2,754 research outputs found
InGAME international pathway to collaboration: Collaboration in Games UK-China
In 2019 the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded a series of projects as part of its UK-China Creative Partnerships Programme. Led by Abertay University in partnership with academic and industry partners across the UK and China, InGAME International was funded through this AHRC programme with the aim of studying the potential for UK-China cooperation and collaboration in the computer games sector. The project is linked to the AHRC Creative Industries Cluster, InGAME: Innovation for Games and Media Enterprise, which is also led by Abertay University in partnership with the University of Dundee and University of St Andrews. The games industry is one of the largest and fastest growing sectors in both the UK and the Chinese creative economies. In 2023, China was the largest gaming market globally with revenue forecast at 7.94 billion in the UK (Statista, 2023). The growth in Chinaâs market has long been the source of appeal for UK game developers and publishers seeking new routes to market. However, the divergence between the UK and China in terms of market profile, consumption patterns, leading companies, technologies, regulation, licensing, management, and business culture has presented ongoing difficulties for any UK based developer interested in engagement in- or with- China. It is from this basis that the current study sought to consolidate industry, legal, and regulatory knowhow with a view to providing a valuable resource to games professionals and researchers who have interests in UK-China collaboration. This Pathway to Collaboration report curates the cumulative knowledge and insight generated during the InGAME International programme, with an intended audience of games industry professionals and researchers interested in UK-China collaboration. At the heart of the research is an unprecedented qualitative study that involved in-depth interviews with 47 leading experts from the UK, China and other territories and with knowledge of games development, business, publishing, marketing, localisation, IP, copyright, regulation, markets, and sales. This report is the first comprehensive qualitative study to investigate the intersection between the UK and China games industries and markets at this scale and depth, providing readers with an invaluable, interactive resource that will support professionals and researchers to initiate new collaborations between the two nations.</p
A Spark Of Emotion: The Impact of Electrical Facial Muscle Activation on Emotional State and Affective Processing
Facial feedback, which involves the brain receiving information about the activation of facial muscles, has the potential to influence our emotional states and judgments. The extent to which this applies is still a matter of debate, particularly considering a failed replication of a seminal study. One factor contributing to the lack of replication in facial feedback effects may be the imprecise manipulation of facial muscle activity in terms of both degree and timing. To overcome these limitations, this thesis proposes a non-invasive method for inducing precise facial muscle contractions, called facial neuromuscular electrical stimulation (fNMES). I begin by presenting a systematic literature review that lays the groundwork for standardising the use of fNMES in psychological research, by evaluating its application in existing studies. This review highlights two issues, the lack of use of fNMES in psychology research and the lack of parameter reporting. I provide practical recommendations for researchers interested in implementing fNMES. Subsequently, I conducted an online experiment to investigate participants' willingness to participate in fNMES research. This experiment revealed that concerns over potential burns and involuntary muscle movements are significant deterrents to participation. Understanding these anxieties is critical for participant management and expectation setting. Subsequently, two laboratory studies are presented that investigated the facial FFH using fNMES. The first study showed that feelings of happiness and sadness, and changes in peripheral physiology, can be induced by stimulating corresponding facial muscles with 5âseconds of fNMES. The second experiment showed that fNMES-induced smiling alters the perception of ambiguous facial emotions, creating a bias towards happiness, and alters neural correlates of face processing, as measured with event-related potentials (ERPs). In summary, the thesis presents promising results for testing the facial feedback hypothesis with fNMES and provides practical guidelines and recommendations for researchers interested in using fNMES for psychological research
InGAME international pathway to collaboration: Collaboration in Games UK-China
