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The Impact of Roleplaying games on Culture
No full textThis chapter explores the influence of role-playing games (RPGs) on other games and media products as well as their representation in popular culture, including “moral panics” around tabletop RPGs and massively multiplayer online RPGs (MMORPGs). It examines the cultural impact of specific role-playing aspects that have caused a “drop down” effect whereby RPGs feed upon common themes and tropes to impact gaming as a whole. For computer RPGs (CRPGs) and MMORPGs, changes in the rules may require explanations by the designers, such as an expansion for World of Warcraft that changed the process used by groups to divide their loot. The chapter also examines the cultural impact of RPGs through their dissemination as a thematic genre and discusses their representation in three other popular media: literature, film, and television. RPGs lend themselves well to fiction writing simply because of the formulaic manner in which campaigns, events, and games are structured. Often tracking versions of Joseph Campbell’s monomyth, RPG campaigns can form the basis of stories or encourage derivative texts
‘A chance to give your life purpose and meaning’: The evolution and testing of the future zombie in Star Trek: Picard
No full textDescription
An innovative investigation into how zombie narratives over the past ten years have been specifically leading up to a unique intersection with the world as it exists in the 2020s, this book posits the undead as a vehicle to communicate humanity's pathway into, and out of, the ideological, health and environmental pandemics of our time. Exploring depictions of zombies across literature, poetry, comics, television, film and video games, Simon Bacon brings together this timely intervention into how zombies enable speculation about future modes of being in a changing world and represent the fluid notion of 'old' and 'new' normals. With each chapter moving beyond traditional readings of the undead, Zombie Futures situates the zombie as an evolving cultural imaginary at the centre of discourses around how human cognition and embodiment are effected by global realities such as consumerism, new technologies, climate change and planetary degeneration.
Structured around contagious partisan ideologies, ecological sickness, mental health crisis and the very literal COVID-19 virus, this book establishes how the zombie figure might manifest post-human and post-normative futures. Works featured include graphic novels and comics like The West + Zombies, Crossed and Endzeit, the South Korean series and films Kingdom, Train to Busan and Peninsula, The Last of Us and the Resident Evil game franchises, Bollywood horror anthology Ghost Stories, Joss Whedon's Serenity, Cargo and literature such as The Girl with All the Gifts, the fiction of Stephen Graham Jones and Ryan Mecum's Zombie Haiku. In a time when popular culture and scholarship has been overrun with the undead, this original study offers a refreshing look at the zombie and what it can tell us about about our world going into and emerging from global catastrophe
Thermophotovoltaics (TPVs), solar and wind assisted hydrogen production and utilisation in iron and steel industry for low carbon productions
Full text linkTo reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in high-grade steel production plants, this study developed a solar and wind assisted H_2-fuelled blast furnace – basic oxygen furnace (BF-BOF) route coupled with the electrolysis of H_2 O and thermoelectric units. The developed model consists of heat recovery units, water gas shift (WGS), low-temperature electrolysis of H_2 O, thermophotovoltaic converter, CO_2 capture by absorption and oxy-hydrogen firing ovens and furnaces. The recovered thermal energy generated steam and distilled H_2 O feedstocks for WGS and PEMEC (proton exchange membrane electrolyser cell) units. WGS converted CO to 〖CO〗_2 and increased the H_2 production rate before separation from other by-products in the pressure swing adsorption (PSA) column. H_2 O electrolysis generated more H_2 fuel for the coke oven, Fe-CaO oven-sinter, BF and BOF. The result of the proposed system reveals that by utilising H_2 as fuel and O_2 as oxidant instead of burning natural gas (NG) for thermal decomposition of feedstocks, 1111.4kg/hr of CO_2 emission for every 626kg/hr of produced steel can be prevented. The application of 〖CO〗_2 capture by absorption process eliminated 〖CO〗_2 emission footprint from the process. Whereas 61.1kW was recovered by installing TPV units on ovens and furnaces’ walls for conversion of waste heat to electricity. By incorporating either solar or wind renewable energy systems with a power output of 20MW, 1290.4kg/hr of H_2 fuel and 38.5kg/hr of CH_4 were stored for later use and 6754.8kg/hr of CO_2 emission was avoided. The steel purchase price of the proposed system is anticipated to be cheaper than the conventional BF-BOF route operating with a CCS unit as ≥10% energy efficiency was recorded. The recycling of more scrap steel is also viable in this developed system because of the high energy density of utilised H_2 fuel for the thermal decomposition of ovens and furnaces’ feeds
Music in Vision: Visual Music Instruments in Practice
