Journal articles on the topic 'Free sorting task'

The differences between the processing of textual and pictorial information have been a topic of research for some time now. Previous research concerning the modality of information has often concentrated on the speed of processing rather than the organizational differences that may exist. This experiment utilized card sorting to evaluate the changes in knowledge organization that occur when information is presented in text and picture formats. In addition to this, the structure of the elicitation task was manipulated to evaluate its effects on sharedness. It was found that textual stimuli produced a greater sharedness among participants in a free sorting task. However, for a structured sorting task, results reversed, and pictorial stimuli created a greater level of sharedness. Overall, structured sorting tasks produced a greater level of sharedness than the free sorting condition, regardless of modality.

AbstractThese studies examined naming and free-sorting behavior by informants speaking a wide range of languages, from both industrialized and traditional cultures. Groups of informants, whose color vocabularies varied from 5 to 12 basic terms, were given an unconstrained color grouping task to investigate whether there are systematic differences between cultures in grouping behavior that mirror linguistic differences and, if there are not, what underlying principles might explain any universal tendencies. Despite large differences in color vocabulary, there were substantial similarities in grouping behavior across language groups, and substantial within-language variation across informants. It seems that all informants group stimuli based on some criterion of perceptual similarity, but those with large color vocabularies are more likely to group stimuli in line with their basic color terms. The data are best accounted for by a hybrid system that combines a universal principle of grouping by similarity with culture-specific category salience.

A fundamental task in neuroscience is to understand how neural ensembles represent information. Population decoding is a useful tool to extract information from neuronal populations based on the ensemble spiking activity. We propose a novel Bayesian decoding paradigm to decode unsorted spikes in the rat hippocampus. Our approach uses a direct mapping between spike waveform features and covariates of interest and avoids accumulation of spike sorting errors. Our decoding paradigm is nonparametric, encoding model-free for representing stimuli, and extracts information from all available spikes and their waveform features. We apply the proposed Bayesian decoding algorithm to a position reconstruction task for freely behaving rats based on tetrode recordings of rat hippocampal neuronal activity. Our detailed decoding analyses demonstrate that our approach is efficient and better utilizes the available information in the nonsortable hash than the standard sorting-based decoding algorithm. Our approach can be adapted to an online encoding/decoding framework for applications that require real-time decoding, such as brain-machine interfaces.

AbstractThe present study examined linguistic relativity in the domain of emotion terms. Exp. 1 showed that American English speakers use the word "jealous" to describe both situations involving envy and those involving jealousy, whereas Russian speakers describe emotions involved in the situations using the Russian terms revnuet and zaviduet in a mutually exclusive manner. Bilinguals performed according to the language they were tested in. In Experiment 2 we sought evidence for conceptual consequences of the difference in how emotion terms mapped onto situations for English and Russian speakers. In a non-linguistic triad sorting task, all subjects clearly distinguished jealousy situations from envy situations, but monolingual English speakers and bilinguals were more likely to see envy situations and jealousy situations as similar than Russian speakers. In a free sorting task, high agreement across all groups was shown in sorting jealousy, envy and control situations. However, native Russian speakers, in contrast to native English speakers, labeled the groups in a mutually-exclusive way. While providing some evidence for the weak view of linguistic relativity, overall the study shows that despite the difference in labeling the emotions of jealousy and envy, Russian speakers, English speakers and bilinguals are very similar in how they conceptualize emotionally-laden situations.

Dichromatic subjects can name colors accurately, even though they cannot discriminate among red-green hues (Jameson & Hurvich, 1978). This result is attributed to a normative language system that dichromatic observers developed by learning subtle visual cues to compensate for their impoverished color system. The present study used multidimensional scaling techniques to compare color categorization spaces of color-vision deficient (CVD) subjects to those of normal trichromat (NT) subjects, and consensus analysis estimated the normative effect of language on categorization. Subjects sorted 140 Munsell color samples in three different ways: a free sorting task (unlimited number of categories), a constrained sorting task (number of categories limited to eight), and a constrained naming task (limited to eight basic color terms). CVD color categories were comparable to those of NT subjects. For both CVD and NT subjects, a common color categorization space derived from the three tasks was well described by a three-dimensional model, with the first two dimensions corresponding to reddish-greenish and yellowish-bluish axes. However, the third axis, which was associated with an achromatic dimension in NTs, was not identified in the CVD model. Individual differences multidimensional scaling failed to reveal group differences in the sorting tasks. In contrast, the personal color naming spaces of CVD subjects exhibited a relative compression of the yellowish-bluish dimension that is inconsistent with the typical deutan-type color spaces derived from more direct measures of perceptual color judgments. As expected, the highest consensus among CVDs (77%) and NTs (82%) occurred in the naming task. The categorization behaviors studied in this experiment seemed to rely more on learning factors, and may reveal little about CVD perceptual representation of colors.

Purpose: An approach is considered in the article to the assessment of stability main conditions related to maintaining the equality of incoming and outgoing wagon flows and also related to the conditions of track freedom in the parks of local line sorting systems. Methods: The task is settled with the use of (mathematical) analysis, probability theory and fuzzy set theory. Results: The study of arrival probabilities for trains with local cargo for a disbandment leads to the conclusion that trains with wagons for more than two destinations constitute the norm. The performed calculations show that in the sorting system of local line stations at any time moment there should be free at least three tracks at the expense of arriving and departing train intensity. Practical importance: The proposed approach makes it possible to specify the assessment of work stability for station sorting devices and to increase the reliability in meeting set deadlines for goods delivery.

We examined the relationship between executive function (EF) and creativity and whether a creative manipulation related to free coloring or coloring task-relevant materials would impact EF performance in the Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS). Participants also completed individual difference measures of creativity with an Alternative Uses Task and EF with a Backward Digit Span Working Memory Task and Delay of Gratification Inhibition Task. Although we failed to find a relationship between creativity in the Alternative Uses Task and our EF measures (rs < .25, ps > .10), we found evidence to suggest the effects of a creative color manipulation differed by individual differences in creativity. Those who were low in certain creative components like the ability to switch between categories (p = .03 and p = .08), generate a number of unique ideas (p = .03 and p = .04), and originality (p = .01) seemed to perform better when allowed to freely color before the DCCS compared to other conditions. Those who performed higher in creative measures generally did not benefit from a creative manipulation before the task. This suggests that a more nuanced examination of the relationship between creativity and EF considering possible experimental manipulations, multiple components, and individual differences may be useful in understanding the relationship between these 2 constructs.

Label-free and gentle separation of cell stages with desired target properties from mixed stage populations are a major research task in modern biotechnological cultivation process and optimization of micro algae. The reported microfluidic sorter system (MSS) allows the subsequent investigation of separated subpopulations. The implementation of a viability preserving MSS is shown for separation of late stage 1 Haematococcus pluvialis (HP) cells form a mixed stage population. The MSS combines a three-step flow focusing unit for aligning the cells in single file transportation mode at the center of the microfluidic channel with a pure hydrodynamic sorter structure for cell sorting. Lateral displacement of the cells into one of the two outlet channels is generated by piezo-actuated pump chambers. In-line decision making for sorting is based on a user-definable set of image features and properties. The reported MSS significantly increased the purity of target cells in the sorted population (94%) in comparison to the initial mixed stage population (19%).

Novel input devices can increase the bandwidth between users and their devices. Traditional desktop computing uses windows, icons, menus, and pointers – an interface built for the computer mouse and very effective for pointing-and-clicking. Alternative devices provide a variety of interactions including touch-free, gesture-based input and gaze-tracking to determine the user’s on-screen gaze location, but these input channels are not well-suited to a point-and-click interface. This study evaluates five new schemes, some multi-modal. These experimental schemes perform worse than mouse-based input for a picture sorting task, and motion-based gesture control creates more errors. Some gaze-based input has similar performance to the mouse while not creating additional workload.

From a cognitive information processing perspective, parents’ cognitive schemas strongly influence the way they perceive and act toward their children. In order to explore how maternal cognitive representations about parenting are organized in a multidimensional space, mothers referred to child protection services and mothers with no such reference completed a free description task of maternal attributes and a sorting task of those attributes according to their probability of co-occurrence in the same mother. Overall, the results suggest that maladaptive parenting seems to be associated with less positive parental schemata, higher schemata rigidity, and higher external attributions regarding parenting. Using multidimensional scaling to represent the structure and content of maternal schemata constitutes an innovative contribution to the parenting domain with potential applications. These conceptual maps representing maternal schemata that shape parental responses in child-rearing situations can be used as theoretical frameworks to develop empirically based guidelines for intervention work with maltreating parents.

