Artykuły w czasopismach na temat „Dynamic agent ordering”

This study examines the complex and evolutionary nature of supply network configuration. Taking a bottom-up approach, we examine how supply network configuration at the macro-level evolves as a result of individual retailers' dynamic choice of procurement strategies at the micro-level. Employing agent-based modeling, we focus on the effects of switch cost and distributors' ordering policy on the evolution of supply network configuration. Our results show that (1) supply networks tend to evolve into a set of separate supply chains when switch cost is high and into an integrated network when switch cost is low, (2) a responsive ordering policy adopted by distributors is more conducive to the integrated network configuration than a non-responsive policy, and (3) lack of coordination among retailers in their dynamic choice of procurement strategies hurts not only the overall system performance, but also retailers themselves. More importantly, our study demonstrates the capabilities of agent-based modeling as a methodology for researching complex supply network issues.

Temporal Jump Point Search (JPST) is a recently introduced algorithm for grid-optimal pathfinding among dynamic temporal obstacles. In this work we consider JPST as a low-level planner in Multi-Agent Path Finding (MAPF). We investigate how the canonical ordering of JPST can negatively impact MAPF performance and we consider several strategies which allow us to overcome these limitations. Experiments show our new CBS/JPST approach can substantially improve on CBS/SIPP, a contemporary and leading method from the area.

Supply chain collaboration management is a systematic, integrated and agile advanced management mode, which helps to improve the competitiveness of enterprises and the entire supply chain. In order to realise the synergy of supply chain, the most important is to realise the dynamic synergy of information. Here we proposed a strategy to integrate system dynamics and multi-agent system modelling methods. Based on the strategy of supply chain information sharing and coordination, a two-level aggregation hybrid model was designed and established. Through the computer simulation analysis of the two modes before and after information collaboration, it is found that under the information collaboration mode, the change trend of order or inventory of suppliers and manufacturers always closely matches that of retailers. After the implementation of supply chain information coordination, ordering and inventory can be reasonably planned and matched, and problems such as over-stocking or short-term failure to meet order demands caused by poor information communication will no longer occur, which can greatly reduce the “bullwhip effect”.

Multi-Agent Plan Recognition (MAPR) seeks to identify the dynamic team structures and team behaviors from the observations of the activity-sequences of a set of intelligent agents, based on a library of known team-activities (plan library). It has important applications in analyzing data from automated monitoring, surveillance, and intelligence analysis in general. In this paper, we formalize MAPR using a basic model that explicates the cost of abduction in single agent plan recognition by "flattening" or decompressing the (usually compact, hierarchical) plan library. We show that single-agent plan recognition with a decompressed library can be solved in time polynomial in the input size, while it is known that with a compressed (by partial ordering constraints) library it is NP-complete. This leads to an important insight: that although the compactness of the plan library plays an important role in the hardness of single-agent plan recognition (as recognized in the existing literature), that is not the case with multiple agents. We show, for the first time, that MAPR is NP-complete even when the (multi-agent) plan library is fully decompressed. As with previous solution approaches, we break the problem into two stages: hypothesis generation and hypothesis search. We show that Knuth's ``Algorithm X'' (with the efficient ``dancing links'' representation) is particularly suited for our model, and can be adapted to perform a branch and bound search for the second stage, in this model. We show empirically that this new approach leads to significant pruning of the hypothesis space in MAPR.

Different materials, based on an L-rich polylactide (PLA) as matrix, acetyl tri-n-butyl citrate (ATBC) as plasticizer, and mesoporous Mobile Crystalline Material.41 (MCM-41) particles as nucleating agent, were attained by melt extrusion. These materials are constituted by (a) binary blends of PLA and ATBC with different contents of the latest; (b) a dual compound of PLA and a given amount of MCM-41 silica (5 wt.%); and (c) ternary composites that include PLA, ATBC at several compositions and mesoporous MCM-41 at 5 wt.%. Influence of the incorporation of the plasticizer and nucleating particles has been comprehensively analyzed on the different phase transitions: glass transition, cold crystallization, melt crystallization and melting processes. Presence of both additives moves down the temperature at which PLA phase transitions take place, while allowing the PLA crystallization from the melt at 10 °C/min in the composites. This tridimensional ordering is not noticeable in the pristine PLA matrix and, accordingly, PLA crystallization rate is considerably increased under dynamic conditions and also after isothermal crystallization from either the melt or the glassy state. An important synergistic effect of dual action of ATBC and MCM-41 has been, therefore, found.

Purpose: To determine the reliability of arterial phase capture and evaluate hypervascular lesion contrast kinetics with a combined view-sharing and parallel imaging dynamic contrast-enhanced acquisition, DIfferential Sub-sampling with Cartesian Ordering (DISCO), in patients with known chronic liver disease. Methods: A retrospective review of 3T MR images from 26 patients with known chronic liver disease referred for hepatocellular carcinoma surveillance or post-treatment follow up was performed. After administration of a gadolinium-based contrast agent, a multiphasic acquisition was obtained in a 28 s breath-hold, from which seven sequential post-contrast image volumes were reconstructed. Results: The late arterial phase was successfully captured in all cases (26/26, 95% CI 87-100%). Images obtained 26 s post-injection had the highest frequency of late arterial phase capture (20/26) and lesion detection (23/26) of any individual post-contrast time; however, the multiphasic data resulted in a significantly higher frequency of late arterial phase capture (26/26, p=0.03) and a higher relative contrast (5.37+/-0.97 versus 7.10+/-0.98, p < 0.01). Conclusion: Multiphasic acquisition with combined view-sharing and parallel imaging reliably captures the late arterial phase and provides sufficient temporal resolution to characterize hepatic lesion contrast kinetics in patients with chronic liver disease while maintaining high spatial resolution.

