Literatura científica selecionada sobre o tema "Tracker Imitation"

The ventral premotor cortex (PMv) is involved in grasping and object manipulation, while the dorsal premotor cortex (PMd) has been suggested to play a role in reaching and action selection. These areas have also been associated with action imitation, but their relative roles in different types of action imitation are unclear. We examined the role of the left PMv and PMd in meaningful and meaningless action imitation by using repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS). Participants imitated meaningful and meaningless actions performed by a confederate actor while both individuals were motion-tracked. rTMS was applied over the left PMv, left PMd or a vertex control site during action observation or imitation. Digit velocity was significantly greater following stimulation over the PMv during imitation compared with stimulation over the PMv during observation, regardless of action meaning. Similar effects were not observed over the PMd or vertex. In addition, stimulation over the PMv increased finger movement speed in a (non-imitative) finger–thumb opposition task. We suggest that claims regarding the role of the PMv in object-directed hand shaping may stem from the prevalence of object-directed designs in motor control research. Our results indicate that the PMv may have a broader role in ‘target-directed’ hand shaping, whereby different areas of the hand are considered targets to act upon during intransitive gesturing.

ABSTRACT Background Eggs are a rich source of nutrients important for brain development, including choline, riboflavin, vitamins B-6 and B-12, folate, zinc, protein, and DHA. Objective Our objective was to evaluate the effect of the consumption of 1 egg per day over a 6-mo period on child development. Methods In the Mazira Project randomized controlled trial, 660 children aged 6–9 mo were randomly allocated into an intervention or control group. Eggs were provided to intervention households during twice-weekly home visits for 6 mo. Control households were visited at the same frequency. At enrollment, blinded assessors administered the Malawi Developmental Assessment Tool (MDAT), and 2 eye-tracking tasks using a Tobii-Pro X2–60 eye tracker: a visual paired comparison memory task and an Infant Orienting with Attention task. At endline, 6-mo later, blinded assessors administered the MDAT and eye-tracking tasks plus an additional elicited imitation memory task. Results At endline, intervention and control groups did not significantly differ in any developmental score, with the exception that a smaller percentage of children were delayed in fine motor development in the intervention group (10.6%) compared with the control group (16.5%; prevalence ratio: 0.59, 95% CI: 0.38–0.91). Among 10 prespecified effect modifiers for the 8 primary developmental outcomes, we found 7 significant interactions demonstrating a consistent pattern that children who were less vulnerable, for example, those with higher household wealth and maternal education, showed positive effects of the intervention. Given multiple hypothesis testing, some findings may have been due to chance. Conclusion The provision of 1 egg per day had no overall effect on child development in this population of children, however, some benefits may be seen among children in less vulnerable circumstances. This trial was registered at clinicaltrials.gov as NCT03385252.

The analysis of visually guided tracking movements is important to the understanding of imitation exercises and movements carried out using the human visuomotor control system. In this study, we analyzed the characteristics of visuomotor control in the intermittent performance of circular tracking movements by applying a system that can differentiate between the conditions of invisible and visible orbits and visible and invisible target phases implemented in a 3D VR space. By applying visuomotor control based on velocity control, our study participants were able to track objects with visible orbits with a precision of approximately 1.25 times greater than they could track objects with invisible orbits. We confirmed that position information is an important parameter related to intermittent motion at low speeds (below 0.5 Hz) and that tracked target velocity information could be obtained more precisely than position information at speeds above 0.5 Hz. Our results revealed that the feedforward (FF) control corresponding to velocity was delayed under the visible-orbit condition at speeds over 0.5 Hz, suggesting that, in carrying out imitation exercises and movements, the use of visually presented 3D guides can interfere with exercise learning and, therefore, that the effects of their use should be carefully considered.

This paper describes an approach for automatic detection and evaluation of Region of Interest (ROI) based on human psychology of interest and relevance. It is very challenging to determine the cognitive boundary of the scene in real time due to its complexity in decision making. We have proposed a novel method to solve this problem by using human cognitive processes of attention, interest generation and relevancy. Our method successfully determines this cognitive boundary as ROI which is significant by its information content based on interest and relevancy. The effectiveness of ROI detection is checked with Eye tracker system. The highest detection accuracy found is 81.25% which is higher than the existing method. The ROI evaluation is compared with evaluation by human observers. The subjective correlation is found 85% with human evaluation. The experimental results show that our method is imitating human decision making for ROI detection and evaluation.

The objective of this study was to determine the usefulness of acoustic tracking as a supplement to perceptual judgments during remediation. One child, receiving weekly individual treatment, participated in a drill-and-practice approach to remediation for a single [w]-for-/r/substitution error. Imitations of consonant-vowel (CV), VCV, and matched/r/and/w/sentence stimuli were audiotape recorded. The temporal and spectral characteristics of the recorded stimuli (i.e., the F2 transition rates and F2 values for the changing [r]) were spectrographically tracked and analyzed over a 70-day remediative period. The acoustic data were compared with the perceptual judgments of articulatory change. Generally, as the child's productions moved from the [w] toward the [r], the measured F2 values became higher and the F2 transition rates lowered. Results suggest that acoustic tracking of a child's productions may become a useful tool to augment perceptual tracking. Implications are discussed for the applications of acoustic tracking within clinical practice.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is mostly diagnosed according to behavioral symptoms in sensory, social, and motor domains. Improper motor functioning, during diagnosis, involves the qualitative evaluation of stereotyped and repetitive behaviors, while quantitative methods that classify body movements’ frequencies of children with ASD are less addressed. Recent advances in neuroscience, technology, and data analysis techniques are improving the quantitative and ecological validity methods to measure specific functioning in ASD children. On one side, cutting-edge technologies, such as cameras, sensors, and virtual reality can accurately detect and classify behavioral biomarkers, as body movements in real-life simulations. On the other, machine-learning techniques are showing the potential for identifying and classifying patients’ subgroups. Starting from these premises, three real-simulated imitation tasks have been implemented in a virtual reality system whose aim is to investigate if machine-learning methods on movement features and frequency could be useful in discriminating ASD children from children with typical neurodevelopment. In this experiment, 24 children with ASD and 25 children with typical neurodevelopment participated in a multimodal virtual reality experience, and changes in their body movements were tracked by a depth sensor camera during the presentation of visual, auditive, and olfactive stimuli. The main results showed that ASD children presented larger body movements than TD children, and that head, trunk, and feet represent the maximum classification with an accuracy of 82.98%. Regarding stimuli, visual condition showed the highest accuracy (89.36%), followed by the visual-auditive stimuli (74.47%), and visual-auditive-olfactory stimuli (70.21%). Finally, the head showed the most consistent performance along with the stimuli, from 80.85% in visual to 89.36% in visual-auditive-olfactory condition. The findings showed the feasibility of applying machine learning and virtual reality to identify body movements’ biomarkers that could contribute to improving ASD diagnosis.

