8383 research outputs found
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Enhancing film sound design using audio features, regression models and artificial neural networks
Get PDFThis is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of New Music Research on 21/09/2021, available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/09298215.2021.1977336Making the link between human emotion and music is challenging. Our aim was to produce an efficient system that emotionally rates songs from multiple genres. To achieve this, we employed a series of online self-report studies, utilising Russell's circumplex model. The first study (n = 44) identified audio features that map to arousal and valence for 20 songs. From this, we constructed a set of linear regressors. The second study (n = 158) measured the efficacy of our system, utilising 40 new songs to create a ground truth. Results show our approach may be effective at emotionally rating music, particularly in the prediction of valence
Protecting noncommunicable disease prevention policy in trade and investment agreements
Get PDFPreventing noncommunicable diseases is a global priority, for which the World Health Organization has recommended policies to reduce the consumption of tobacco products, alcohol and unhealthy foods. However, regulation has been strongly opposed by affected industries, who have invoked the provisions of legally binding trade and investment agreements. The aim of this analysis of the legal, economic and public health literature was to present a short primer on the relationship between noncommunicable disease prevention policy and trade and investment agreements to help public health policy-makers safeguard public health policies. The analysis identified opportunities for protecting, and even promoting, public health in trade and investment agreements, including: (i) ensuring exceptions for public health measures are included in agreements; (ii) committing to good regulatory practice that balances transparency and cooperation with the need for governments to limit the influence of vested interests; (iii) ensuring trade and investment agreement preambles acknowledge the importance of public health; (iv) excluding investor–state dispute settlement mechanisms from agreements; and (v) limiting the scope and definition of key provisions on investor protection to reduce the risk of investment disputes. This synthesis of the multidisciplinary literature also provides support for greater strategic and informed engagement between the health and trade policy sectors. In addition, ensuring a high level of health protection in trade and investment agreements requires cooperation between disciplines, engagement with experts in law, economics and public health policy, and fully transparent policy processes and governance structures
Effects of strength training on the biomechanics and coordination of short-term maximal cycling
Get PDFThis is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of Sports Sciences on 28/06/2022, available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02640414.2022.2080159The aim was to investigate the effects of a gym-based strength training intervention on biomechanics and intermuscular coordination patterns during short-term maximal cycling. Twelve track sprint cyclists performed 3 × 4 s seated sprints at 135 rpm, interspersed with 2 × 4 s seated sprints at 60 rpm on an isokinetic ergometer, repeating the session 11.6 ± 1.4 weeks later following a training programme that included two gym-based strength training sessions per week. Joint moments were calculated via inverse dynamics, using pedal forces and limb kinematics. EMG activity was measured for 9 lower limb muscles. Track cyclists ‘leg strength” increased (7.6 ± 11.9 kg, P = 0.050 and ES = 0.26) following the strength training intervention. This was accompanied by a significant increase in crank power over a complete revolution for sprints at 135 rpm (26.5 ± 36.2 W, P = 0.028 and ES = 0.29). The increase in leg strength and average crank power was associated with a change in biceps femoris muscle activity, indicating that the riders successfully adapted their intermuscular coordination patterns to accommodate the changes in personal constraints to increase crank powe
Dilemmas of alienation in arts-based education research methods
Get PDFWe discuss the use of arts-based practices from our recent investigations into research methodologies, comparing the approaches of educators and doctoral students whose work has derived predominantly from their previous experience of arts-based practices with those who had no previous experience of such practices, but who nonetheless engaged with it for at least part of their research. All of our participants are professionals engaged with education backgrounds, such as doctoral students, teachers and gallery educators, and we explore some of the tensions arising between professional and arts-based practices, and discuss questions of the legitimacy and validity of these practices as perceived by our participants, with a critical focus on the feelings of scepticism and alienation that arts-based methods may generate for the inexperienced
Gary Owen’s Iphigenia in Splott: The Anthropocene as Tragedy
Get PDFReprinted with permission from the author. Originally published in Critical Stages/ Scènes critiques (https://www.critical-stages.org
Kerrigan, S. Gary Owen’s Iphigenia in Splott: The Anthropocene as Tragedy, 26. 2022.The fate of the tragic Greek figure Iphigenia is intrinsically connected to her environment in classical canonical source texts. Her death, depicted in Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis, is the result of human failings, and yet the natural world and the climate play an integral part. In 2015, Gary Owen transposed the narrative of this classical heroine to Cardiff, Wales, to consider the ruins of contemporary Britain in an increasingly hostile environment of austerity. Owen’s play is a scathing indictment of the overpopulated and under-resourced urban environment, but it is ultimately a catastrophic climate event that leads to the tragedy within this adaptation. Classical tragedy is a predominantly anthropocentric dramatic form. However, with reference to Owen’s Iphigenia in Splott and utilising emerging ecocriticism and discourse, I argue that there is potential for an ecologically sensitive, revisionist perspective in contemporary adaptations of classical tragedy. Building upon Carl Lavery’s and Clare Finburgh’s provocation that, “the Anthropocene is a term that invariably attests to humanity’s inability to impact upon and intervene in natural processes [and] it simultaneously highlights humanity’s failure to harness or control such interventions” (34), I consider what the real tragedy is within Owen’s play. Is the tragedy of his Iphigenia a tragedy of humanity’s failure to cohabit with the natural environment without causing harm or, perhaps more broadly, a tragedy that reflects the failure of a historic and dogmatic anthropocentric view in theatre and beyond
Religion and Spirituality
Get PDFWorking with clients around issues relating to spirituality or religion presents a range of challenges and opportunities to counsellors and psychotherapists. It is apparent that clients do not always receive best practice in this area (Jenkins, 2010).
