18693 research outputs found
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An Exploration into Liminal Spaces and Their Effects on Player Tension
No full textThis thesis explores how liminal spaces can be used in video games by analyzing their design and impact on player tension. How can designers create transitional or ambiguous environments that contribute to a sense of unease, anticipation, and tension? What are some of the common design elements that help build an effective liminal space, which the researcher calls distortions, and how do those distortions affect player tension? The researcher created a series of levels that explore the different elements of liminal spaces to test how they affect player tension while playing the level
Effective Guidance Using Natural and Unnatural Framing
No full textThis thesis investigates the impact of six types of framing—Natural, Unnatural, Implied, Implicit, Mixed, and Lighting / Color Contrast Framing—on guiding player navigation in video games. It further examines how additional design elements, such as chokepoints and breadcrumbing, interact with these different types of framing to enhance directional cues across both indoor and outdoor settings. Utilizing the Dying Light Editor: Chrome Engine, the researcher developed a custom single-player level in which these framing methods were implemented and evaluated. Through testing and analysis we can determine the best practices for utilizing the framing techniques
Visual Legal Rhetoric in the Age of Generative AI and Deepfakes: Renaissance or Dark Ages?
No full textThe paradoxical development of visual generative AI tools, such as OpenAI’s DALL-E 3, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion, simultaneously signals a renaissance and a potential dark age in visual rhetoric and communication. On the one hand, these tools democratize the creation of visual content, empowering attorneys and others to become artists and illustrators of their legal communications without needing to learn how to draw. These AI systems can simplify complex legal concepts, bridge language barriers, and enhance advocacy. But on the other hand, the proliferation of deepfakes presents significant challenges for visual rhetoric. Deepfakes can quickly and easily create realistic but false images, videos, and audio that exploit celebrities, distort facts, and facilitate various crimes. The negative implications of deepfakes include their association with fraud, misinformation, and emotional harm. This technological advancement undermines the credibility of genuine news photography and other highly representational media as the public struggles to distinguish real from fabricated content and begins to discount all visual media. The challenge lies in using the tools effectively while maintaining the verisimilitude and integrity of representational visual media, which traditionally relies on its status as an unembellished depiction of reality to achieve its rhetorical and communicative goals. The ethical and professional questions raised by manipulated images extend to the decision whether to edit or alter visual content to improve the communication of the message and enhance understanding, while still acknowledging the lurking risk of misleading or confusing the audience with altered or manufactured media. The article suggests best practices for using generative AI responsibly: Use Non-representational Visuals: Favor diagrams, charts, drawings, and illustrations over highly representational media to avoid the pitfalls of staged, manufactured, or altered representational imagery. Disclose Staged Images: Always inform the audience when an image has been staged or recreated to maintain transparency and trust. Provide Original and Enhanced Versions: Present the original im- age alongside any enhanced version to allow for critical examination and comparison. The article concludes by emphasizing the need for vigilance in working with manipulated visuals and detecting the possible deceptions of the works of others. Given the ease with which AI can alter images, lawyers and judges must remain aware of their biases and heuristics in assessing visual evidence, recognizing that even analog photographs and videos do not represent definitive “truths.” The advent of AI-generated visuals necessitates a reassessment of the ethical use of visual media in legal communications to preserve the power of visuals in legal rhetoric
Re-Imagine Paradise: The Impacts of the Illegal Annexation of Hawai\u27i & Tourism on Native Hawaiians
No full textThis literature review presents a vital exploration of colonialism, the illegal annexation of Hawai’i, and the subsequent emergence of the tourism industry as a neocolonial enterprise. Neocolonialism is the process of colonial dominance through modern exploitation, which is masked through economic opportunities and has left territories and their native people dependent on it. By tracing the major historical events in Hawai’i highlights how education was a vital aspect of Native Hawaiian culture, empowering its people - a stark contrast to the current education system where the education system perpetuates the commodification of Native Hawaiian culture. Education has played a pivotal role in reshaping narratives and contributing to the exploitation of Native Hawaiian culture for economic gains. In addition, this study employs a theoretical framework approach, drawing upon theories of settler colonialist ideologies embedded in the tourism industry. This examination highlights how the tourism industry functions as a neocolonial enterprise as it echoes historical power imbalances. Native Hawaiians have been marginalized within their own lands and make up a significant proportion of workers within the tourism industry, which demonstrates economic dependency and racialization. The analysis conducted displays the consequences of these interconnected and historical elements. The project not only highlights the exploitation of cultural heritage but also the multifaceted ways in which the tourism industry serves as a neocolonial enterprise, further alienating and disempowering Native Hawaiians. By addressing historical empowerment and modern-day exploitation, the study offers a critical perspective on how neocolonialism is interconnected within major institutions such as education and economics, while also offering a dialogue on indigenous rights and ethical tourism