Summary Reservoir connectivity analysis plays an essential role in controlling water cut in the middle and later stages of reservoir development. The traditional analysis methods, such as well test and tracer, may result in interruption and high reservoir development costs. Analyzing connectivity through history data is an advisable alternative method because the fluctuation of data reflects interwell interference. However, most of the former data-driven methods, such as capacitance and resistance model (CRM), estimate connectivity using formulas in relatively simple forms, leading to inadequate expression for underground interwell flow. In this paper, an interpretable recurrent graph neural network (GNN) is proposed to construct an interacting process imitating the real interwell flow regularity and overcoming the weakness in previous methods. In contrast, it is formed by a deep enough neural network structure with a relatively larger number of parameters when compared with the CRM model. In detail, this method makes the first use of both rate information and bottomhole pressure (BHP) to completely describe the hidden state of wells and the energy information exchanged among them, which are then continually updated in spatial and temporal ways. Meanwhile, a self-defined recurrent structure deals with the time lag and attenuation phenomenon as it records the residual energy from past timestamps. Finally, it calculates BHP for each production well with the manually specified production rate as extra input data. Detailed results are presented in two examples. Our proposed method shows significant advantages to other methods due to its reasonable structure and great ability to fit nonlinear mapping.

Musik adaptasi dangdut Madura adalah bentuk penciptaan musik yang prosesnya dilakukandengan mengadaptasi lagu asing (asal) menjadi lagu dangdut Madura (sasaran). Tujuan penelitianini adalah untuk mengetahui proses adaptasi musik dangdut Madura dari lagu asal ke lagu sasaranmelalui analisis musikologis. Analisis musikologis meliputi lirik, melodi vokal, dan hubungan antaralirik dan melodi vokal. Lirik dan melodi vokal dipilih sebagai objek studi karena keduanya merupakanunsur yang paling menonjol dalam musik adaptasi dangdut Madura. Hasil penelitian menunjukkanbahwa dalam proses adaptasi lagu asal ke lagu sasaran terdapat pola-pola atau kecenderungan yangsering terjadi yaitu: 1) lirik lagu sasaran selalu menyesuaikan dengan lirik lagu asal, penyesuaiantersebut melalui penyesuaian pola liris, pola tiruan bunyi (onomatope), pola penyesuaian bunyi dansaduran. 2) Melodi vokal lagu asal selalu berorientasi untuk tetap dipertahankan, tetapi mengalamiperubahan yaitu penyesuaian ritme melodi vokal dan perubahan nada melodi vokal. 3) Terdapat hubungan lirik dan melodi vokal yang saling mempengaruhi dalam musik adaptasi dangdut Madura.The Musical Adaptation of Maduranese Dangdut. The musical adaptation of Maduranese dangdutis a form of musical creation process done by adapting a foreign song (origin) into a Maduranese dangdutsong (target). The purpose of this study was to determine the adaptation process of Maduranese dangdutmusic from the origin song to the target one through musicological analysis. The musicological analysisincludes the analysis of the lyrics, the vocal melodies, and the relationship between the lyrics and vocalmelodies. The lyrics and vocal melodies were chosen as the objects of study because both of which were themost prominent elements in the musical adaptation of Maduranese dangdut. The results showed that in theprocess of adaptation tracked from the target to the original songs there are several patterns or tendencies thatoften occur. The patterns are the followings: 1) The lyrics targets always adjust to the lyrics of origin, theseadjustments include the adjustment of lyrical pattern, the pattern of sound imitation (onomatopoeic), thepattern of sound adjustment and adaptation. 2) The melody of the original vocal songs are always designedto be retained, yet the changes are in the adjustment of the vocal melody rhythm and the tonal changes of thevocal melody. 3) There is a relationship between the lyrics and vocal melody which interplay in the musical adaptation of Maduranese dangdut.

Dynamics of the greenland halibut biomass in the fishery districts of the Okhotsk Sea (or subzones) is considered. The biomass variation in the East-Sakhalin subzone has a significant (p < 0.05) negative correlation with the number of 3+ fish in other subzones, with the time lag of 3 years (r = –0.53) and 4 years (r = –0.49), that is interpreted as alternative distribution of the halibut recruitment from the common spawning area either to this district or other ones. From other hand, the recruits abundance in other districts is significantly and positively associated (r = 0.52, p < 0.05) with the index of zonal atmosphere transfer in January and with the index of meridional atmosphere transfer in March of the years of hatching. The recruitment dependence on the spawning stock could be explained by Beaverton-Holt equation with the residuals significantly and positively (r = 0.64, p = 0.03) related with the Arctic Oscillation index. Transport of the eggs, larvae and juveniles of greenland halibut from the spawning grounds at western Kamchatka to the western Okhotsk Sea is considered as the mechanism of its recruitment distribution between the districts in relation with atmospheric indices. The transport was simulated for 1993–2017 using the circulation model JCOPE2 as the movement of 250,000 artificial passive particles, imitating eggs and larvae, with water flows at the depth 40–50 m where their main aggregations are supposed. The particles were released in the area at western Kamchatka where the maximal concentration of spawning females occurred. Number of the particles reached the sections off eastern Sakhalin and their arrival times were computed, their pathways were tracked. The portion of particles released in December and reached northern Sakhalin within 150 days changed in significant positive correlation (r = 0.44, p < 0.05) with dynamics of the halibut stock in the East-Sakhalin subzone, with the time lag 6 years. Even closer correlation (r = 0.94, p < 0.05) could be found for the optimum income of the particles released in October or November in the general additive model of the stock. Using the model results for the recent years, the greenland halibut stock decreasing in the East-Sakhalin subzone is forecasted for the next 6 years.