The scientific discussion about classical and nonclassical nucleation theories has lasted for two decades so far. Recently, multiple nucleation pathways and the occurrence and role of metastable intermediates in crystallization processes have attracted increasing attention, following the discovery of functional phase separation, which is now under investigation in different fields of cellular life sciences, providing interesting and novel aspects for conventional crystallization experiments. In this context, more systematic investigations need to be carried out to extend the current knowledge about nucleation processes. In terms of the data we present, a well-studied model protein, glucose isomerase (GI), was employed first to investigate systematically the early stages of the crystallization process, covering condensing and prenucleation ordering of protein molecules in diverse scenarios, including varying ionic and crowding agent conditions, as well as the application of a pulsed electric field (pEF). The main method used to characterize the early events of nucleation was synchronized polarized and depolarized dynamic light scattering (DLS/DDLS), which is capable of collecting the polarized and depolarized component of scattered light from a sample suspension in parallel, thus monitoring the time-resolved evolution of the condensation and geometrical ordering of proteins at the early stages of nucleation. A diffusion interaction parameter, KD, of GI under varying salt conditions was evaluated to discuss how the proportion of specific and non-specific protein–protein interactions affects the nucleation process. The effect of mesoscopic ordered clusters (MOCs) on protein crystallization was explored further by adding different ratios of MOCs induced by a pEF to fresh GI droplets in solution with different PEG concentrations. To emphasize and complement the data and results obtained with GI, a recombinant pyridoxal 5-phosphate (vitamin B6) synthase (Pdx) complex of Staphylococcus aureus assembled from twelve monomers of Pdx1 and twelve monomers of Pdx2 was employed to validate the ability of the pEF influencing the nucleation of complex macromolecules and the effect of MOCs on adjusting the crystallization pathway. In summary, our data revealed multiple nucleation pathways by tuning the proportion of specific and non-specific protein interactions, or by utilizing a pEF which turned out to be efficient to accelerate the nucleation process. Finally, a novel and reproducible experimental strategy, which can adjust and facilitate a crystallization process by pEF-induced MOCs, was summarized and reported for the first time.

The goal of adaptive game AI is to enhance computer-controlled game-playing agents with (1) the ability to self-correct mistakes, and (2) creativity in responding to new situations. Dynamic scripting is a reinforcement learning technique that realises fast and reliable online adaptation of game AI. It employs knowledge bases which contain rules that can be included in game scripts. To be successful, dynamic scripting requires a mechanism to order the rules that are selected for scripts. So far, rule ordering was achieved by a manually-tuned priority value for each rule. In the present research, we propose three mechanisms to order rules automatically for dynamic scripting. We performed experiments in which we let dynamic scripting, using each of the three mechanisms, play against manually-designed tactics. Our results show that dynamic scripting with automatic rule ordering generates game AI that is at least as effective as dynamic scripting with manually-tuned priority values. Moreover, it has the ability to generate novel game AI with significantly increased effectiveness. The costs are a slight decrease in learning efficiency. So, we may conclude that automatic rule ordering is a valuable enhancement for dynamic scripting.

Most biological neurons exhibit stochastic and spiking action potentials. However, the benefits of stochastic spikes versus continuous signals other than noise tolerance and energy efficiency remain largely unknown. In this study, we provide an insight into the potential roles of stochastic spikes, which may be beneficial for producing on-site adaptability in biological sensorimotor agents. We developed a platform that enables parametric modulation of the stochastic and discontinuous output of a stochastically spiking neural network (sSNN) to the rate-coded smooth output. This platform was applied to a complex musculoskeletal–neural system of a bipedal walker, and we demonstrated how stochastic spikes may help improve on-site adaptability of a bipedal walker to slippery surfaces or perturbation of random external forces. We further applied our sSNN platform to more general and simple sensorimotor agents and demonstrated four basic functions provided by an sSNN: 1) synchronization to a natural frequency, 2) amplification of the resonant motion in a natural frequency, 3) basin enlargement of the behavioral goal state, and 4) rapid complexity reduction and regular motion pattern formation. We propose that the benefits of sSNNs are not limited to musculoskeletal dynamics. Indeed, a wide range of the stability and adaptability of biological systems may arise from stochastic spiking dynamics.

In the context of robotics and game AI, grid-based Distance Maps (DMs) are often used to fulfill collision checks by providing each traversable cell maximal clearance to its closest obstacle. A key challenge for DMs’ application is how to improve the efficiency of updating the distance values when cell states are changed (i.e., changes caused by newly inserted or removed obstacles). To this end, this paper presents a novel algorithm to speed up the construction of DMs on planar, eight-connected grids. The novelty of our algorithm, Canonical Ordering Dynamic Brushfire (CODB), lies in two aspects: firstly, it only updates those cells which are affected by the changes; secondly, it employs the strategy of Canonical Ordering from the fast path planning community to guide the direction of the update; therefore, the construction requires much fewer cell visits and less computation costs compared to previous algorithms. Furthermore, we propose algorithms to compute DM-based subgoal graphs. Such a spatial representation can be used to provide high-level, collision-free roadmaps for agents with certain safety radius to engage fast and rational path planning tasks. We present our algorithm both intuitively and through pseudocode, compare it to competing algorithms in simulated scenarios, and demonstrate its usefulness for real-time path planning tasks.

The aim of this paper is to contribute to Jung's later work, with a particular focus on the numerical archetypes viewed from an investor's perspective. It attempts to achieve this via a three-pronged approach. First, placing complex psychology in the framework of complexity theory allows a robust acknowledgement and treatment of ‘elusive’ macroscopic properties, i.e. archetypal dynamics, involved in the ordering of a mind as a complex adaptive system. Second, modern insights in number sense (the direct intuition of what numbers mean) provide neuroscientific support for numerical archetypes and clarify their primacy. Third, this paper points to the empirical relevance of numerical archetypes in price discovery, the self-organizing principle of the capital markets (which allocate resources in modern society). The resulting proposition is that the (collective) mind's unconscious and conscious forces can be considered as ‘intelligent’ agents. The competition between these two domains provides the necessary condition to endogenously generate innovative outcomes, the essential capability of complex adaptive systems. According to this view producing such adaptive novelty is achieved in the form of intuitive insights and imagination, which result in a vast array of symbols, e.g. prices in the case of the market's mind.

This introduction provides an overview for the following collection of articles that engage with, and aim to extend, recent scholarship emphasising space as a category of analysis in peace and conflict studies. Attempts to ‘spatialise’ this field of enquiry have emphasised the ways actors and ideas travel and transform across scale (from the personal to the local, regional and global) and how agents, actors and identities constitute, and are constituted by, space and place in dynamics of conflict and peace. Attention to space has increased appreciation of the complex nature of nature of war- and peace-‘scapes’, and reflects upon space as material and symbolic, given meaning through peoples’ embodied activity and interactions. The articles in this issue engage with the foundations of the spatial turn and build upon innovations in spatial analysis of peace and conflict by focussing on the idea of ‘emplacement’ and emplaced security as critical to peacebuilding efforts and processes of conflict transition. To do so, we consider place in a relational sense, focussing on attachment, affective connection and narratives of place-identity as these are connected with conflict management, security, governance and political ordering.

