A review of the new MBIE Report on the Marsden Fund

​The New Zealand Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employ-ment (MBIE) has recently completed a report on the way that the Marsden Fund works (MBIE 2017). In many ways this is an excellent document. It describes the history and purpose of the fund and explains how it operates. It also compares Marsden to other granting agencies overseas (Section 3). The authors consulted widely with stakeholders, identified many issues in their findings (Section 4) and made a set of recommendations (Section 5). Although a lot of key points were revealed, the MBIE team seems to have been consistently just wide of the mark, in the estimation of this reviewer. In this short article I identify those key topics that have been a source of long-term concern for many applicants and commentators. It is hoped that these, together with the original MBIE report, may stimulate wider discussion in the scientific community

Striking a balance between culture and fun: 'Quality' meets hitman genre in 'In Bruges'

This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in New Review of Film and Television Studies, 9(2), 132 - 151, 2011, copyright Taylor & Francis, available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/17400309.2011.556934.This paper gives an analysis of In Bruges (2008) that situates the film as a hybrid product offering a mixture of signifiers of cinematic ‘quality’ and ‘lower’ genre ingredients. This paper also considers the extent to which In Bruges offers a combination of tonal registers in which irony and detachment, as markers of distinction, are blended with a more mainstream-oriented appeal to emotional engagement on the part of the viewer, and considers how this might be related to the broader social and industrial contexts in which it appeared

Hierarchical recognition of intentional human gestures for sports video annotation

We present a novel technique for the recognition of complex human gestures for video annotation using accelerometers and the hidden Markov model. Our extension to the standard hidden Markov model allows us to consider gestures at different levels of abstraction through a hierarchy of hidden states. Accelerometers in the form of wrist bands are attached to humans performing intentional gestures, such as umpires in sports. Video annotation is then performed by populating the video with time stamps indicating significant events, where a particular gesture occurs. The novelty of the technique lies in the development of a probabilistic hierarchical framework for complex gesture recognition and the use of accelerometers to extract gestures and significant events for video annotation

Segmentation of intentional human gestures for sports video annotation

We present results on the recognition of intentional human gestures for video annotation and retrieval. We define a gesture as a particular, repeatable, human movement having a predefined meaning. An obvious application of the work is in sports video annotation where umpire gestures indicate specific events. Our approach is to augment video with data obtained from accelerometers worn as wrist bands by one or more officials. We present the recognition performance using a Hidden Markov Model approach for gesture modeling with both isolated gestures and gestures segmented from a stream

The Borders Long Shadow: How Border Patrol Uses Racial Profiling and Local and State Police to Instill Fear in Michigans Immigrant Communities

This groundbreaking report exposes how Border Patrol, an agency within U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), uses racial profiling to target immigrants from Latin America and other people of color throughout Michigan. The report also reveals how Border Patrol colludes with state and local police agencies to target, arrest, and deport immigrants, many of whom are longtime Michigan residents.

\u27Mutiny on the Bounty\u27: the genetic history of Norfolk Island reveals extreme gender-biased admixture

Background The Pacific Oceania region was one of the last regions of the world to be settled via human migration. Here we outline a settlement of this region that has given rise to a uniquely admixed population. The current Norfolk Island population has arisen from a small number of founders with mixed Caucasian and Polynesian ancestry, descendants of a famous historical event. The ‘Mutiny on the Bounty’ has been told in history books, songs and the big screen, but recently this story can be portrayed through comprehensive molecular genetics. Written history details betrayal and murder leading to the founding of Pitcairn Island by European mutineers and the Polynesian women who left Tahiti with them. Investigation of detailed genealogical records supports historical accounts. Findings Using genetics, we show distinct maternal Polynesian mitochondrial lineages in the present day population, as well as a European centric Y-chromosome phylogeny. These results comprehensively characterise the unique gender-biased admixture of this genetic isolate and further support the historical records relating to Norfolk Island. Conclusions Our results significantly refine previous population genetic studies investigating Polynesian versus Caucasian diversity in the Norfolk Island population and add information that is beneficial to future disease and gene mapping studies

Review: The Journal of Dramaturgy, volume 20, 2009/2010

Contents include: Recognizing Toward a Dramaturgical Sensibility, Geoff Proehl, recipient of the 2009 ATHE Outstanding Book Award; Geoff Proehl\u27s Acceptance Speech, Association for Theatre in Higher Education Awards Ceremony August 10, 2009; Millennial Dramaturgy, A conversation about the new book Dramaturgy and Performance; Creating Sub/Text, Dramaturging the ReStaged Festival; Dramaturgy and Interdisciplinary Learning, A Case Study of Russian Theatre and Politics; Thinking about Theatre Photography; Theatre / Photography. Issue editors: D.J. Hopkins, Sydney Cheek O\u27Donnell, Lauren Beckhttps://soundideas.pugetsound.edu/lmdareview/1040/thumbnail.jp

The state of the Martian climate

60°N was +2.0°C, relative to the 1981–2010 average value (Fig. 5.1). This marks a new high for the record. The average annual surface air temperature (SAT) anomaly for 2016 for land stations north of starting in 1900, and is a significant increase over the previous highest value of +1.2°C, which was observed in 2007, 2011, and 2015. Average global annual temperatures also showed record values in 2015 and 2016. Currently, the Arctic is warming at more than twice the rate of lower latitudes