As the use of social networks becomes increasingly commonplace, scholars have observed that associated requirements arise relating to how one’s digital self is practised, worked on, and disseminated (Cover; Miller; Papacharissi). Since the earliest forms of online interaction, scholars have tracked the importance of the question of “realness” in identity and social groupings (Burkhalter; Donath; O’Brien). More recently, as people become more connected, connect-able and subject to peer (as well as corporate and government surveillance) (van Zoonen), digital media cultures have increasingly demanded the performance of authenticity as part of the work of belonging online (Banet-Weiser; Keller). Drawing on Banet-Weiser’s and Keller’s work in particular, “authenticity” is defined here as the quality of being considered consistently “true to oneself” in a way which is socially legitimated. I suggest, online, that this demand for authenticity is manifested through two poles of authenticity: authentic individuality and authentic belonging. In this paper, I discuss the interplay between authentic individuality and authentic belonging in (postfeminist) digital cultures, by using the case study of a set of meme blogs narrating youthful femininity on blogging social network Tumblr. This meme set, based on Tumblr blog “WhatShouldWeCallMe” (WSWCM), sets out a self-representative affective account of quotidian feminine experiences. In a set of six blogs of this meme set, including the “founder”, I consider the production of authenticities where the simultaneous importance of connection and imitative differentiation is foregrounded, tracking the way authenticity is practised in the founder and follower meme blogs. I contend that the WSWCM founder claims authentic individuality, producing itself through claims to originality, and pre-existing “best girlfriendship”. I then suggest that the follower meme blogs foreground authentic digital belonging, by exhibiting certain affective cultural literacies that demonstrate insider status in this intimate digital feminine public (Berlant). I surmise these strategies are used to manage the demands of tension between proving one’s true and individual self and the need to be recognised as belonging through commonality. The Authentic Self Brand and the Authentic Insider I suggest that one expression of authentic individuality can be found in the increasingly prevalent practice of self-branding in digital cultures on social network sites (Banet-Weiser). In what Banet-Weiser calls “the authentic self-brand”, one sets up a simultaneous relationship to oneself, and a relationship between oneself and one’s audience. This double relationship is one of “innovation, production, and consumption [of the self], charged with ideally producing a unique, ‘authentic’ self” (73) for others. The self-social relationship offered by the authentic self-brand dovetails with what scholars identify as a postfeminist media landscape in the West (Gill; McRobbie; Negra). Postfeminist narratives promote highly commercial paradigms of self-surveillance, self-regulation and self-improvement, particularly for young women (Gill, McRobbie), whereby one’s body, social practices and relationships are evaluated as part of the marketability of one’s self-brand (Banet-Weiser, Winch). In this marketised recasting of social relationships, one must treat oneself as a product to be invested in, and remain vigilantly aware of how one is perceived by an audience of potential “buyers”. Notably, postfeminism relies on the idea of a deep, inhering individuality to justify the injunction to marketise oneself (Gill). Following this logic, gendered practices which may improve one’s feminine “self-brand” such as attention to beauty practices and body shape, must be cast as for “oneself” and part of one’s “true desires”. This occurs in a landscape where it is widely presumed that feminism has done its work, and women are now “free” to perform femininity however they wish (Gill). In postfeminist digital cultures, proving one’s acts are done for one’s true self, not for others becomes crucial in demonstrating one’s feminine authenticity (Dobson, Individuality; Performative), even as one is aware of the social value of one’s profile or digital brand (Banet-Weiser, Ringrose and Barajas). Drawing on this body of work, I suggest that authentic individuality, performed through imperviousness to social influence, is the way in which these contradictions of the postfeminist self-brand are justified. At the same time, digital cultures can also be argued to offer “remix” spaces (Lessig) where the borrowing, imitation and adaptation of existing cultural artefacts demonstrates personally felt connections to wider social meanings. One common manifestation of this is the Internet “meme”, a unit of culture which relies on imitative adaptation and differentiation in its circulation (Shifman), which I discuss further in this article. Shifman illustrates the meme as a mode of interpretive connection with the example of YouTube meme “Leave Britney Alone”, which began with the founder meme video by actor Chris Crocker making an emotional plea that society leave singer Britney Spears in peace. Memes signal dominant social understandings of the original cultural unit: Shifman notes that with the “Leave Britney Alone” meme, the follower memes tended to mock Crocker’s perceived effeminacy, sexuality and excessiveness in their re-enactments of Crocker’s founder video. Authenticity in these forms of digital production might be argued to signify more about desires for legitimate or authentic belonging within digital publics as insiders, rather than proving a fundamental individuality. WhatShouldWeCallMe and Tumblr Remix Culture Tumblr is a relatively under-researched but rapidly growing blogging social network, documented at the end of 2014 as the social platform with the most growth in user numbers (Lunden). Tumblr is known as a promising hub of burgeoning visual youth cultures (Third and Hart), possibly due to its norms of anonymity and significant pop culture content of posts. Images are a dominant form of communication on the site, and most content on Tumblr is public. Notably, 70% of Tumblr traffic occurs internally through the repurposing and reblogging of posts in the “dashboard” area (the equivalent being the “newsfeed’ for Facebook), rather than from external sources (Walker). Tumblr users are able to follow each other, and like and reblog each other’s posts. However, direct comments on posts are not an available feature, unlike most “first wave” (Miller and Fink) blogging sites; if a user wishes to comment on a post, they can only do so when reblogging the post, which is then featured on their own blog. According to Tumblr founder David Karp, this feature discourages overly negative comments and flame wars because “if you’re going to be a jerk, you’re looking like a jerk in your own space” (Walker). These structures set up Tumblr as an ideal site for the production of memes as part of its remix culture, whilst still adhering to certain connective features of other social networks. To provide some context, the founder WSWCM blog boasted 50,000 new Tumblr followers in the month following its creation in 2012, with independent traffic reports logging the number of page views as one to two million per day (Casserly). Each post on the founder WSWCM is on average liked and reblogged by hundreds of other Tumblr users, but its significance, which I consider here, lies in the way that it has been taken up in a prolific variety of follower meme blogs. Interestingly, unlike “Leave Britney Alone”, the form of imitative differentiation here is keyed at speaking at a more self-representative level, rather than making a comment on or satirising the founder, suggesting a level of personal connection. Like “Leave Britney Alone”, the WSWCM meme set can be understood as a founder-based meme (Shifman), with one originating, successful meme text which then inspires many follower memes, which are usually less successful. The follower memes I consider here adapt the GIF-reaction format which is used to narrate everyday experiences of youthful femininity. Blog posts are produced by matching a GIF image to situations such as “when my boyfriend forgets to DVR the Voice” or “when I hear my frenemy got dumped by her boyfriend”. GIFs are moving photo files excerpting about three seconds of movement from popular culture ranging from film, television and YouTube videos. It must be stressed that the term “follower” does not necessarily connote a lack of originality. The imitation of the follower blogs is strategic: a deliberate, slight differentiation, which operates to set them apart, but still locates them within a youthful feminine public. The emergence of the WSWCM follower blogs is a dynamic one which, I suggest, has catalysed the founder to intensify its claims to legitimacy through authentic originality even as its funny and creative followers throw its uniqueness into question. The Founder Meme Blog: Best Friendship as Authenticity Practice One key way that the WSWCM founder makes claims to authenticity is through a “best girlfriendship”, which is also explicitly articulated as the driving force for the maintenance of the blog, rather than Tumblr followers or outside audiences. Whilst ads are hosted on the founder blog, it is explained that these are almost ancillary—“to pay the bills” of purchasing material to create the GIFs, pay for the site design, web-hosting fees, and other costs. The almost romantic figure of the female “best friend” features significantly, fitting with Winch’s claim that the female best friend becomes a new “soul mate”, beyond one’s (heterosexual) partner in postfeminist girlfriend culture. In this way, we see how certain social relationships become recognisable as authentic. The founder bloggers state in their FAQs: We are two best friends who met in college and now live on opposite coasts (of the United States). We used to send each other funny .gifs as a way of staying in touch, and decided to start a tumblr that both of us could check during the day. We thought we were just posting inside jokes, but are thrilled that other people find them as funny as we do. We never really intended for anyone else to see it. Whilst now, with potentially hundreds of thousands of followers, it is difficult to maintain that the blog is maintained solely as a means of keeping in contact, this long distance girlfriendship can be drawn on to establish the authenticity and social capital for the blog. The best friend is a productive space through which one can express one’s true, individual desires, free of others’ wishes and outside constraints. Many moments expressed in the original blog centre on (very funny) moments that are only shared with the best friend where one can really be “oneself”, such as “when my best friend and I stay in” (for a night in), or “when my best friend and I are DGAF in public” (“don’t give a fuck”). In the blog, the very exclusivity of the female best friend compared to other ambivalent relations with “other girls” and “guys”, can also be understood as a mechanism for carving out a space of feminine individuality. I suggest that this best girlfriendship should be understood as a permutation of the authentic self-brand, practised to achieve a form of authentic individuality. In Winch’s conception, postfeminist girlfriendship is about strategy rather than solidarity; girlfriendship becomes an “investment in the individual” as it is “essential in enabling feminine normativity” (2). This may be reflected in the way best friendship is mobilised as a brand for WSWCM. At its inception, WSWCM only used the “Minimalist” theme for its layout, a free theme offered by Tumblr, which is still visible in the formats of some of the meme blogs. Fig. 1A: “Screenshot of Minimalist Theme in follower blog.” Twodumbgirls.tumblr.com, 16 Feb. 2015.Fig. 1B: “Screenshot of Minimalist Theme in follower blog.” Whatshouldwecollegeme.tumblr.com, 16 Feb. 2015. However, in early 2014 the bloggers changed to a different header to distinguish their site. I suggest this can be understood as a response to establish originality and authenticity through a best friendship brand, in opposition to the other meme blogs, which had also adopted the founder theme. The WSWCM header features cartoonish depictions of the two bloggers, one in New York with the silhouette of skyscrapers