No full textVisual music, as a contemporary artistic discipline, involves the expression of musical aesthetics in the visual medium and strives for cohesion between sound and image. Both these aspects will be considered in thaudiois chapter. After initially introducing the visual music genre, attention will then focus on techniques for expressing musical qualities in the visual medium. This is a type of cross-modal transference which is both a technical and artistic challenge. It will be demonstrated how electroacoustic music’s material qualities and theoretical concepts can guide the artist in this endeavour, specifically focussing on the structuring processes of gesture and how they can be recreated visually. Further theoretical insights into this approach are presented by considering gesture and texture from a gestalt psychology perspective. From a technical standpoint, the design and use of a series of visual music instruments (VMIs) will be explored, examining how they practically achieved material transference. In the VMIs under discussion, visual primitives comprising simple geometric forms, enhanced with feedback and noise, were used as fundamental visual building blocks. Manipulation of these permitted both gestural and textural qualities to be expressed visually and could create a cohesive quality in fixed media sound and image. For real-time application a further VMI, ‘morphlux’, was developed and used as part of biphase, a duo comprising a musician and a visualist. morphlux proved to be an effective and versatile instrument that could express both gesture and texture and had the capability to transform between these
Jamming-Resilient Fairness-Oriented Resource Allocation Technique for IRS-Assisted NOMA 6G-Enabled IoT Networks
Full text linkIntelligent Reflecting Surface (IRS) has recently been combined with cutting-edge technologies to meet the demanding requirements of six-generation (6G)-based IoT consumer electronics (CE) communication systems. This paper considers IRS-assisted hybrid orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) and non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) systems under proactive jamming attacks. Jamming severely affects the performance of CE devices, reducing data rates, increasing packet loss, and significantly reducing communication reliability. A jamming-aware fairness-oriented design is proposed to overcome such attacks and maintain fairness between CE devices. Specifically, the fairness index (FI) is maximized under relevant constraints, including secure transmission requirements and transmission power constraints. However, due to the non-convex and fractional nature of the proposed jamming-aware FI optimization framework, an iterative algorithm is developed to solve the problem and evaluate the optimization parameters, namely the IRS phase reflection coefficients and the per-user allocated power level (i.e., CE device). To validate the effectiveness of the proposed jamming-aware FI maximization framework, its performance is compared with a set of benchmarks. The simulation results demonstrate its superiority in ensuring fairness among users and providing secure jamming-resistant communication in IRS-assisted OFDMA-NOMA CE-based systems
Predictive models for Alzheimer's disease diagnosis and MCI identification: The use of cognitive scores and artificial intelligence algorithms
Full text linkThe paper presents a comprehensive study on predictive models for Alzheimer's disease (AD) and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) diagnosis, implementing a combination of cognitive scores and artificial intelligence algorithms. The research includes detailed analyses of clinical and demographic variables such as age, education, and various cognitive and functional scores, investigating their distributions and correlations with AD and MCI. The study utilizes several machine-learning classifiers, comparing their performance through metrics like accuracy, precision, and area under the ROC curve (AUC). Key findings include the influence of gender on AD prevalence, the potential protective effect of education, and the significance of functional decline and cognitive performance scores in the models. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of ensemble methods and the robustness of the models across different data subsets, highlighting the potential of artificial intelligence in enhancing diagnostic accuracy for Alzheimer's disease and mild cognitive impairment
Obsolescence and Renewal (second edition)
No full textThe Crafts Study Centre is honoured to host the second iteration of Neil
Brownsword’s Obsolescence and Renewal, an examination of the marginalised
histories associated with North Staffordshire’s ceramic industry in its pre- or
proto-industrial moment in the 17th and 18th centuries. This was a time when
competing workshops in the region were trying to emulate highly fashionable
Chinese porcelain and other valuable ceramics. In revisiting these histories,
Brownsword seeks not only to celebrate the ingenuity of fledgling ceramic
producers, but to draw attention to the details of technical innovation and
the material slippages that occur when attempting to develop one material
in imitation of another. Brownsword achieves this with digital renderings,
prototypes gone askew, tapestries of digital glitches, the display of museum
objects, and archival prints.
The timing for Brownsword’s first exhibition at the Crafts Study Centre is both
overdue, given his position as a leading ceramic researcher, educator and
practitioner, and fortuitous. Just weeks before writing this preface, Stoke-on-
Trent was named the UK’s second craft city, following Farnham which achieved
the same accolade from the World Crafts Council in 2020. The ceramic culture
of both places is often presented in oppositional terms: Stoke-on-Trent, the
industrial behemoth; Farnham, one of many English towns with a rich history
in small-scale studio pottery. Brownsword’s advocacy and preservation of
the skill within industry complicates this division and provides a basis for
thinking about what connects these different contexts of ceramic practice.
In an original essay for this publication Tanya Harrod examines the complex
relationship between studio and industrial ceramics with an especial focus
on the early days of the Crafts Study Centre in the 1970s. Anti-industrialism
was prevalent among the Centre’s founders and is reflected in many of the
founding collections, but Harrod questions these presumptions, providing
examples of rapprochement and even active collaboration with industry
among studio craftspeople, and draws an unexpected parallel between
Brownsword and Michael Cardew.
The texts following Harrod’s essay introduce Brownsword’s artistic practice
from a range of theoretical positions and offer a historic context to Newcastle-
under-Lyme’s importance contribution to early ceramic industrialisation
Big Wednesday: Lamenting Lost Youth in the New Hollywood
No full textThis book provides an examination of Big Wednesday as an unconventional film that employs a mythic sensibility in its representation of the loss of youth and young manhood.
Critically and commercially unsuccessful on its original release, the coming-of-age, surf drama Big Wednesday (1978), has undergone a significant reappraisal. It is now considered not only an important contribution to youth cinema, but also the most important film that John Milius ever made. Over six chapters, the book considers questions of authorship, commerce, genre, stardom, and myth, and explores how these ideas intersect with the film’s status as a significant youth movie and collectively how these ideas have contributed to its recent critical rehabilitation. In doing so, the book also provides a much-needed reassessment of an important and overlooked entry in the New Hollywood canon.
Exploring Big Wednesday’s subsequent resonance and relevance, this unique study will appeal to students and scholars in film studies, popular culture studies, youth studies, sociology and media studies
Peak Performance: Marginal Gains in the Workplace
No full textIn a complex world of fast-paced change, the key to success is measured incremental improvements. This book provides a framework to achieve peak performance in your professional life. Drawing inspiration from the concept of marginal gains, you will embark on a journey of transformation to elevate your effectiveness and productivity to new levels – to unlock your full potential.
Discover the power of small, strategic changes which, together, lead to significant advancements in competency. The scope of this book is behaviours and traits, as we explore the components of success. We start with the importance of becoming a reflective practitioner and understanding our own values, learning and social styles, to increase emotional intelligence.
We then delve into the psychology of time management, problem solving, decision making, and our synergy with others through communication and delegation. As we transition to high-level activity, we analyse adaptive leadership, influence, negotiation, and how to effectively manage talent to support the next generation. Finally, we tackle personal development planning to ensure rigorous interventions are in place.
Deviating from the anecdotal perspective taken by some of the self-help genre, this book provides multiple credible, reliable academic theories for each topic, followed by a call-to-action, so you may dictate your own path. Our aim is to enact minor adjustments in habits, routines, and mindsets to create a significant impact on your overall performance
FEDge-HAR: An Optimized Private Mobile Edge-Enabled IoT Paradigm for Privacy of Human Activity Recognition
Full text linkFederated learning (FL) has emerged as a pivotal technology for the Internet of Things (IoT) that models distributed client data without compromising privacy. The IoT-based wearable generates data and FL running on a private edge performing human activity recognition (HAR). In this article, we proposed a novel technique to protect sensitive data during the training process and ensure the confidentiality of model updates before transmission to the edge server. The proposed technique integrates the El-Gamal encryption technique for data protection, and the FL process is rigorously optimized using pruning, quantization, and network slicing. Pruning removes redundant connections, which reduces model complexity and communication delays. On the other hand, quantization decreases the bit precision of model parameters, and network slicing strategically allocates resources solely for FL resulting in low latency and optimal bandwidth utilization. The results are evaluated in terms of accuracy and communication overhead, which is highly required in real-world applications. Furthermore, the HAR system within PEC shows better results by achieving an accuracy of 99% at 300 epochs that outperformed existing machine learning (ML) algorithms
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