Before the Rain Came (poems)

Poetry is often perceived as an unfamiliar form of expression. With misconceptions of poetry being as something driven by pure epiphany, poetry is lost amongst many individuals. This misconception is challenged throughout this collection and encourages readers to embrace vulnerability through the speaker’s passage to self acceptance. In my piece, “For the Big Horns,” vulnerability is encompassed when the speaker says that “The mountain told me that we are all animals without blueprints. That people are no longer people without fear, and that fear is a root.” These lines encapsulate the speaker’s persistence to show readers an experience of humanness, and how this perspective can be expressed throughout the reach of poetry. Poetry is capable of restoring the wonder that can be found within one, and this collection of poetry is the beginning to this journey

A new multi-modal dataset for human affect analysis

In this paper we present a new multi-modal dataset of spontaneous three way human interactions. Participants were recorded in an unconstrained environment at various locations during a sequence of debates in a video conference, Skype style arrangement. An additional depth modality was introduced, which permitted the capture of 3D information in addition to the video and audio signals. The dataset consists of 16 participants and is subdivided into 6 unique sections. The dataset was manually annotated on a continuously scale across 5 different affective dimensions including arousal, valence, agreement, content and interest. The annotation was performed by three human annotators with the ensemble average calculated for use in the dataset. The corpus enables the analysis of human affect during conversations in a real life scenario. We first briefly reviewed the existing affect dataset and the methodologies related to affect dataset construction, then we detailed how our unique dataset was constructed

‘Requires proofing by a native speaker’ – colonization and scholarship

Many academic scholars have encountered some variation of the phrase: ‘This manuscript could benefit from proofing by a native English speaker’. They may have received this feedback or given it. This article aims to use peer review as a prism through which to explore aspects of linguistic power and privilege. In unpacking some of the language of peer review we may question some assumptions we hold about ‘native’ English speakers. Although making reference to other written works, this commentary is foregrounded in personal testimony. It does this to contextualize the issues. It is written from the perspective of a storyteller. It draws upon the stories of languages and how we use them, of where they come from and where they are going. Running throughout is the idea and the very dark reality of colonization

Spoken language processing: piecing together the puzzle

Attempting to understand the fundamental mechanisms underlying spoken language processing, whether it is viewed as behaviour exhibited by human beings or as a faculty simulated by machines, is one of the greatest scientific challenges of our age. Despite tremendous achievements over the past 50 or so years, there is still a long way to go before we reach a comprehensive explanation of human spoken language behaviour and can create a technology with performance approaching or exceeding that of a human being. It is argued that progress is hampered by the fragmentation of the field across many different disciplines, coupled with a failure to create an integrated view of the fundamental mechanisms that underpin one organism's ability to communicate with another. This paper weaves together accounts from a wide variety of different disciplines concerned with the behaviour of living systems - many of them outside the normal realms of spoken language - and compiles them into a new model: PRESENCE (PREdictive SENsorimotor Control and Emulation). It is hoped that the results of this research will provide a sufficient glimpse into the future to give breath to a new generation of research into spoken language processing by mind or machine. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

The scholarly hunter: a textual analysis of the ways in which Bloodborne’s narrative and environment invites player involvement and initiates critical debate

This thesis discusses Bloodborne's narrative and its ability to make players invested in its narrative through its genres, environmental storytelling, high-intensity gameplay, and the open-ended nature of the narrative. The thesis uses Henry Jenkin’s narrative architecture as a structure to present current academic findings on Bloodborne while also delving into the roles of environmental storytelling, game mechanics, and the action horror genre in relation to player investment and agency. Further on, paratextual narrative co-construction is examined, and this concept carries us into the final chapter of the thesis. Before looking into the co-authoring of a narrative between players and game developers, this thesis will first break down Bloodborne's narrative in its first chapter. In the second chapter, I explore the gameplay and difficulty of Bloodborne in relation to the horror genre and its ability to evoke strong emotions. Finally, the third chapter investigates my claim that Bloodborne’s narrative and cryptic storytelling style have created a lore-hunting culture and community that inspires players to co-construct the narrative and solve unanswered questions. Suggesting that the developer of Bloodborne intentionally creates narratives and worlds in such a way as to sow the seeds for critical debate and discussion surrounding the narrative

Regression algorithm for emotion detection

International audienceWe present here two components of a computational system for emotion detection. PEMs (Personalized Emotion Maps) store links between bodily expressions and emotion values, and are individually calibrated to capture each person's emotion profile. They are an implementation based on aspects of Scherer's theoretical complex system model of emotion~\cite{scherer00, scherer09}. We also present a regression algorithm that determines a person's emotional feeling from sensor measurements of their bodily expressions, using their individual PEMs. The aim of this architecture is to dissociate sensor measurements of bodily expression from the emotion expression interpretation, thus allowing flexibility in the choice of sensors. We test the prototype system using video sequences of facial expressions and demonstrate the real-time capabilities of the system for detecting emotion. We note that, interestingly, the system detects the sort of hysteresis phenomenon in changing emotional state as suggested by Scherer's psychological model

Walter Haskell Hinton: Illustrator of the Popular American West

Walter Haskell Hinton was an American commercial illustrator. He is known for his work for Velvet Joe tobacco company, Sports Afield, Outdoor Life, John Deere, Fairmont Motors, Washington National Insurance, and various Western pulp magazines