behind her, and one on a beach with an open laptop, the blog visible on her screen. Fig. 2: “WhatShouldWeCallMe Header.” Whatshouldwecallme.tumblr.com, 17 Feb. 2015. This header clearly alludes to the fact that the bloggers are separated, in different places, but links them by depicting them as virtually identical. Somewhat similar to “Bratz” dolls, they are both represented with oversized heads, tiny bodies, long hair, and large eyes, with the only differences being that one is blonde with pale skin and blue eyes, the other brunette with tanned skin and green eyes. I suggest that what is striking about this cartoonish image is the way it fits into a commercial genre of representation of “girlfriends”. Further, whilst girlfriends are often positioned as differing, their differences are often positioned as complementary, to strengthen a united co-brand (Winch). The differences here are noticeably nominal, skin-deep—the slight variation in hair, eye and skin colour hint at “‘tantalising differences within a normative paradigm” (Winch 46). I am not suggesting here that the best friendship of the bloggers is artificial or purely commercial, but rather, that this production of digital best friendship coincides with strategies to achieve authentic individuality recognisable in postfeminist digital cultures. The best friend is thus crucial to the performance of authenticity in the original blog. It is important to note, however, that these practices exceed postfeminist self-branding in certain ways. Given that WSWCM has indeed inspired follower memes keyed in a self-representative register, this suggests possibilities of broader connection and a sense of intimacy through recognisability of shared femininity. From one form of insider practice—the WSWCM best girlfriendship—to another, other Tumblr bloggers through follower meme texts have also signalled their insider status, as young women able to narrate forms of feminine experience held out as representative and legitimate. The Follower Meme Blogs: Connective Differentiation In contrast to the founder’s production of authenticity through claims to originality, and through a relationship, which is held out as distinct from the desires to gain Internet followers, authenticity is practised differently in the follower memes. Authentic individuality is decentred; rather, the follower blogs appear to foreground the importance of authentic belonging. This becomes clear in the followers’ imitation of the founder in their positioning as similar, but slightly different. For example, in the blog WhatShouldBetchesCallMe, the blogging subject still narrates quotidian feminine trials and tribulations, but is much more knowingly confident and sassy; in WhatShouldWeCollegeMe, the blog focuses more on the experience of being at university than the founder meme. Shifman foregrounds the process of repackaging and imitation in the adaptation of memes; I suggest that what also must be considered in this meme set is connective differentiation, which repositions this repackaging as simultaneously a form of distancing and connection. Here, the connective differentiation of the follower blogs is a way of citing one’s knowledge and understanding of youthful feminine experience. By creating a self-representative, knowingly derivative but different follower blog in this meme set, this subsequent variation demonstrates one’s legitimate belonging in the feminine public sphere of WSWCM readership. I suggest Berlant’s conceptualisation of intimate publics is useful here in explaining how slight variations on an original theme play out in a culture in which authenticity is held up as essential. Berlant argues that women’s culture in the West, centrally shaped by relations to commodities, creates expectations of both normativity and commonality whereby the market claims to offer texts and objects which are true to women’s “particular core interests and desires” (5). This provides a “generic-but-unique” femininity (6) through which women can expect to be recognisable in this public. Arguably, what the memes opt into—through being recognised as derivative—is a form of recognition in an intimate feminine public. Thus, the follower memes adhere to these rules of recognisability in order to be seen. Recognition as belonging in this intimate public through social knowledge becomes more useful for the follower memes, which cannot rely on the status of originality of the founder meme. What this practice of discerning, connective differentiation may signal is a configuration of authenticity which manages the tension in demands of digital culture— signalling one’s individuality yet demonstrating one’s social embeddedness. As O’Brien (1998) notes in relation to early online social interaction, if one wants to be recognised and recognisable, one must draw on established social, cultural codes. Notably, many of the situations which are put forward in blog posts of the follower memes are not necessarily easily distinguishable in genre or content from the blog posts of the founder memes. Though the founder meme text places particular emphasis on best friendship, other forms of youthful, feminine (middle class) experience are recycled and re-adapted for circulation. Many of the situations which are put forward in the meme set, while creatively assembled, are ultimately generic so that they can be circulated on Tumblr to connect with others. Consequently, posts abound about social rituals of excessive drinking, struggling through university, and inadequacies in flirting technique. However, I note that these generic posts are still specific at the same time, requiring a highly discerning ability to capture and narrativise affective moments from diverse, miscellaneous pop culture material. The well-chosen GIF articulating one’s despondency as a single girl demonstrates a level of cultural and affective awareness of the semiotic intelligibility of the GIF, and the recognisable trials and tribulations of youthful feminine experience. Fig. 3: “When I’m depressed and have too much to drink.” 2ndhand-embarrassment.tumblr.com, 11 Feb. 2015. Thus, showing one’s specific knowledge of shared experience demonstrates an affective authenticity of connection and belonging. This authenticity works to prove one’s digital authority to micro-broadcast one’s life in a youthful feminine public, through showing one’s knowledge of the recognisable pitfalls, idiosyncrasies and experiences of being a young woman. I emphasise that it is this situated knowingness that comes through in the meme set in general, particularly in the follower memes. Given the generic nature of the content of posts across the meme set, the importance of “true” emotion is decentred—rather, what is vital is knowing which affective situations have the capacity to connect and be recognisable. Whilst the revelation of inner emotional truths have otherwise been considered key in the practice of authenticity in celebrity culture (Biressi and Nunn; Hesmondalgh and Baker), I propose that in the context in which this meme set is situated, this is not necessarily the most useful form of social currency. In these remix digital cultures, I suggest the interpretive premise of the digital audience is not that these products of remix literally speak to one’s experiences. Rather, remix cultures provide a means of demonstrating insider knowledge, which connects other insiders—a form of authentic belonging. Conclusion This paper has traced differing practices of feminine authenticity visible in the intersection of social network and remix cultures on Tumblr by examining the WSWCM meme set. I have suggested that the founder meme employs particular strategies of maintaining authentic individuality, such as resorting to the performance of an exclusive, “original” best girlfriendship brand. In contrast, the follower memes perform cultural and affective knowingness of youthful femininity, to assert their digital insider status—and right to belong. This meme set presents some productive questions through which to think through authenticity in digital cultures. Could striving for authentic belonging constitute one strategy of responding to a media-saturated culture, where authentic individuality is constantly elevated yet (perhaps) harder to achieve? These blogs demonstrate how the significance and practice of authenticity transforms in managing different configurations of social desires to belong, or be recognised as individual and original in (postfeminist) digital cultures. References Banet-Weiser, Sarah. Authentic TM. New York, NY: New York UP, 2012. Beer, David, and Roger Burrows. “Popular Culture, Digital Archives and the New Social Life of Data.” Theory, Culture & Society 30.4 (2013): 47–71. Berlant, Lauren Gail. The Female Complaint. Durham: Duke UP, 2008. Burkhalter, Byron. "Reading Race Online: Discovering Racial Identity in Usenet Discussions." Communities in Cyberspace. Eds. Marc A. Smith and Peter Kollock. London: Routledge, 1999. 59–74. Casserly, Meghan. “#Whatshouldwecallme Revealed: The 24-Year Old Law Students behind the New Tumblr Darling.” Forbes 29 Mar 2012: n.p. 23 Dec. 2014 ‹http://www.forbes.com/sites/meghancasserly/2012/03/29/whatshouldwecallme-revealed-24-year-old-law-students-tumblr-darling/›. Cover, Rob. “Performing and Undoing Identity Online: Social Networking, Identity Theories and the Incompatibility of Online Profiles and Friendship Regimes.” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 18.2 (2012): 177–93. Dobson, Amy Shields. “Performative Shamelessness on Young Women's Social Network Sites: Shielding the Self and Resisting Gender Melancholia.” Feminism & Psychology 24.1 (2013): 97–114. Dobson, Amy Shields. “'Individuality is Everything': 'Autonomous Femininity' in Myspace Mottos and Self–Descriptions.” Continuum 26.3 (2012): 371–83. Donath, Judith. "Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community." Communities in Cyberspace. Eds. Marc A. Smith and Peter Kollock. London: Routledge, 1999. 27–57. Fink, Marty, and Quinn Miller. “Trans Media Moments: Tumblr, 2011–2013.” Television & New Media 15.7 (2013): 611–26. Gill, Rosalind. Gender and the Media. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2007. Hesmondhalgh, David, and Sarah Baker. Creative Labour. London: Routledge, 2011. Keller, Jessalynn Marie. “Fiercely Real?: Tyra Banks and the Making of New Media Celebrity.” Feminist Media Studies 14.1 (2012): 147–64. Lessig, Lawrence. Remix. New York: Penguin P, 2008. Lunden, Ingrid. “Tumblr Overtakes Instagram as Fastest-Growing Social Platform, Snapchat Is the Fastest-Growing App.” TechCrunch 25 Nov. 2014: n.p. 23 Dec. 2014 ‹http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/25/tumblr-overtakes-instagram-as-fastest-growing-social-platform-snapchat-is-the-fastest-growing-app/›. McRobbie, Angela. The Aftermath of Feminism. London: SAGE Publications, 2009. Miller, Vincent. Understanding Digital Culture. London: SAGE Publications, 2011. Negra, Diane. What a Girl Wants? Fantasising the Reclamation of Self in Postfeminism. London: Routledge, 2009. Nunn, Heather, and Anita Biressi. “'A Trust Betrayed': Celebrity and the Work Of Emotion.” Celebrity Studies 1.1 (2010): 49–64. O’Brien, Jodi. "Writing in the Body: Gender (Re)production in Online Interaction." Communities in Cyberspace. Eds. Marc A. Smith and Peter Kollock. London: Routledge, 1999. 75–103. Papacharissi, Zizi. A Networked Self. New York: Routledge, 2011. Ringrose, Jessica, and Katarina Eriksson Barajas. “Gendered Risks and Opportunities? Exploring Teen Girls’ Digitized Sexual Identities in Postfeminist Media Contexts.” International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics 7.2 (2011): 121–38. Shifman, Limor. Memes in Digital Culture. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT P, 2014. Van Doorn, Niels, Sally Wyatt, and Liesbet van Zoonen. “A Body of Text.” Feminist Media Studies 8.4 (2008): 357–74. Van Zoonen, Liesbet. “From Identity to Identification: Fixating the Fragmented Self.” Media, Culture & Society 35.1 (2013): 44­–51. Walker, Rob. “Can Tumblr’s™ David Karp Embrace Ads without Selling Out?” New York Times 12 July 2012: n.p. 23 Dec. 2014 ‹http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/magazine/can-tumblrs-david-karp-embrace-ads-without-selling-out.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0›. Winch, Alison. Girlfriends and Postfeminist Sisterhood. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