AbstractThe research analyses overtourism in a fast-changing destination on the Arabian Peninsula with its social ‘ordering’, conceptualized in local community perceptions, local memories and representations. The souq, located opposite the cruise terminal in Muscat, is the oldest marketplace in Oman and one of the top tourist destinations. The construction of a new USD 2 billion Waterfront Development facing the souq will start by the end of 2019. How does the local, multi-ethnic community consisting of sellers, business owners, tour guides, residents and government officials experience the spatial and social changes? How authentic is the souq for them? Cultural brokers like shop vendors, business-owners and tour guides are seen as local agents. Their perspectives are analyzed within a capitalist, neoliberal development, reinforced since the arrival of mega-cruise tourism in the Sultanate of Oman in 2004. The research is part of a long-term, qualitative, ethnographic research project conducted between 2012 and 2014 and 2017 and 2019 on cruise tourism development transforming Souq Muttrah into a ‘hybrid space’. Results indicate that mega-cruise tourism has created signs of overtourism, operationalized in overcrowding along the main streets, a monoculture of shops, unethical guiding and selling practices transforming the souq into a hybrid space and a staged culture. Interviewees felt being part of a dynamic, cultural and historical process or legacy in Souq Muttrah. To maximize benefits and to increase their quality of life, it is recommended to introduce regulatory, economic and physical measures while including all stakeholders of the local community in cruise tourism planning.

Introduction: AML is an aggressive cancer that develops from the sequential accumulation and clonal expansion of somatic mutations in hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells. Recent next-generation sequencing (NGS) studies of AML have correlated mutations with clinical outcomes and response to targeted therapies. Additionally, emerging reports have suggested that increased clonal heterogeneity and mutation burden tend to correlate with worse survival outcomes. However, due to previous cohort sizes, the architecture of clonal evolution and variant allele frequency (VAF) of recurrent mutations have yet to be robustly correlated with response to therapy or with more granular risk stratification. To address previous limitations, we combined available datasets of sequenced AML to model features of clonality and determine their correlations with clinical outcomes and drug sensitivity. Methods: A systematic literature review was performed to identify cohorts of clinically annotated and genetically profiled adult AML. Studies were included if: (i) their sequencing panel targeted at least 30 of the most commonly mutated genes, (ii) censored overall survival data was reported, and (iii) data were publicly available. An additional cohort of patients profiled at Stanford was also included. Leveraging statistical learning methods and robust clonal modeling algorithms (PyClone and ClonEvol), we performed a meta-analysis of the clonal architecture of mutations, their temporal relationships, sensitivity to drugs, and correlation with outcomes in AML. Results: A total of 12 studies were aggregated into a uniformly annotated database comprising 2,987 AML patient samples profiled with an array of DNA sequencing modalities (2,884 with VAFs) and ex vivo drug screening results (nsamples = 562; ndrugs = 122); survival outcomes were available for 2,606 patients. To investigate broad features of leukemia evolution, we used clonal modeling algorithms to infer clonal architecture. Interestingly, patients exhibiting linear evolution (sequential mutations in the same clone) displayed worse outcomes compared to those with branched architecture (distinct subclonal populations). Additionally, mutational burden and clonal heterogeneity only stratified patients with branched structure. These results motivated us to understand how the temporal acquisition of mutations might further stratify outcomes. Using dynamic VAF thresholds, we identified novel high-risk patient populations for 15 recurrently mutated genes. Greater VAF was associated with statistically significant improved survival in genotypes such as GATA2mut and WT1mut and with worse outcomes for patients with NRAS and NF1 mutations. Next, we leveraged VAFs to infer the temporal ordering of individual mutations and functional mutation categories. Patients where NRAS mutations occurred before GATA2 mutations showed a significant correlation with worse outcomes. We also observed that patients in which (i) DNA methylation mutations occurred before those in tumor suppressors and (ii) splicing factor mutations occurred before RTK/RAS signaling components showed significantly shortened overall survival. These results indicate that patients with the same genotype can be stratified by the timing of mutations in the clonal evolution of their leukemia. Finally, we used linear regression between drug sensitivity and VAF to identify several mutations which predict drug sensitivity exclusively in a VAF-dependent manner. Increased WT1 VAF correlated with sensitivity to ABT-737 and elevated FLT3-TKD VAF predicted sensitivity to cabozantinib, among other clinically notable drug-gene relationships. These results suggest potential biomarkers for clinical response to emerging targeted agents. Conclusions: We show that VAF can identify novel high-risk patient populations at the individual mutation level (e.g. BCOR and NF1) and can also be leveraged to stratify outcomes based on inferring the temporal ordering of mutations (e.g. NRAS and GATA2). Our observation that patients with leukemias exhibiting branched evolution showed improved survival compared to linear evolution was also striking and warrants further experimental and clinical validation. Incorporating these results with our findings of drug sensitivity validate the clinical utility of integrating clonal analysis into the molecular evaluation and treatment of AML. Disclosures Majeti: Zenshine Pharmaceuticals: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Kodikaz Therapeutic Solutions Inc.: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Stanford University: Patents & Royalties: pending patent application on CD93 CAR ; Coherus BioSciences: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; BeyondSpring Pharmaceuticals: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Forty-Seven Inc.: Divested equity in a private or publicly-traded company in the past 24 months; Gilead Sciences, Inc.: Patents & Royalties: inventor on patents related to CD47 cancer immunotherapy; CircBio Inc.: Research Funding.

O presente artigo tem como objetivo analisar o processo de metropolização goiana tendo em vista os fatores determinantes das políticas nacionais, estaduais e municipais decisivos no ordenamento territorial da metrópole. Analisado a partir da escala intraurbana o trabalho busca uma interpretação geográfica sobre o espaço urbano levando em conta a contiguidade territorial da Região Metropolitana de Goiânia (RMG). As contradições do espaço metropolitano são explicadas em parte pela ação dos atores modeladores do espaço urbano, principalmente o Estado e por outra através dos atores imobiliários, que reproduzem a dinâmica do capital segregando e ao mesmo tempo reestruturando os espaços da metrópole. A metodologia está amparada pela revisão bibliográfica e análise documental dos parâmetros jurídicos nacionais, estaduais e municipais, da literatura relacionada à temática urbana e de dados levantados pelos órgãos como o Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE), a Secretaria de Planejamento do Estado de Goiás, além de estudos de caso que nos permitiram construir uma narrativa que visasse contemplar a dinâmica territorial da metrópole. Palavras-chave: metropolização; periferização; Região Metropolitana de Goiânia. ABSTRACT This article aims to analyze the process of Goiás metropolisation in view of the determinant factors of national, state and local politics decisive in the territorial ordering of the metropolis. Analyzed from the intra-urban scale this job search a geographical interpretation of urban space considering the territorial contiguity of the Região Metropolitana de Goiânia (RMG). The contradictions of metropolitan space are explained in part by the action of the actors who models the urban space, especially the state, and by estate agents who reproduces the dynamics of capital, at the same time segregating and restructuring the spaces of the Metropolitan Area of Goiânia. The methodology is supported by the literature review and document analysis of national, regional and local legal standards, as well as the literature related to urban themes and the data collected by agencies such as Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE) and Secretaria de Planejamento do Estado de Goiás, also case studies that allowed to construct a narrative that aims the territorial dynamics of the metropolis. Keywords: metropolization; periphery; the Metropolitan Area of Goiânia. RESUMEN En este artículo se pretende analizar el proceso de la metrópolis de Goiás, en vista de los determinantes de la nacional, estatal y local decisivo en ordenamiento territorial de la metrópoli. Analizados desde la escala intraurbana la búsqueda de empleo en una interpretación geográfica del espacio urbano, teniendo en cuenta la contigüidad territorial la zona metropolitana de Goiânia. Las contradicciones del espacio metropolitano se explica en parte por la acción del modelado de los actores del espacio urbano, especialmente para los actores estatales y de otro tipo a través de la finca, que reproducen la dinámica del capital y segregar al mismo tiempo la reestructuración de los espacios de la metrópoli. La metodología se apoya en la revisión de la literatura y el análisis de la documentacion, de la literatura, de las normas jurídicas nacionales, estatales y locales relacionadas con temas urbanos y los datos recogidos por organismos como el Instituto Brasileño de Geografía y Estadística (IBGE), el Secretario de Estado de Planificación Goiás, y estudios de casos que nos han permitido construir un relato que tiene como objetivo contemplar las dinámicas territoriales de la metrópoli. Palabras clave: metrópolis; periferia; el zona metropolitana de Goiânia. DOI: 10.5654/actageo2013.0715.0007

На примере реальной ситуации, однажды разыгравшейся между известным художником и теоретиком искусства Иоханессом Иттеном и его учениками на одном из уроков учебного курса (форкурса) в Баухаусе, в Высшей школе строительства и художественного конструирования, существовавшей в Германии в период с 1919 по 1933 год, выявляется оптическая двойственность визуального поля натюрморта. Задача исследования заключается в прояснении природы двух различных концептов вúдения – изобразительного и живо-писного. Методологическая основа исследования задана философией языка, аналитикой визуальных практик, философией действия, практической философией с элементами кантианской эстетики. В исследовании показано, что изображение как схематизирующий способ репрезентации выполняет роль инструмента вúдения возможных, а не реальных объектов. Напротив, в опыте живо-писания сами действия становятся источником вúдения. В области визуальных практик оно позволяет сместить аналитический приоритет с языковых структур как универсального способа упорядочивания элементов изображения на мир непосредственных практических действий художников, позволяющих им выходить за пределы привычных созерцательных способов репрезентации. В результате анализа выявлены характеристики и отличия изобразительного и живо-писного концептов как двух различных визуальных модусов современной художественной оптики. Сформулированы выводы о роли практического ресурса в реконструкции процесса вúдения как «того, что есть», а не «того, что, возможно, есть». В области визуальных практик важным объектом исследования становится их флюидность, природа которой дает о себе знать в различных живописных аспектах, таких как пластичность, изменчивость, действие, реакция, намерение, состояние, в противовес чисто изобразительным аспектам, таким как созерцание, схема, техника и наблюдение. Процесс живо-писного вúдения напрямую связан с подвижностью той среды, сквозь которую проходит наш взгляд, поэтому особое значение здесь обретает качество самого движения, берущее на себя роль знака происходящих в среде изменений. Соответственно, концепт живо-писания есть чистое намерение, то есть само это действие, тогда как концепт изобразительности есть, скорее, готовый инструмент – схема, для которой наибольшую ценность представляют техника и точность исполнения. Эмоциональная структурированность визуального поля натюрморта не сводится к простым механическим действиям агентов (как это было показано в рисунках учеников Иттена), а проявляет себя как неоднородная динамическая совокупность их живых реакций, способных образовывать не строгие правила репрезентации предметов натюрморта, а тенденции чувственности самих художников. Акцент на практической составляющей визуальности дает интересный материал для междисциплинарных исследований, помогая сконцентрироваться на самом процессе формирования различных типов и форм зримости. This article analyzes a real situation that once happened with the famous artist and art theorist Johannes Itten and his students at one of the classes of his preparatory course (Vorkurs) at the Bauhaus, a school of design, architecture, and applied arts that operated in Germany from 1919 to 1933. The situation reveals the optical duality of the visual field of the still life. The aim of the study is to clarify the nature of two different concepts of vision – image-depiction and lively-depiction. The methodological basis of the research is set by the philosophy of language, the analytics of visual practices, the philosophy of action, practical philosophy with elements of Kantian aesthetics. The study shows that the image as a schematizing way of representation plays the role of a tool for seeing possible rather than real objects. On the contrary, in the lively-depiction experience, actions themselves become the source of vision. In the field of visual practices, it shifts the analytical priority from linguistic structures (as a universal way of ordering image elements) to the world of direct practical actions of artists, allowing them to go beyond the usual contemplative ways of representation. As a result of the study, the author revealed the characteristics and differences between the image-depiction and lively-depiction concepts as two different visual modes of modern artistic optics. Conclusions are formulated about the role of a practical resource in the reconstruction of vision as “what is”, and not “what may be”. In the field of visual practices, the concepts’ fluidity becomes an important object of study; its nature shows in various lively-depiction aspects, such as plasticity, variability, action, reaction, intention, state, as opposed to purely image-depiction aspects, such as contemplation, scheme, technique and observation. The process of lively-depiction vision is directly related to the mobility of the environment through which our eyes pass; therefore, the quality of the movement itself acquires special significance here, taking on the role of a sign of the changes taking place in the environment. Accordingly, lively-depiction is pure intention, or action itself, while image-depiction is rather a ready-made tool or a scheme for which the technique and accuracy of execution are of the greatest value. The emotional structuring of the visual field of a still life is not reduced to simple mechanical actions of agents (as was shown in the drawings of Itten’s students) but manifests itself as a heterogeneous dynamic set of their living reactions that can form tendencies of artists’ sensuality rather than strict rules for representing still life objects. The emphasis on the practical component of visuality provides interesting material for interdisciplinary research, helping to focus on the very process of formation of various types and forms of visibility.

