938 research outputs found
"Disney is the Tiffany’s and I am the Woolworth's of the business": A critical re-analysis of the business philosophies, production values and studio practices of animator-producer Paul Houlton Terry
No full textThis thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.Animator-producer Paul Houlton Terry has been portrayed as having little passion for the animation he produced and being more concerned with making a profit than producing entertaining cartoons with high production values. The purpose of the dissertation is to re-evaluate Terry‘s legacy to animated cartooning by analyzing his business philosophies, production values, and studio practices.
Application of four psychodynamic factors to the early life and career of Terry, 1887-1929, found that his economic decision making was characterized by: an external locus of control, risk-averse financial behaviour, extreme saving behaviour through precaution, and shrewd money management practices. Based on Terry‘s historical responses to twelve major economic, technological, or institutional forces of change for the period 1929-1955, the psychodynamic factors were found to provide accurate explanations for his studio practices and production decisions.
There was no evidence to support the conclusion that three early career disappointments undermined Terry‘s intrinsic motivation to create animated cartoons. Rather, Terry‘s lack of risk taking, external locus of control, tight studio production schedule, desire to compete with neighbour studio Fleischer, difficulty in separating financial rewards from creative processes in animation, and practice of undertaking surveillance measures on staff may have undermined his and his studio‘s creativity. Archival research found Terry to possess strong passions for and to have made significant creative contributions to the field of animation.
Biographical research found that Terry retained a stable nucleus of highly talented artists who dedicated a significant portion of their working careers to the studio. An analysis of the cel aesthetics of a random sample of animated cartoons produced during the years 1930-1955 found that Terry created animated cartoons with above average cel aesthetics when compared to the other studios thereby supporting an inference that Terry was motivated to producing quality crafted animation. Further research is suggested into the role psychodynamic factors and economic decision-making play in the film production process and a clarification of Terry‘s legacy to the field of animated cartoons
Is a Semantic Web Agent a Knowledge-Savvy Agent?
No full textThe issue of knowledge sharing has permeated the field of distributed AI and in particular, its successor, multiagent systems. Through the years, many research and engineering efforts have tackled the problem of encoding and sharing knowledge without the need for a single, centralized knowledge base. However, the emergence of modern computing paradigms such as distributed, open systems have highlighted the importance of sharing distributed and heterogeneous knowledge at a larger scale—possibly at the scale of the Internet. The very characteristics that define the Semantic Web—that is, dynamic, distributed, incomplete, and uncertain knowledge—suggest the need for autonomy in distributed software systems. Semantic Web research promises more than mere management of ontologies and data through the definition of machine-understandable languages. The openness and decentralization introduced by multiagent systems and service-oriented architectures give rise to new knowledge management models, for which we can’t make a priori assumptions about the type of interaction an agent or a service may be engaged in, and likewise about the message protocols and vocabulary used. We therefore discuss the problem of knowledge management for open multi-agent systems, and highlight a number of challenges relating to the exchange and evolution of knowledge in open environments, which pertinent to both the Semantic Web and Multi Agent System communities alike
Advocating a utilitarian profession in a Kantian world? LIS ethical reflection and the challenges of political philosophy
No full textThe over-arching political philosophy of the past 30 years has seen a movement from the Utilitarian principles that had dominated since the mid to late Victorian period to a more Kantian, rights-based approach to justification of public services and professions. Political philosophy has a major impact on the ethical parameters in which professions operate. In publically-funded libraries a change in such philosophy can alter the aims and objectives of the organisation, and even the justification for its very existence. In a sector that grew out of the Utilitarian era, such as public libraries, old arguments for advocacy that have been used historically hold little sway with elected officials and managers inculcated within a rights-based framework. LIS professional education rarely fills such gaps; while many LIS courses contain modules that deal in professional ethics, a key tangential issue is the understanding of political philosophy and the motivations and beliefs of those who fund library services. Conversely many elected officials come to public service with an education that covers the broadest range of political philosophy. In the UK, North America and Europe, for instance, the PPE degree (politics, philosophy, and economics) and its variants are a staple of the ruling classes. Such a background sees them well able to understand and be able to rebut any arguments for justifying services that do not fit into the rights-based approach. LIS professionals’ ethical reflection must become more strategic and be aimed at advocacy that is effective and will be understood by elected officials influenced by rights-based arguments. Utilising the public library service as an example, this paper will identify how many in the profession may have strategically misfired in terms of their advocacy approach, and instead suggest how ethical reflection could be enhanced by presenting the justification of library services within the philosophical context of the day, and how in doing so fill a major gap in the knowledge of many library and information professionals. It will be argued that used in partnership with ethical codes, such a focused ethical reflection can take such static documents and apply them to myriad real scenarios, enabling them to become a living embodiment of active ethical reflection in library and information services
Particle production in 158.A GeV Pb + Pb collisions
No full textThe production of neutral pions in 158.A GeV /sup 208/Pb+/sup 208/Pb collisions has been studied in the WA98 experiment. The centrality dependence of the neutral pion production is investigated. An invariance of the spectral shape and a simple scaling of the yield with the number of participating nucleons is observed for centralities with more than about 50 participants. The transverse mass spectrum is analyzed in terms of a thermal model with hydrodynamic expansion. The high accuracy and large kinematic coverage of the measurement constrains the extracted freeze-out parameters, and provides information on the freeze-out velocity profile. (18 refs)
Minding the aesthetic: The place of the literary in education and research.
No full textThe article discusses the significance of aesthetic as a mode of cognition and means of social cohesion. It notes the relation of aesthetic knowledge with the perception or intuition, the emergence of such awareness into something durable and the response to the embodiment. It describes the evolution of aesthetic delight in the human species, the sense of sense of beauty arising on one's realization of the formal qualities of something, through the poem presented by the author on achievement
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