L’art performance est un art contemporain difficile à définir. Néanmoins il peut se décrire par l’action d’un artiste de performance qui, à la différence du théâtre traditionnel, se présente lui-même devant un public, s’infligeant parfois de véritable blessure. Cet art questionne le « pour de vrai » et le « vrai ». En le comparant au théâtre il semble moins fictif car les blessures est le sang sont « vrais », et sa trace (captations vidéos, captations sonores, photographies, objets, croquis, écrits, etc.) le prouve. La fiction et la trace paraissent opposées, là où la première est une invention (le « pour de vrai ») l’autre est un élément pérenne d’une action vécue (le « vrai »), l’art performance permettrait alors de penser ces deux notions non plus comme opposés mais comme corrélatives. L’art performance présente sa trace comme un élément pérenne d’une action plus ou moins inventée : le « vrai » dont la frontière avec le « pour de vrai » peut être questionné. Cette thèse argumente ces hypothèses à travers une première partie comparative entre l’art performance et l’art théâtral, avec comme problématique la fiction qui semble opposée au « vrai ». Et une seconde partie corrélative sur le possible « pour de vrai » de la trace, qui permet l’étude de trois traces épistémologiques : la mémoire, l’écriture et l’indice à travers des exemples respectifs d’artistes de performance
Performance art is a contemporary art is hard to define but which can be described as an action made an audience by a performance artist who, in contrast to the traditional theater, is the artist himself is inflicting sometimes real physical injuries. This art questions the 'like true' and the 'true' and seems less fictitious than traditional theater because blood’s physical injuries is 'true' and that he uses his trace as evidence (video recordings, sound recordings, photographs, objects, sketches, written, etc.). If the fiction and the trace seem opposed, because the first is an invention (the "like true") the other is a sustainable living action (the ' true') element, performance art then would think these two concepts not as opposites but as Horn related. As performance art, object of study here, presents his trail as a perennial element of a more or less invented action: as the 'true' including the border with the "like true" can be questioned. This thesis argues its assumptions through a comparative part between performance art and theatrical art, with as problematic fiction that seems opposite to 'true'. And a second consequential part on the possible "like true" of the trace, which allows the study of three epistemological traces : memory, writing, and trifle through respective examples of performance artists

Consummation was the one term about which Kenneth Burke wasn't particularly long-winded - odd considering his claim that it was the apex of his theory of form. Perhaps Burke never explained exactly what consummation was because he himself was never clear on the subject, as he told John Woodcock in an interview toward the end of his career. Burke began conceptualizing his theory of form early on - in his 20s - and published it in his first critical book, Counter-Statement, in 1931. At that time, Burke's theory of form had already taken one evolutionary step - from self-expression, with the focus on the artist, to communication, with the focus on the psychology of the reader. Communication was to Burke an "arousing and fulfilling of desires." However, by the 60s, Burke introduced us to a new term which he only used a handful of times in his entire corpus: consummation. This paper attempts to define consummation by exploring Burke's theory of form and looking to his correspondences with friends and scholars. It offers two answers: first, consummation is the act of a reader responding to a writer in critical conversation; second, consummation is the ultimate cathartic achievement. Both play an important civic role. Using current science regarding the gut in connection with emotional purgation, this paper treats seriously Burke's essay "The Thinking of the Body (Comments on the Imagery of Catharsis in Literature)" and his ideas regarding the "Demonic Trinity": micturition, defecation, and parturition, explaining Burkean catharsis as it differs from, deepens, and extends Aristotelian catharsis. What can we learn from what Burke meant by consummation? That the symbolic world is much more significant to our survival than we may realize. As the world of scientific motion advanced rapidly during Burke's lifetime, he began to lose hope that symbolic action could keep up with it. We can see how important poetry and the symbolic motive was for him; he seemed to think it was a matter of life and death. This paper explores what it meant for Burke to seek a consummated life, and the implications that held for him and for us. In the end, the paper posits the importance of catharsis to society in terms of war and peace.

Pierre Aubenque’s “Science Regained” (1962; translated by Clayton Shoppa) was originally published as the concluding chapter of Le Problème de l’Être chez Aristote, one of the most important and original books on Aristotle’s Metaphysics. In this essay, Aubenque contends that the impasses which beset the project of first philosophy paradoxically become its greatest accomplishments. Although science stabilizes motion and thereby introduces necessity into human cognition, human thought always occurs amidst an inescapable movement of change and contingency. Aristotle’s ontology, as a discourse that strives to achieve being in its unity, succeeds by means of the failure of the structure of its own approach: the search of philosophy – dialectic – becomes the philosophy of the search. Aubenque traces this same structure of scission, mediation, and recovery across Aristotelian discussions of theology, motion, time, imitation, and human activity.

This chapter examines Gregory of Nyssa’s anthropology as it is evident in three of his ascetic works: De Professione Christiana, De Perfectione, and De Instituto Christiano. Previous research has tended to use these as evidence for Gregory’s spirituality or his instructions concerning the truly Christian life, while his anthropology has been studied from his De Anima et Resurrectione and De Hominis Opificio. However, his concept of the truly Christian life seems to rely on some basic anthropological ideas which one can see in the ascetic treatises—especially in Gregory’s use of the language of ‘formation’ or ‘shaping’ the Christian and in metaphors relating to those concepts. Such language emphasizes the unity of the human being, her working together with God (the concept of sunergeia), and the imitation of Christ. It perhaps also suggests traces of hylomorphism in Gregory’s anthropology.

This chapter reads Samuel Warren’s Passages from the Diary of a Late Physician (1830–7) in its vexed original publishing context – the ideologically charged popular periodical press – in terms of its inception and reception, as well as its initiation of a new genre of ‘medico-popular’ writing, and places this reading in relation to debates surrounding the professionalisation of medicine. The political significance of the original intention to publish the series within the New Monthly Magazine is discussed. Within Blackwood’s, the series is read as a new development of the tale of terror, in which the genre re-coalesces with the case history, a continuation of the morally didactic and implicitly conservative mode of John Wilson’s proto-Kailyard writings, and an idealistic and politicised depiction of a literary and gentlemanly medical man. With its avowed mission to reunite intellect and feeling, Blackwood’s provided an apt platform for the construction of a professional medical man of feeling, following in the tradition of medical ethics initiated by John Gregory (1724–73). However, the reception of the controversial series, as tracked both through letters, reviews, parodies, and imitations, reveals that Warren’s series may be read as both contributing to and detracting from the agenda of professionalisation.

This chapter reviews Hans Blumenberg's “'Imitation of Nature': Toward a Prehistory of the Idea of the Creative Being” (1957). In this work, Blumenberg traces the consequences of the changes in the concept of nature for technology and art through the historical reevaluation of the concept of mimesis. According to Aristotle, “human skill (technē) either completes what nature is incapable of completing or imitates nature.” This dual definition is closely tied to the double meaning of the concept of “nature” as a productive principle (natura naturans) and produced form (natura naturata). It is easy to see, however, that the overlapping component lies in the element of “imitation.” Nature and “art” are structurally identical: the immanent characteristics of one sphere can be transposed onto the other. This idea was then established as fact when tradition shortened the Aristotelian formulation to ars imitator naturam, as Aristotle himself had already expressed it.

From the minuteness with which I have traced Waverley’s pursuits, and the bias which they unavoidably communicated to his imagination, the reader may perhaps anticipate, in the following tale, an imitation of the romance of Cervantes. But he will do my prudence injustice in...

