30115 research outputs found
Sort by
Promoting Sustainable Development in Festivals through Ritual Revisions
Get PDFThis study takes a process-oriented approach to answer the research question: how may long-standing religious festivals promote sustainable development by modifying various ritual elements? The contribution of one-time events to overarching long-term sustainability goals may be hindered predominantly by their transitory nature. Based on a case study, this research examines a 400-year-old annual Hindu festival, Durga Puja, as a potential contributor to sustainable development. The data comprises online news articles on the Durga Puja published between 2002 and 2022 in the Indian daily, The Times of India. Based on a thematic data analysis, the research findings highlight three processual themes related to altering various ritual elements: artefacts, scripts, performance roles and audience. These themes include subverting the patriarchal, adopting a proactive approach to invitation and facilitation, and incorporating visual storytelling. The study’s findings have theoretical implications regarding the broader discussions on sustainability, such as sustainable development goals (SDGs) and the potential of festivals to contribute to them through ritual modifications. As such, festival organisers, policymakers and practitioners may find the study helpful in promoting sustainable development through ritual changes in festivals
Hyper-personalized employment in urban hubs: multimodal fusion architectures for personality-based job matching
Get PDFIn the evolving landscape of smart cities, employment strategies have been steering towards a more personalized approach, aiming to enhance job satisfaction and boost economic efficiency. This paper explores an advanced solution by integrating multimodal deep learning to create a hyper-personalized job matching system based on individual personality traits. We employed the First Impressions V2 dataset, a comprehensive collection encompassing various data modalities suitable for extracting personality insights. Among various architectures tested, the fusion of XceptionResNet with BERT emerged as the most promising, delivering unparalleled results. The combined model achieved an accuracy of 92.12%, an R2 score of 54.49%, a mean squared error of 0.0098, and a root mean squared error of 0.0992. These empirical findings demonstrate the effectiveness of the XceptionResNet + BERT in mapping personality traits, paving the way for an innovative, and efficient approach to job matching in urban environments. This work has the potential to revolutionize recruitment strategies in smart cities, ensuring placements that are not only skill-aligned but also personality-congruent, optimizing both individual satisfaction and organizational productivity. A set of theoretical case studies in technology, banking, healthcare, and retail sectors within smart cities illustrate how the model could optimize both individual satisfaction and organizational productivity
Screening musicality in children: Development and initial validation of a new tool for rapid assessment of musical profiles
Get PDFMusical development in childhood follows universal trajectories, such as the acquisition of basic rhythm and pitch recognition, alongside individual differences shaped by environmental, educational, and innate factors. Despite the importance of understanding these aspects for both research and educational purposes, there remains a significant gap in the availability of validated tools that can quickly and comprehensively assess musicality in children. To address this gap, this paper presents a series of studies on the development and validation of the Child Musicality Screening, a standardised instrument for the assessment of musicality in children aged 3 to 10 years. In Study 1, an initial pool of items was compiled and administered to 810 adults (293 English-speaking, 517 German-speaking) who regularly interact with children. Factor analysis was used to reduce the number of items and to identify three key dimensions of child musicality: Enthusiasm and Motivation, Music Perception, and Music Production. In Study 2, confirmatory factor analysis on ratings of parents (n = 305) and educators (n = 250) indicated moderate to high model fit, confirming the factor structure of the questionnaire. Interrater agreement between parents and educators was significant, with moderate agreement on the total scale and subscales. Preliminary evidence of convergent and divergent validity was also obtained. Study 3 further established the convergent and divergent validity, as well as internal reliability and test-retest reliability, of the instrument, using both English (n = 323) and German (n = 384) samples. Overall, the Child Musicality Screening is a newly developed tool for assessing individual musical profiles in children aged 3 to 10 years, with initial evidence supporting its validity and reliability. Available in both English and German, it offers a promising approach for researchers and educators to assess musicality, map developmental trajectories, identify musically gifted children, and enhance targeted music education
Voluntary movement initiation is associated with cardiac input in Libet’s task
Get PDFThe relationship between motor intention and initiation of voluntary movement remains a fundamental topic in neuroscience, originating from the B. Libet seminal framework introduced in 1983. Libet’s paradigm significantly influenced discussions on intentionality, motor control, and free will. However, methodological critiques continue to challenge its interpretations, specifically the accuracy and validity of the ‘urge to move’ phenomenon. One understudied factor in this debate is the potential influence of interoceptive signals—particularly cardiac activity—in shaping the experience of motor intention and movement initiation.
In our study, we addressed this gap by examining whether cardiac signals modulate participants’ experience of the ‘urge to move’, using behavioural and electrophysiological measures in 34 healthy human participants performing Libet’s task. Crucially, when participants were asked to report the perceived ‘urge to move’, their button press timings were predominantly aligned with the diastolic phase of the cardiac cycle, indicating cardiac modulation of motor intention perception. However, analysing heart evoked potential (HEP) amplitudes as a measure of cardiac input perception, we observed no differences in HEP amplitudes associated with changes in introspective demands during the task in both source and sensor spaces.
