Dance-making on the internet: can on-line choreographic projects foster creativity in the user-participant?

Interactive Internet artworks invite viewers to become involved as user-participants as the creative process unfolds. Through analysis of selected Internet projects, the authors discuss the potential for facilitating an interactive, creative experience for participants in the process of making dance. This study was carried out in 1998 and 1999, but the findings remain relevant, as there have been few subsequent developments in the field

Missing in Action: Embodied Experience and Virtual Reality

This essay examines embodied experience in virtual reality (VR) theatre, performance art, and installations in one-to-one engagements with virtual worlds and in telematic interactions with other people. It proposes that bodies in VR are blurred, virtual and physical, absent and present, compounded and indivisible, even though body and environment have different materialities. This blurring can cause confusion in the ethics of embodiment that usually govern physical interactions between audience and performer—when, and if, to touch or be touched—since embodied experience confounds cognitive separation between the physical and virtual. Such confusion can result in a mismatch between the embodied self and disembodied Other that the gaming world is poorly equipped to negotiate, but that could have profound effects on VR users. Theatre, on the other hand, is well-versed in the negotiation of the real and the virtual, and virtual environments allow us to ask questions about embodiment and humanity through the experiences of individual bodies in ways that were never previously achievable. How can theatre and performance help us to understand the nature of embodied experience in VR when anything can be done but the body is apparently missing? It becomes possible to explore impossible situations and experiences through the eyes of others. Yet, is it ethically defensible to engage in any experience or action that would not be viable, or perhaps condoned, in the physical world on the basis that it is not “real”? The essay examines the nature of embodied experience in VR and considers the implications for theatre

Efficacy of Innovative Learning Engagement Modes

Change is an indispensible part of an organization. Change always brings modifications and alterations, which leads to innovations. Classroom pedagogy is not an exception in this. This research is an attempt in the direction to comprehend and make innovations in classroom learning. The paper focuses on the measuring the effectiveness of implemented innovative learning engagement modes in a regular classroom practices. The action research was carried out for this purpose. Sample includes the B.Sc. B.Ed. students of Navrachan University, Vadodara. Mainly, role play, interview, personal diary writing and analysis, bulletin board presentations, peer tutoring and mentoring were the learning engagement modes. The open ended questionnaire was constituted in order to collect the data. Content analysis was done to arrive at the findings and conclusion. The positive impact of the implemented methodologies has been observed form the findings. Findings also support the regular usage of these types of learning engagement modes in regular classroom practices

Highlights in lung cancer in 2019.

There have been significant advances in the treatment landscape of lung cancer in the recent few years. In this podcast, Jonathan Lim (a member of the European Society for Medical Oncology Young Oncologists Committee) interviews Professor Sanjay Popat (Professor of Thoracic Medical Oncology at The Royal Marsden Hospital, UK) on the highlights of lung cancer in 2019. Professor Popat provides his perspective and contextualises how some of the key studies reported this year (including CheckMate 227, IMpower110, KEYNOTE 042, FLAURA and CASPIAN) have been practice-changing. We also discuss the current utility and caveats of PD-L1(programmed death-ligand 1) as a biomarker for immunotherapy with anti-PD1, and explore progress made in the clinical translation of circulating tumour DNA, circulating tumour cell and tumour mutational burden. Finally, we talk about the recent hype on targeting KRAS in non-small cell lung cancer, and highlight what is on the horizon in 2020. Click here to listen to the Podcast (https://soundcloud.com/bmjpodcasts/highlights-in-lung-cancer-2019?in=bmjpodcasts/sets/esmo-open)

The effect of resting morphological lip shape during lip movement: A three-dimensional motion analysis study

Purpose The aim of this study was to determine the influence of different morphological lip shape during lip movement. Method A sample of 80 individuals with three-dimensional facial images at rest and during speech were recorded. Subjects were asked to pronounce four bilabial words in a relaxed manner and scanned using the 3dMDFace™ Dynamic System at 48 frames per second. Six lip landmarks were identified at rest and the landmark displacement vectors for the frame of maximal lip movement for all six visemes were recorded. Principal component analysis was applied to isolate relationship between lip traits and their registered coordinates. Eight specific resting morphological lip traits were identified for each individual. The principal component (PC) scores for each viseme were labelled by lip morphological trait and were graphically visualized as ellipses to discriminate any differences in lip movement. Results The first five PCs accounted for up to 95% of the total variance in lip shape during movement, with PC1 accounting for at least 38%. There was no clear discrimination between PC1, PC2 and PC3 for any of the resting morphological lip traits. Conclusion Lip shapes during movement are more uniform between individuals and resting morphological lip shape does not influence movement of the lips