This chapter synthesizes sociolinguistic scholarship on enregisterment, regimes of language, chronotopes, and scale to offer the concept of “mass-mediated chronotopic identity.” It starts with an examination of a 1998 speech on good governance made by the director of the International Monetary Fund, and the subsequent uptake of these ideas in policy documents sponsored by an Indonesian president and a government ministry. The chapter traces the imitation of ideas of good governance across these contexts through reference to words, such as “efficiency,” “effectiveness,” “corruption,” and “bureaucracy.” In doing so, it points to the utility of connecting the discursive work that occurs within one chronotopic moment with another quite different one. I argue that a reduction in media censorship, along with the move from a highly centralized authoritarian regime to a democratic one tasked with the large-scale fiscal and political decentralization of Indonesia, facilitated this imitation and the creation of what I refer to as “chronotopes of good governance.”

Chapter Five disaggregates political violence not by cause or group, but by basic technique. It identifies the key means that underpin violent repertoires: and attempt to trace their evolution in conjunction with some reference to other major social and technological changes. At heart, this is a structural approach that leans towards identifying emerging opportunities for violence. Yet, paradoxically, such a structuralist approach can also help to highlight the key roles of agency and contingency. Again and again, new and shocking trends in political violence turn out to be exploiting ideas that are not fundamentally new, though they may indeed be adapted or transformed in importantly novel ways. Likewise, violent techniques may be practised in a very limited way—and then very suddenly achieve widespread imitation. In short, contagion patterns can be very dramatic.

The chapter traces the musical educations of Domenico Cimarosa, a contemporary of Mozart, in the 1760s and of Henri Busser, a contemporary of Claude Debussy, in the 1880s. Though born into quite different worlds, their experiences as fatherless boys taken in by conservatories were very similar. For both of them, instruction was largely nonverbal. They did not learn from reading about music. They learned by constantly imitating and creating music. That is, in modern terms, they learned predominantly “by ear,” although they also learned to read and write music.

It is on the ricercar that most treatments of pre-Bach fugue have focused. The genre’s focus on serious fugal counterpoint can be traced to the year 1540, at the point when Gombert’s experiments had borne fruit, in a publication of ricercars by Willaert and others active in Venice. The central early contributions to the genre came from Venetian organists, both Italian and northern, including J. Buus, A. Padovano, and especially, beginning in the 1560s, Claudio Merulo and Andrea Gabrieli. Thanks to the absence of text, composers explored a wide range of structural possibilities within the point-of-imitation model, including the return of thematic material later in the piece, such contrapuntal devices as augmentation, diminution, inversion, and inganno, and even the basing of an entire piece on only one theme. Later in the century other, more southerly Italian cities, including Ferrara, Rome, and Naples, also saw important ricercar cultivation.

Chapter 1 traces the images of angels and sacred embodiment as these emerge within the culture of eleventh- and twelfth-century reforms and underwrite its suspicion (and ultimate rejection) of popular charismatics. In an unrecognized irony, reformers’ model of a sexually purified and angelic priesthood came to require both persistent defense and the unholy specter of demonic transfiguration (2 Cor. 11:14) as the countervailing threat to clerical authority and its narratives of spiritual power. The anxieties informing the several cultural transitions underway throughout the twelfth century were accordingly projected onto holy men and women, including anchorites, whose spirituality was often assumed to be in competition with that authority and potentially out of alignment with orthodox culture generally. Through forms of imitatio clerici/angeli, a subject to which later chapters will return, anchorites not only resembled their (at times unreformed) clerical counterparts but even outstripped them in charismatic power.

Safety and efficiency are two key elements for planning and control in autonomous driving. Theoretically, model-based optimization methods, such as Model Predictive Control (MPC), can provide such optimal driving policies. Their computational complexity, however, grows exponentially with horizon length and number of surrounding vehicles. This makes them impractical for real-time implementation, particularly when nonlinear models are considered. To enable a fast and approximately optimal driving policy, we propose a safe imitation framework, which contains two hierarchical layers. The first layer, defined as the policy layer, is represented by a neural network that imitates a long-term expert driving policy via imitation learning. The second layer, called the execution layer, is a short-term model-based optimal controller that tracks and further fine-tunes the reference trajectories proposed by the policy layer with guaranteed short-term collision avoidance. Moreover, to reduce the distribution mismatch between the training set and the real world, Dataset Aggregation is utilized so that the performance of the policy layer can be improved from iteration to iteration. Several highway driving scenarios are demonstrated in simulations, and the results show that the proposed framework can achieve similar performance as sophisticated long-term optimization approaches but with significantly improved computational efficiency.

In this research, a scooping motion generation method is proposed to scoop the semi-liquid objects from different containers automatically for meal support purpose. A spoon equipped robot arm is used. Based on the pre-measured shape of the containers, the robot arm can move the spoon to trace the inner surface of containers continuously. We also control the rotation of the spoon to scoop more semi-liquid object every time by imitating human’s scooping motion. A scraping motion is also generated as the auxiliary operation to gather the remaining semi-liquid object, which can realize an increase in the scooping amount. In the experiment, we tested the generated scooping motion for two containers and four type of semi-liquid objects. The scooped amount and the scooping times are measured and compared. The result shows that about 85.9% object on average could be scooped out.

This paper investigates the use of Symbolic Dynamic Filtering (SDF) algorithms in detecting anomalous behavior trends in social networks. Data is generated from an agent-based discrete choice model, which relies on a Markov Decision Process framework for stochastic simulation of decision-making in a social setting, where choices and decisions by individuals are influenced by social interactions. We show that such collective imitative behavior leads to rapid unstable fluctuations in the society, the fluctuation statistics being a weak function of the number of extremist nodes present in the network as well as the prevailing political climate. In this paper, using a time-trace of global opinions in the said society, we investigate the effectiveness of SDF in estimating the number of extremist nodes in a network, and studying the role of unpopular government policies as an enabler of political instability. Spread of influence and ‘recruiting’ by extremist groups through social networks has become an important political issue in recent years. This study is a step in the direction of building tools to preempt and intervene such efforts.