Our results suggest that implicit perception of cardiac signals biases subjective experience of voluntary action initiation, independent from cortical interoceptive markers. These findings have implications for models of motor preparation, intentionality and the bodily basis of voluntary action, challenging conventional interpretations of motor intention and informing debates on volition and interoception
Explainable Contrastive Learning Framework for EEG-Based Affective Computing in Privacy-Preserving Consumer Devices
No full texton privacy-preserving consumer devices. Neurophysiologically grounded features, including differential entropy across canonical EEG bands and frontal asymmetry indices, are extracted from a reduced frontal-central montage optimized for wearable compatibility. A supervised contrastive learning module encodes latent representations that discriminate against emotions and are classified using a lightweight, low-latency predictor. Post-hoc interpretability is achieved via SHAP (SHapley Additive exPlanations), offering localized, instance-level feature attribution. Privacy preservation is ensured through a combination of pseudonymization, differential privacy during inference, and blockchain-based consent logging. Using the DEAP dataset, the framework achieves 91\% accuracy in valence classification with sub-40\,ms inference latency on edge-compatible hardware. This work delivers a unified architecture that integrates real-time emotion sensing, explainable machine learning, and privacy engineering, advancing the deployment of trustworthy affective computing in next-generation consumer electronics
Exploring the role of rhythmic music and embodied interaction in interpersonal synchrony and prosocial behaviors in children: The Moving Mandala mixed reality experience
No full textInterpersonal synchrony (IPS), the temporal alignment of behaviors between individuals, fosters social bonding, cooperation, and sharing in children. These prosocial outcomes make IPS a promising mechanism to support social inclusion and psychological well-being, particularly in therapeutic and educational contexts where strengthening peer interaction is essential. However, most IPS interventions rely on static dyadic tasks that lack playfulness and ecological validity, limiting their generalization to real-world environments. Advances in Mixed Reality (MR) offer new possibilities for designing more natural and embodied IPS experiences. Nevertheless, it remains unclear which specific design elements are most effective in eliciting synchrony that fosters prosocial outcomes in group-based settings. This study introduces The Moving Mandala, a playful Mixed Reality experience designed to foster real-time synchrony among four children (ages 8–10) through audiovisual cues and embodied interaction. In a between-subjects study with 268 children, participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: “no prior movement” (Baseline), “asynchronous and non-rhythmic ambient music” (Control), “synchronous and rhythmic music” (Experimental 1), and “synchronous and non-rhythmic ambient music” (Experimental 2). The study tested: (i) whether rhythmic auditory stimuli enhance IPS compared to non-rhythmic ambient sound, and (ii) whether synchronous movements facilitate prosocial behavior and social bonding compared to asynchronous and no prior (baseline) movements. Results showed that rhythmic music significantly improved synchrony performance, confirming its role as a temporal scaffold. However, no significant differences in prosocial behavior or social bonding were found between conditions. Design choices such as limited mutual dependency and high cognitive load may have reduced the salience of interpersonal cues. These findings highlight both the potential and challenges of using MR to promote synchrony-based social outcomes. By identifying key design elements, this work contributes to the development of engaging socially supportive MR interventions for children, with potential applications in therapeutic, educational, and rehabilitative contexts
Make It Sew
No full textArtwork by Miriam Sturdee
Kat Jungnickel explores the role of technologies in relation to mobilities, bodies, gender, and DIY cultures, as well as how people radically reinvent and reimagine sociopolitical worlds with ordinary things
Contributions, conjunctures and care: revisiting Formations of Class and Gender
Get PDFSince its publication in 1997, Formations of Class and Gender has become a touchstone for research in sociology and feminist media and cultural studies due to the precise, evocative and generative way it pinpoints and theorises class and gender. Skeggs’ careful ethnographic work – listening to 83 women training to be carers in the north of England over 12 years – provides tangible evidence of classed ‘feelings’ at the intersection of culture and economy and uses a multifaceted cultural studies approach to understand how this relates to their socially and historically specific context, or conjuncture. Formations gave many people a language with which to extend their analysis of the cultural violence enacted through the terms of ‘respectability’, alongside the undervalued nature of classed and gendered labours of care. These insights have had remarkable analytical reach for sociology and media and cultural studies, helping us understand how inequalities are both formed and felt. This article analyses the book’s contribution in three parts. The first opens by highlighting key features of the text and sharing our reflections on the book when re-reading it in the present. The second part charts the impact and contributions of the text in and around feminist media and cultural studies. The third part discusses the book’s continued relevance for understanding the current conjunctural moment of widening social inequality and a crisis in care, when sexism, racism and class divides adopt new incarnations, and suggests how its lessons might be repurposed today
immersiTea: Exploring Multisensory Virtual Reality Environments to Enrich Bubble Tea Drinking Experiences
Get PDFHCI is increasingly interested in multisensory experiences; however, multisensory drinking seems to be underexplored. We introduce "immersiTea", a novel multisensory virtual reality (VR) system that aims to enrich the experience of drinking low-sugar bubble tea. Leveraging crossmodal correspondences between visual, auditory, and flavor stimuli, immersiTea integrates immersive VR environments with physical drinking actions to enhance sensory and emotional engagement. Through a mixed-method evaluation (n = 31), we found that the VR environments can elevate participants’ enjoyment and sweetness perception while reducing reliance on sugar. Participants highlighted the role of playful interactivity and sensory congruence in drinking, making it a more engaging experience. These findings contribute to the growing field of Human-Food Interaction by showcasing the potential of immersive technologies to promote healthier and more enjoyable consumption practices. This work demonstrates the potential of immersiTea to not only enrich the drinking experience but also inspire future advancements in multisensory beverage design