Double-deep multi-tier shuttle warehousing systems (DMSWS) have been increasingly applied for store-and-retrieval stock-keeping unit tasks, with the advantage of a reduced number of aisles and improved space utilization. Scheduling different devices for retrieval tasks to increase system efficiency is an important concern. In this paper, a Pareto optimization model of task operations based on the cycle time and carbon emissions is presented. The impact of the rearrangement operation is considered in this model. The cycle time model is converted into a flow-shop scheduling model with parallel machines by analyzing the retrieval operation process. Moreover, the carbon emissions of the shuttle in the waiting process, the carbon emissions of the lift during the free process, and the carbon emissions of the retrieval operation are considered in the carbon emissions model, which can help us to evaluate the carbon emissions of the equipment more comprehensively during the entire retrieval task process. The elitist non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA-II) is adopted to solve the non-linear multi-objective optimization function. Finally, a real case is adopted to illustrate the findings of this study. The results show that this method can reduce carbon emissions and improve system efficiency. In addition, it also help managers to reduce operational costs and improve the utilization of shuttles.

ABSTRACTResearch on categorization suggests that information conveyed by language may be a guide for children performing classification tasks. In our study we asked whether differences between languages in linguistic form influence this performance. Thirty-five three- and four-year-old monolingual speakers of Spanish and English, languages differing in the way they encode gender, were tested in their native countries on a classification task of familiar objects. This task assessed strategies used in (1) a free sort, (2) a sort with instructions to use natural gender, and (3) one (for the Spanish speakers) with specific instructions to use grammatical gender. Half of both the Spanish and the English groups used animacy as a sorting strategy in the first sort, whereas the majority of both groups sorted by natural gender in the second sort. Most Spanish speakers also used grammatical gender as a categorizing strategy in at least one of the sorts. Results suggest that both instructional context and language-specific experience can influence the ways children classify familiar referents.

The debate as to whether language influences cognition has been long standing but has yielded conflicting findings across domains such as colour and kinship categories. Fewer studies have investigated systems such as nominal classification (gender, classifiers) across different languages to examine the effects of linguistic categorisation on cognition. Effective categorisation needs to be informative to maximise communicative efficiency but also simple to minimise cognitive load. It therefore seems plausible to suggest that different systems of nominal classification have implications for the way speakers conceptualise relevant entities. A suite of seven experiments was designed to test this; here we focus on our card sorting experiment, which contains two sub-tasks — a free sort and a structured sort. Participants were 119 adults across six Oceanic languages from Vanuatu and New Caledonia, with classifier inventories ranging from two to 23. The results of the card sorting experiment reveal that classifiers appear to provide structure for cognition in tasks where they are explicit and salient. The free sort task did not incite categorisation through classifiers, arguably as it required subjective judgement, rather than explicit instruction. This was evident from our quantitative and qualitative analyses. Furthermore, the languages employing more extreme categorisation systems displayed smaller variation in comparison to more moderate systems. Thus, systems that are more informative or more rigid appear to be more efficient. The study implies that the influence of language on cognition may vary across languages, and that not all nominal classification systems employ this optimal trade-off between simplicity and informativeness. These novel data provide a new perspective on the origin and nature of nominal classification.

In this paper, we study the one-shot and lifelong versions of the Target Assignment and Path Finding problem in automated sortation centers, where each agent needs to constantly assign itself a sorting station, move to its assigned station without colliding with obstacles or other agents, wait in the queue of that station to obtain a parcel for delivery, and then deliver the parcel to a sorting bin. The throughput of such centers is largely determined by the total idle time of all stations since their queues can frequently become empty. To address this problem, we first formalize and study the one-shot version that assigns stations to a set of agents and finds collision-free paths for the agents to their assigned stations. We present efficient algorithms for this task based on a novel min-cost max-flow formulation that minimizes the total idle time of all stations in a fixed time window. We then demonstrate how our algorithms for solving the one-shot problem can be applied to solving the lifelong problem as well. Experimentally, we believe to be the first researchers to consider real-world automated sortation centers using an industrial simulator with realistic data and a kinodynamic model of real robots. On this simulator, we showcase the benefits of our algorithms by demonstrating their efficiency and effectiveness for up to 350 agents.

Frontal pole cortex (FPC) and posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) have close neuroanatomical connections, and imaging studies have shown coactivation or codeactivation of these brain regions during performance of certain tasks. However, they are among the least well-understood regions of the primate brain. One reason for this is that the consequences of selective bilateral lesions to either structure have not previously been studied in any primate species. We studied the effects of circumscribed bilateral lesions to FPC or PCC on monkeys’ ability to perform an analog of Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) and related tasks. In contrast to lesions in other prefrontal regions, neither posttraining FPC nor PCC lesions impaired animals’ abilities to follow the rule switches that frequently occurred within the WCST task. However, FPC lesions were not without effect, because they augmented the ability of animals to adjust cognitive control after experiencing high levels of conflict (whereas PCC lesions did not have any effect). In addition, FPC-lesioned monkeys were more successful than controls or PCC-lesioned animals at remembering the relevant rule across experimentally imposed distractions involving either an intervening secondary task or a surprising delivery of free reward. Although prefrontal cortex posterior to FPC is specialized for mediating efficient goal-directed behavior to maximally exploit reward opportunities from ongoing tasks, our data led us to suggest that FPC is, instead, specialized for disengaging executive control from the current task and redistributing it to novel sources of reward to explore new opportunities/goals.

In this work, we present CogBeacon, a multi-modal dataset designed to target the effects of cognitive fatigue in human performance. The dataset consists of 76 sessions collected from 19 male and female users performing different versions of a cognitive task inspired by the principles of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), a popular cognitive test in experimental and clinical psychology designed to assess cognitive flexibility, reasoning, and specific aspects of cognitive functioning. During each session, we record and fully annotate user EEG functionality, facial keypoints, real-time self-reports on cognitive fatigue, as well as detailed information of the performance metrics achieved during the cognitive task (success rate, response time, number of errors, etc.). Along with the dataset we provide free access to the CogBeacon data-collection software to provide a standardized mechanism to the community for collecting and annotating physiological and behavioral data for cognitive fatigue analysis. Our goal is to provide other researchers with the tools to expand or modify the functionalities of the CogBeacon data-collection framework in a hardware-independent way. As a proof of concept we show some preliminary machine learning-based experiments on cognitive fatigue detection using the EEG information and the subjective user reports as ground truth. Our experiments highlight the meaningfulness of the current dataset, and encourage our efforts towards expanding the CogBeacon platform. To our knowledge, this is the first multi-modal dataset specifically designed to assess cognitive fatigue and the only free software available to allow experiment reproducibility for multi-modal cognitive fatigue analysis.

The rapid development of new genetic breeding techniques is accompanied by a polarized debate around their risks. Research on the public perception of these techniques lags behind scientific developments. This study tests a method for revealing laypeople’s perceptions and attitudes about different genetic techniques. The objectives are to enable laypeople to understand the key principles of new genetic breeding techniques and to permit a comparison of their modes of classification with those of scientific experts. The combined method of a free sorting task and focus groups showed that the participants distinguished the techniques that did not induce any change in DNA sequence, and applied two different logics to classify the other breeding techniques: a Cartesian logic and a naturalistic logic with a distinct set of values. The lay categorization differed substantially from current scientific categorizations of genetic breeding techniques. These findings have implications for food innovation policy and genetically modified organism legislation.

This article describes the vision system, which is designed for diagnostics of defects in casted products. In the first part an overview about image processing, edge and pattern recognition algorithms and current status in available free and commercial vision libraries is found. For the described task we selected open source Aforge .NET library. The next part describes common defects in casted products. Modular education system MPS 500 from Festo with conveyor and palette with plastic parts is used for simulation of production system. This system contains an industrial robot which can be used for sorting defective parts. The selected vision library is used for two level diagnostics of algorithm implementation. The first level algorithm detects position of part, its dimensions and edge disturbances. The second algorithm detects any defects inside of a part. The basic algorithm is presented only for circular shape with red color texture, but can be easily extended to other basic shapes by shape detector.

Семенной ворох с поля никогда не бывает чистым. В процессе уборки семян в семенной ворох попадают различные примеси – семена сорняков, различные обломки частей растений, минеральные частицы: комочки земли, камешки и др. Очистка семенного вороха до регламентированных показателей, предусмотренных в нормативном документе, – основная задача послеуборочной доработки семян. Примеси, которые отличаются размером от семян основной культуры, легко удаляются на ветрорешетных машинах. Полностью удалить все примеси на ветрорешетных машинах невозможно. Поэтому существует необходимость во вторичной, более качественной очистке семенного вороха. Пневмосортировальные столы способны разделить семенной ворох по плотности семян. В результате дополнительной вторичной очистки семян можно повысить чистоту семян, которая необходима для безотказной работы современных высевающих аппаратов. Пневмосортировальный стол ПСС-1 имеет ряд настроек, которые меняются оператором в зависимости от культуры. Основные настройки: подача семян, регулировка заслонки вентилятора, изменение продольного и поперечного угла наклона рабочей деки, частота колебания рабочей деки, регулируемые заслонки приемника семян. Все настройки могут быть оперативно изменены оператором технологического процесса очистки. Использование пневмосортировального стола во вторичной очистке семенного вороха возможно на различных овощных культурах. В процессе очистки семян на пневмосортировальном столе из семенного вороха удаляются вместе с легковесными примесями, обломками стебельков, листьев, стручков и прочими, удаляются и легковесные невызревшие семена, что способствует повышению всхожести получаемых после очистки семян. The resulting seed heap from the field is never clean. In the process of harvesting seeds, various impurities are found in the seed pile. As impurities in the seed heap, there may be weed seeds, various fragments of plant parts, mineral particles: lumps of earth, pebbles and others. Cleaning the seed pile to the regulated indicators provided for in the regulatory document is the main task of post-harvest seed refinement. Impurities that differ in size from the seeds of the main crop are easily removed by wind-screen machines. It is impossible to completely remove all impurities on windscreen machines. Therefore, there is a need for a secondary, better cleaning of the seed pile. Pneumatic sorting tables are able to divide the seed pile according to the density of seeds. Because of additional secondary cleaning of seeds, it is possible to increase the purity of seeds, which is necessary for the trouble-free operation of modern sowing machines. The PSS-1 pneumatic sorting table has a number of settings that are changed by the operator depending on the culture. Basic settings: seed feeding, fan flap adjustment, changing the longitudinal and transverse angle of inclination of the working deck, the oscillation frequency of the working deck, adjustable shutters of the seed receiver. The operator of the cleaning process can quickly change all settings. The use of a pneumatic sorting table in the secondary cleaning of the seed pile is possible on various vegetable crops. In the process of cleaning seeds on a pneumatic sorting table, fragments of stems, leaves, pods and others are removed from the seed pile together with lightweight impurities, and lightweight unripe seeds are also removed, which helps to increase the germination of seeds obtained after cleaning.

This exploratory study focuses on a cognitive approach to categorize complex auditory scenes in the built environment, while prior studies have concentrated on outdoor acoustic environments. Six experts and 30 non-experts performed a free chip sorting task to assess 70 binaural recordings taken from indoor spaces. Healthcare, working, cultural, educational, leisure, worship, and transportation spaces (e.g., bus, train, metro stations, and airports) were chosen as public spaces. The participants were asked to classify the auditory objects into sound categories based on the descriptive labels provided by the authors to identify the sound sources. The findings, obtained through hierarchical agglomerative clustering and non-metric multidimensional scaling (MDS), show that there are three prominent category labels regarding perceived sound in the indoor acoustic environment: (1) intelligible and unintelligible speech; (2) periodic and transient sounds; and (3) stationary and non-stationary sounds. Human-generated sounds such as conversation, laughter, footsteps, and coughing vary over time according to the context of the built environment. Moreover, technology-related sounds, such as mechanical and electronic ones, have a deterministic and random nature that differ according to the function of the spaces.

Conveyors are used commonly in industrial production lines and automated sorting systems. Many applications require fast, reliable, and dynamic detection and recognition for the objects on conveyors. Aiming at this goal, we design a framework that involves three subtasks: one-class instance segmentation (OCIS), multiobject tracking (MOT), and zero-shot fine-grained recognition of 3D objects (ZSFGR3D). A new level set map network (LSMNet) and a multiview redundancy-free feature network (MVRFFNet) are proposed for the first and third subtasks, respectively. The level set map (LSM) is used to annotate instances instead of the traditional multichannel binary mask, and each peak of the LSM represents one instance. Based on the LSM, LSMNet can adopt a pix2pix architecture to segment instances. MVRFFNet is a generalized zero-shot learning (GZSL) framework based on the Wasserstein generative adversarial network for 3D object recognition. Multi-view features of an object are combined into a compact registered feature. By treating the registered features as the category attribution in the GZSL setting, MVRFFNet learns a mapping function that maps original retrieve features into a new redundancy-free feature space. To validate the performance of the proposed methods, a segmentation dataset and a fine-grained classification dataset about objects on a conveyor are established. Experimental results on these datasets show that LSMNet can achieve a recalling accuracy close to the light instance segmentation framework You Only Look At CoefficienTs (YOLACT), while its computing speed on an NVIDIA GTX1660TI GPU is 80 fps, which is much faster than YOLACT’s 25 fps. Redundancy-free features generated by MVRFFNet perform much better than original features in the retrieval task.

Carrying out the task of the exploration of a scene by an autonomous robot entails a set of complex skills, such as the ability to create and update a representation of the scene, the knowledge of the regions of the scene which are yet unexplored, the ability to estimate the most efficient point of view from the perspective of an explorer agent and, finally, the ability to physically move the system to the selected Next Best View (NBV). This paper proposes an autonomous exploration system that makes use of a dual OcTree representation to encode the regions in the scene which are occupied, free, and unknown. The NBV is estimated through a discrete approach that samples and evaluates a set of view hypotheses that are created by a conditioned random process which ensures that the views have some chance of adding novel information to the scene. The algorithm uses ray-casting defined according to the characteristics of the RGB-D sensor, and a mechanism that sorts the voxels to be tested in a way that considerably speeds up the assessment. The sampled view that is estimated to provide the largest amount of novel information is selected, and the system moves to that location, where a new exploration step begins. The exploration session is terminated when there are no more unknown regions in the scene or when those that exist cannot be observed by the system. The experimental setup consisted of a robotic manipulator with an RGB-D sensor assembled on its end-effector, all managed by a Robot Operating System (ROS) based architecture. The manipulator provides movement, while the sensor collects information about the scene. Experimental results span over three test scenarios designed to evaluate the performance of the proposed system. In particular, the exploration performance of the proposed system is compared against that of human subjects. Results show that the proposed approach is able to carry out the exploration of a scene, even when it starts from scratch, building up knowledge as the exploration progresses. Furthermore, in these experiments, the system was able to complete the exploration of the scene in less time when compared to human subjects.

Lugana and Verdicchio are two Italian white wines with a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) label. These two wine types are produced in different regions using the same grape variety. The aim of this work is to investigate the existence of volatile chemical markers that could help to elucidate differences between Lugana and Verdicchio wines both at chemical and sensory levels. Thirteen commercial wine samples were analyzed by Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS), and 76 volatile compounds were identified and quantified. Verdicchio and Lugana had been differentiated on the basis of 19 free and glycosidically bound compounds belonging to the chemical classes of terpenes, benzenoids, higher alcohols, C6 alcohols and norisoprenoids. Samples were assessed by means of a sorting task sensory analysis, resulting in two clusters formed. These results suggested the existence of 2 product types with specific sensory spaces that can be related, to a good extend, to Verdicchio and Lugana wines. Cluster 1 was composed of six wines, 4 of which were Lugana, while Cluster 2 was formed of 7 wines, 5 of which were Verdicchio. The first cluster was described as “fruity”, and “fresh/minty”, while the second as “fermentative” and “spicy”. An attempt was made to relate analytical and sensory data, the results showed that damascenone and the sum of 3 of esters the ethyl hexanoate, ethyl octanoate and isoamyl acetate, was characterizing Cluster 1. These results highlighted the primary importance of geographical origin to the volatile composition and perceived aroma of Lugana and Verdicchio wines.

On the territory of Donbass, more than 450 mine dumps with a volume of up to 300 million m3 and an area of 1.3 thousand hectares have a negative impact on the land, the area of which reaches 7 thousand hectares. In connection with this, an urgent task arises to involve processing waste in the production process for obtaining the end products. It is known that the coal enrichment tailings contain critical non-ferrous and rare-earth metals. However, the processing of coal enrichment tailings using traditional physical and chemical technologies does not solve the problem of mine surface reclamation due to new tailings formation. The main method of reclamation of the mine surface is the inclusion of dump materials in the natural circulation of the metal extraction. A promising direction of the development is the processing of coal enrichment tailings in the disintegrators with leaching. This will help to prevent an ecological catastrophe in the region and obtain critical products. The rational application of the theory of mechanical activation of processes, the use of the results of field observations and analysis methods at the satisfactory convergence of the theoretical and practical data, will allow to minimize the negative impact of coal processing tailings on the environment. Based on the results of comprehensive studies, the parameters of the waste-free disposal of coal tailings as the main cause of degradation of the environmental ecosystems were substantiated. The ecological and economic effect is ensured by the combination of sorting and mechanical activation of tailings of the coal preparation in the disintegrators. The recommended technology may become in demand in the development of deposits of the metal-containing technologically discovered minerals. It is used for industrial mining of uranium, copper, and gold at 12 enterprises in Russia. The proposed approach has good prospects as the only one that ensures cost-effective environmental and resource-saving production.

Abstract To assess the effect of inclusion of camelina expeller in beef cattle diets, 24 Simmental heifers were used. Two experiments were carried out. In the first, two free-choice tests, one without and another with molasses, were conducted to know the preference of animals for a total mixed ration (TMR) made with a 90 to 10 concentrate to barley straw ratio, where canola meal (CM) or camelina expeller (CE) was used in the concentrate as a protein source. Heifers were allotted in four pens with two independent feedbunks, one for each diet. In the second, a replicated 4 × 4 Latin square design was used to assess the effects of the replacement of CM with CE on intake, digestibility, and sorting and animal behavior. The experiment was performed in four 28-d periods during which groups of three animals were allotted in each pen of 12.5 m2. Diets were formulated with a 90 to 10 concentrate to barley straw ratio and fed as TMR, and they were designed to contain 1) CM as main protein source and 0% of CE (0CE), 2) 3% of CE replacing CM (3CE), 3) 6% of CE replacing CM (6CE), and 4) 9% of CE replacing CM (9CE). In the free-choice test without molasses, heifers showed a greater preference for CM than for CE (38.6 vs. 8.7 kg/d; P &lt; 0.001). When molasses were added to the diet, the preference for CM was maintained (39.1 vs. 9.8 kg/d; P &lt; 0.001). Dry matter (DM), organic matter (OM), crude protein (CP), and neutral detergent fiber (NDF) intake was unaffected by the level of replacement of CM by CE (P &gt; 0.10), and there was no effect of this replacement on DM, OM, CP, and NDF apparent digestibility (P &gt; 0.10). Intake of long particle size increased lineally as CE proportion increased (P = 0.015). In addition, extension of sorting behavior for long particle size tended to increase lineally (P = 0.07), and sorting against this particle size was detected in 0CE and 3CE, but not in 6CE and 9CE (P &lt; 0.05). However, the results recorded for long particle size intake and for sorting behavior against these particles did not translate into more time spent ruminating in heifers fed diets with higher proportion of CE. In conclusion, when canola meal was replaced with camelina expeller at more than 14% of inclusion, heifers preferred the canola meal diet. However, replacing canola meal with camelina expeller up to 9% of inclusion in diets for beef cattle did not affect intake and digestibility but promoted a greater intake of long particle size of barley straw.

Protein turnover can be achieved via the lysosome/vacuole and the autophagic degradation pathways. Evidence has accumulated revealing that efficient autophagic degradation requires functional endosomal sorting complex required for transport (ESCRT) machinery. However, the interplay between the ESCRT machinery and the autophagy regulator remains unclear. Here, we show that FYVE domain protein required for endosomal sorting 1 (FREE1), a recently identified plant-specific ESCRT component essential for multivesicular body (MVB) biogenesis and plant growth, plays roles both in vacuolar protein transport and autophagic degradation. FREE1 also regulates vacuole biogenesis in both seeds and vegetative cells of Arabidopsis. Additionally, FREE1 interacts directly with a unique plant autophagy regulator SH3 DOMAIN-CONTAINING PROTEIN2 and associates with the PI3K complex, to regulate the autophagic degradation in plants. Thus, FREE1 plays multiple functional roles in vacuolar protein trafficking and organelle biogenesis as well as in autophagic degradation via a previously unidentified regulatory mechanism of cross-talk between the ESCRT machinery and autophagy process.

Exploring constructions of mental health in the perinatal period among Indian immigrants can be challenging. This article describes the use of visual methods, photo elicitation, free listing and pile sorting, as an adjunct to face-to-face interviews to understand the constructions of perinatal mental health among Indian immigrants in Australia. The benefits and challenges of using these methods and modifications made during the research are explained. The modifications resulted in a broader understanding of terminology used by the Indian community. Incorporating visual methods as an adjunct to interviews when discussing perinatal mental health with Indian immigrants is effective and using multiple methods enhances the richness of data.

This research aims to describe the style of language in the closing statement of NajwaShihab on the talk show "Mata Najwa" in Trans 7. This type of research is a qualitative research using a descriptive approach. The data of this research is in the form of NajwaShihab's speech in the closing statement in the talk show "Mata Najwa" which contains language style. The data source for this research is the video recording of Mata Najwa's talk show on Trans 7 March - April 2020 edition. The video was taken on the Narasi Newsroom Youtube Channel. The methods and techniques used at the stage of providing the data are the listening method with tapping techniques and advanced listening techniques, free involvement, conversation and notes. At the stage of data analysis, the method used is the matching method with the technique of sorting the determining elements, while at the stage of presenting the results of data analysis, the method is used the informal method. The language styles found in NajwaShihab's closing statement on the talk show "Mata Najwa" in Trans 7 are hyperbole, personification, metaphor, synecdoche (totem pro parte), association, euphemism, anaphora, epanolepsis, epizeuksis, cynicism, innuendo, sarcasm, paradox, antithesis, and repetition. Repetition is the most dominant language style found in this research (in all data). The repetition in question is in the form of repeating phonemes at the end of the sentence (having a rhyme/rhyme "aa"). Each row in the data has a pair, namely odd and even rows (eg rows 1 and 2, 3 and 4, and so on).

AbstractThe homeostatic adult bone marrow (BM) is a complex tissue wherein physical and biochemical interactions serve to maintain a balance between the hematopoietic and nonhematopoietic compartments. To focus on soluble factor interactions occurring between mesenchymal and hematopoietic cells, a serum-free adhesion-independent culture system was developed that allows manipulation of the growth of both mesenchymal and hematopoietic human BM-derived progenitors and the balance between these compartments. Factorial experiments demonstrated a role for stem cell factor (SCF) and interleukin 3 (IL-3) in the concomitant growth of hematopoietic (CD45+) and nonhematopoietic (CD45–) cells, as well as their derivatives. Kinetic tracking of IL-3α receptor (CD123) and SCF receptor (CD117) expression on a sorted CD45– cell population revealed the emergence of CD45–CD123+ cells capable of osteogenesis. Of the total fibroblast colony-forming units (CFU-Fs) and osteoblast colony-forming units (CFU-O), approximately 24% of CFU-Fs and about 22% of CFU-Os were recovered from this population. Cell-sorting experiments demonstrated that the CD45+ cell population secreted soluble factors that positively affect the survival and proliferation of CFU-Fs and CFU-Os generated from the CD45– cells. Together, our results provide insight into the intercellular cytokine network between hematopoietic and mesenchymal cells and provide a strategy to mutually culture both mesenchymal and hematopoietic cells in a defined scalable bioprocess.

Abstract Recent experimental evidences proved that kinins, which are a family of octa- to decapeptides structurally related to bradykinin (BK), have modulatory effects on multiple players of the immune system, including macrophages, dendritic cells (DC), T and B lymphocytes, and induce the activation, proliferation, migration, and effector functions of these cells. To further understand the molecular mechanisms underlying bradykinin mediated activation of DCs, we have employed global proteomics and transcriptomic (mRNA) profiling of mouse DCs activated by BK peptide (RPPGFSPFR). The proteomics profiling was performed using a combination of label-free nanoLC-ESI MS/MS and 2D-DIGE analysis. C57BL/6J wild type mice were treated with: 1) BK, or 2) Captopril, an ACE inhibitor that enhances the endogenous BK, or 3) a combination of both drugs (BK+CAP). Following treatment, the DCs (CD11c+) were purified by immunomagnetic sorting. Comparative Ingenuity Pathway Analysis (IPA) identified the upregulated cellular pathways in the BK/CAP/BK+CAP treated DCs, highlighting molecules involved in the DCs migration/chemotaxis, MHC-I and MHC-II expression, antigen presentation pathways, inflammation and cytokines secretion. Moreover, both the comparative proteomics and the transcriptomic analyses demonstrated the significant upregulation of the coagulation pathway (e.g. coagulation factors V, VII, VIII and PAR2 and PAR3 receptors) in the purified DCs from treated mice. Production of coagulation factors V and VIII by BK-activated DCs was validated by RT-PCR, and by immunofluorescence. Our research highlights novel cellular pathways that regulate the cross-talk between inflammation and coagulation in the bradykinin activated DCs.

