease stigma-related experiences and improve outcomes through greater equity, support, and care for GSDAS

A review and comparison of ontology-based approaches to robot autonomy

Within the next decades, robots will need to be able to execute a large variety of tasks autonomously in a large variety of environments. To relax the resulting programming effort, a knowledge-enabled approach to robot programming can be adopted to organize information in re-usable knowledge pieces. However, for the ease of reuse, there needs to be an agreement on the meaning of terms. A common approach is to represent these terms using ontology languages that conceptualize the respective domain. In this work, we will review projects that use ontologies to support robot autonomy. We will systematically search for projects that fulfill a set of inclusion criteria and compare them with each other with respect to the scope of their ontology, what types of cognitive capabilities are supported by the use of ontologies, and which is their application domain.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft