Articoli di riviste sul tema "Steinberg variety"

Abstract In this paper we first generalize to the case of partial flags a result proved both by Spaltenstein and by Steinberg that relates the relative position of two complete flags and the irreducible components of the flag variety in which they lie, using the Robinson-Schensted-Knuth correspondence. Then we use this result to generalize the mirabolic Robinson-Schensted-Knuth correspondence defined by Travkin, to the case of two partial flags and a line.

Lethal intergroup conflict has been part of the human experience ever since our species emerged on the African savannah. Modern evolutionary thinking suggests that children's development could have evolved a variety of responses to it, some of which are highlighted upon considering, from the field of behavioural ecology, life-history theory and, derived from it, Belsky, Steinberg and Draper's (1991) evolutionary theory of socialization. This speculative essay examines the implications of such thinking, specifically with regard to insecure attachment, anxiety, depression, aggression, pubertal and sexual development, as well as mating and parenting. Considered, too, are issues of intergenerational transmission and variation in developmental reactivity to exposure to deadly political violence of the ethnic-cleansing variety in childhood.

The problem of computing the abelian kernel of a finite semigroup was first solved by Delgado describing an algorithm that decides whether a given element of a finite semigroup S belongs to the abelian kernel. Steinberg extended the result for any variety of abelian groups with decidable membership. In this paper, we used a completely different approach to complete these results by giving an exact description of the abelian kernel of an inverse semigroup. An abelian group that gives this abelian kernel was also constructed.

AbstractMatMan is a program for performing a variety of ethological analyses of frequency (interaction) matrices and transition matrices. These analyses include linear hierarchy indices for dominance matrices (APPLEBY, 1983), reorganization of a dominance matrix such that the subjects are in rank order, matrix correlation methods such as Mantel's test (MANTEL, 1967) and rowwise matrix correlation (DE VRIES, 1993), methods based on information theory (STEINBERG, 1977), and the calculation of expected and residual values in transition matrices with defined or undefined diagonal. In addition, MatMan offers some useful options for manipulating matrices. Import of matrices from The Observer (NOLDUS, 1991) and SAS is, within certain limitations, possible. Export of matrices is possible to the programs CORAN (1985), Vegrow (FRESCO, 1989), NCSS (HINTZE, 1987), SAS and SPSSPC.

For a Dynkin quiver Q Q (of type A D E \mathrm {ADE} ), we consider a central completion of the convolution algebra of the equivariant K K -group of a certain Steinberg type graded quiver variety. We observe that it is affine quasi-hereditary and prove that its category of finite-dimensional modules is identified with a block of Hernandez-Leclerc’s monoidal category C Q \mathcal {C}_{Q} of modules over the quantum loop algebra U q ( L g ) U_{q}(L\mathfrak {g}) via Nakajima’s homomorphism. As an application, we show that Kang-Kashiwara-Kim’s generalized quantum affine Schur-Weyl duality functor gives an equivalence between the category of finite-dimensional modules over the quiver Hecke algebra associated with Q Q and Hernandez-Leclerc’s category C Q \mathcal {C}_{Q} , assuming the simpleness of some poles of normalized R R -matrices for type E \mathrm {E} .

In order to better protect and conserve biodiversity, ecologists use machine learning and statistics to understand how species respond to their environment and to predict how they will respond to future climate change, habitat loss and other threats. A fundamental modeling task is to estimate the probability that a given species is present in (or uses) a site, conditional on environmental variables such as precipitation and temperature. For a limited number of species, survey data consisting of both presence and absence records are available, and can be used to fit a variety of conventional classification and regression models. For most species, however, the available data consist only of occurrence records --- locations where the species has been observed. In two closely-related but separate bodies of ecological literature, diverse special-purpose models have been developed that contrast occurrence data with a random sample of available environmental conditions. The most widespread statistical approaches involve either fitting an exponential model of species' conditional probability of presence, or fitting a naive logistic model in which the random sample of available conditions is treated as absence data; both approaches have well-known drawbacks, and do not necessarily produce valid probabilities. After summarizing existing methods, we overcome their drawbacks by introducing a new scaled binomial loss function for estimating an underlying logistic model of species presence/absence. Like the Expectation-Maximization approach of Ward et al. and the method of Steinberg and Cardell, our approach requires an estimate of population prevalence, $\Pr(y=1)$, since prevalence is not identifiable from occurrence data alone. In contrast to the latter two methods, our loss function is straightforward to integrate into a variety of existing modeling frameworks such as generalized linear and additive models and boosted regression trees. We also demonstrate that approaches by Lele and Keim and by Lancaster and Imbens that surmount the identifiability issue by making parametric data assumptions do not typically produce valid probability estimates.

We have studied 4 species of the genus fir, 3 species of the genus spruce (including (hereinafter) 14 varieties of Norway spruce and 12 varieties of blue spruce), 2 species of the genus larch (3 varieties of Western European larch), 7 species of the genus pine (7 varieties of mountain pine and 12 varieties of northern white cedar), 6 species of the genus juniper (3 varieties of common juniper, 5 varieties of savin juniper, a variety of Rocky Mountain juniper, 3 varieties of flaky juniper, 2 varieties of Virginian juniper and 3 varieties of Juniperus pfitzeriana) and a species of Siberian carpet cypress. All the studied plants were divided into three groups: highly promising, less promising and unpromising for this region. Most plants from the first group have large habitats indicating a wide range of their ecological potential. It has been found that the use of plants from the second group requires a careful selection of suitable locations and great attention to care measures. Plants from the third group are unpromising. It is impractical to use them actively in landscaping. The analysis also resulted in the development of a method for selecting coniferous plants for landscaping in the northern forest steppe of the south of the Tyumen region, based on their size parameters, species, varieties and needle colour. There are also 4 groups based on height: procumbent, scrubby, medium-grown, and tall-grown. Each group is divided into 3 subgroups based on the color of the needles: green, yellowish and caesious. The size of the plant has to be taken into account when creating ornamental plantations. Thus, fastgrowing varieties are useful for short-term decorative effects or in places where wind or noise protection is required fairly quickly. Medium-grown species are suitable for landscaping any territories and, with the use of restrictive pruning, even for small gardens or topiary art. Scrubby plants are suitable for landscaping small gardens, rockeries, small compositions. Depending on their growth rate, groundcover plants can be used as a lawn replacement, to stabilize slopes and create a carpet effect. For citation: Lyasheva L.V., Lyashev A.A., Steinberg Yu.S. Winter Hardiness of Conifers in the Northern Forest Steppe Conditions of the South of the Tyumen Region. Lesnoy Zhurnal [Russian Forestry Journal], 2022, no. 1, pp. 49–61. DOI: 10.37482/0536-1036-2022-1-49-61

AbstractAccording to Kazhdan-Lusztig and Ginzburg, the Hecke algebra of an affine Weyl group is identified with the equivariant K-group of Steinberg’s triple variety. The K-group is equipped with a filtration indexed by closed G-stable subvarieties of the nilpotent variety, where G is the corresponding reductive algebraic group over ℂ. In this paper we will show in the case of type A that the filtration is compatible with the Kazhdan-Lusztig basis of the Hecke algebra.

Currently, various types of news media that are developing have their own challenges, one of them is the increasing number of digital or online media. The increasing number of digital media in the form of online news sites not only has a positive impact on society, but also poses challenges. The more the number of online news portals increases, the more information is spread out. With a variety of topics and diverse information, it creates problems for readers to make time efficient in reading in full to obtain the desired information. This makes the phenomenon of text summarization very important. The purpose of this study is to analyze the Latent Semantic Analysis method in the text summarization process. The dataset used comes from previous research which includes 100 Indonesian news articles from various online news portals. In the experiment process, the Steinberger and Jezek techniques are used for the sentence selection process. The summary process is carried out using three types of compression rates, namely 10%, 30% and 50%. The best results obtained in this study are the precision value of 20% at a 10% compression rate, a recall value of 42% at a 50% compression rate, and an f-measure value of 22% at a 50% compression rate.

This Special Issue of Frontiers is timely. Over the past ten to fifteen years, the field of education abroad has seen a dramatic increase in the number and variety of experiential approaches to learning. While it has long been recognized that the learning outcomes of study abroad are closely related to out-of-class experiences, until recently surprisingly little attention had been paid to this topic. This volume seeks to address this need by inviting some of the leaders in the theory and practice of experiential education abroad to address important considerations related to their work. Like other Special Issues of Frontiers, this volume is meant to bridge a gap between the administration of study abroad programs and the academic disciplines from which study abroad programs emanate. Frontiers has as one of its central purposes connecting study abroad to its academic underpinnings and to the faculty that teach and research within these disciplines. In addressing the topic of experiential education, we hope to engage our faculty in further study and dialogue about how best to create, manage, and evaluate experiential education programming in study abroad in order to enhance learning outcomes. The current volume also bridges another gap, this one between study abroad professionals and our colleagues involved in experiential education. Past Special Issues of Frontiers have looked at the intersection of key fields related to study abroad: science and engineering; foreign languages; and area studies. By addressing the theoretical, pedagogical and practical connections between international education and experiential education, it is our hope that this volume will spur discussion and collaboration in areas of mutual interest. The featured articles in this volume move from theory and history to praxis and the concrete issues that we encounter in our everyday work. The introductory essay by Lynn Montrose of Regis University provides a framework for understanding the theory and pedagogy of experiential education. After a brief review of some experiential education theorists, Montrose outlines the standards of good practice, and helps us to think about how to define experiential education goals and means of assessment. Rather than an historical overview of experiential education, this special issue of Frontiers offers case studies that relate individuals to their political and historical contexts. Ronald Cluett, a professor of Classics at Pomona College, shows how movement across borders is an often-repeated narrative that blends the personal and the political. His historical case studies, ranging in subject from Cicero to Mohammed Atta, remind us that experiential education is an old form that has influenced history in tangible ways, both positively and negatively. The next article, by Ann Lutterman-Aguilar and Orval Gingerich, examines the ways in which international experiential education contributes to educating for global citizenship. Drawing on their well-known program at Augsburg College, Lutterman-Aguilar and Gingerich argue that study abroad in and of itself does not contribute to the development of global citizenship, but that it can do so when study abroad programs are designed with that goal in mind. The authors provide suggestions for how to design such programs by drawing on the principles of experiential education and their own experience at Augsburg. Following this piece, John Annette provides readers with a broad view of the area of international service learning, based on his expertise. The next series of articles frame the “how to” of this Special Issue by offering best practices from practitioners on the front line of study abroad experiential programming. These articles cover internships, field-based learning, and collaborative learning using journal writing. The first article is by Gerald Honigsblum, Director of the Boston University Paris Internship Program. Honigsblum outlines the material, cultural, intellectual, legal, and professional issues associated with a professional internship model. His article analyzes the conditions and variables of experiential learning within internship programs, and recommends a number of guidelines and strategies to make the internship a seamless learning experience that is both substantial and substantive. Carol Brandt and Thomas Manley present the practice of using a fieldbook on study abroad programs as both a pedagogical and assessment tool. They provide specific examples of how the fieldbook is used to engage students in certain types of learning activities, as they elucidate both the successes and the problems with this approach. Experiential education requires rigorous reflective and analytical structures, and the fieldbook is an example of an effective model for achieving this goal. Leeann Chen of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University provides an innovative model for incorporating host nationals as cross-cultural collaborators in overseas learning. Chen proposes to have students write for a native audience, creating opportunities for students to reflect more deeply on cultural differences from cross-cultural points of view. Her article examines the experiential links created within a creative dialogic relationship rather than the traditional appositive relationship that exists between students and hosts. She also addresses how to prepare both host nationals and students for using writing addressed to the former as a structure of cross-cultural collaborative learning. The next article of this Special Issue examines experiential education abroad models. Chip Peterson of the University of Minnesota argues that program design and pedagogical strategies are critical to transformative experiential education. He compares and contrasts three different approaches to program design, management, and evaluation. The many similarities among them reflect the common values, objectives, and principles of good practice on which they draw; the notable differences among them illustrate that there are many valid pedagogies. In his article, Michael Steinberg of the Institute for the International Education of Students (IES) addresses the question of maintaining academic quality in experiential study abroad programming. He demonstrates that experiential education is a laudable and creditworthy endeavor, and discusses some approaches designed to reinforce the academic nature of experiential learning, using IES as a case study. Steinberg reviews recent research on credit acceptance and on student learning, and then discusses assessment and the nature of academic programming for students in field placements, internships, and service learning. Finally, we include in this volume tributes to two giants in the field of experiential education abroad who passed away within the past year, Senator Paul Wellstone and Howard Berry. We are pleased also to be able to publish a bibliography of Howard Berry’s writings as well as a short article of his that appeared in Transitions Abroad. We thank Clay Hubbs of Transitions for granting permission to reprint the article and the tributes to Howard Berry. We thank also Amy Sunderland, Executive Director of the Higher Education Consortium for Urban Affairs (HECUA), for her moving tribute to Senator Wellstone. Both Wellstone and Berry were influential leaders in promoting and developing international experiential education, and we are pleased to be able to honor their memory in this Special Issue of Frontiers. Readers will notice a page dedicated to notes from the Forum on Education Abroad. Frontiers is pleased to be a strategic partner of the Forum by sharing the research goals of the organization. The Forum and Frontiers will work together on future projects to benefit the field of international education. Already being planned are special issues of Frontiers developed in collaboration with Forum members whose topics include outcomes assessment and curriculum development. In addition, the Frontiers Editorial Board is pleased to distribute complimentary copies of Frontiers to all Forum members. Study abroad professionals are challenged to design, manage, and assess all aspects of experiential education programs, often in a climate in which these programs themselves are not well understood. The guest editors and the editorial board of Frontiers hope that this Special Issue will contribute to the work of our colleagues by offering insight into critical topics, and by providing concrete ideas and tools for engaging in this work. It is a beginning, and we hope one that will assist study abroad professionals to think through the ways in which experiential learning influences study abroad learning. Rhoda Borcherding, Pomona College Linda Goff, Marymount University Bill Nolting, University of Michigan Chip Peterson, University of Minnesota Brian Whalen, Dickinson College

Accounting information systems (AIS) is a new course of accounting in the sense that the methods of teaching may differ from one school to another. There has been no such of a standard outline that best describes the important topics to be covered in the course of AIS (McCarthy 1999). Although much effort has been made towards the development of standard lists of topical materials, the space is widely open for research in this debate. It has been noted recently that AIS course textbooks include the relational database design and development as an important part adopted by instructors in teaching the course of AIS (Hollander et al. 2006; Romney and Steinbart 2006). This paper evaluates the current situation for teaching methods sued in the course of AIS and indicates several factors that may preference one method over another method of teaching to the AIS course. It reviews a variety of methods adopted in teaching AIS with emphasize on the data modeling approach using cardinalities and the documentation techniques of flowcharting. The study indicates that preference among variety of teaching methods is based on the method that may increase students' motivation and desire to study AIS, and the relevancy and reliability of the business system. It also indicates that improving students' ability to cope with the higher volatility of systems' requirements now days is another factor that may preference one over another methods of teaching to the course of the AIS.

Abstract Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed malignancy in women worldwide. It is a molecularly heterogeneous disease, which poses difficulties in the treatment of more advanced cancers. Despite this fact, the mechanisms contributing to the emergence of aggressive breast cancers remains poorly understood. We focus on reactive oxygen species (ROS), which are induced by a variety of stimuli in breast cancer cells. Moderately elevated ROS levels are tumor-promoting and facilitate the emergence of more aggressive tumours. Our laboratory has developed a unique model of HER2+ breast cancer that evolved to acquire more aggressive properties under conditions of chronic oxidative stress. We identified 20 transcription factors/co-regulators that were specifically overexpressed in these aggressive breast cancers, compared to their parental counterparts. We hypothesize that these transcription factors are central to the ability of breast tumors to adapt to chronic oxidative stress and acquire more aggressive properties. To test this, I have performed an in vivo functional shRNA screen to identify those transcriptional regulators that drive an aggressive phenotype. This will be followed by functional validation studies to interrogate whether and how these unique transcription factors overexpressed in aggressive breast cancers impact tumour growth, metastasis, and drug resistance. Mechanistically, we will explore whether and how these transcriptional responses mediate adaptive responses to tumor microenvironmental stressors, including altered metabolism, hypoxia, and tumor immune responses. This research will broaden our understanding of how breast cancers adapt to oxidative stress responses and represents a necessary first step in the development of novel therapeutics against these invulnerable malignancies. Citation Format: Caitlynn N. Mirabelli, Rachel La Selva, John Heath, Steven Hébert, Jutta Steinberger, Jialin Jiang, Claudia Kleinman, Sidong Huang, Josie Ursini-Siegel. Defining how oxidative stress drives the evolution of aggressive breast cancers [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2022; 2022 Apr 8-13. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2022;82(12_Suppl):Abstract nr 126.

This paper analyzes the Taiko no Tatsujin (Bandai Namco 2001/ 2018) franchise and the musical literacy it conveys. While previous accounts of game musical literacy have focused on the competence necessary to interpret references across media (van Elferen 2016), this paper expands on the concept, and includes the discussion of live performances and oral traditions.The musical compositions included in Taiko no Tatsujin pertain to the Japanese phenomenon of media convergence known as media mix (Steinberg 2012), as they have been previously popularized by anime and geemu ongaku (or game music) (Yamakami and Barbosa 2015). However, the musical participation initiated extends its references to the practice of Japanese taiko drumming, a largely oral, non-notated musical form, which cannot be reduced to a musical repertoire. The resulting, emerging ludo mix, a form of media mix centered around digital games (Blom 2019; Bjarnason 2019; Picard and Pelletier-Gagnon 2015; Steinberg 2015), presents original musical characteristics, representing and synthesizing a dynamic musical culture.The conclusions show that game musical literacy is based, not only on competence with previous media forms, but also with various different forms of participation in musical performances, or musicking (Small 1998), which concur in constructing game musical literacy. The musical side of the ludo mix can therefore be expressed through a large variety of musical practices.

AbstractKazhdan and Lusztig identified the affine Hecke algebra ℋ with an equivariant $K$ K -group of the Steinberg variety, and applied this to prove the Deligne-Langlands conjecture, i.e., the local Langlands parametrization of irreducible representations of reductive groups over nonarchimedean local fields $F$ F with an Iwahori-fixed vector. We apply techniques from derived algebraic geometry to pass from $K$ K -theory to Hochschild homology and thereby identify ℋ with the endomorphisms of a coherent sheaf on the stack of unipotent Langlands parameters, the coherent Springer sheaf. As a result the derived category of ℋ-modules is realized as a full subcategory of coherent sheaves on this stack, confirming expectations from strong forms of the local Langlands correspondence (including recent conjectures of Fargues-Scholze, Hellmann and Zhu).In the case of the general linear group our result allows us to lift the local Langlands classification of irreducible representations to a categorical statement: we construct a full embedding of the derived category of smooth representations of $\mathrm{GL}_{n}(F)$ GL n ( F ) into coherent sheaves on the stack of Langlands parameters.

A variety of different approaches, theories and philosophies can be used to engage in diverse range of projects through bricolage (Sharp, 2019). The use of bricolage employs difference in research methods and stimulates creativity (Kincheloe, 2011). Projects have spanned a range of scholarly activities and included learning about an assessment and evaluation research group and supporting KMB of research group activities through reporting and website design. Gathering information on awards, funding as well as activities and publications from our group members enables us to summarize key information and reflect comprehensive work in visual and written reports. We focused on the content, graphics, structure and navigation aspects of our website. Research within assessment and evaluation plays an important role in teaching and learning process. By conducting data analysis on testing student competency development in an evaluation course, we translated the research question into the language of statistical tests of hypotheses. Paired two-sample t-test and two-way ANOVA test are generated using statistical programming language R. After processing the data, we took authorship roles in a peer-reviewed publication and presentation to write the findings based on the results and interpret the ultimate impact. Our findings have identified the evaluator competencies are improved apparently through the evaluation course where the findings are supported by the data of pre- and post-course scores. Overall, this summer learning opportunity allowed us to piece together a different understanding that demonstrated the power of collaboration when diverse skill sets are brought together to advance and make visible educational ideas. References Kincheloe J. L. (2011). Describing the bricolage: Conceptualizing a new rigor in qualitative research. In Steinberg S. R., Kenneth T. (Eds.), Key works in critical pedagogy (pp. 177–189). Brill Sense. Crossref. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6091-397-6_15 Sharp, H. (2019). Bricolage research in history education as a scholarly mixed-methods design. History Education Research Journal, 16(1), 50-62. https://doi.org/10.18546/HERJ.16.1.05

Special needs dentistry, also known as special care dentistry, is a specialty of dentistry concerned with the oral health ofpeople who have intellectual disability, or who are affected by other medical, physical, or psychiatric issues. Their additionalneeds may be due directly to their impairment or disability, or to some aspect of their medical history that affects theiroral health, or because their social, environmental or cultural context disables them with reference to their oral health.1According to data from the Indonesian Medical Council, there was an increasing number of Indonesians experiencing chronicdiseases including cancer, stroke, heart disease, renal disease, and diabetes mellitus from 2013 to 2018.2Unfortunately, therewas no data describing other special needs condition aside from medically challenged. This absence of data might makedentists and authorities complacent about this need. Even in the developed country, we found that people with disabilitieswere rarely identified as a priority population group in the public health policy and practice.3Along with increasing awareness of parents and careers, supporting facilities and education such as physiotherapy, speechtherapy, management behavior are much in demand. Though, dental treatment is still not popular. They are prioritizinggeneral health instead of dental and oral health to support short term impact.4Meanwhile, special need persons are proneto poor oral health. People with developmental disabilities have higher rates of cavities, gum disease and tooth loss and thecause is often heartbreakingly simple.5Many of these persons are physically unable to brush their teeth, and many won’t allowsomeone else do it for them.6Others are hampered by medical conditions, or by the side effects of medications they take,which is why regular dental checkups and cleanings are so important.General dentists are reluctant of taking care of special need patientsWe recognized that there are only a few oral health professions that work to improve the oral health of people withspecial needs.7Not only is their access to care almost non-existent in comparison to the general population, but also thefacilities are inadequate and staff lack awareness of oral health matters that may impact those with special needs.8Moreover,parents and careers are confronted with different problems such as, dentists who lack skills and competency in managingpeople with disabilities. Dentists reported having difficulty treating such patients. The complexity in treating patients withspecial needs, the variety of medical conditions or disabilities that require more time or altered delivery methods than theroutine delivery of dental care for the general population,9and sometimes patients required special methods and techniquesto treat their oral health conditions has led to low preparedness and willingness of oral health professionals to treat patientswith special needs.10 It requires a holistic approach that is dentist led in order to meet the complex requirements of peoplewith impairments. It may impact access and thus their oral health, while other complications include inconvenient locationsof dental clinics, transport issues, and cost of dental treatment.11All patients with special needs should have equal access andhigh-quality treatment that focuses on patient safety, patient-centered care, and treatment of all dental needs. Thus, oral healthprofessional needs to have training or special education to handle patients with special needs in an effort to increase oral anddental health of this population.Dental student training improvement is neededIt is written in standard competency of Indonesian dental doctor released by Indonesian Medical Council thatundergraduate dental student must be able to ascertain congenital and hereditary abnormalities in oral cavity, and maintainingoral soft tissue health in patients with compromised medical condition. In fact, there are limitation of opportunity forthem to meet those special patients. Dentists who treat patients with special needs are dental pediatrics; there are no dentalspecialists who specifically manage patients who are adults with special needs.12 Furthermore, for the undergraduate basis,dental school are not well equipped with staff and tools to support that competency. Of the 11 dental schools that have beenaccredited ”A” in Indonesia, there are only 4 dental schools who have structured dental courses on taking care of oral and dentalhealth for person with special needs. This program is restricted to postgraduate student only. There is no syllabus or programfor undergraduate dental students. Lack of training and experience of undergraduate dental students in dealing with patientswith special needs was one of the most reported issues that inhibits the treatment of these patients. Therefore, the access ofdental student to gain knowledge and experience in this major should be improved.Indeed, it is well known that good oral health is conducive to overall well-being. Due to increasing demand of treatingspecial care persons with their complexities, oral health professionals need to improve their skill and knowledge. Tania Saskianti, DDS, PhD, Ped DentChairperson, Joint Scientific Meeting in Special Care DentistryLecturer, Department of Pediatric DentistryFaculty of Dental Medicine, Universitas Airlangga REFERENCES1. Friel S, Jamieson L. Political economy, trade relations and health inequalities: lessons from general health. Community Dent Health. 2019; 36(2),152–156 (2019).2. National Institute of Health Research and Development of Ministry of Health Indonesia. Main Result of Basic Health Research 2018. 2018.3. Victorian Health Promoting Foundation. Disability and health inequalities in Australia. VicHealth. 2012; 1–11.4. Anders PL, Davis EL. Oral health of patients with intellectual disabilities: A systematic review. Spec Care Dentist. 2010; 30(3):110–7.5. Minihan PM, Morgan JP, Park A, Yantsides KE, Nobles CJ, Finkelman MD, et al. At-home oral care for adults with developmental disabilities A surveyof caregivers. J Am Dent Assoc. 2014; 145(10):1018–25.6. Eijsink AM, Schipper G, Vermaire JH. A Q-methodology study among caregivers of people with moderate intellectual disabilities on their clients’health care: An example in oral health. J Appl Res Intellect. Disabil. 2018; 31(5):915–26.7. Wyne AH, Hammad N, Splieth C. Oral health knowledge of health care workers in special children’s center. Pak J Med Sci. 2015; 31(1):164–8.8. Hewson ND. Submission 552 - Australian Dental Association Inc - Disability Care and Support - Public inquiry. Aust Dent Assoc. 2010; 1–20.9. Wilson NJ, Lin Z, Villarosa A, Lewis P, Philip P, Sumar B, et al. Countering the poor oral health of people with intellectual and developmentaldisability: a scoping literature review. BMC Public Health. 2019; 19(1):1530.10. Alumran A, Almulhim L, Almolhim B, Bakodah S, Aldossary H, Alakrawi Z. Preparedness and willingness of dental care providers to treat patientswith special needs. Clin Cosmet Investig Dent. 2018; 10:231–6.11. Steinberg BJ. Issues and challenges in special care dentistry. J Dent Educ. 2005; 69:323–4.12. Vertel N, Harrison RL, Campbell KM. Access to Dental Services for Children with Special Health Care Needs: A Pilot Study at the DentalDepartment of BC Children’s Hospital. J Can Dent Assoc. 2017; 83:h6.

ObjectiveAutomated syndromic surveillance using mobile devices is an emerging public health focus that has a high potential for enhanced disease tracking and prevention in areas with poor infrastructure. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory sought to develop an Android mobile application for syndromic biosurveillance that would i) use the phone camera to take images of human faces to detect individuals that are sick through a machine learning (ML) model and ii) collect image data to increase training data available for ML models. The initial prototype use case is for screening and tracking the health of soldiers for use by the Department of Defense’s Disease Threat Reduction Agency.IntroductionInfectious diseases present with multifarious factors requiring several efforts to detect, prevent, and break the chain of transmission. Recently, machine learning has shown to be promising for automated surveillance leading to rapid and early interventions, and extraction of phenotypic features of human faces [3, 5]. In addition, mobile devices have become a promising tool to provide on-the-ground surveillance, especially in remote areas and geolocation mapping [4].Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) combines machine learning with mobile technology to provide a groundbreaking prototype of disease surveillance without the need for internet, just a camera. In this android application, VisionDx, a machine learning algorithm analyses human face images and within milliseconds notifies the user with confidence level whether or not the person is sick. VisionDx comes with two modes, photo and video, and additional features of history, map, and statistics. This application is the first of its kind and provides a new way to think about the future of syndromic surveillance.MethodsData. Human healthy (n = 1096) and non-healthy (n = 1269) facial images met the criteria for training the Machine Learning model after preprocessing them. The healthy images were obtained from the Chicago face database [6] and California Institute of Technology [2]. There are no known collections of disease facial images. Using open source image collection/curation services, images were identified by a variety of keywords, including specific infectious diseases. The criteria for image inclusion was 1. a frontal face was identified using OpenCV library [1], and 2. the image contained signs of disease through visual inspection (e.g., abnormal color, texture, swelling).Model. To identify a sick face from a healthy one, we used transfer machine learning and experimented with various pretrained Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) from Google for mobile and embedded vision applications. Using MobileNet, we trained the final model with our data and deployed it to our prototype mobile app. Google Mobile Vision API and TensorFlow mobile were used to detect human faces and run predictions in the mobile app.Mobile Application. The Android app was built using Android Studio to provide an easily navigable interface that connects every action between tabbed features. The app features (i.e., Map, Camera, History, and Statistics) are in tab view format. The custom-made camera is the main feature of the app, and it contains face detection capability. A real-time health status detection function gives a level of confidence based the algorithm results found on detected faces in the camera image.ResultsPNNL's prototype Android application, VisionDx, was built with user-friendly tab views and functions to take camera images of human faces and classify them as sick or healthy through an inbuilt ML model. The major functions of the app are the camera, map, history, and statistics pages. The camera tab has a custom-made camera with face detection algorithm and classification model of sick or healthy. The camera has image or video mode and results of the algorithm are updated in milliseconds. The Statistics view provides a simple pie chart on sick/healthy images based on user selected time and location. The Map shows pins representing all labeled images stored, and the History displays all the labeled images. Clicking on an image in either view shows the image with metadata, i.e., model confidence levels, geolocation, and datetime.The CNN model prediction accuracy has ~98% validation accuracy and ~96% test accuracy. High model performance shows the possibility that deep learning could be a powerful tool to detect sickness. However, given the limited dataset, this high accuracy also means the model is most likely overfit to the data. The training set is limited: a. the number of training images is small compared to the variability in facial expressions and skin coloring, and b. the sick images only contained overt clinical signs. If trained on a larger, diverse set of data, this prototype app could prove extremely useful in surveillance efforts of individual to large groups of people in remote areas, e.g., to identify individuals in need of medical attention or get an overview of population health. In effort to improve the model, VisionDx was developed as a data collection tool to build a more comprehensive dataset. Within the tool, users can override the model prediction, i.e., false positive or false negative, with a simple toggle button. Lastly, the app was built to protect privacy so that other phone aps can't access the images unless shared by a user.ConclusionsDeveloped at PNNL for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, VisionDx is a novel, camera-based mobile application for real-time biosurveillance and early warning in the field without internet dependency. The prototype mobile app takes pictures of faces and analyzes them using a state-of-the-art machine learning model to give two confidence levels of likelihood of being sick and healthy. With further development of a labeled dataset, such as by using the app as a data collection too, the results of the algorithm will quickly improve leading to a ground-breaking approach to public health surveillance.References1. Bradski G. (n.d.) The OpenCV Library. Retrieved Sept 30, 2018 at http://www.drdobbs.com/open-source/the-opencv-library/1844043192. Computational Vision: Archive. (1999). Retrieved Sept 22, 2018 at http://www.vision.caltech.edu/html-files/archive.html3. Ferry Q, Steinberg J, Webber C, et al (2014). Diagnostically relevant facial gestalt information from ordinary photos. ELife, 3, e02020.4. Fornace KM, Surendra H, Abidin TR, et al (2018). Use of mobile technology-based participatory mapping approaches to geolocate health facility attendees for disease surveillance in low resource settings. International Journal of Health Geographics, 17(1), 21. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12942-018-0141-05. Lopez DM, de Mello FL, G Dias, CM, et al (2017). Evaluating the Surveillance System for Spotted Fever in Brazil Using Machine-Learning Techniques. Frontiers in Public Health, 5. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2017.003236. Ma DS, Correll J, Wittenbrink B. (2015) The Chicago face database: A free stimulus set of faces and norming data. Behavior Research Methods, 47(4), 1122–1135. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-014-0532-5

2021 is the fiftieth anniversary year for Japanese live-action superhero franchise Kamen Rider. For half a century, heroes bearing the name Kamen Rider have battled rubber suited monsters and defended the smiles of children. Unlike many superheroes, however, the Kamen Riders are grotesque heroes, usually drawing their powers from the same source as the villains they battle. Grotesque human-machine-animal hybrids, they differ from their opponents only in the kindness of their hearts and the strength of their spirits. Although the Kamen Rider franchise includes a variety of texts including manga, novels, movies, and stage musicals, the central text is the Sunday morning children’s television program. This article focusses exclusively on the television series. Each season of the television program is comprised of around fifty twenty-five-minute episodes, and each season features an entirely new cast, title, and premise. Kamen Rider was originally created at a time of economic downturn and social unrest, and the unease of the zeitgeist is reflected in the figure of the no longer human hero. A little over thirty years later Japan was again facing a variety of crises and intense debate over what, if any, role it should play in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The 2002 television season, Kamen Rider Ryūki, tackles difficult questions about what justice, heroism, and monstrosity mean, through the medium of a children’s martial arts and live action special effects hero television program. This article explores the blurred boundaries between monster and hero in Kamen Rider, in the context of social attitudes toward children. The First Kamen Rider The inaugural Kamen Rider (protagonist of the 1971 television season), Hongo Takeshi, is a university student who gains superpowers after being abducted and experimented on by Shocker, a terrorist organisation founded by Nazis. Their medical experiments are part of a plan to produce an army capable of world domination. Takeshi’s body was modified with grasshopper DNA and cybernetic enhancements, but he was able to escape before the mind control portion of the operation. Although he appears human, Takeshi transforms via a special belt into Kamen (masked) Rider in order to fight. His face is obscured by an insectoid helmet with red compound eyes and antennae. The transformation scene is a highlight of every episode, and the transformation belt is the most important of the (many) tie-in toys. The primary audience of Kamen Rider is children between two and seven, and as a media-mix (Steinberg) franchise the sale of toys and branded products to the primary audience is vital. Anne Allison (105) identifies the transformation and blending or crossing of bodily borders it entails as the “money shot” children anticipate and enjoy. There is also a substantial tertiary audience, however, which includes older children and adults. During the early 1970s, when the first few seasons of Kamen Rider were broadcast, ‘employment trains’ were transporting Japanese teenagers (immediately following their graduation from middle school) from rural areas to the large cities, where they worked in factories and construction far from their families (Alt 54). Kamen Rider’s creator, Ishinomori Shōtarō, had debuted as a manga artist while still in school himself, and his works were particularly popular among this disenfranchised demographic. The figure of a young man taken and changed against his will and left to forge his own path in the aftermath may have been particularly resonant with these teenagers. Kamen Rider’s creator, Ishinomori Shōtarō, was a member of the yakeato (burnt ruins) generation, who were children during the Second World War and experienced the fire- and nuclear bombings of Japan and grew up amidst the burned-out ruins. Roman Rosenbaum (Redacting 97-98) argues that this generation (or perhaps more accurately, micro-generation), “later subconsciously released the bent-up trauma of their early childhood experiences throughout their adult lives in their body of work”. Ishinomori was not alone in this experience, of course; other members of the early Kamen Rider creative team were also motivated by childhood trauma. Hirayama Tōru, who helped Ishinomori bring the Rider concept to television as a producer, was sixteen when his hometown of Nagoya was firebombed. He and other schoolboys were dispatched to dispose of the bodies of civilians who had died while trying to escape the flames only to die in the river (Oda and Muraeda 41-2). Members of the yakeato generation were prominent in anti-war activism during the 1970s, opposing Japan’s entanglement in the Vietnam War (Rosenbaum Generation 284). Violence and the meaning of justice were urgent issues for this generation. This first season of Kamen Rider, along with many of the subsequent seasons, is classifiable as a horror text, with numerous Gothic elements (Staite). Many of the monsters Takeshi battles are “designed to elicit a specific reaction: that of abject horror” (Kim 28). While some of the prosthetic suits are quite silly-looking by contemporary standards, many remain compellingly disturbing in their fusion of animal-human-machine. Although he proceeds up the chain of command to eventually battle the leaders of Shocker, Takeshi is always aware when battling other victims of Shocker experimentation that the only difference between himself and them is that he was able to escape before losing his will. He, like them, is no longer entirely human, and has become as grotesque as the unfortunate monsters he must defeat. As Miura Shion (180) puts it (translation mine), “Kamen Rider was originally an entity created by evil. The reality is that the enemy in front of you and you are actually the same. The fate of Kamen Rider is to fight while struggling with this”. Noting that Kamen Rider was created during a time of social, economic, and political upheaval in Japan, Hirofumi Katsuno (37-38) links the rise of the ambiguous hero to the decline of the ‘grand narrative’ of modernity and the belief in the kind of absolute justice represented by more traditional superheroes. Kamen Rider instead inhabits “an ambiguous space between human and nonhuman, good and evil” (Katsuno 44). In the early years of the franchise the ambiguity remained largely centred on the figure of the hero. Members of the opposing Shocker organisation – who were responsible for the rise of the first two Kamen Riders – are unambiguously evil and unsympathetic. For ordinary people who have been subjected to mind control and experimentation there is compassion, but in terms of the central conflict there is no question that destroying Shocker is correct and moral. The villains battled by Kamen Riders remained predominantly fascists and cultists bent on world domination until the late 1980s, with the primary antagonist of 1987 season Kamen Rider Black the protagonist’s beloved brother. The following season, Kamen Rider Black RX, had environmental themes. The villains trying to take over the world in this season are doing so because their own planet has become too polluted to sustain life. They argue, somewhat persuasively, that since humans are on the path to global environmental destruction they are justified in taking over the planet before it is ruined. This gradual shift toward more sympathetic monsters became explicit in 2002 with Kamen Rider Ryūki’s ambivalent response to the Bush administration’s so-called War on Terror. Justice Is a Thing with Teeth and Claws Kamen Rider Ryūki (hereafter Ryūki) was in the planning stages when the 9/11 terrorist attacks occurred, destroying the twin towers. TV Asahi, the station that airs Kamen Rider, immediately sent a directive to producer Shirakura Shinichiro stating that “now more than ever we must teach children about justice” (Salas). Seemingly uncomfortable with the implications of this idea of “justice” in light of the Bush administration's subsequent actions, Shirakura says: in that mood I wondered if I could repeat the sort of hero story we had made so far, where the ‘good person’ beats the ‘bad person’ that appears one after another and finally hits the headquarters of evil. It is very dangerous to plant the mentality of the Cold War era in children at this time. ‘Ryuuki’ was created in the hope that children will have an eye for what justice means. (Cited in Uno 261-2, translation mine) Since its creation in the 1970s, Kamen Rider had been forging a new path for Japanese heroes in opposition to what Jonathan Abel identifies as an external attitude to justice in the hero programs of the 1950s and 1960s. In these programs, he argues, justice was represented as something imposed into Japan from outside (by alien superheroes, for example, or the Allied Occupation forces). American superheroes and their various approaches to questions of justice and vigilantism were also well known in Japan, as Timothy Peters has highlighted. In its depiction of a hero so closely resembling the monsters he battles, Kamen Rider rejected notions of an absolute distinction between the categories of hero and monster. As Katsuno (46) argues, “in this postmodern, liquid society, superheroes lack a unified, self-evident justice, but must navigate multiple conceptions of justice … . As embodiments of relativized justice, these grotesque heroes were the seeds for what have become enduring trends in Japanese popular culture”. 