Central within the discourses that have surrounded the commercial internet during its emergence has been an underlying promise of disorder. The claims for consumer empowerment with which e-commerce was promoted and discussed within industry and academic literature (Flamberg; Gates; Horton; Levine et al. for instance), coupled with recurring claims that the emergence of e-commerce was as profound a shift as that occasioned by the Industrial Revolution (Dancer; Sullivan; Lynch for instance), established an underlying sense of chaotic upheaval – a clear and present danger to the established order. And on the surface it would appear as if the commercial internet does serve as a challenge to established authority. User interfaces function by offering a degree of autonomy and informal control to the user. However, the infrastructure supporting e-commerce is multi-layered. It is here that the friendly interface cedes to a vast data structure: an ordered and ordering database. Using an August 2002 sample of the corporate portal ninemsn extensively analysed as part of a broader PhD project, this paper explores the tension between front end disorder and back end order. Its goal is to indicate how the surface forms of this site are superimposed on a machinery which orders, or perhaps disciplines, consumer activity. The ninemsn Interface The ninemsn website is typified by a dominance of written text over graphic images. It is constituted primarily by complex noun phrases (the most commonly occurring utterance type) followed by imperative formations. Less often used are statements and interrogatives. The preponderance of noun phrases is readily explained by the metafunction of these utterances as hypertext anchors. Content analyses conducted by Haas and Grams indicate a typical use of noun phrases as anchor text on websites. But it is the fact that all of the phrase types are used on the ninemsn website as hypertext which renders the distinction between utterance types redundant. Despite their different surface forms, the status of the utterances as hypertext anchors makes them similar in terms of function. All of the utterances become actionable, open to activation and engagement by the consumer, thereby challenging their function as direct commands or statements. By inviting the act of linking, hypertext presupposes that there is ‘something else’ which lies behind those pieces of text. They are, therefore, never merely utterances which can be interpreted solely at their surface but are marked by the immanent existence of what Chomsky calls deep structure, layers of significance beyond that revealed in the surface form. None of the linguistic features previously identified is therefore a simple utterance. Each has an alternative form and function by virtue of the fact that it is constituted within a logic of hypertext. On ninemsn all the utterances have the performative (illocutionary) force (Austin) of offers. The surface forms can be read as the result of a transformation (Chomsky) of this underlying linguistic structure. The base form best associated with a commercial institution operating within a hypertextual medium is the interrogative “would you like …?” Consequently, the noun phrase “Bust-shaping bodysuit” (ninemsn Home Page 12 Aug 2002) is a transformation of the underlying interrogative “Would you like a bust-shaping bodysuit?”, or the humble statement “I [ninemsn] offer you [the user] a bust-shaping bodysuit”. But what is significant is that for the site to make sense and serve as something other than a random collection of statements and imperatives, this underlying form must be recovered by the user. And it would be a naïve user indeed who did not recognise the polite offers of hypertext which underpin the commands appearing at the surface of the ninemsn website. These transformative effects mitigate the power, or control, being obviously exerted by the company over the user’s experience of ninemsn. Firstly they do this by transforming commands and bold declaratives into polite inquiries. But the very nature of hypertext alone works to this end. As Miles has argued, the illocutionary force of hypertext, in this case the act of offering, is contained within the relationship between anchor text and the destination site. “It is not in the nodes that hypertext ‘happens’, but in the causal connections and pathways made between nodes” (Miles “Cinematic Paradigms” n.pag.). Thus, for Miles, what becomes important in a hypertextual document is the ‘event of connection’ (“Hypertext Structure” n.pag.) – an act performed by the user. Thus, hypertext and the performative power it extends to the statements on the ninemsn website, make the user the key active agent in the determination of meaning on the site rather than the company. By denying control of the site, both in the form of user activated hypertext and through the underlying invitational nature of its utterances, ninemsn opens itself to random and chaotic interaction. It becomes a site not for the direct and strict ordering of users – neither in the form of direct imperatives nor in the form of control of practice. Rather it is a site for the de-control of user activity. The interactivity enabled by hypertext here becomes a tool for disorder. The ninemsn Database However thus far we have only examined the surface structures of the site, the user-friendly interface of the corporate entity that is ninemsn. Below this lies the infrastructure of the site: the database. ninemsn is a database in two senses. Firstly it is a collection of sites, pages, and links which cohere under the ninemsn brand umbrella. Pages which are marked with the ninemsn brand, and to which links are directly offered from the site, do not constitute the entire World Wide Web. This occurs despite the site’s description as a portal implying that it functions as a window onto the system. At this level, ninemsn can be conceived as a particular ordering through selection and collation of the information system that is the Web. But it is also an active ordering of the activities of the user. By only offering a limited set of links to strategic partners, and offering paid listings foremost in its Web-wide search function, the site delimits the autonomy which it appears to offer at the hypertextual interface. At the level of the database, it becomes an attenuated autonomy, ordered by strategic hyperlinking (Jackson). But ninemsn is also a database of consumers and consumer traffic patterns which are then onsold to advertisers and strategic partners. The site invites users to personalise the interface by entering preferences which effectively expose their consumer behaviour. They are offered memberships which result in extra rewards but involve filling in a proforma listing personal details remarkably similar to the demographic information the site offers advertisers about its consumers. By entering data into the system in these ways – a voluntary act of choice lured by the personalisation options it enables – the consumer becomes ordered. Online consumer activity here becomes organised into a set of pre-ordained fields which constitute that user for the purposes of that transaction (Poster). They become known, not through the self-directed, disorderly conduct of surfing, but through the pre-defined and orderly fields of the marketing database. This effect can be traced further in the commercial Web. By similarly mapping the behaviours of users, cookies and other forms of more passively activated ‘spyware’ also reduce the behaviour of users to pre-constituted fields of value. As the consumer interacts with the system following the polite invitations of hypertext, the system orders this trail into valuable marketing data. Thus, it is the same hypertext which offers the illusion of autonomy at the site interface which enables the increasing surveillance and ordering of consumers at the lower levels of the database. Interactivity as an Ordering Practice Interactivity and its e-commerce companion, the promise of personalisation, here become disciplining practices, seductively drawing the consumer further into the ordering machinery of the site. They encourage the user to submit more and more of their Self – their interests, the trajectory of their logic – to the ordering gaze of the market. Using Virilio’s terms, we can therefore understand interactivity in e-commerce as both an accelerator and a brake on human movement, in this instance the movement of hypertext as the manifestation of individual choice. It is both a technology which ‘empowers’ the user to move in their personally determined disordered fashion, mimicking the radical potential of dynamic bodies, and a delimiting of that potential into the regimented service of commerce. But this is not to argue that consumers necessarily accept this role, nor to imply any (over)- determining role for hypertextual environments. Foucault himself recognises the immanent potential for resistance within any disciplining practice. It is however, to point to the ordered disordering that constitutes the new media environment, particularly in its commercial forms. Like Featherstone on consumer culture we can read interactive media as a site for the ‘controlled de-control’ of emotion. We can see it as a site where disorder is not necessarily the weapon of the revolutionary or the radical, but is also, and simultaneously, in the service of the order it ostensibly challenges. References Austin, J.L. How to Do Things with Words: The William James Lectures Delivered at Harvard University in 1955. 2nd edition. Eds. J.O. Urmson and Marina Sbisa. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975. Chomsky, Noam. Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1965. Dancer, Helen. “Riding the Storm”. The Bulletin 1 Feb 2000: 64-5. Featherstone, Mike. Consumer Culture and Postmodernism. London: Sage, 1991. Flamberg, Danny. “Understanding the Empowered E-Consumer”. iMarketing News 1.9 (19 Nov 1999): 32. Foucault, Michel. The Will to Knowledge: The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1998. Trans. Robert Hurley. Originally published 1976. Gates, Bill, with Nathan Myhrvold and Peter Rinearson. The Road Ahead. Revised edition. London: Penguin Books, 1996. Originally published 1995. Haas, Stephanie W., and Erika S. Grams. “Page and Link Classifications: Connecting Diverse Resources”. Proceedings of the Third ACM Conference on Digital Libraries, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, 1998: 99-107. 2 Oct 2002 http://portal.acm.org>. Haas, Stephanie W., and Erika S. Grams. “Readers, Authors and Page Structure: A Discussion of Four Questions Arising from a Content Analysis of Web Pages.” Journal of the American Society for Information Science 51.2 (2000): 181-92. Horton, Matthew. “The Internet and the Empowered Consumer: From the Scarcity of the Commodity to the Multiplicity of Subjectivities.” Media International Australia 91 (May 1999): 111-23. Jackson, Michele H. “Assessing the Structure of Communication on the World Wide Web”. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 3.1 (Jun 1997). 8 Aug 2002 http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/> Levine, Rick, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls and David Weinberger. The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual. South Yarra: Hardie Grant Books, 2000. Lynch, Adrian. “Revolution Gives Power to Consumers.” The Australian 30 May 2000: IT section 17. Miles, Adrian. “Cinematic Paradigms for Hypertext.” Presented at Digital Arts & Culture conference, Bergen, Norway, 26-28 Nov 1998. 3 Oct 2002 http://cmc.uib.no/dac98/> Miles, Adrian. “Hypertext Structure as the Event of Connection.” Journal of Digital Information 2.3 (2002). Originally presented at ACM Hyperlink 2001 conference in Aarhus, Denmark. 5 Sep 2002 http://jodi.ecs.soton.ac.uk>. Poster, Mark. The Second Media Age. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995. Sullivan, Andrew. “Dotcommo e-Volution”. The Australian 19 Jun 2000: 40. Virilio, Paul. Speed and Politics: Essays on Dromology. New York: Semiotext(e), 1986. Trans. Mark Polizzotti. Originally published 1977. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Jarrett, Kylie. "Ordering Disorder: ninemsn, Hypertext and Databases." M/C Journal 7.6 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0501/07-jarrett.php>. APA Style Jarrett, K. (Jan. 2005) "Ordering Disorder: ninemsn, Hypertext and Databases," M/C Journal, 7(6). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0501/07-jarrett.php>.

The electrical and mechanical properties of carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) composites have a close dependence on the use of modifiers like polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP), as well as on the processing techniques to disperse functional charges such as graphene-related materials into the epoxy base. In the present work, reduced graphene oxide (RGO), prepared by a natural antioxidant agent, astaxanthin, was used as a filler material in the epoxy matrix of the carbon fiber composites. The astaxanthin reduction leads to an increase in the sp2 ordering in RGO; some residual epoxy and C-O groups that enhance the interaction with the epoxy matrix remain after reduction. The effects of RGO and PVP-modified RGO (PVP-RGO) fillers with different contents (0.05, 0.1, and 0.15% wt.) on the electrical conductivity, bending properties, and dynamic mechanical properties of CFRP were investigated. The incorporation of 0.15 wt.% RGO with and without PVP-modification, leads to through-the-thickness (Z-direction testing) conductivity values 7.4 and 9.6 times higher than those of the neat composite, respectively. The conductivity tests indicate that the RGO/epoxy composite behaves as a continuous conductor due to the formation of agglomerates of RGO within the matrix, while at the added contents of the PVP-RGO filler, the composite is below the percolation threshold, then conducting by electron tunneling, due to a better dispersion of the PVP-RGO filler within the epoxy matrix. The dynamic mechanical analysis shows that the glass transition temperature is indicative of the interactions among the filler, the epoxy matrix, and the carbon fiber, that is, the PVP-RGO filler increases the chain mobility due to its higher dispersion in the matrix. While Tg of the neat epoxy/CFRP composite is 92.5°C, a minimum Tg of 88.5°C was achieved with a 0.10 % wt. PVP-RGO filler contents, and a maximum Tg of 94.5°C with a 0.15 % wt. of RGO filler amount. For constant filler content (0.15 wt.%), CFRP composite containing RGO and PVP-modified RGO exhibited 9.73% and 13.87% increase in flexural strength values, respectively, compared to the neat composite. The bending test revealed that PVP modification to RGO is beneficial to improve flexural strength of CFRP composites.

AbstractPlasmonic nanoparticles such as those of gold or silver have been recently investigated as a possible way to improve light absorption in thin film solar cells. Here, a simple method for the preparation of spherical plasmonic gold nanoparticles in the form of a colloidal solution is presented. The nanoparticle diameter is controlled in the range from several nm to tens of nm depending on the synthesis parameters with the size dispersion down to 14 %. The synthesis is based on thermal decomposition and reduction of the chloroauric acid in the presence of a stabilizing capping agent (surfactant) that is very slowly injected into the hot solvent. The surfactant prevents uncontrolled nanoparticle aggregation during the growth process. The nanoparticle size and shape depend on the type of the stabilizing agent. Surfactants with different lengths of the hydrocarbon chains such as Z-octa-9-decenylamine (oleylamine) with AgNO3 and polyvinylpyrrolidone with AgNO3 were used for the steric stabilization. Hydrodynamic diameter of the gold nanoparticles in the colloidal solution was determined by dynamic light scattering while the size of the nanoparticle metallic core was found by small-angle X-ray scattering. The UV-VIS-NIR spectrophotometer measurements revealed a plasmon resonance absorption in the 500–600 nm range. Self-assembled nanoparticle arrays on a silicon substrate were prepared by drop casting followed by spontaneous evaporation of the solvent and by a modified Langmuir-Blodgett deposition. The degree of perfection of the self-assembled arrays was analyzed by scanning electron microscopy and grazing-incidence small-angle X-ray scattering. Homogeneous close-packed hexagonal ordering of the nanoparticles stretching over large areas was evidenced. These results document the viability of the proposed nanoparticle synthesis for the preparation of high-quality plasmonic templates for thin film solar cells with enhanced power conversion efficiency, surface enhanced Raman scattering, and other applications.

AbstractThe viscoelastic behavior of hydrogenated nitrile butadiene rubber (HNBR) was studied over a range of temperatures and shear frequencies. Dynamic mechanical properties were studied and modelled using the generalized Maxwell model and the Williams-Landel-Ferry equation. A fitting algorithm was developed to provide the best agreement between the experimental data and the model results. In addition to dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) was applied. The HNBR structure was characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD). The developed model exhibited an excellent agreement with either isothermal or dynamic experiment data, yet only up to the rubbery plateau, after which a structure ordering occurred. This was explained by the cyano group secondary bonding and consequentially the cross-linking between HNBR chains. A molecular modeling simulation was made to confirm the cross-linking. The effect of peroxide cross-linking agents in a compound resembled the one usually observed in the filler formulated compounds.

Agent-based social simulations are typically described in imperative form. While this facilitates implementation as computer programs, it makes implicit the different assumptions made, both about the functional form and the causal ordering involved. As a solution to the problem, a probabilistic graphical model, Action Network (AN), is proposed in this paper for social simulation. Simulation variables are represented by nodes, and causal links by edges. An Action Table is associated with each node, describing incremental probabilistic actions to be performed in response to fuzzy parental states. AN offers a graphical causal model that captures the dynamics of a social process. Details of the formalism are presented along with illustrative examples. Software that implements the formalism is available at http://actionnetwork.epizy.com .

AbstractA “carpet plot” is a 2-dimensional plot (time vs. voxel) of scaled fMRI voxel intensity values. Low frequency oscillations (LFOs) can be successfully identified from BOLD fMRI and used to study characteristics of neuronal and physiological activity. Here, we evaluate the use of carpet plots paired with a developed slope-detection algorithm as a means to study LFOs in resting state fMRI (rs-fMRI) data with the help of dynamic susceptibility contrast (DSC) MRI data. Carpet plots were constructed by ordering voxels according to signal delay time for each voxel. The slope-detection algorithm was used to identify and calculate propagation times, or “transit times”, of tilted vertical edges across which a sudden signal change was observed. We aim to show that this metric has applications in understanding LFOs in fMRI data, possibly reflecting changes in blood flow speed during the scan, and for evaluating alternative blood-tracking contrast agents such as inhaled CO2. We demonstrate that the propagations of LFOs can be visualized and automatically identified in a carpet plot as tilted lines of sudden intensity change. Resting state carpet plots produce edges with transit times similar to those of DSC carpet plots. Additionally, resting state carpet plots indicate that edge transit times vary at different time points during the scan.