Thyroid hormones l-thyroxine (T4) and 3,3′,5-triiodo-l-thyronine (T3) have been shown to initiate short- and long-term effects via a plasma membrane receptor site located on integrin αvβ3. Also insulin-like growth factor type I (IGF-I) activity is known to be subject to regulation by this integrin. To investigate the possible cross-talk between T4and IGF-I in rat L6 myoblasts, we have examined integrin αvβ3-mediated modulatory actions of T4on glucose uptake, measured through carrier-mediated 2-deoxy-[3H]-d-glucose uptake, and on cell proliferation stimulated by IGF-I, assessed by cell counting, [3H]-thymidine incorporation, and fluorescence-activated cell sorting analysis. IGF-I stimulated glucose transport and cell proliferation via the cell surface IGF-I receptor (IGFIR) and, downstream of the receptor, by the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase signal transduction pathway. Addition of 0.1 nM free T4caused little or no cell proliferation but prevented both glucose uptake and proliferative actions of IGF-I. These actions of T4were mediated by an Arg-Gly-Asp (RGD)-sensitive pathway, suggesting the existence of crosstalk between IGFIR and the T4receptor located near the RGD recognition site on the integrin. An RGD-sequence-containing integrin inhibitor, a monoclonal antibody to αvβ3, and the T4metabolite tetraiodothyroacetic acid all blocked the inhibition by T4of IGF-I-stimulated glucose uptake and cell proliferation. Western blotting confirmed roles for activated phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase and extracellular regulated kinase 1/2 (ERK1/2) in the effects of IGF-I and also showed a role for ERK1/2 in the actions of T4that modified the effects of IGF-I. We conclude that thyroid hormone inhibits IGF-I-stimulated glucose uptake and cell proliferation in L6 myoblasts.

Artikel ini membahas fungsi tindak tutur ilokusi dalam acara “I’m Possible” Merry Riana Metro TV. Tindak tutur ilokusi merupakan sebuah tuturan selain berfungsi untuk menyatakan atau menginformasikan sesuatu, dapat juga dipergunakan untuk melakukan sesuatu. Penelitian dilakukan menggunakan sumber data acara gelar wicara di televisi. Jenis penelitian adalah penelitian deskriptif kualitatif. Subjek penelitian adalah acara “I’m Possible” Merry Riana Metro TV dengan objek fungsi tindak tutur ilokusi. Metode pengumpulan data yaitu metode simak dan catat, dengan teknik lanjutan teknik Simak Bebas Cakap (SBC) dan teknik catat. Instrumen yang digunakan ialah “human instrument” dengan alat bantu kartu data. Metode analisis data menggunakan padan refensial, dengan teknik dasar berupa teknik Pilah Unsur Penentu (PUP) dan teknik lanjut berupa teknik Hubung Banding Menyamakan (HBS). Temuan hasil penelitian meliputi: (1) fungsi tindak tutur ilokusi dalam acara I’m Possible Merry Riana Metro TV ditemukan 50 data yaitu: kompetitif 15 data, konvivial 13 data, kolaboratif 22 data, dan konflikatif 0 data.Katakunci: Google Classroom, pembelajaran menulis puisi, pandemi covidAbstract This article discusses the function of illocutionary speech acts in the “I'm Possible” Merry Riana Metro TV program. The illocutionary speech act is an utterance that not only serves to state or informs something, it can also be used to do something. This study uses a data source in the form of a talk show on television. This type of research is descriptive qualitative research. The subject of this research is the program I'm Possible Merry Riana Metro TV with the object of the illocutionary speech act function. The data collection method is the method of observing and recording with the advanced technique of Listening Free Cakap (SBC) and note-taking techniques. The instrument used is a human instrument with an instrument assist data card. The method of data analysis used referential equivalents, with the basic technique being the Determining Element Sorting (PUP) technique and the advanced technique being the Equalizing Comparison Appeal (HBS) technique. The findings of the research include: (1) the function of illocutionary speech acts in the “I'm Possible” Merry Riana Metro TV program found 50 data, namely: competitive 15 data, convivial 13 data, collaborative 22 data, and conflictive 0 data.Keywords: Google Classroom, learning to write poetry, covid pandemic.

A novel laboratory experiment is used to show that mismatching between task preferences and task assignment strongly undermines worker performance and leads to free riding in teams. Unlike prior experiments using real effort tasks, task preferences are elicited from all workers. Under team-based remuneration (revenue sharing), free riding is significant, but this effect is largely driven by those working on undesired tasks. Workers’ endogenous sorting into tasks improves productivity as it mitigates task mismatching although workers’ task selection per se has only small effects on work performance and effort provisions beyond the positive sorting effects. This paper was accepted by Yan Chen, behavioral economics and decision analysis.

AbstractIn this paper, we aim to study nonlinear time-periodic systems using the Koopman operator, which provides a way to approximate the dynamics of a nonlinear system by a linear time-invariant system of higher order. We propose for the considered system class a specific choice of Koopman basis functions combining the Taylor and Fourier bases. This basis allows to recover all equations necessary to perform the harmonic balance method as well as the Hill analysis directly from the linear lifted dynamics. The key idea of this paper is using this lifted dynamics to formulate a new method to obtain stability information from the Hill matrix. The error-prone and computationally intense task known by sorting, which means identifying the best subset of approximate Floquet exponents from all available candidates, is circumvented in the proposed method. The Mathieu equation and an n-DOF generalization are used to exemplify these findings.

High-throughput label-free single cell screening technology has been studied for noninvasive analysis of various kinds of cells. We tackle the cell identification task in the cell sorting system as a continuous skyline computation. Skyline Computation is a method for extracting interesting entries from a large population with multiple attributes. Jointed rooted-tree (JR-tree) is continuous skyline computation algorithm that manages entries using a rooted-tree structure. JR-tree delays extend the tree to deeper levels to accelerate tree construction and traversal. In this study, we proposed the JR-tree-based parallel skyline computation accelerator. We implemented it on a field-programmable gate array (FPGA). We evaluated our proposed software and hardware algorithms against an existing software algorithm using synthetic and real-world datasets.

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) play a crucial role in solid tumor metastasis, but obtaining high purity and viability CTCs is a challenging task due to their rarity. Although various works using spiral microchannels to isolate CTCs have been reported, the sorting purity of CTCs has not been significantly improved. Herein, we developed a novel double spiral microchannel for efficient separation and enrichment of intact and high-purity CTCs based on the combined effects of two-stage inertial focusing and particle deflection. Particle deflection relies on the second sheath to produce a deflection of the focused sample flow segment at the end of the first-stage microchannel, allowing larger particles to remain focused and entered the second-stage microchannel while smaller particles moved into the first waste channel. The deflection of the focused sample flow segment was visualized. Testing by a binary mixture of 10.4 and 16.5 μm fluorescent microspheres, it showed 16.5 μm with separation efficiency of 98% and purity of 90% under the second sheath flow rate of 700 μl min−1. In biological experiments, the average purity of spiked CTCs was 74% at a high throughput of 1.5 × 108 cells min−1, and the recovery was more than 91%. Compared to the control group, the viability of separated cells was 99%. Finally, we validated the performance of the double spiral microchannel using clinical cancer blood samples. CTCs with a concentration of 2–28 counts ml−1 were separated from all 12 patients’ peripheral blood. Thus, our device could be a robust and label-free liquid biopsy platform in inertial microfluidics for successful application in clinical trials.