In 2019 the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded a series of projects as part of its UK-China Creative Partnerships Programme. Led by Abertay University in partnership with academic and industry partners across the UK and China, InGAME International was funded through this AHRC programme with the aim of studying the potential for UK-China cooperation and collaboration in the computer games sector. The project is linked to the AHRC Creative Industries Cluster, InGAME: Innovation for Games and Media Enterprise, which is also led by Abertay University in partnership with the University of Dundee and University of St Andrews. The games industry is one of the largest and fastest growing sectors in both the UK and the Chinese creative economies. In 2023, China was the largest gaming market globally with revenue forecast at 7.94 billion in the UK (Statista, 2023). The growth in Chinaâs market has long been the source of appeal for UK game developers and publishers seeking new routes to market. However, the divergence between the UK and China in terms of market profile, consumption patterns, leading companies, technologies, regulation, licensing, management, and business culture has presented ongoing difficulties for any UK based developer interested in engagement in- or with- China. It is from this basis that the current study sought to consolidate industry, legal, and regulatory knowhow with a view to providing a valuable resource to games professionals and researchers who have interests in UK-China collaboration. This Pathway to Collaboration report curates the cumulative knowledge and insight generated during the InGAME International programme, with an intended audience of games industry professionals and researchers interested in UK-China collaboration. At the heart of the research is an unprecedented qualitative study that involved in-depth interviews with 47 leading experts from the UK, China and other territories and with knowledge of games development, business, publishing, marketing, localisation, IP, copyright, regulation, markets, and sales. This report is the first comprehensive qualitative study to investigate the intersection between the UK and China games industries and markets at this scale and depth, providing readers with an invaluable, interactive resource that will support professionals and researchers to initiate new collaborations between the two nations.</p
FARC musicians' musical identities and political identities through their music: analysis of their narratives, musical practices and songs in the Colombian peace post-agreement
The Colombia Revolutionary Army Forces (FARC) was the largest and most important guerrilla movement in the long and persistent Colombian internal armed conflict. In November 2016, after overcoming significant difficulties, the Colombian government and FARC signed and ratified a Final Peace Agreement; nowadays, FARC has become a lawful political party: Los Comunes. For over fifty years, the movement stimulated cultural and musical activities; FARC's musicians created, composed, arranged, recorded, performed and distributed thousands of songs, initially as part of a guerrilla and now as political party members. This research studies the musical identities of FARC musicians and their political identities as constructed through their music, based on social and cultural perspectives from the field of musical identities, the music and social movements theoretical framework and the transformation of conflict approach. This study observes how musical identities are negotiated as a force for transformative political and cultural changes at the personal and collective levels. The FARC musicians' narratives are a primary source for analysing the sociocultural transformation of identities and how they negotiate their musical and political identities.
Based on a phenomenological perspective and qualitative methods, this research applied an ethnographic approach and narrative analysis based on the Listening Guide Method (LGM) to undertake a qualitative study of two narratives: life histories and songs-as-narratives. The life histories and the songs-as-narratives can be understood as sociocultural performances with multiple and continuous constructions of selfhood. The analysis of (5) FARC musicians' musical biographies (life histories), obtained through three in-depth semi-structured interviews each, and four (4) songs-as-narratives, based on music video material, allows us to observe the relationship between their music and the social movement and the role of their music in the conflict transformation process.
The analysis reveals how the negotiation of musical and political identities interacts mutually and intertwined during conflict transformation experiences involving personal and collective changes. The life histories and song-as-narratives analysis provide evidence about the relationship between Identities in Music (IIM) and their Music in Identities (MII). The IIM and MII are inseparable dimensions of the self. The former is narrated through ex-combatant musicians' experiences as songwriters, singers, instrumentalists, producers, and music teachers committed to their political ideas. The latter emerges in ideological terms, but mainly through personal and collective experiences, emotionally significant, expressing their belonging to the peasantry, indigenous and popular musical cultures. At individual and collective levels, their musical knowledge, interactions and experiences construct new social roles, particularly in transitioning from guerrilla combatants to political party members.