It is important to recognise that:
• Religion and/or spirituality remains an important part of many people’s lives today
• Engaging with spirituality and religion can contribute to people’s health and well being
• Therapists need to be familiar with the challenges and benefits of working with their clients around their relationship with religion and spirituality
• For many in the field, discussing religious or spiritual dimensions remains something of a taboo.
This chapter explores religion and spirituality within counselling and psychotherap
Public Viking Research in Museums and Beyond
Get PDFThe popularity of the Vikings remains a mixed blessing for archaeologists and heritage practitioners; they are ‘victims of their own success’ on multiple registers (Croix 2015). This is all the more so because, over the last decade at least, we have been unquestionably living through a global ‘Viking revival’ (Birkett 2019:4). Today, Vikings are a focus of identity, faith, politics, consumerism and escapism in which archaeological sources are drawn upon in rich and complex fashions. I have three critical points to make which aim to support and extend, not detract from or devalue, Sindbæk’s insights and inferences: ‘where’s the evidence?’; ‘what’s the context?’; ‘what do we do about it?’ These points together lead me to propose we must collectively adopt a refreshed and reinvigorated agenda to pursue dedicated and sustained ‘Public Viking Research’ into today’s Vikingisms in museums and elsewhere
The contribution of intellectual disabilities nurses
Get PDFApproximately 1.5 million people (2.16% of adults and 2.5% of children) in the UK, are identified as having an intellectual disability (ID) (Mencap, 2020). Despite avoidable disparities in health between people with IDs and the general population (Kerr, 2004; van Schrojenstein Lantman-de Val et al, 2007), their life expectancy is increasing, along with the complexity of their health and social care needs (Truesdale and Brown, 2017). Health inequalities can be reduced through better access to health services and appropriate intellectual disability nursing interventions. However, there is a wide variety of roles and expectations for ID nurses in the UK and Ireland, and the range of nursing skills used in this field has not been clearly identified
Changes in foraging behaviour suggest competition between wild and domestic ungulates: Guanaco and domestic sheep in southern Patagonia
Get PDFThis is the peer reviewed version of the following article: [Lancaster, A., Corti, P., Fernández, T., Moraga, C. A., Radic-Schilling, S., & von Hardenberg, A. (2022). Changes in foraging behaviour suggest competition between wild and domestic ungulates: Guanaco and domestic sheep in southern Patagonia. Journal of Zoology, 317(3), 213-228], which has been published in final form at [https://doi.org/10.1111/jzo.12971]. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions. This article may not be enhanced, enriched or otherwise transformed into a derivative work, without express permission from Wiley or by statutory rights under applicable legislation. Copyright notices must not be removed, obscured or modified. The article must be linked to Wiley’s version of record on Wiley Online Library and any embedding, framing or otherwise making available the article or pages thereof by third parties from platforms, services and websites other than Wiley Online Library must be prohibited.Previous attempts to address the presence of interspecific competition between domestic livestock and wild ungulates have focused largely on habitat or dietary overlaps. Although overlaps in habitat or diet create opportunities for competition to occur between species, competition only results from such overlap if it affects one or both species negatively. Less attention has been afforded to possible behavioural modifications induced in wildlife by competition with domestic livestock. Here, we investigated the effects of the presence of livestock on feeding behaviour of guanaco (Lama guanicoe) in southern Patagonia, using focal sampling of individuals during foraging bouts, with instantaneous scan samples to estimate group behavioural budgets. We recorded guanaco bite and step rates, used as proxies of foraging intake and selectivity, from four different study sites over eight consecutive seasons. We also estimated sheep and guanaco densities per site, along with vegetation biomass availability. As in other ungulates, bite rates of guanaco appear to be highly flexible and generally increased with vegetation biomass availability. However, as sheep densities and thus additional grazing pressure increased, guanaco foraging strategy compensated by increasing bite rates when foraging vegetation was scarce, indicating further likelihood of competition. Additionally, scan samples indicated that the probability of guanaco feeding occurring at any one time was higher in areas shared with domestic sheep compared to national parks, suggesting guanaco have to focus more on feeding than other behaviours when sheep are present
Crafts and Craftwork in Medieval Europe
No full textThis entry examines crafts and craftwork in Medieval Europe. Through an analysis of craftwork associations, craftspeople and craftworks in medieval Europe, it seeks to explore their growth and complexity reflecting on the explosion of urban centres, an emergence of a commercial society and mass production, diversification and usage of objects from the everyday to the luxurious from the year 1000 onwards. It begins by reflecting on urban guilds, associations of craftspeople who oversaw the various stages of craftwork production, examining their structures, hierarchies and memberships to think about their responses to social, cultural and economic conditions. From guilds, the entry turns to focus on the variety of craftspeoples in Medieval Europe. Here the benefits of guild membership, commercial, spiritual and social are explored, as well as the importance of maintaining product integrity, quality and the management of risk. Finally, craftwork itself is examined, to reflect on the multiple processes and local-global networks behind objects, dispelling notions of one master at work and demonstrating the multiple uses, interpretations and ambiguities of craftworks
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