Multi-plane light converters (MPLCs) are an emerging class of optical device capable of converting a set of input spatial light modes to a new target set of output modes. This operation represents a linear optical transformation - a much sought after capability in photonics. MPLCs have potential applications in both the classical and quantum optics domains,in fields ranging from optical communications,to optical computing and imaging. They consist of a series of diffractive optical elements (the 'planes'),typically separated by free-space. The phase delays imparted by each plane are determined by the process of inverse-design,most often using an adjoint algorithm known as the wavefront matching method (WMM),which optimises the correlation between the target and actual MPLC outputs. In this work we investigate high mode capacity MPLCs to create arbitrary spatial mode sorters and linear optical circuits. We focus on designs possessing low numbers of phase planes to render these MPLCsexperimentally feasible. To best control light in this scenario,we develop a new inverse-design algorithm,based on gradient ascent with a specifically tailored objective function,and show how in the low-plane limit it converges to MPLC designs with substantially lower modal cross-talk and higher fidelity than achievable using the WMM. We experimentally demonstrate several prototype few-plane high-dimensional spatial mode sorters,operating on up to 55 modes,capable of sorting photons based on their Zernike mode,orbital angular momentum state, or an arbitrarily randomized spatial mode basis. We discuss the advantages and drawbacks of these proof-of-principle prototypes,and describe future improvements. Our work points to a bright future for high-dimensional MPLC-based technologies.

Material samples form an important portion of the data infrastructure for many disciplines. Here, a material sample is a physical object, representative of some physical thing, on which observations can be made. Material samples may be collected for one project initially, but can also be valuable resources for other studies in other disciplines. Collecting and curating material samples can be a costly process. Integrating institutionally managed sample collections, along with those sitting in individual offices or labs, is necessary to faciliate large-scale evidence-based scientific research. Many have recognized the problems and are working to make data related to material samples FAIR: findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable. The Internet of Samples (i.e., iSamples) is one of these projects. iSamples was funded by the United States National Science Foundation in 2020 with the following aims: enable previously impossible connections between diverse and disparate sample-based observations; support existing research programs and facilities that collect and manage diverse sample types; facilitate new interdisciplinary collaborations; and provide an efficient solution for FAIR samples, avoiding duplicate efforts in different domains (Davies et al. 2021) enable previously impossible connections between diverse and disparate sample-based observations; support existing research programs and facilities that collect and manage diverse sample types; facilitate new interdisciplinary collaborations; and provide an efficient solution for FAIR samples, avoiding duplicate efforts in different domains (Davies et al. 2021) The initial sample collections that will make up the internet of samples include those from the System for Earth Sample Registration (SESAR), Open Context, the Genomic Observatories Meta-Database (GEOME), and Smithsonian Institution Museum of Natural History (NMNH), representing the disciplines of geoscience, archaeology/anthropology, and biology. To achieve these aims, the proposed iSamples infrastructure (Fig. 1) has two key components: iSamples in a Box (iSB) and iSamples Central (iSC). The iSC component will be a permanent Internet service that preserves, indexes, and provides access to sample metadata aggregated from iSBs. It will also ensure that persistent identifiers and sample descriptions assigned and used by individual iSBs are synchronized with the records in iSC and with identifier authorities like International Geo Sample Number (IGSN) or Archival Resource Key (ARK). The iSBs create and maintain identifiers and metadata for their respective collection of samples. While providing access to the samples held locally, an iSB also allows iSC to harvest its metadata records. The metadata modeling strategy adopted by the iSamples project is a metadata profile-based approach, where core metadata fields that are applicable to all samples, form the core metadata schema for iSamples. Each individual participating collectionis free to include additional metadata in their records, which will also be harvested by iSC and are discoverable through the iSC user interface or APIs (Application Programming Interfaces), just like the core. In-depth analysis of metadata profiles used by participating collections, including Darwin Core, has resulted in an iSamples core schema currently being tested and refined through use. See the current version of the iSamples core schema. A number of properties require a controlled vocabulary. Controlled vocabularies used by existing records are kept, while new vocabularies are also being developed to support high-level grouping with consistent semantics across collection types. Examples include vocabularies for Context Category, Material Category, and Specimen Type (Table 1). These vocabularies were also developed in a bottom-up manner, based on the terms used in the existing collections. For each vocabulary, a decision tree graph was created to illustrate relations among the terms, and a card sorting exercise was conducted within the project team to collect feedback. Domain experts are invited to take part in this exercise here, here, and here. These terms will be used as upper-level terms to the existing category terms used in the participating collections and hence create connections among individual participating collections. iSample project members are also active in the TDWG Material Sample Task Group and the global consultation on Digital Extended Specimens. Many members of the iSamples project also lead or participate in a sister research coordination network (RCN), Sampling Nature. The goal of this RCN is to develop and refine metadata standards and controlled vocabularies for the iSamples and other projects focusing on material samples. We cordially invite you to participate in the Sampling Nature RCN and help shape the future standards for material samples. Contact Sarah Ramdeen (sramdeen@ideo.columbia.edu) to engage with the RCN.