The results reveal that music is a sociocultural resource developed by musicians and the entire movement throughout the decades. The ex-combatant musicians' narratives reveal how they employ their musical experiences to explore the possibilities of the moral imagination, changing lyrics, musical production and distribution processes. Exploring new musical genres or affirming their belonging to some of them, they build different social (political) and cultural (musical) realities in their contexts. The transformation of the conflict is a profound identity negotiation process. During the transformation of the conflict, musical and political identities support each other based on ex-combatant musicians' emotional competence or emotional capital, their different uses of "I" and "we", their personal and collective relationships and connections with broader socioeconomic, political and cultural structures
Natural and Technological Hazards in Urban Areas
Natural hazard events and technological accidents are separate causes of environmental impacts. Natural hazards are physical phenomena active in geological times, whereas technological hazards result from actions or facilities created by humans. In our time, combined natural and man-made hazards have been induced. Overpopulation and urban development in areas prone to natural hazards increase the impact of natural disasters worldwide. Additionally, urban areas are frequently characterized by intense industrial activity and rapid, poorly planned growth that threatens the environment and degrades the quality of life. Therefore, proper urban planning is crucial to minimize fatalities and reduce the environmental and economic impacts that accompany both natural and technological hazardous events
On the Effectiveness of Image Manipulation Detection in the Age of Social Media
Image manipulation detection algorithms designed to identify local anomalies
often rely on the manipulated regions being ``sufficiently'' different from the
rest of the non-tampered regions in the image. However, such anomalies might
not be easily identifiable in high-quality manipulations, and their use is
often based on the assumption that certain image phenomena are associated with
the use of specific editing tools. This makes the task of manipulation
detection hard in and of itself, with state-of-the-art detectors only being
able to detect a limited number of manipulation types. More importantly, in
cases where the anomaly assumption does not hold, the detection of false
positives in otherwise non-manipulated images becomes a serious problem.
To understand the current state of manipulation detection, we present an
in-depth analysis of deep learning-based and learning-free methods, assessing
their performance on different benchmark datasets containing tampered and
non-tampered samples. We provide a comprehensive study of their suitability for
detecting different manipulations as well as their robustness when presented
with non-tampered data. Furthermore, we propose a novel deep learning-based
pre-processing technique that accentuates the anomalies present in manipulated
regions to make them more identifiable by a variety of manipulation detection
methods. To this end, we introduce an anomaly enhancement loss that, when used
with a residual architecture, improves the performance of different detection
algorithms with a minimal introduction of false positives on the
non-manipulated data.
Lastly, we introduce an open-source manipulation detection toolkit comprising
a number of standard detection algorithms
Funduse sinine ja lĂ€hi-infrapuna autofluorestsentsuuring autosoom-retsessiivse Stardgardti tĂ”ve, koroidereemia, PROM1-maakuli dĂŒstroofia ja okulaarse albinismi patsientidel
VĂ€itekirja elektrooniline versioon ei sisalda publikatsiooneFunduse sinine ja lĂ€hi-infrapuna autofluorestsentsuuring autosoom-retsessiivse Stardgardti tĂ”ve, koroidereemia, PROM1-maakuli dĂŒstroofia ja okulaarse albinismi patsientidel
PÀrilikud vÔrkkestahaigused on juhtivaks nÀgemiskaotuse pÔhjuseks tööealise elanikkonna seas arenenud riikides. Tegemist on kliiniliselt ja geneetiliselt vÀga heterogeense haiguste grupiga, mistÔttu diagnostika ja haiguse patogeneesi uurimine on olnud vaevarikas. VÔrkkesta piltdiagnostika on oluline mitte-invasiivne meetod haiguste diagnoosimiseks ja uurimiseks. Konfokaalne skanneeriv laseroftalmoskoop valgustab vÔrkkesta erineva lainepikkusega laserkiirega ning salvestab tagasikiirgavat valgust luues silmapÔhjast pildi. Funduse autofluorestsents (AF) uuringul kasutatakse Àra silmapÔhja enda naturaalseid fluorofoore. Lipofustsiini ergastamiseks kasutatakse sinise spektri laserkiirt (sinine AF) ja melaniini jaoks lÀhipuna laserkiirt (lÀhipuna AF). Nende fluorofooride jaotus ja kogus silmapÔhjas muutub erinevate haigusprotsesside mÔjul ning need muutused on tuvastatavad AF uuringul.
Antud doktoritöös uurisime sinise ja lĂ€hipuna AF uuringu pilte autosoom-retsesiivse Stargardti tĂ”ve (STGD1), koroidereemia, PROM1-maakuli dĂŒstroofia ning okulaarse albinismi patsientidel. Töö eesmĂ€rgiks oli paremini mĂ”ista sinise ja lĂ€hipuna AF signaali allikaid erinevate haigusseisundite korral, kus vĂ”rkkesta fluorofooride jaotus ning kogused on muutunud. Lisaks kvalitatiivsele piltide hindamisele kasutamise kvantitatiivset AF signaali tugevuse mÔÔtmist hindamaks lipofustsiini ja melaniini taset.