2002 season Ryūki takes the idea of relativised justice to its extreme, questioning the very existence of a ‘justice’ that exists independently from the people it impacts. It is impossible to summarise the plot of Ryūki both briefly and accurately; this attempt prioritises the former over the latter. Ryūki features thirteen Kamen Riders in a battle royale, competing for the granting of a single wish. The Riders gain their powers through forming a contract with a mirror monster, who they must feed by defeating other Riders or less powerful mirror monsters (who are themselves feeding on helpless humans). If a Rider is defeated and can no longer feed his contract monster, the creature will consume them. Mirror monsters are so called because they come from mirror world, a parallel dimension connected to ours by reflective surfaces including mirrors and, significantly, gleaming skyscrapers. The battle is controlled by antagonist Kanzaki Shiro, who is trying to save the life of his younger sister Yui. Protagonist Kido Shinji tries to stop the Riders from fighting one another, which delays Shiro’s plans and leads to Yui’s death. Shiro repeatedly loops time to restart the battle and save Yui, but Shinji disrupts each new timeline. There are multiple alternate endings to the story, including both televisual and print versions. Because the endings each involve uncovering the reason Shiro has created the battle as part of their resolution of the story, there are also multiple explanations for why and how the battle began. In some versions the origin of the mirror monsters lies in Shiro and Yui’s childhood experience of abuse at the hands of their parents, while in another Shinji inadvertently sets events in motion after breaking a childhood promise to Yui. Which origin, ending, or time-loop is ‘true’ is never resolved. Viewers were invited to vote on the ending of the television special by telephone; alternate endings had been prepared with the winning option inserted at the end of the broadcast (Uno 271). This moral ambiguity and confusion over what is ‘true’ is an intentional critique of simplistic ideas about justice. In Ryūki each of the Riders participates in the battle because they believe that their wish is important enough to justify the means employed to obtain it. The program problematises the idea that there is an objective division between good and evil by focusing on the subjective righteousness of the individual characters’ motivations, including the irony of Shinji’s battles for the sake of stopping the war. Although these feel like quite adult themes, Shirakura couches them firmly within his interpretation of teaching children about justice, explaining that children sometimes envision themselves as the heroes and think they might also be justice. There is also the idea that people often don’t accept themselves as being wrong, because in one’s mind ‘I am myself, so I’m not wrong’ is the prevailing thought process. These thoughts lead to selfish patterns because kids might not see themselves as themselves but as the heroes. (Salas) Uno Tsunehiro (263-4) argues that there is in fact no villain and no justice in Ryūki, simply competing desires. Ryūki does not make judgements about which desires are more or less worthy, he writes, but displays all of the Riders’ motivations equally, just like Google search results of products displayed on Amazon. Just like Capitalism, Uno (263-4) suggests, Ryūki treats every story (justice / evil) equally as a desire (as a product). The mirror monsters are quite frightening; using a combination of Godzilla-style rubber suits and CGI they are all based on animals including spiders, crabs, and cobras, combined with cyborg elements such as guns embedded in various body parts. However, their behaviour is straightforwardly animalistic. They are hungry; they kill to feed. The truly monstrous characters in Ryūki are clearly the Kamen Riders themselves, who use the mirror monsters to lend power to human motivations that are far more complex and twisted. Although many of the Riders have sympathetic motivations such as saving the life of a loved one, Kamen Rider Ōja simply enjoys violence. Uno points out that this character is essentially the same as The Joker in 2008’s The Dark Knight; like The Joker, Ōja tells a variety of stories explaining the origins of his psychopathy in past traumas only to mock the credulity of those so eager to believe these explanations (Uno 274). Crucially, Ōja is still a Kamen Rider, and appears alongside more sympathetic Kamen Riders in ensemble-cast films and games. The line between hero and monster has become blurred beyond comprehension. Monsters for Children, Children as Monsters Shirakura’s comment about the danger of children uncritically viewing their own actions as being just draws attention to an important shift taking place at the turn of the millennium. Monsters were no longer something to protect children from, but increasingly children themselves were becoming viewed as potentially monstrous. Five years before Ryūki’s release Japan had been rocked by the discovery that the murderer of two elementary school children was a fourteen-year-old child dubbed ‘Youth A’, who had described his behaviour as a game, taunting the police and media before his capture (Arai 370-1). Although violent crimes perpetrated by children are always shocking, what stands out from this particular incident is the response from other school children. Youth A had sent a manifesto to a local newspaper lambasting the education system that had created him. In a survey conducted by the Ministry of Education more than fifty percent of the students surveyed sympathised and identified with at Youth A (cited in Arai 371). Lindsay Nelson (4) notes the prevalence of child-monsters in Japanese horror films in the late 1990s and early 2000s, writing that “the many monstrous children of contemporary Japanese cinema stand at a crossroads of Japan’s past, present, and future, crying out for compassion even as they drag those around them into death” (Nelson 13). There is of course a world of difference between depictions of monstrous children in adult media, and depictions of monsters in children’s media. I do not mean to conflate or confuse the two. Both kinds of monsters are, however, influenced and in turn influence wider social discourses and anxieties. Kamen Rider is also a text characterised by dual address, a narrative mode which addresses both adults and children simultaneously (in contradistinction to double address, in which the adults talk over the heads of children in an exclusionary way (Wall). Although Kamen Rider Ryūki featured adult actors (teenagers began to appear in leading roles with increasing frequency from the mid-2000s), it foreshadows the shifting of social attitudes toward children through intertextual references to the film Battle Royale (2000), also distributed by Kamen Rider’s producer Toei. Battle Royale centres on a school class who have (without their prior knowledge) been selected by lottery to participate in a ‘survival game’ on an isolated island. They must kill one another until only one survives; they have all been fitted with explosive collars, and any child refusing to participate will have their collar remotely detonated, killing them. Director Fukasaku Kinji comments that he felt a connection to the thematic linking of violence and children in Battle Royale because of his own experiences as a member of the yakeato generation. He had worked in a munitions factory during the war that was frequently targeted by bombs, and he describes hiding under and later having to dispose of the bodies of his friends (Rose). The story is a biting commentary of the relationship between economic collapse, school-based violence, and failures of governance. In Andrea Arai’s (368) analysis, “the tropes of battle, survival, and the figure of the schoolchild, reflect and refract social anxieties about the Japanese future in an era of globalisation and neoliberal reform, and the enduring historical conundrums of Japan’s twentieth-century past”. The battle between Kamen Riders in Ryūki is also a battle royale; although the core audience of very young children would probably not have made the intertextual link to the film (or the 1999 novel the film was based on), the association would have been strengthened for older viewers by the use of "those who don't fight won't survive!" as a catchphrase for Kamen Rider Ryūki. Conclusion In the early 1970s, Kamen Rider stood out as a text rejecting externally imposed, objective ideas of justice enforced by unassailable virtue, in favour of a grotesque hero struggling to find a path to justice through a metaphorical forest of misadventure and victimisation. The first Kamen Rider was a grotesque, damaged hero who fought monsters to whom he was more alike than different. In the early 2000s this blurring of the heroic and monstrous was taken even further, questioning the very concepts of justice and monstrosity. Much as the original season of Kamen Rider responded to economic and social upheavals with its reassessment of the role and figure of the hero, Kamen Rider Ryūki draws attention to fears of and for its child audience in response to both domestic economic disaster and global events. In Kamen Rider Ryūki the trope of an unwitting victim being turned into a Kamen Rider through biomechanical enhancements is discarded entirely; anyone can become a Kamen Rider simply by entering into a contract with a mirror monster. No longer grotesque because of powers beyond their control, the new generation of Kamen Riders choose grotesquery and risk their lives to obtain their desire. Anyone can become a hero, Ryūki tells its viewers, and anyone can become a monster. And, perhaps, anyone can be both at the same time. References Abel, Jonathan E. "Masked Justice: Allegories of the Superhero in Cold War Japan." Japan Forum 26.2 (2014): 187–208. Allison, Anne. Millennial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination. Berkeley: U of California P, 2006. Alt, Matthew. Pure Invention: How Japan Conquered the World in Eight Fantasies. Brown Book Group, 2020. Arai, Andrea. "Killing Kids: Recession and Survival in Twenty-First-Century Japan." Postcolonial Studies 6.3 (2003): 367–79. Battle Royale. Dir. Kinji Fukasaku. Toei, 2000. Katsuno, Hirofumi. "The Grotesque Hero: Depictions of Justice in Tokusatsu Superhero Television Programs." Introducing Japanese Popular Culture. Eds. Alisa Freedman and Toby Slade. Routledge, 2018. 37–47. Kim, Se Young. "Kamen Rider vs. Spider-Man and Batman." Giant Creatures in Our World: Essays on Kaiju and American Popular Culture. Eds. Camille Mustachio and Jason Barr. McFarland, 2017. Nelson, Lindsay. "Ghosts of the Past, Ghosts of the Future: Monsters, Children, and Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema." Cinemascope 13 (2009). Oda, Katsumi, and Kenichi Muraeda. The Men Who Made Kamen Rider: 1971-2011. Kodansha, 2011. Peters, Timothy. "'Holy Trans-Jurisdictional Representations of Justice, Batman!' Globalisation, Persona and Mask in Kuwata's Batmanga and Morrison's Batman, Incorporated." Law and Justice in Japanese Popular Culture: From Crime Fighting Robots to Duelling Pocket Monsters. Eds. Ashley Pearson, Thomas Giddens, and Kieran Tranter. Taylor & Francis, 2018. Kamen Rider. Toei, 1971. Kamen Rider Black RX. Toei, 1988. Kamen Rider Ryūki. Toei, 2002. Rose, Steve. “The Kid Killers.” The Guardian 2001. Rosenbaum, Roman. “The ‘Generation of the Burnt-out Ruins’.” Japanese Studies 27.3 (2007): 281–293. ———. “Redacting Japanese History: Ishinomori Shōtarō’s Graphic Narratives.” Rewriting History in Manga: Stories for the Nation. Eds. Nissim Otmazgin and Rebecca Suter. Palgrave Macmillan US, 2016. Salas, Jorge. "Kamen Rider’s Reaction to 9/11." Tokusatsu Network 2018. 1 Oct. 2021 <https://tokusatsunetwork.com/2018/08/kamen-riders-reaction-to-9-11/>. Shion, Miura. Momoiro Towairaito. Paperback Bunko: Shinchosha, 2010. Staite, Sophia. "Playing the Bloody Rose: Deconstructing Childhood with Kamen Rider Kiva." Aeternum: The Journal of Contemporary Gothic Studies 6.1 (2019): 34–48 Steinberg, Marc. Anime's Media Mix: Franchising Toys and Characters in Japan. U of Minnesota P, 2012. The Dark Knight. Dir. Christopher Nolan. Warner Bros, 2008. Uno, Tsunehiro. The Era of Little People. Gentosha, 2015. Wall, Barbara. The Narrator's Voice: The Dilemma of Children's Fiction. Macmillan, 1991.