Introduction Crime fiction is one of the world’s most popular genres. Indeed, it has been estimated that as many as one in every three new novels, published in English, is classified within the crime fiction category (Knight xi). These new entrants to the market are forced to jostle for space on bookstore and library shelves with reprints of classic crime novels; such works placed in, often fierce, competition against their contemporaries as well as many of their predecessors. Raymond Chandler, in his well-known essay The Simple Art of Murder, noted Ernest Hemingway’s observation that “the good writer competes only with the dead. The good detective story writer […] competes not only with all the unburied dead but with all the hosts of the living as well” (3). In fact, there are so many examples of crime fiction works that, as early as the 1920s, one of the original ‘Queens of Crime’, Dorothy L. Sayers, complained: It is impossible to keep track of all the detective-stories produced to-day [sic]. Book upon book, magazine upon magazine pour out from the Press, crammed with murders, thefts, arsons, frauds, conspiracies, problems, puzzles, mysteries, thrills, maniacs, crooks, poisoners, forgers, garrotters, police, spies, secret-service men, detectives, until it seems that half the world must be engaged in setting riddles for the other half to solve (95). Twenty years after Sayers wrote on the matter of the vast quantities of crime fiction available, W.H. Auden wrote one of the more famous essays on the genre: The Guilty Vicarage: Notes on the Detective Story, by an Addict. Auden is, perhaps, better known as a poet but his connection to the crime fiction genre is undisputed. As well as his poetic works that reference crime fiction and commentaries on crime fiction, one of Auden’s fellow poets, Cecil Day-Lewis, wrote a series of crime fiction novels under the pseudonym Nicholas Blake: the central protagonist of these novels, Nigel Strangeways, was modelled upon Auden (Scaggs 27). Interestingly, some writers whose names are now synonymous with the genre, such as Edgar Allan Poe and Raymond Chandler, established the link between poetry and crime fiction many years before the publication of The Guilty Vicarage. Edmund Wilson suggested that “reading detective stories is simply a kind of vice that, for silliness and minor harmfulness, ranks somewhere between crossword puzzles and smoking” (395). In the first line of The Guilty Vicarage, Auden supports Wilson’s claim and confesses that: “For me, as for many others, the reading of detective stories is an addiction like tobacco or alcohol” (406). This indicates that the genre is at best a trivial pursuit, at worst a pursuit that is bad for your health and is, increasingly, socially unacceptable, while Auden’s ideas around taste—high and low—are made clear when he declares that “detective stories have nothing to do with works of art” (406). The debates that surround genre and taste are many and varied. The mid-1920s was a point in time which had witnessed crime fiction writers produce some of the finest examples of fiction to ever be published and when readers and publishers were watching, with anticipation, as a new generation of crime fiction writers were readying themselves to enter what would become known as the genre’s Golden Age. At this time, R. Austin Freeman wrote that: By the critic and the professedly literary person the detective story is apt to be dismissed contemptuously as outside the pale of literature, to be conceived of as a type of work produced by half-educated and wholly incompetent writers for consumption by office boys, factory girls, and other persons devoid of culture and literary taste (7). This article responds to Auden’s essay and explores how crime fiction appeals to many different tastes: tastes that are acquired, change over time, are embraced, or kept as guilty secrets. In addition, this article will challenge Auden’s very narrow definition of crime fiction and suggest how Auden’s religious imagery, deployed to explain why many people choose to read crime fiction, can be incorporated into a broader popular discourse on punishment. This latter argument demonstrates that a taste for crime fiction and a taste for justice are inextricably intertwined. Crime Fiction: A Type For Every Taste Cathy Cole has observed that “crime novels are housed in their own section in many bookshops, separated from literary novels much as you’d keep a child with measles away from the rest of the class” (116). Times have changed. So too, have our tastes. Crime fiction, once sequestered in corners, now demands vast tracts of prime real estate in bookstores allowing readers to “make their way to the appropriate shelves, and begin to browse […] sorting through a wide variety of very different types of novels” (Malmgren 115). This is a result of the sheer size of the genre, noted above, as well as the genre’s expanding scope. Indeed, those who worked to re-invent crime fiction in the 1800s could not have envisaged the “taxonomic exuberance” (Derrida 206) of the writers who have defined crime fiction sub-genres, as well as how readers would respond by not only wanting to read crime fiction but also wanting to read many different types of crime fiction tailored to their particular tastes. To understand the demand for this diversity, it is important to reflect upon some of the appeal factors of crime fiction for readers. Many rules have been promulgated for the writers of crime fiction to follow. Ronald Knox produced a set of 10 rules in 1928. These included Rule 3 “Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable”, and Rule 10 “Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them” (194–6). In the same year, S.S. Van Dine produced another list of 20 rules, which included Rule 3 “There must be no love interest: The business in hand is to bring a criminal to the bar of justice, not to bring a lovelorn couple to the hymeneal altar”, and Rule 7 “There simply must be a corpse in a detective novel, and the deader the corpse the better” (189–93). Some of these directives have been deliberately ignored or have become out-of-date over time while others continue to be followed in contemporary crime writing practice. In sharp contrast, there are no rules for reading this genre. Individuals are, generally, free to choose what, where, when, why, and how they read crime fiction. There are, however, different appeal factors for readers. The most common of these appeal factors, often described as doorways, are story, setting, character, and language. As the following passage explains: The story doorway beckons those who enjoy reading to find out what happens next. The setting doorway opens widest for readers who enjoy being immersed in an evocation of place or time. The doorway of character is for readers who enjoy looking at the world through others’ eyes. Readers who most appreciate skilful writing enter through the doorway of language (Wyatt online). These doorways draw readers to the crime fiction genre. There are stories that allow us to easily predict what will come next or make us hold our breath until the very last page, the books that we will cheerfully lend to a family member or a friend and those that we keep close to hand to re-read again and again. There are settings as diverse as country manors, exotic locations, and familiar city streets, places we have been and others that we might want to explore. There are characters such as the accidental sleuth, the hardboiled detective, and the refined police officer, amongst many others, the men and women—complete with idiosyncrasies and flaws—who we have grown to admire and trust. There is also the language that all writers, regardless of genre, depend upon to tell their tales. In crime fiction, even the most basic task of describing where the murder victim was found can range from words that convey the genteel—“The room of the tragedy” (Christie 62)—to the absurd: “There it was, jammed between a pallet load of best export boneless beef and half a tonne of spring lamb” (Maloney 1). These appeal factors indicate why readers might choose crime fiction over another genre, or choose one type of crime fiction over another. Yet such factors fail to explain what crime fiction is or adequately answer why the genre is devoured in such vast quantities. Firstly, crime fiction stories are those in which there is the committing of a crime, or at least the suspicion of a crime (Cole), and the story that unfolds revolves around the efforts of an amateur or professional detective to solve that crime (Scaggs). Secondly, crime fiction offers the reassurance of resolution, a guarantee that from “previous experience and from certain cultural conventions associated with this genre that ultimately the mystery will be fully explained” (Zunshine 122). For Auden, the definition of the crime novel was quite specific, and he argued that referring to the genre by “the vulgar definition, ‘a Whodunit’ is correct” (407). Auden went on to offer a basic formula stating that: “a murder occurs; many are suspected; all but one suspect, who is the murderer, are eliminated; the murderer is arrested or dies” (407). The idea of a formula is certainly a useful one, particularly when production demands—in terms of both quality and quantity—are so high, because the formula facilitates creators in the “rapid and efficient production of new works” (Cawelti 9). For contemporary crime fiction readers, the doorways to reading, discussed briefly above, have been cast wide open. Stories relying upon the basic crime fiction formula as a foundation can be gothic tales, clue puzzles, forensic procedurals, spy thrillers, hardboiled narratives, or violent crime narratives, amongst many others. The settings can be quiet villages or busy metropolises, landscapes that readers actually inhabit or that provide a form of affordable tourism. These stories can be set in the past, the here and now, or the future. Characters can range from Edgar Allan Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin to Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade, from Agatha Christie’s Miss Jane Marple to Kerry Greenwood’s Honourable Phryne Fisher. Similarly, language can come in numerous styles from the direct (even rough) words of Carter Brown to the literary prose of Peter Temple. Anything is possible, meaning everything is available to readers. For Auden—although he required a crime to be committed and expected that crime to be resolved—these doorways were only slightly ajar. For him, the story had to be a Whodunit; the setting had to be rural England, though a college setting was also considered suitable; the characters had to be “eccentric (aesthetically interesting individuals) and good (instinctively ethical)” and there needed to be a “completely satisfactory detective” (Sherlock Holmes, Inspector French, and Father Brown were identified as “satisfactory”); and the language descriptive and detailed (406, 409, 408). To illustrate this point, Auden’s concept of crime fiction has been plotted on a taxonomy, below, that traces the genre’s main developments over a period of three centuries. As can be seen, much of what is, today, taken for granted as being classified as crime fiction is completely excluded from Auden’s ideal. Figure 1: Taxonomy of Crime Fiction (Adapted from Franks, Murder 136) Crime Fiction: A Personal Journey I discovered crime fiction the summer before I started high school when I saw the film version of The Big Sleep starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. A few days after I had seen the film I started reading the Raymond Chandler novel of the same title, featuring his famous detective Philip Marlowe, and was transfixed by the second paragraph: The main hallway of the Sternwood place was two stories high. Over the entrance doors, which would have let in a troop of Indian elephants, there was a broad stained-glass panel showing a knight in dark armour rescuing a lady who was tied to a tree and didn’t have any clothes on but some very long and convenient hair. The knight had pushed the visor of his helmet back to be sociable, and he was fiddling with the knots on the ropes that tied the lady to the tree and not getting anywhere. I stood there and thought that if I lived in the house, I would sooner or later have to climb up there and help him. He didn’t seem to be really trying (9). John Scaggs has written that this passage indicates Marlowe is an idealised figure, a knight of romance rewritten onto the mean streets of mid-20th century Los Angeles (62); a relocation Susan Roland calls a “secular form of the divinely sanctioned knight errant on a quest for metaphysical justice” (139): my kind of guy. Like many young people I looked for adventure and escape in books, a search that was realised with Raymond Chandler and his contemporaries. On the escapism scale, these men with their stories of tough-talking detectives taking on murderers and other criminals, law enforcement officers, and the occasional femme fatale, were certainly a sharp upgrade from C.S. Lewis and the Chronicles of Narnia. After reading the works written by the pioneers of the hardboiled and roman noir traditions, I looked to other American authors such as Edgar