AI-Powered Unobtrusive Sensing for Advancing Social Good
No full textSmart devices are becoming increasingly integrated into our daily lives, offering convenience and immersive experiences. However, the existing authentication methods for these devices are insecure and vulnerable to various attacks. For example, traditional biometric authentication methods (such as Face ID, fingerprint, and hand biometrics) can be easily forged using advanced 3D technologies and leveraged for replay attacks. Beyond security, smart devices also pose significant safety risks. For example, while smartphones enable easy communication, the constant need to check notifications distracts drivers, creating dangerous driving conditions. Moreover, although smart devices like smartphones and smartwatches are widely used in healthcare, they often require active user input, which can limit their effectiveness in continuous monitoring scenarios. While Artificial Intelligence (AI) has made significant contributions across various societal domains, effectively applying it to solve real-world problems for the greater social good remains a challenge. My research focuses on combining the power of AI with unobtrusive sensing technologies to address this gap. Specifically, I aim to enhance security, improve safety, and make smart devices more seamless and user-friendly in healthcare applications
“One Step Too Many”: Deference in \u3cem\u3eBruen, Loper Bright\u3c/em\u3e, and \u3cem\u3eRahimi\u3c/em\u3e
No full textThis Article examines the Supreme Court’s rejection of deferential twostep tests in New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen and Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. Prior to these decisions, Second Amendment and administrative law doctrines limited courts’ interpretive role at Step One in order to create space for regulatory judgments to which courts would defer at Step Two. Bruen and Loper Bright rejected this approach, reclaiming courts’ authority to ascertain legal norms and (less emphatically) to apply them to concrete disputes without deferring to regulators.
Although it was decided the same term as Loper Bright, many see United States v. Rahimi as a retreat from Bruen. Scholars describe the conflict between Bruen and Rahimi in terms of “levels of generality,” a perennially intractable concept. This Article reframes the levels-of-generality problem as a deference problem. Focusing on which forms of deference Bruen rejects—and which it embraces—shows the decisions to be in greater alignment than at first appears. It also suggests that the Court is not shying away from reclaiming the authority it claimed in Bruen and Loper Bright as the traditional province of the judiciary
Judge–Scholar Collaboration and the Second Amendment
No full textLegal scholarship is overly abstract and theoretical, making it unhelpful to judges and lawyers. That, at least, is the classic critique from the bench. When it comes to the Second Amendment, however, a different pattern has emerged: judges consistently cite law review articles and look to the academy for guidance. Most recently, in United States v. Rahimi, some Justices went further, implicitly inviting more scholarly work to help the Court answer open questions raised by its novel methodological approach to the Second Amendment. This Article explores this aberrant trend.
We raise several explanations for the distinctive scholarly role in Second Amendment jurisprudence, including the Amendment’s unique aspects as well as the role of legal movements in facilitating the Amendment’s development. Faced with a lack of judicial precedent on both the right to keep and bear arms and originalism-in-practice, law review articles often can be more helpful than past opinions. Beyond scholarship’s utility in a new area of law, we suggest that a related phenomenon—the gun rights and conservative legal movements’ trifold success at facilitating the rise of the individual Second Amendment right, popularizing originalism as a methodology, and elevating originalist judges to the bench—is an important part of the story. For a halfcentury, organizations focused on achieving both a robust right to bear arms and a conservative vision of the Constitution have become more prominent and have closely associated with both scholars and judges. If, in the usual telling, judges look askance at scholarship, this specific area of law might present an exception since it has been a joint project from the beginning.
The Article concludes that the judge–scholar collaboration that has characterized Second Amendment case law is likely to continue. Moreover, it could have ramifications far beyond the right to keep and bear arms, including for other rights that may be on the cusp of transformation and for other legal movements seeking to emulate the strategies that ushered in modern Second Amendment law
Assembly Line Public Defense
No full textPublic defense in the United States is not just underfunded but also understudied. In their forthcoming article, David Abrams and Priyanka Goonetilleke empirically examine, for the first time, an essential question about public defense: What difference does vertical representation make? Criminal justice advocates, scholars, and the American Bar Association strongly favor vertical representation—where a single public defender represents a defendant throughout their case—over horizontal representation, where different attorneys handle different stages. This article provides the first empirical analysis of how attorney continuity affects criminal case outcomes. Using a natural experiment created by the Defender Association of Philadelphia’s transition from horizontal to partially vertical representation, the authors provide the first empirical analysis of how attorney continuity affects criminal case