Image 1: Hasbro/Tiger Electronics 1998 Furby. (Photo credit: Author) Introduction Since the mid-1990s robotic and digital creatures designed to offer social interaction and companionship have been developed for commercial and research interests. Integral to encouraging positive experiences with these creatures has been the use of cute aesthetics that aim to endear companions to their human users. During this time there has also been a growth in online communities that engage in cultural production through fan fiction responses to existing cultural artefacts, including the widely recognised electronic companion, Hasbro’s Furby (image 1). These user stories and Furby’s online representation in general, demonstrate that contrary to the intentions of their designers and marketers, Furbys are not necessarily received as cute, or the embodiment of the helpless and harmless demeanour that goes along with it. Furbys’ large, lash-framed eyes, small, or non-existent limbs, and baby voice are typical markers of cuteness but can also evoke another side of cuteness—monstrosity, especially when the creature appears physically capable instead of helpless (Brzozowska-Brywczynska 217). Furbys are a particularly interesting manifestation of the cute aesthetic because it is used as tool for encouraging attachment to a socially interactive electronic object, and therefore intersects with existing ideas about technology and nonhuman companions, both of which often embody a sense of otherness. This paper will explore how cuteness intersects withand transitions into monstrosity through online representations of Furbys, troubling their existing design and marketing narrative by connecting and likening them to other creatures, myths, and anecdotes. Analysis of narrative in particular highlights the instability of cuteness, and cultural understandings of existing cute characters, such as the gremlins from the film Gremlins (Dante) reinforce the idea that cuteness should be treated with suspicion as it potentially masks a troubling undertone. Ultimately, this paper aims to interrogate the cultural complexities of designing electronic creatures through the stories that people tell about them online. Fan Production Authors of fan fiction are known to creatively express their responses to a variety of media by appropriating the characters, settings, and themes of an original work and sharing their cultural activity with others (Jenkins 88). On a personal level, Jenkins (103) argues that “[i]n embracing popular texts, the fans claim those works as their own, remaking them in their own image, forcing them to respond to their needs and to gratify their desires.” Fan fiction authors are motivated to write not for financial or professional gains but for personal enjoyment and fan recognition, however, their production does not necessarily come from favourable opinions of an existing text. The antifan is an individual who actively hates a text or cultural artefact and is mobilised in their dislike to contribute to a community of others who share their views (Gray 841). Gray suggests that both fan and antifan activity contribute to our understanding of the kinds of stories audiences want: Although fans may wish to bring a text into everyday life due to what they believe it represents, antifans fear or do not want what they believe it represents and so, as with fans, antifan practice is as important an indicator of interactions between the textual and public spheres. (855) Gray reminds that fans, nonfans, and antifans employ different interpretive strategies when interacting with a text. In particular, while fans intimate knowledge of a text reflects their overall appreciation, antifans more often focus on the “dimensions of the moral, the rational-realistic, [or] the aesthetic” (856) that they find most disagreeable. Additionally, antifans may not experience a text directly, but dislike what knowledge they do have of it from afar. As later examples will show, the treatment of Furbys in fan fiction arguably reflects an antifan perspective through a sense of distrust and aversion, and analysing it can provide insight into why interactions with, or indirect knowledge of, Furbys might inspire these reactions. Derecho argues that in part because of the potential copyright violation that is faced by most fandoms, “even the most socially conventional fan fiction is an act of defiance of corporate control…” (72). Additionally, because of the creative freedom it affords, “fan fiction and archontic literature open up possibilities – not just for opposition to institutions and social systems, but also for a different perspective on the institutional and the social” (76). Because of this criticality, and its subversive nature, fan fiction provides an interesting consumer perspective on objects that are designed and marketed to be received in particular ways. Further, because much of fan fiction draws on fictional content, stories about objects like Furby are not necessarily bound to reality and incorporate fantastical, speculative, and folkloric readings, providing diverse viewpoints of the object. Finally, if, as robotics commentators (cf. Levy; Breazeal) suggest, companionable robots and technologies are going to become increasingly present in everyday life, it is crucial to understand not only how they are received, but also where they fit within a wider cultural sphere. Furbys can be seen as a widespread, if technologically simple, example of these technologies and are often treated as a sign of things to come (Wilks 12). The Design of Electronic Companions To compete with the burgeoning market of digital and electronic pets, in 1998 Tiger Electronics released the Furby, a fur-covered, robotic creature that required the user to carry out certain nurturance duties. Furbys expected feeding and entertaining and could become sick and scared if neglected. Through a program that advanced slowly over time regardless of external stimulus, Furbys appeared to evolve from speaking entirely Furbish, their mother tongue, to speaking English. To the user, it appeared as though their interactions with the object were directly affecting its progress and maturation because their care duties of feeding and entertaining were happening parallel to the Furbish to English transition (Turkle, Breazeal, Daste, & Scassellati 314). The design of electronic companions like Furby is carefully considered to encourage positive emotional responses. For example, Breazeal (2002 230) argues that a robot will be treated like a baby, and nurtured, if it has a large head, big eyes, and pursed lips. Kinsella’s (1995) also emphasises cute things need for care as they are “soft, infantile, mammalian, round, without bodily appendages (e.g. arms), without bodily orifices (e.g. mouths), non-sexual, mute, insecure, helpless or bewildered” (226). From this perspective, Furbys’ physical design plays a role in encouraging nurturance. Such design decisions are reinforced by marketing strategies that encourage Furbys to be viewed in a particular way. As a marketing tool, Harris (1992) argues that: cuteness has become essential in the marketplace in that advertisers have learned that consumers will “adopt” products that create, often in their packaging alone, an aura of motherlessness, ostracism, and melancholy, the silent desperation of the lost puppy dog clamoring to be befriended - namely, to be bought. (179) Positioning Furbys as friendly was also important to encouraging a positive bond with a caregiver. The history, or back story, that Furbys were given in the instruction manual was designed to convey their kind, non-threatening nature. Although alive and unpredictable, it was crucial that Furbys were not frightening. As imaginary living creatures, the origin of Furbys required explaining: “some had suggested positioning Furby as an alien, but that seemed too foreign and frightening for little girls. By May, the thinking was that Furbies live in the clouds – more angelic, less threatening” (Kirsner). In creating this story, Furby’s producers both endeared the object to consumers by making it seem friendly and inquisitive, and avoided associations to its mass-produced, factory origins. Monstrous and Cute Furbys Across fan fiction, academic texts, and media coverage there is a tendency to describe what Furbys look like by stringing together several animals and objects. Furbys have been referred to as a “mechanized ball of synthetic hair that is part penguin, part owl and part kitten” (Steinberg), a “cross between a hamster and a bird…” (Lawson & Chesney 34), and “ “owl-like in appearance, with large bat-like ears and two large white eyes with small, reddish-pink pupils” (ChaosInsanity), to highlight only a few. The ambiguous appearance of electronic companions is often a strategic decision made by the designer to avoid biases towards specific animals or forms, making the companion easier to accept as “real” or “alive” (Shibata 1753). Furbys are arguably evidence of this strategy and appear to be deliberately unfamiliar. However, the assemblage, and exaggeration, of parts that describes Furbys also conjures much older associations: the world of monsters in gothic literature. Notice the similarities between the above attempts to describe what Furbys looks like, and a historical description of monsters: early monsters are frequently constructed out of ill-assorted parts, like the griffin, with the head and wings of an eagle combined with the body and paws of a lion. Alternatively, they are incomplete, lacking essential parts, or, like the mythological hydra with its many heads, grotesquely excessive. (Punter & Byron 263) Cohen (6) argues that, metaphorically, because of their strange visual assembly, monsters are displaced beings “whose externally incoherent bodies resist attempts to include them in any systematic structuration. And so the monster is dangerous, a form suspended between forms that threatens to smash distinctions.” Therefore, to call something a monster is also to call it confusing and unfamiliar. Notice in the following fan fiction example how comparing Furby