Advanced Media Control Through Drawing: Using a graphics tablet to control complex audio and video data in a live context

This paper demonstrates the results of the authors’ Wacom tablet MIDI user interface. This application enables users’ drawing actions on a graphics tablet to control audio and video parameters in real-time. The programming affords five degrees (x, y, pressure, x tilt, y tilt) of concurrent control for use in any audio or video software capable of receiving and processing MIDI data. Drawing gesture can therefore form the basis of dynamic control simultaneously in the auditory and visual realms. This creates a play of connections between parameters in both mediums, and illustrates a direct correspondence between drawing action and media transformation that is immediately apparent to viewers. The paper considers the connection between drawing technique and media control both generally and specifically, postulating that dynamic drawing in a live context creates a performance mode not dissimilar to performing on a musical instrument or conducting with a baton. The use of a dynamic and physical real-time media interface re-inserts body actions into live media performance in a compelling manner. Performers can learn to “draw/play” the graphics tablet as a musical and visual “instrument”, creating a new and uniquely idiomatic form of electronic drawing. The paper also discusses how to practically program the application and presents examples of its use as a media manipulation tool

The Digital Revolution in Qualitative Research: Working with Digital Audio Data Through Atlas.Ti

Modern versions of Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Software (CAQDAS) are enabling the analysis of audio sound files instead of relying solely on text-based analysis. Along with other developments in computer technologies such as the proliferation of digital recording devices and the potential for using streamed media in online academic publication, this innovation is increasing the possibilities of systematically using media-rich, naturalistic data in place of transcribed 'de-naturalised' forms. This paper reports on a project assessing online learning materials that used Atlas.ti software to analyse sound files, and it describes the problems faced in gathering, analysing and using this data for report writing. It concludes that there are still serious barriers to the full and effective integration of audio data into qualitative research: the absence of 'industry standard' recording technology, the underdevelopment of audio interfaces in Atlas.ti (as a key CAQDAS package), and the conventional approach to data use in many online publication formats all place serious restrictions on the integrated use of this data. Nonetheless, it is argued here that there are clear benefits in pushing for resolutions to these problems as the use of this naturalistic data through digital formats may help qualitative researchers to overcome some long-standing methodological issues: in particular, the ability to overcome the reliance on data transcription rather than 'natural' data, and the possibility of implementing research reports that facilitate a more transparent use of 'reusable' data, are both real possibilities when using these digital technologies, which could substantially change the shape of qualitative research practice.CAQDAS, Recording Technology, Online Publication

The Gibson Paradox: An Empirical Investigation for Turkey

This paper tests the existence of Gibson paradox using the traditional and modern time series techniques in the case of annual Turkish data. Even though the results from the traditional Gibson paradox regression suggested a positive relationship between the interest rates and the prices levels in Turkish data, subsequently it was proven to be spurious. On analyzing the time series properties of the variables and the results from the Johansen cointegration procedure, we reveal that there is no support of the Gibson paradox in Turkish data.Gibson paradox; co-integration; Turkey

What Are They Doing Now?

Post-Liberty University achievements by Honors alumni: Jess Gibson, Courtney Hale, and Jonathan Davis

Like Sand through the Hour Glass . . .

Postcard from Jory Gibson, during the Linfield College Year Abroad Program at the Universidad de Alicante, Spai

Ceramic Vessels from Caddo Sites in Wood County, Texas

This article concerns the documentation of 54 ceramic vessels in the collections of the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at The University of Texas at Austin (TARL) from seven ancestral Caddo sites in Wood County in East Texas (Figure 1). This includes vessels from A. C. Gibson (41WD1, n=2 vessels), J. H. Reese (41WD2, n=26), H. D. Spigner (41WD4, n=17), Mattie Dial (41WD5, n=2), B. F. Cathey (41WD14, n=2), J. H. Baker (41WD33, n=4), and 41WD117 (n=1 vessel). The A. C. Gibson site is situated in the floodplain of the Sabine River near the confluence with Cottonwood Creek. In 1932, looters had dig in a midden deposit (with many mussel shells) and exposed one ancestral Caddo burial with two vessels. In 1934, University of Texas archaeologists excavated two more burials (S-1 and S-2) in the midden. Burial S-1 was that of a child, in a flexed position; this burial had no associated funerary offerings. Burial S-2 held two individuals in an extended supine position in an east-west oriented grave. This burial had two ceramic vessels and a rounded elbow pipe as funerary offerings. The TARL files also indicate that at least three ancestral Caddo burials were excavated by amateur archaeologists prior to the 1970s, and at least one burial had associated ceramic vessels. The nearby Son Gibson Farm site (41WD518) is reported to have had sherds from Sanders Slipped, Sanders Engraved, Canton Incised, and Maxey Noded Redware vessels, and it may be contemporaneous with the burials at the A. C. Gibson site

Optimizing Genetic Manipulation of Methanogens through Faster Cloning Techniques

Methanogenesis is the biological production of methane. Only anaerobic archaea known as methanogens are capable of such a metabolic feat. They have strict living conditions and substrate sources which determine their rate of metabolism. This is of particular importance from a greenhouse gas reduction perspective or biogas capturing perspective. One of the best ways to optimize methanogen methane production is via genetic manipulation. The current procedures are timely though, therefore a faster cloning processes should be developed. The objective of this study was to optimize a premade genetic transformation kit known as the Gibson Kit. The Gibson Kit was supposed to ease the work of genetic manipulation by combining several linear chunks of DNA together at once via the use of sequence overhangs. The resulting plasmid from the Gibson could then be transformed into E. coli where E. coli is supposed to replicate the plasmids extremely quickly. Afterwards, that plasmid could then transform methanogens. Several baseline PCR (polymerase chain reaction) transformations were performed to linearize and amplify the desired plasmid of pNB72.3. PCR amplifications of the desired gene segments which would be added to the plasmid were also performed. The desired gene segments being assembled were supposed to take out the production of Cytochrome C within the methanogen electron transport system by deleting the ccmf gene. Several PCR experiments were carried through without success. The cause of the failures included the primers “hair pinning” at the recommended annealing temperatures, primers being too nonspecific, and primers unable to perform efficiently at the recommend annealing temperatures. After several tries of no success, the Gibson Kit was tested without PCR linearization of the circular plasmid. Instead, standard digestion was relied on. With standard electro competent cell transformation and antibiotic screening, the Gibson product was then tested for successful transmission of the plasmid to the E. coli. Results were negative; therefore, the optimization of faster cloning techniques was unsuccessful, but it will help guide future efforts

Endings

Postcard from Jory Gibson, during the Linfield College Year Abroad Program at the Center for Cross-Cultural Study in Seville, Spai

Current Status of the Norman Site, 34WG2

As defined by Finkelstein in his description of excavations at the site, the Norman site currently is completely located within the waters of Fort Gibson Reservoir, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (COE) lake on the Grand (Neosho) River in northeastern Oklahoma. Due to a combination of archeological excavations at the site during the 1930s and 1940s, pothunting, large-scale earthmoving activities associated with the construction of a nearby highway bridge, and approximately 50 years of wave action and seasonal inundation by Fort Gibson Reservoir, portions of Mounds I-1 and I-2 are all that remain of the Norman site