Uurimustöös nĂ€itasime, et melaniin on lĂ€hipuna AF signaali peamiseks allikaks. Lisaks nĂ€itasime, et melanin vĂ”ib kaudselt moduleerida lipofustsiinist tuleneva sinise AF signaali, sest okulaarse albinismi kandjate hĂŒpopigmenteeritud vĂ”rkkesta alade sinise AF signal oli tavapĂ€rasest kĂ”rgem. AF signaali tugevuse mÔÔtmisel leidsime, et lipofustsiini kuhjumine vĂ”rkkestas pĂ”hjustab lisaks sinise AF signaali tĂ”usule ka lĂ€hipuna AF signaali tĂ”usu STGD1 patsientidel. Kvantitatiivsel analĂŒĂŒsil nĂ€itasime ka, et PROM1-maakuli dĂŒstroofia patsientide sinise AF signaal oli vĂ”rreldav terve silmapĂ”hja signaali tugevusega, eristades seda fenotĂŒĂŒbiliselt sarnasest STGD1 haigusest ning viidates ka sellele, et lipofustsiini ĂŒleliigne kuhjumine ei ole antud haigusele omane mehhanism. Koroidereemia ja STGD1 haigete uurimisel leidsime, et pigmentepiteeli rakkude kĂ€rbumine on nĂ€htav AF signaali hÀÀbumisena, samas lĂ€hipuna AF uuringaitab tuvastada varasemaid muutusi kui sinine AF uuring. Lipofustsiin ja melanin on mĂ”lemad olulised vĂ”rkkesta rakkude seisundi biomarkerid, mida on vĂ”imalik mitte-invasiivsel moel AF uuringu abil analĂŒĂŒsida ning hinnata haiguse progressiooni.Inherited retinal diseases are the leading cause of visual impairment among the working age-group in the developed countries. Because of genetic and phenotypical heterogeneity, diagnosis and understanding pathogenesis of inherited retinal disease has been challenging. Retinal imaging studies which are noninvasive, are an invaluable source of information. Fundus autofluorescence (FAF) utilizes natural fluorophores to create an image of the retina. Lipofuscin is the primary source for short-wavelength autofluorescence (SW-AF) and melanin for near-infrared autofluorescence (NIR-AF). The amount and distribution of these fluorophores changes in the different disease processes and is detectable in FAF images.
In this study we analyzed SW-AF and NIR-AF images in cases of genetically confirmed recessive Stargardt disease (STGD1), choroideremia, PROM1-macular disease and ocular albinism. The aim was to qualitatively describe FAF in conditions with varying levels of lipofuscin or melanin as well as to quantify FAF signal intensities. We also aimed at finding new clinical implications for autofluorescence imaging in evaluating inherited retinal disease.
We confirmed that melanin is the major source of NIR-AF signal by analyzing ocular albinism carriers and mice models with varying fundus pigmentation, but we also found that presence of melanin can modulate SW-AF signal strength. As a novel finding we confirmed that lipofuscin contributes to NIR-AF signal intensity in cases with excessive bisretinoid lipofuscin levels like seen in STGD1. The analysis of choroideremia and STGD1 patients showed that retinal pigment epithelium atrophy causes loss of signal in both SW-AF and NIR-AF, but NIR-AF could be more sensitive in detecting early cell degeneration. Quantifying the autofluorescence signal intensity helps to further understand disease processes as it is an indirect measure for levels of retinal fluorophores. We showed PROM1-macular dystrophy does not present with elevated levels of SW-AF indicating that excessive lipofuscin accumulation is likely not part of its disease mechanism. That knowledge is valuable in differentiating it from phenotypically similar STGD1 or when developing therapeutic approaches. Lipofuscin and melanin are both valuable retinal biomarkers for evaluating retinal health by using non-invasive autofluorescence imaging.https://www.ester.ee/record=b555738
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