Fighting Game Difficulty

Lowering difficulty in games has become a recent trend amongst gaming companies. The goal of this tactic is to provide a more welcoming platform for players that are new to the franchise. However, this trend has been met with criticism amongst more experienced veterans of their respective games. This essay will touch upon different games within the fighting game genre that have lowered their overall difficulty, and the positive/negative effects of it

The ruin and the circular narrative

The written component submitted to the University Research Degree Committee in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of MASTERS BY RESEARCH in Fine ArtThis study constitutes the written component of a practice based Masters by Research in Fine Art. The research arises from my practice as an artist working in film and video in which I have come across links between the representation of ruins and aspects of narrative structure that have suggested the possibility that the ruin represents a nodal point in the work. Ruins have tended to be treated thematically by art historians and theorists and I will demonstrate that there are very few attempts to take the subject beyond the role of metaphor or allegory. However, Jacques Derrida has taken the idea of ruins into the idea of origin and it is this insight that lies at the core of this study. This leads to the idea of the ruin as a condensation of the end and beginning thereby giving it an important role in relation to narrative structure. The circular narrative is a form in which the end and beginning are stitched together at the same theoretical point as the ruin. In terms of practice the circular structure is explored in the form of film and video loops in which the circle structures the way the works physical production, its contextual background, its content and the ways in which it can be interpreted. Underlining this is Derrida's idea that the ruin is always already present at the origin of the work. These ideas are also combined with Freud's theory of the Death Instinct which is rooted in the compulsion to repeat. I have extended Peter Brooks' linking of the Death Instinct with linear narrative structure to include the circular narrative and tested this against my studio practice and the work of another artists, a writer and a film maker. In combining this link between the Death Instinct and the circular narrative with the ruin I have used the Freudian Theory of Primal Phantasies. This was also done to resolve the link with fantasy that was identified at the beginning of the project. My argument ends with the consolidation of these strands with Elisabeth Bronfen's use of the navel as a symbolic intervention into the conventional structures of psychoanalysis. In conclusion the identification of this nodal point in the structure of the work is shown to present an example of the ways in which theory and practice in contemporary art can be dynamically combined. In this way the art work is not only the result of the context from which it has emerged but also provides the means of interrogating that context

The Lady in the Harbor and the Lady in Albany

Commemorating the 100 year anniversary of Kate Stoneman\u27s entrance into legal practice in the State of New York, the first women to achieve this milestone, Hon. Sol Wachtler hails the achievements of the Task Force on Women and relays its future plans about how, in its continued pursuing of equality, it will help eradicate sexual biases still persisting in the legal industry

A Factor Analysis of Investment Behaviour for Small Investors in the Hong Kong Stock Market

Hon (2012) found that small investors were overconfident and bought more stock during the buoyant market in the Hong Kong stock market. Small investors also exhibited herd behaviour. In this paper we extend his paper to identify and analyse the important factors that capture the behaviour of small investors in the Hong Kong stock market,especially during the financial crisis.Exploratory factor analysis is employed to analyse the data, we found that monitor investments is the second important factor and reference group is the most important factor..Keywords. Factor analysis, Small investors, Stock market, Hong Kong.JEL. E22, G02, G10

Biochemical and haematological aspects of ethanol metabolism in humans : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Biochemistry at Massey University, New Zealand

Macrocytosis or raised mean cell volume (MCV) (which as measured by the Coulter S counter) is one of the results of alcohol abuse. There is a need to identify (chronic) alcoholics by laboratory tests. The obvious measurement of blood alcohol is not suitable as ethanol is so rapidly cleared from the body. It is usually undetectable 2 – 3 hours after drinking. To this the following battery of tests: MCV, fast haemoglobin, gamma glutamyl transferase and thiamine, have been examined These tests which were performed, on a population consisting of 115 random hospital patients, 14 patients attending diabetic clinic and 13 'normal' volunteers. For ethical reasons it was not possible to obtain samples from known alcoholics. Instead those samples which contained red cells above 92 fl of MCV were suspected of including alcoholics and correlated with other parameter which may be assumed to be elevated in alcoholics. The results showed that there were 23 abnormal findings likely to be associated with heavy drinkings in 70 bloods selected for high MCV