to an owl makes it strange, and there seems to be uncertainty around what Furbys are, and where they fit in the natural order: The first thing Heero noticed was that a 'Furby' appeared to be a childes toy, shaped to resemble a mutated owl. With fur instead of feathers, no wings, two large ears and comical cat paws set at the bottom of its pudding like form. Its face was devoid of fuzz with a yellow plastic beak and too large eyes that gave it the appearance of it being addicted to speed [sic]. (Kontradiction) Here is a character unfamiliar with Furbys, describing its appearance by relating it to animal parts. Whether Furbys are cute or monstrous is contentious, particularly in fan fictions where they have been given additional capabilities like working limbs and extra appendages that make them less helpless. Furbys’ lack, or diminution of parts, and exaggeration of others, fits the description of cuteness, as well as their sole reliance on caregivers to be fed, entertained, and transported. If viewed as animals, Furbys appear physically limited. Kinsella (1995) finds that a sense of disability is important to the cute aesthetic: stubby arms, no fingers, no mouths, huge heads, massive eyes – which can hide no private thoughts from the viewer – nothing between their legs, pot bellies, swollen legs or pigeon feet – if they have feet at all. Cute things can’t walk, can’t talk, can’t in fact do anything at all for themselves because they are physically handicapped. (236) Exploring the line between cute and monstrous, Brzozowska-Brywczynska argues that it is this sense of physical disability that distinguishes the two similar aesthetics. “It is the disempowering feeling of pity and sympathy […] that deprives a monster of his monstrosity” (218). The descriptions of Furbys in fan fiction suggest that they transition between the two, contingent on how they are received by certain characters, and the abilities they are given by the author. In some cases it is the overwhelming threat the Furby poses that extinguishes feelings of care. In the following two excerpts that the revealing of threatening behaviour shifts the perception of Furby from cute to monstrous in ‘When Furbies Attack’ (Kellyofthemidnightdawn): “These guys are so cute,” she moved the Furby so that it was within inches of Elliot's face and positioned it so that what were apparently the Furby's lips came into contact with his cheek “See,” she smiled widely “He likes you.” […] Olivia's breath caught in her throat as she found herself backing up towards the door. She kept her eyes on the little yellow monster in front of her as her hand slowly reached for the door knob. This was just too freaky, she wanted away from this thing. The Furby that was originally called cute becomes a monster when it violently threatens the protagonist, Olivia. The shifting of Furbys between cute and monstrous is a topic of argument in ‘InuYasha vs the Demon Furbie’ (Lioness of Dreams). The character Kagome attempts to explain a Furby to Inuyasha, who views the object as a demon: That is a toy called a Furbie. It's a thing we humans call “CUTE”. See, it talks and says cute things and we give it hugs! (Lioness of Dreams) A recurrent theme in the Inuyasha (Takahashi) anime is the generational divide between Kagome and Inuyasha. Set in feudal-era Japan, Kagome is transported there from modern-day Tokyo after falling into a well. The above line of dialogue reinforces the relative newness, and cultural specificity, of cute aesthetics, which according to Kinsella (1995 220) became increasingly popular throughout the 1980s and 90s. In Inuyasha’s world, where demons and monsters are a fixture of everyday life, the Furby appearance shifts from cute to monstrous. Furbys as GremlinsDuring the height of the original 1998 Furby’s public exposure and popularity, several news articles referred to Furby as “the five-inch gremlin” (Steinberg) and “a furry, gremlin-looking creature” (Del Vecchio 88). More recently, in a review of the 2012 Furby release, one commenter exclaimed: “These things actually look scary! Like blue gremlins!” (KillaRizzay). Following the release of the original Furbys, Hasbro collaborated with the film’s merchandising team to release Interactive ‘Gizmo’ Furbys (image 2). Image 2: Hasbro 1999 Interactive Gizmo (photo credit: Author) Furbys’ likeness to gremlins offers another perspective on the tension between cute and monstrous aesthetics that is contingent on the creature’s behaviour. The connection between Furbys and gremlins embodies a sense of mistrust, because the film Gremlins focuses on the monsters that dwell within the seemingly harmless and endearing mogwai/gremlin creatures. Catastrophic events unfold after they are cared for improperly. Gremlins, and by association Furbys, may appear cute or harmless, but this story tells that there is something darker beneath the surface. The creatures in Gremlins are introduced as mogwai, and in Chinese folklore the mogwai or mogui is a demon (Zhang, 1999). The pop culture gremlin embodied in the film, then, is cute and demonic, depending on how it is treated. Like a gremlin, a Furby’s personality is supposed to be a reflection of the care it receives. Transformation is a common theme of Gremlins and also Furby, where it is central to the sense of “aliveness” the product works to create. Furbys become “wiser” as time goes on, transitioning through “life stages” as they “learn” about their surroundings. As we learn from their origin story, Furbys jumped from their home in the clouds in order to see and explore the world firsthand (Tiger Electronics 2). Because Furbys are susceptible to their environment, they come with rules on how they must be cared for, and the consequences if this is ignored. Without attention and “food”, a Furby will become unresponsive and even ill: “If you allow me to get sick, soon I will not want to play and will not respond to anything but feeding” (Tiger Electronics 6). In Gremlins, improper care manifests in an abrupt transition from cute to monstrous: Gizmo’s strokeable fur is transformed into a wet, scaly integument, while the vacant portholes of its eyes (the most important facial feature of the cute thing, giving us free access to its soul and ensuring its total structability, its incapacity to hold back anything in reserve) become diabolical slits hiding a lurking intelligence, just as its dainty paws metamorphose into talons and its pretty puckered lips into enormous Cheshire grimaces with full sets of sharp incisors. (Harris 185–186) In the Naruto (Kishimoto) fan fiction ‘Orochimaru's World Famous New Year's Eve Party’ (dead drifter), while there is no explicit mention of Gremlins, the Furby undergoes the physical transformation that appears in the films. The Furby, named Sasuke, presumably after the Naruto antagonist Sasuke, and hinting at its untrustworthy nature, undergoes a transformation that mimics that of Gremlins: when water is poured on the Furby, boils appear and fall from its back, each growing into another Furby. Also, after feeding the Furby, it lays eggs: Apparently, it's not a good idea to feed Furbies chips. Why? Because they make weird cocoon eggs and transform into… something. (ch. 5) This sequence of events follows the Gremlins movie structure, in which cute and furry Gizmo, after being exposed to water and fed after midnight, “begins to reproduce, laying eggs that enter a larval stage in repulsive cocoons covered in viscous membranes” (Harris 185). Harris also reminds that the appearance of gremlins comes with understandings of how they should be treated: Whereas cute things have clean, sensuous surfaces that remain intact and unpenetrated […] the anti-cute Gremlins are constantly being squished and disembowelled, their entrails spilling out into the open, as they explode in microwaves and run through paper shredders and blenders. (Harris 186) The Furbys in ‘Orochimaru's World Famous New Year's Eve Party’ meet a similar end: Kuro Furby whined as his brain was smashed in. One of its eyes popped out and rolled across the floor. (dead drifter ch. 6) A horde of mischievous Furbys are violently dispatched, including the original Furby that was lovingly cared for. Conclusion This paper has explored examples from online culture in which different cultural references clash and merge to explore artefacts such as Furby, and the complexities of design, such as the use of ambiguously mammalian, and cute, aesthetics in an effort to encourage positive attachment. Fan fiction, as a subversive practice, offers valuable critiques of Furby that are imaginative and speculative, providing creative responses to experiences with Furbys, but also opening up potential for what electronic companions could become. In particular, the use of narrative demonstrates that cuteness is an unstable aesthetic that is culturally contingent and very much tied to behaviour. As above examples demonstrate, Furbys can move between cute, friendly, helpless, threatening, monstrous, and strange in one story. Cute Furbys became monstrous when they were described as an assemblage of disparate parts, made physically capable and aggressive, and affected by their environment or external stimulus. Cultural associations, such as gremlins, also influence how an electronic animal is received and treated, often troubling the visions of designers and marketers who seek to present friendly, nonthreatening, and accommodating companions. These diverse readings are valuable in understanding how companionable technologies are received, especially if they continue to be developed and made commercially available, and if cuteness is to be used as means of encouraging positive attachment. References Breazeal, Cynthia. Designing Sociable Robots. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002. Brzozowska-Brywczynska, Maja. "Monstrous/Cute: Notes on the Ambivalent Nature of Cuteness." Monsters and the Monstrous: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil. Ed. Niall Scott. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi. 2007. 213 - 28. 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