Allan Poe who, in the mid-1800s, became the father of the modern detective story, and Thorne Smith who, in the 1920s and 1930s, produced magical realist tales with characters who often chose to dabble on the wrong side of the law. This led me to the works of British crime writers including Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, and Dorothy L. Sayers. My personal library then became dominated by Australian writers of crime fiction, from the stories of bushrangers and convicts of the Colonial era to contemporary tales of police and private investigators. There have been various attempts to “improve” or “refine” my tastes: to convince me that serious literature is real reading and frivolous fiction is merely a distraction. Certainly, the reading of those novels, often described as classics, provide perfect combinations of beauty and brilliance. Their narratives, however, do not often result in satisfactory endings. This routinely frustrates me because, while I understand the philosophical frameworks that many writers operate within, I believe the characters of such works are too often treated unfairly in the final pages. For example, at the end of Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, Frederick Henry “left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain” after his son is stillborn and “Mrs Henry” becomes “very ill” and dies (292–93). Another example can be found on the last page of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four when Winston Smith “gazed up at the enormous face” and he realised that he “loved Big Brother” (311). Endings such as these provide a space for reflection about the world around us but rarely spark an immediate response of how great that world is to live in (Franks Motive). The subject matter of crime fiction does not easily facilitate fairy-tale finishes, yet, people continue to read the genre because, generally, the concluding chapter will show that justice, of some form, will be done. Punishment will be meted out to the ‘bad characters’ that have broken society’s moral or legal laws; the ‘good characters’ may experience hardships and may suffer but they will, generally, prevail. Crime Fiction: A Taste For Justice Superimposed upon Auden’s parameters around crime fiction, are his ideas of the law in the real world and how such laws are interwoven with the Christian-based system of ethics. This can be seen in Auden’s listing of three classes of crime: “(a) offenses against God and one’s neighbor or neighbors; (b) offenses against God and society; (c) offenses against God” (407). Murder, in Auden’s opinion, is a class (b) offense: for the crime fiction novel, the society reflected within the story should be one in “a state of grace, i.e., a society where there is no need of the law, no contradiction between the aesthetic individual and the ethical universal, and where murder, therefore, is the unheard-of act which precipitates a crisis” (408). Additionally, in the crime novel “as in its mirror image, the Quest for the Grail, maps (the ritual of space) and timetables (the ritual of time) are desirable. Nature should reflect its human inhabitants, i.e., it should be the Great Good Place; for the more Eden-like it is, the greater the contradiction of murder” (408). Thus, as Charles J. Rzepka notes, “according to W.H. Auden, the ‘classical’ English detective story typically re-enacts rites of scapegoating and expulsion that affirm the innocence of a community of good people supposedly ignorant of evil” (12). This premise—of good versus evil—supports Auden’s claim that the punishment of wrongdoers, particularly those who claim the “right to be omnipotent” and commit murder (409), should be swift and final: As to the murderer’s end, of the three alternatives—execution, suicide, and madness—the first is preferable; for if he commits suicide he refuses to repent, and if he goes mad he cannot repent, but if he does not repent society cannot forgive. Execution, on the other hand, is the act of atonement by which the murderer is forgiven by society (409). The unilateral endorsement of state-sanctioned murder is problematic, however, because—of the main justifications for punishment: retribution; deterrence; incapacitation; and rehabilitation (Carter Snead 1245)—punishment, in this context, focuses exclusively upon retribution and deterrence, incapacitation is achieved by default, but the idea of rehabilitation is completely ignored. This, in turn, ignores how the reading of crime fiction can be incorporated into a broader popular discourse on punishment and how a taste for crime fiction and a taste for justice are inextricably intertwined. One of the ways to explore the connection between crime fiction and justice is through the lens of Emile Durkheim’s thesis on the conscience collective which proposes punishment is a process allowing for the demonstration of group norms and the strengthening of moral boundaries. David Garland, in summarising this thesis, states: So although the modern state has a near monopoly of penal violence and controls the administration of penalties, a much wider population feels itself to be involved in the process of punishment, and supplies the context of social support and valorization within which state punishment takes place (32). It is claimed here that this “much wider population” connecting with the task of punishment can be taken further. Crime fiction, above all other forms of literary production, which, for those who do not directly contribute to the maintenance of their respective legal systems, facilitates a feeling of active participation in the penalising of a variety of perpetrators: from the issuing of fines to incarceration (Franks Punishment). Crime fiction readers are therefore, temporarily at least, direct contributors to a more stable society: one that is clearly based upon right and wrong and reliant upon the conscience collective to maintain and reaffirm order. In this context, the reader is no longer alone, with only their crime fiction novel for company, but has become an active member of “a moral framework which binds individuals to each other and to its conventions and institutions” (Garland 51). This allows crime fiction, once viewed as a “vice” (Wilson 395) or an “addiction” (Auden 406), to be seen as playing a crucial role in the preservation of social mores. It has been argued “only the most literal of literary minds would dispute the claim that fictional characters help shape the way we think of ourselves, and hence help us articulate more clearly what it means to be human” (Galgut 190). Crime fiction focuses on what it means to be human, and how complex humans are, because stories of murders, and the men and women who perpetrate and solve them, comment on what drives some people to take a life and others to avenge that life which is lost and, by extension, engages with a broad community of readers around ideas of justice and punishment. It is, furthermore, argued here that the idea of the story is one of the more important doorways for crime fiction and, more specifically, the conclusions that these stories, traditionally, offer. For Auden, the ending should be one of restoration of the spirit, as he suspected that “the typical reader of detective stories is, like myself, a person who suffers from a sense of sin” (411). In this way, the “phantasy, then, which the detective story addict indulges is the phantasy of being restored to the Garden of Eden, to a state of innocence, where he may know love as love and not as the law” (412), indicating that it was not necessarily an accident that “the detective story has flourished most in predominantly Protestant countries” (408). Today, modern crime fiction is a “broad church, where talented authors raise questions and cast light on a variety of societal and other issues through the prism of an exciting, page-turning story” (Sisterson). Moreover, our tastes in crime fiction have been tempered by a growing fear of real crime, particularly murder, “a crime of unique horror” (Hitchens 200). This has seen some readers develop a taste for crime fiction that is not produced within a framework of ecclesiastical faith but is rather grounded in reliance upon those who enact punishment in both the fictional and real worlds. As P.D. James has written: [N]ot by luck or divine intervention, but by human ingenuity, human intelligence and human courage. It confirms our hope that, despite some evidence to the contrary, we live in a beneficent and moral universe in which problems can be solved by rational means and peace and order restored from communal or personal disruption and chaos (174). Dorothy L. Sayers, despite her work to legitimise crime fiction, wrote that there: “certainly does seem a possibility that the detective story will some time come to an end, simply because the public will have learnt all the tricks” (108). Of course, many readers have “learnt all the tricks”, or most of them. This does not, however, detract from the genre’s overall appeal. We have not grown bored with, or become tired of, the formula that revolves around good and evil, and justice and punishment. Quite the opposite. Our knowledge of, as well as our faith in, the genre’s “tricks” gives a level of confidence to readers who are looking for endings that punish murderers and other wrongdoers, allowing for more satisfactory conclusions than the, rather depressing, ends given to Mr. Henry and Mr. Smith by Ernest Hemingway and George Orwell noted above. Conclusion For some, the popularity of crime fiction is a curious case indeed. When Penguin and Collins published the Marsh Million—100,000 copies each of 10 Ngaio Marsh titles in 1949—the author’s relief at the success of the project was palpable when she commented that “it was pleasant to find detective fiction being discussed as a tolerable form of reading by people whose opinion one valued” (172). More recently, upon the announcement that a Miles Franklin Award would be given to Peter Temple for his crime novel Truth, John Sutherland, a former chairman of the judges for one of the world’s most famous literary awards, suggested that submitting a crime novel for the Booker Prize would be: “like putting a donkey into the Grand National”. Much like art, fashion, food, and home furnishings or any one of the innumerable fields of activity and endeavour that are subject to opinion, there will always be those within the world of fiction who claim positions as arbiters of taste. Yet reading is intensely personal. I like a strong, well-plotted story, appreciate a carefully researched setting, and can admire elegant language, but if a character is too difficult to embrace—if I find I cannot make an emotional connection, if I find myself ambivalent about their fate—then a book is discarded as not being to my taste. It is also important to recognise that some tastes are transient. Crime fiction stories that are popular today could be forgotten tomorrow. Some stories appeal to such a broad range of tastes they are immediately included in the crime fiction canon. Yet others evolve over time to accommodate widespread changes in taste (an excellent example of this can be seen in the continual re-imagining of the stories of Sherlock Holmes). Personal tastes also adapt to our experiences and our surroundings. A book that someone adores in their 20s might be dismissed in their 40s. A storyline that was meaningful when read abroad may lose some of its magic when read at home. Personal events, from a change in employment to the loss of a loved one, can also impact upon what we want to read. Similarly, world events, such as economic crises and military conflicts, can also influence our reading preferences. Auden professed an almost insatiable appetite for crime fiction, describing the reading of detective stories as an addiction, and listed a very specific set of criteria to define the Whodunit. Today, such self-imposed restrictions are rare as, while there are many rules for writing crime fiction, there are no rules for reading this (or any other) genre. People are, generally, free to choose what, where, when, why, and how they read crime fiction, and to follow the deliberate or whimsical paths that their tastes may lay down for them. Crime fiction writers, past and present, offer: an incredible array of detective stories from the locked room to the clue puzzle; settings that range from the English country estate to city skyscrapers in glamorous locations around the world; numerous characters from cerebral sleuths who can solve a crime in their living room over a nice, hot cup of tea to weapon wielding heroes who track down villains on foot in darkened alleyways; and, language that ranges from the cultured conversations from the novels of the genre’s Golden Age to the hard-hitting terminology of forensic and legal procedurals. Overlaid on these appeal factors is the capacity of crime fiction to feed a taste for justice: to engage, vicariously at least, in the establishment of a more stable society. Of course, there are those who turn to the genre for a temporary distraction, an occasional guilty pleasure. There are those who stumble across the genre by accident or deliberately seek it out. 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