Multilevel principal component analysis (mPCA) in shape analysis: a feasibility study in medical and dental imaging

Background and objective Methods used in image processing should reflect any multilevel structures inherent in the image dataset or they run the risk of functioning inadequately. We wish to test the feasibility of multilevel principal components analysis (PCA) to build active shape models (ASMs) for cases relevant to medical and dental imaging. Methods Multilevel PCA was used to carry out model fitting to sets of landmark points and it was compared to the results of “standard” (single-level) PCA. Proof of principle was tested by applying mPCA to model basic peri-oral expressions (happy, neutral, sad) approximated to the junction between the mouth/lips. Monte Carlo simulations were used to create this data which allowed exploration of practical implementation issues such as the number of landmark points, number of images, and number of groups (i.e., “expressions” for this example). To further test the robustness of the method, mPCA was subsequently applied to a dental imaging dataset utilising landmark points (placed by different clinicians) along the boundary of mandibular cortical bone in panoramic radiographs of the face. Results Changes of expression that varied between groups were modelled correctly at one level of the model and changes in lip width that varied within groups at another for the Monte Carlo dataset. Extreme cases in the test dataset were modelled adequately by mPCA but not by standard PCA. Similarly, variations in the shape of the cortical bone were modelled by one level of mPCA and variations between the experts at another for the panoramic radiographs dataset. Results for mPCA were found to be comparable to those of standard PCA for point-to-point errors via miss-one-out testing for this dataset. These errors reduce with increasing number of eigenvectors/values retained, as expected. Conclusions We have shown that mPCA can be used in shape models for dental and medical image processing. mPCA was found to provide more control and flexibility when compared to standard “single-level” PCA. Specifically, mPCA is preferable to “standard” PCA when multiple levels occur naturally in the dataset

Struggling to be Fit: Identity, Integrity, and the Law

This interdisciplinary co-authored Analysis piece introduces identity and integrity, which are argued to sit at the core of the person. It analyses approaches taken to these concepts by legal regimes, particularly in the context of individuals using artificial limbs or digital avatars. The piece concludes that law engages with identity and integrity to a limited and incomplete extent; and that law is thus inadequate in its engagement with the person, and its meaning making in this respect. This piece draws on two interdisciplinary funded projects, funded by the Wellcome Trust and the Arts and Humanities Research Council

STANCY: Stance Classification Based on Consistency Cues

Controversial claims are abundant in online media and discussion forums. A better understanding of such claims requires analyzing them from different perspectives. Stance classification is a necessary step for inferring these perspectives in terms of supporting or opposing the claim. In this work, we present a neural network model for stance classification leveraging BERT representations and augmenting them with a novel consistency constraint. Experiments on the Perspectrum dataset, consisting of claims and users' perspectives from various debate websites, demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach over state-of-the-art baselines

Resolution of severe hyponatraemia is associated with improved survival in patients with cancer

© Balachandran et al.Background: Hyponatraemia is a common finding in patients with cancer, and has been shown to be associated with poor prognosis in different settings. We have analysed the impact of severe hyponatraemia in patients with cancer. Methods: A retrospective review of all patients admitted to a specialist cancer hospital with a plasma sodium of less than 115 mmol/l and a diagnosis of malignancy was undertaken. Patient and tumour characteristics were analysed as well as impact of hyponatraemia management on overall survival and number of lines of cancer treatment received. Results: 57 patients were identified. 84% had advanced Stage 3 or 4 cancer and approximately 85% with data available had symptoms attributable to hyponatraemia. Mean length of hospital stay was 12 days, and overall survival (OS) was 5.1 months. Plasma sodium level corrected in 56% of patients and here OS was 13.6 months compared to 16 days in those whose sodium did not correct (p < 0.001). Those whose sodium corrected were more likely to receive further lines of anti-cancer treatment. Conclusions: Severe hyponatraemia in cancer is associated with very poor survival, but correction of the sodium level leads to additional treatment and significantly greater overall survival (although it is not possible to determine if this is due to specific therapy of the hyponatraemia or the resolving hyponatraemia reflects an improvement in the clinical condition). Aggressive treatment of hyponatraemia may allow more anti-cancer treatment and improve survival