Transforming the Humane: Human/Animal Relationships in Marlen Haushofer’s \u3ci\u3eDie Wand\u3c/i\u3e and Franz Kafka’s \u3ci\u3eDie Verwandlung\u3c/i\u3e

In this project, I investigate Franz Kafka’s Die Verwandlung (1915) and Marlen Haushofer’s Die Wand (1963) through a magic realist interpretive strategy. I identify how, as a result of a mysterious opening premise, the two texts accomplish a human/animal transformation in the protagonists. While the transformations differ in several aspects, even at times being direct opposites, the way in which the characters navigate their new nonhuman selves poses many important questions about care and humaneness, the human condition, and social and familial structures. By drawing on discussions of magic realism – from its roots in Weimar German art criticism, its contemporary features in literature, and the inherently subversive nature of the narrative mode – I discuss how the lens of magic realism becomes a helpful tool in recognizing, exploring, and appreciating the human/animal transformations as a defamiliarization of the familiar

Developing a Sufficient Knowledge Base for Faces: Implicit Recognition Memory for Distinctive versus Typical Female Faces

Research on adults' face recognition abilities provides evidence for a distinctiveness effect such that distinctive faces are remembered better and more easily than typical faces. Research on this effect in the developmental literature is limited. In the current study, two experiments tested recognition memory for evidence of the distinctiveness effect. Study 1 tested infants (9- and 10-month olds) using a novelty preference paradigm. Infants were tested for immediate and delayed memory. Results indicated memory for only the most distinctive faces. Study 2 tested preschool children (3- and 4-year-olds) using an interactive story. Children were tested with an implicit (i.e. surprise) memory test. Results indicated a memory advantage for distinctive faces by three-year-old girls and four-year-old boys and girls. Contrary to traditional theories of changes in children's processing strategies, experience is also a critical factor in the development of face recognition abilities

Good Grief! Children and Comics

Published by the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum in partnership with The Ohio State University Libraries. With original essays examining everything from Little Nemo to Calvin and Hobbes, from Batman to the Lumberjanes, from Bone to Maus, Children's Comics, Past and Present is your online introduction to the larger questions and contexts of the groundbreaking new exhibit at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum.Published in partnership with the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum.1. How Comics Became Kids' Stuff, Joe Sutliff Sanders. -- 2. "Let's Go Exploring!": Illustrating Childhood Development in Calvin and Hobbes, James Curtis. -- 3. Traumatic Origins: Orphanhood and the Superhero, Jennifer Duggan. -- 4. Striking Camp: Empowerment and Re-Presentation in Lumberjanes, Kyle Eveleth. -- 5. The Great American Graphic Novel: Jeff Smith's Bone and Its Influences, Annette Wannamaker. -- 6. There Are Some Things You Can't Fix with a Magic Wand: Politics in Children's Comics, Camila Z. Tessler. -- 7. The Character in the Mask: An Analysis of Mask in Art Spiegelman's Maus, Taraneh Matloob Haghanikar.No embarg

Direct combination: a new user interaction principle for mobile and ubiquitous HCI

Direct Combination (DC) is a recently introduced user interaction principle. The principle (previously applied to desktop computing) can greatly reduce the degree of search, time, and attention required to operate user interfaces. We argue that Direct Combination applies particularly aptly to mobile computing devices, given appropriate interaction techniques, examples of which are presented here. The reduction in search afforded to users can be applied to address several issues in mobile and ubiquitous user interaction including: limited feedback bandwidth; minimal attention situations; and the need for ad-hoc spontaneous interoperation and dynamic reconfiguration of multiple devices. When Direct Combination is extended and adapted to fit the demands of mobile and ubiquitous HCI, we refer to it as Ambient Combination (AC) . Direct Combination allows the user to exploit objects in the environment to narrow down the range of interactions that need be considered (by system and user). When the DC technique of pairwise or n-fold combination is applicable, it can greatly lessen the demands on users for memorisation and interface navigation. Direct Combination also appears to offers a new way of applying context-aware information. In this paper, we present Direct Combination as applied ambiently through a series of interaction scenarios, using an implemented prototype system

On the Cost of Negation for Dynamic Pruning

Negated query terms allow documents containing such terms to be filtered out of a search results list, supporting disambiguation. In this work, the effect of negation on the efficiency of disjunctive, top-k retrieval is examined. First, we show how negation can be integrated efficiently into two popular dynamic pruning algorithms. Then, we explore the efficiency of our approach, and show that while often efficient, negation can negatively impact the dynamic pruning effectiveness for certain queries

A first empirical study of direct combination in a ubiquitous environment

In dynamic ubiquitous environments, end users may need to create services by causing two or more devices or resources to interoperate together in ad-hoc circumstances. In general, users can find this kind of process hard to manage. At the same time, existing UI architectures are not well suited to supporting such activities. It is proposed that a good basis for addressing these and related problems in a principled, scaleable way is the principle of Direct Combination (DC). The principle is summarized, and analytical arguments are presented that predict that DC can reduce the amount of search required by the user. Other things being equal, such a reduction in search would be expected to offer interactions which are faster, less frustrating, and impose less mental load on the user. We present a proof-of-concept implementation, and a small-scale evaluation of a DC interface. Within the limitations of a preliminary evaluation, consistent support is offered across several measures for the analytical predictions

Upper Bound Approximations for BlockMaxWand

BlockMaxWand is a recent advance on the Wand dynamic pruning technique, which allows efficient retrieval without any effectiveness degradation to rank K. However, while BMW uses docid-sorted indices, it relies on recording the upper bound of the term weighting model scores for each block of postings in the inverted index. Such a requirement can be disadvantageous in situations such as when an index must be updated. In this work, we examine the appropriateness of upper-bound approximation – which have previously been shown suitable for Wand– in providing efficient retrieval for BMW. Experiments on the ClueWeb12 category B13 corpus using 5000 queries from a real search engine’s query log demonstrate that BMW still provides benefits w.r.t. Wand when approximate upper bounds are used, and that, if approximations on upper bounds are tight, BMW with approximate upper bounds can provide efficiency gains w.r.t.Wand with exact upper bounds, in particular for queries of short to medium length