The efficiency of visual transparency

This thesis examines the phenomenon of visual transparency in a novel application of the efficiency approach. Transparency provides a useful stimulus to probe the visual mechanisms that underlie the visual surface representation, introduced in Chapter One. Previous research has found that there is a cost in processing visual transparency defined purely by motion or stereo cues. This has been interpreted in terms of visual mechanisms constraining the recovery of transparency. However, the cost for transparency may reflect the increased complexity of the stimuli. To address this issue I computed the efficiency for motion and stereo defined transparency tasks by comparing human performance with that of the ideal observer. The efficiency approach has two key advantages over traditional psychophysical measures: 1) it provides a performance measure normalised relative to the available information, 2) it is an absolute measure and can be compared directly across diverse tasks. I provide a review of the efficiency approach in Chapter Two. In Chapter Three, I present a study of the efficiency for speed discrimination of transparent random dot stimuli and comparable non-transparent random dot stimuli, as a function of the speed ratio and the dot density of the stimuli. In Chapter Four, I present a study of the efficiency for depth discrimination of transparent and non-transparent random dot stereograms, across a range of disparity ratios and dot densities. In Chapter Five, I present an extension of the efficiency approach to the motor domain, for the smooth pursuit of high-density transparent and non-transparent random-dot stimuli. Finally, in Chapter Six I provide physiologically plausible accounts of the findings

European code against cancer 4th edition: 12 ways to reduce your cancer risk

This overview describes the principles of the 4th edition of the European Code against Cancer and provides an introduction to the 12 recommendations to reduce cancer risk. Among the 504.6 million inhabitants of the member states of the European Union (EU28), there are annually 2.64 million new cancer cases and 1.28 million deaths from cancer. It is estimated that this cancer burden could be reduced by up to one half if scientific knowledge on causes of cancer could be translated into successful prevention. The Code is a preventive tool aimed to reduce the cancer burden by informing people how to avoid or reduce carcinogenic exposures, adopt behaviours to reduce the cancer risk, or to participate in organised intervention programmes. The Code should also form a base to guide national health policies in cancer prevention. The 12 recommendations are: not smoking or using other tobacco products; avoiding second-hand smoke; being a healthy body weight; encouraging physical activity; having a healthy diet; limiting alcohol consumption, with not drinking alcohol being better for cancer prevention; avoiding too much exposure to ultraviolet radiation; avoiding cancer-causing agents at the workplace; reducing exposure to high levels of radon; encouraging breastfeeding; limiting the use of hormone replacement therapy; participating in organised vaccination programmes against hepatitis B for newborns and human papillomavirus for girls; and participating in organised screening programmes for bowel cancer, breast cancer, and cervical cancer

Feeling the Future: Crisis, Time and Emotion in Mia Hansen-Løve’s Things to Come (2016)

Mia Hansen-Løve’s L’Avenir/Things to Come (FR, 2016) depicts a woman’s life at a time of crisis. In so doing, the film subtly but insistently shows Nathalie’s life to be caught up in a wider set of forces and relations, revealing the implication of individual and intimate experience in a socio-political collective sphere. Drawing on Lauren Berlant’s concept of “the impasse”, this essay explores how a filmic depiction of personal unraveling might productively question the prevailing and conflicting modes of futurity experienced in everyday neoliberalism: projects and progress on the one hand, stasis and catastrophe on the other. Things to Come provides a delicate and powerful example of how ordinary filmic production of time, space and affect can offer ways of perceiving and feeling the impasse as a situation within which resistant forms of movement and collective resonance, beyond the isolation of individual subjectivity, might be possible

“That reality-challenged woman”: Dreams and Matter in Barbie

This essay will explore some of the ambiguous interactions between imaginary spaces and material reality as articulated by Barbie, considering the implications for its understanding of womanhood. First outlining a series of oppositions between fantasy and reality, Barbie and “real women” in the film, I will then highlight the ways in which this binary framework is ultimately undermined. With reference to both media theory and trans theories of embodiment, I will argue that the film resists oppositions between imagination and reality in ways that are generative and progressive, yet which simultaneously serve to enhance the film’s marketability

Music and Spatial Injustice in Banlieue Cinema

This article examines the use of pre-existing music in French films set in impoverished banlieue neighbourhoods. It draws on Dikeç’s (2007) concept of ‘spatial injustice’, which arises in a convergence of media representation and government policy, entrenching inequality, in the context of the ‘fracture coloniale’ in French society. Pre-existing music, with its wider spheres of signification beyond the film, potentially disrupts reifying visions of the banlieue. The article considers ‘third space music’ (Powrie 2018), applying the concept to contemporary cinema in the banlieue. For context, Le Thé au harem d’archimède (Charef 1985) and La Haine (Kassovitz 1995), show pre-millennial banlieue films using music as a shared cultural resource. La Haine begins to evoke a third space by foregrounding analogue ‘sampling’, a hip-hop practice in which dominant codes are appropriated and reconfigured, an aesthetics which Christopher (2019) argues has now pervaded contemporary digital life. Looking at pre-existing music in more recent films, Divines (Benyamina, 2016) and Swagger (Babinet, 2016), through the prism of ‘third space music’ and sampling, shows how these films use music in their search for alternative ways of representing the overdetermined space of the banlieue, whilst also confronting its spatial injustice

Tactics and Praxis: A Manifesto

As women and as academics we have found ourselves increasingly troubled by two things. Firstly, where is the time for our creativity, pleasure, exploration, discovery and curiosity? Secondly, in the midst of relentless pressure, how to respond to political and environmental crisis? Where is the connective tissue for collectivity? How can activism happen while working for institutions entrenched in multiple forms of privilege? Is it possible to use what power is accorded to us within such a system to stand with and work for those who have less?Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistic

Ownership of small livestock species, but not aggregate livestock, is associated with an increased risk of anemia among children in Ethiopia: A propensity score matching analysis

Abstract Consumption of animal source foods, through livestock production, improves children's growth and micronutrient status. However, research on the relationship between livestock ownership and childhood anemia has produced conflicting results. The current study used robust analytical approaches to examine the effect of household livestock ownership on children's anemia using the most recent secondary data from the national demographic and health survey. We followed a 1:1 closest neighborhood propensity score matching analysis. A propensity score was generated using the binary logistic regression model to compute the probability of owning livestock. From a total of 18,008 households enrolled in the latest Ethiopian Demographic and Health Survey (EDHS 2016), data of 721 index children aged 6–59 months from households owning livestock were matched with a comparable number (721) of children from households without livestock. The paired and independent t‐test, matched relative risk (RR), and standardized mean differences were used to compare the distributions of hemoglobin concentration and anemia risks between treatment and control groups. Anemia was found in more than half (54.1% and 58.8%) of children aged 6–59 months from livestock‐owning and nonowning families, respectively (p > .05). Aggregate ownership of livestock was not associated with hemoglobin concentration or anemia status (RR = 0.95, 95% confidence interval [95% CI] [0.87–1.04]). Species‐wise, poultry was associated with a lower (RR = 0.88, 95% CI [0.84–0.95]) anemia risk, while ownership of goat/sheep was associated with higher (RR = 1.10, 95% CI [1.03–1.17]) risk. In conclusion, ownership of small livestock species (sheep/goats and poultry), but not aggregate livestock ownership, was associated with the risk of anemia among children in Ethiopia. Therefore, agriculture‐sensitive nutrition, with a One Health lens approach, is recommended to mitigate the high burden of anemia among children in Ethiopia. In the future, a well‐controlled interventional study with more extended periods may be required to fully understand the effects of livestock production and highlight the differences seen across livestock species