The following essay constitutes a theoretical journey through the landscape of the NAMES Project AIDS Quilt, one narrated from the perspective of those who live on to mourn, to remember. To some critics, my approach might at once appear radical or unorthodox since I focus on how Quilt spectators engage with the artifact and are thereby implicated in the history of the epidemic, rather than on how the dead are made to speak from beyond the grave. My intent is not to invalidate the claims made or the conclusions reached by other critics who have written persuasively about how the Quilt facilitates a voice (both individual and collective) for those who have died of AIDS-related illnesses; indeed, such critics have contributed a wealth of significant knowledge to critical understandings of the pedagogical and political functions of the Quilt. My intent, rather, is to respond to a set of as yet unexplored questions about how the ever-evolving landscape of the AIDS epidemic has altered the nature and purpose of Quilt spectatorship. When the Quilt was created in 1985, “naming names” was an important strategy for political survival, especially given the institutional apathy that silenced and marginalized all who were infected and/or affected by the epidemic. However, over the past sixteen years, apathy has slowly given way to increased attention by medical and media institutions. No longer is memory and reverence enough. Now, we must ask ourselves how the Quilt can continue to be used to combat the emergent obstacles that have sprung up in the wake of apathy and silence. This is not to suggest that remembrance, mourning, and reverence are not still significant responses to the epidemic; we cannot forgot the past, lest we repeat it. But it is to suggest that as we look back, we also must move forward and continue to chart new horizons for how our minds and bodies engage with the Quilt as a social and political space. Throughout this essay, then, my conclusions are at best tentative, offered more as a gesture of hope than as a model for survival. It is my hope that critics can continue to press against social spaces both with caution and determination because those actions matter. We must act with caution because there can be devastating consequences of asserting claims to visibility and location. We must act with determination because there are equally perilous consequences of not doing so. Since its meager beginnings, the NAMES Project AIDS Quilt has undergone exponential changes in size, shape, and scope, but critical responses to the Quilt have remained stagnant with most critics attributing to the Quilt a single meaning and purpose: to revere the dead. Cultural critic Peter S. Hawkins, for instance, argues that "the Quilt . . . is most profoundly about the naming of names" (760), while journalist Jerry Gentry suggests that the Quilt bespeaks "a national and international constructive expression of grief" (550), a grief which most powerfully resonates in the loss of individual lives. While "naming names" is a politically important function of the Quilt, critics who read the artifact as only motivated by memory assume that exhibitions of the artifact facilitate a static model of performance. For such critics, the Quilt represents a mass graveyard--both as a place of interment and as a place in which ideological meanings are circumscribed by the fixity and stillness of reverence. (This reading is partly enabled by the fact that each panel measures the size of a human grave.) Not only does this reading universalize the meaning of the Quilt but also it establishes a monolithic viewing position from which to receive that meaning. Here, I outline an alternative model of reception which is implicit in the design and display of the Quilt. While this model acknowledges reverence as one potential response to the Quilt, it does not foreclose other ways of reading. Rather than facilitating a grave performance, then, the Quilt enables performances within the grave. These performances are constituted in/through a dynamic exchange between speaker and listener, text and context, and work to produce a range of ideological meanings and subject positions. To understand how the Quilt locates its viewers within a particular subject position, it is first necessary to specify the speaker-listener relationship established in displays of the Quilt. This relationship is played out through a series of confessional utterances which, as Michel Foucault explains in The History of Sexuality, Volume 1, imply a dialectic relationship between speaker and listener in which subjectivity is predicated on subjection (61-62). The speaker's desire to confess necessitates the presence of a listener, one not wholly passive since his/her presence incites and enables the will to confess. In this way, both speaker and listener are marked as active/passive agents in an exchange characterized by reciprocity and negotiation. Because speakers and listeners simultaneously serve as subject and object of the confession, the exchange cannot be represented as static (active/passive) or unidirectional (sender-message-receiver). Since many critics already have carefully delineated the processes through which the Quilt directs the address of the panels and constitutes the dead as subjects, here I want to focus on how spectators are constructed as subjects who bear witness. Critics typically posit viewers of the Quilt as unified, coherent, monolithic subjects; yet Foucault's discussion of the confessional exchange assumes a subject-in-process. For me, this process is most accurately characterized as schizophrenic. My use of schizophrenia is tropic rather than diagnostic, in that the term works figuratively to describe subject formation rather than to identify the nature of psychiatric disturbance. Two characteristics (which are derived from the symptomatology of the psychic disorder schizophrenia) define the schizophrenic spectator: one, the loss of "normal" associations; and two, the presence of "auditory hallucinations." The first characteristic of schizophrenic spectators is the loss of "normal" associations. Remi J. Cadoret notes that in schizophrenics, "[t]hought processes appear to lose their normal associations, or usual connecting links, so that the individual is often unable to focus his [sic] thinking upon a particular mental task" (481). For schizophrenics, conventional relational markers (such as chronology, causality, temporality, and spatiality) no longer order cognition; instead, these markers are distorted (if not entirely ineffectual), creating for the schizophrenic a fractured sense of self in/and world. Without these normal associations, the schizophrenic wanders aimlessly (and often in isolation) through a chaotic world in search of structure, meaning, and purpose. Temporal associations provide perhaps the most common means of ordering experience. Viewed as a linear progression characterized by movement, change, and renewal, time structures the historical and the everyday by sequencing, demarcating, and hierarchizing events. Within the Quilt, this sense of progression is supplanted by perpetual repetition of the present. Elsley has offered a similar observation, noting that the Quilt operates in a "transitory present" tense, it "exists in a continual state of becoming" (194). In one sense, this perpetual present tense derives from the fact that no two displays of the Quilt are identical. Panels are ordered differently, new names and panels are added, older panels begin to show signs of wear-and-tear. A perpetual present tense also derives from the fact that the Quilt charts the progression of an epidemic that is itself ongoing, incomplete. Thus, the landscape of the Quilt is re-mapped in light of advances in HIV-treatment, softening/tightening of social mores, and changes in AIDS demographics. Another common means of ordering experience is though spatial associations. Location orders the social through architecture, urban planning, and zoning, endowing spaces with a well-defined purpose and layout. Yet the Quilt provides few signals regarding how spectators are intended to navigate its surface. As Weinberg notes, the Quilt is a "great grid" with "no narrative, no start or finish" (37). By describing the Quilt as a "grid," Weinberg implicitly ascribes to the artifact a controlling logic, a unified design--what in quilting parlance is termed a patchwork sampler. This design pattern, however, does not direct the flow of spectators in a single stream of traffic. This is so because, unlike a Drunkard's Path or Double Wedding Band pattern in which the individual panel blocks work together to create a unified design across the surface of the quilt, a patchwork sampler is constituted by a series of single panel blocks, each with a unique design, history, and logic. As a result, patrons' movements are guided by associations and punctuated by pauses, interruptions, and abrupt changes in course. The randomness of engagement is further enabled by the muslin walkways which visually separate the panels, marking each as distinct and disallowing any sense of continuity (narrative, spatial) among them. The routes which visitors of the Quilt traverse thus are transitory and ephemeral, simultaneously charted and erased in the moment of passing by. The second characteristic of schizophrenic spectators is the presence of auditory hallucinations. Cadoret defines these hallucinations as "the perception of auditory stimuli, or sounds, where none are externally present . . . . The voices . . . may repeat his [sic] thoughts or actions, argue with him [sic], or threaten, scold, or cure him [sic]" (481). Auditory hallucinations can lead the schizophrenic to believe that s/he is under constant surveillance or can cause the schizophrenic to slip further into a self-contained, isolated world of delusion. That the Quilt is made up of "a myriad of individual voices" (Elsley 192) is immediately apparent in the number of individuals who have taken part in its construction and display. With each quilt panel, spectators are confronted with multiple voices--the person who has died, the person(s) who made the block, the person(s) who stitched the block to others for a specific display, and so on. Moreover, the Quilt places these "individual voices . . . in the context of community" (Elsley 191). For Quilt spectators, then, memories of a life lived coexist with grief over a life cut short, anger at institutional apathy and systemic homophobia, faith in the import of remembering those who have died, and so on. Each of these voices vie for the spectator's attention, facilitating a gaze that is dynamic, multidirectional, mobile. Because the gaze is not fixed, the Quilt cannot convey a solitary truth claim to its viewers; rather, spectators must immerse themselves within the delusion and confusion of voices, imposing some sense of order on their own viewing experiences. Given that persons with AIDS continue to be marginalized within American culture, my use of the schizophrenic spectator to trace the reception dynamic of Quilt exhibits might appear to perpetuate, rather than unsettle, dominant ideological formations. Of course, this is the critical conundrum at the center of all investigations into subject formation: that is, "how to take an oppositional relation to power that is, admittedly, implicated in the very power one opposes" (Butler 17). Despite the potential pitfalls, I nonetheless use the trope of schizophrenia precisely because it recognizes the ways in which Quilt spectators, persons with AIDS, and persons who have died of AIDS-related illnesses are divested of the power and authority to speak even before they begin speaking. Furthermore, because the schizophrenic subject is founded on ever-shifting affinities (in time, across space), the position enables spectators to chart alternative lines of relation among institutional practices, ideological formations, and individual experiences, thus potentially mobilizing and sustaining a shared political program. It is on these twin goals of pedagogy and polemics that the NAMES Project originally was founded, and it is to these goals that we now must return. References Butler, Judith. The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1997. Cadoret, Remi J. "Schizophrenia." Collier's Encyclopedia. Vol. 20. Eds. Lauren S. Bahr, et. al. New York: Collier's, 1997. 480-482. Elsley, Judy. "The Rhetoric of the NAMES Project AIDS Quilt: Reading the Text(ile)." AIDS: The Literary Response. Ed. Emmanuel S. Nelson. New York: Twayne, 1992. 187-196. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage, 1990. Gentry, Jerry. "The NAMES Project: A Catharsis of Grief." The Christian CENTURY 23 May 1989: 550-551. Hawkins, Peter S. "Naming Names: The Art of Memory and the NAMES Project AIDS Quilt." Critical Inquiry 19(Summer 1993): 752-779. Weinberg, Jonathan. "The Quilt: Activism and Remembrance." Art in America 80(Dec. 1992): 37, 39.

As Lewis Carroll’s Alice comes to the end of her journey through the looking glass world, she has also come to the end of her patience with its strange power games and arbitrations. At every stage of the adventure, she has encountered someone who wants to dictate rules and protocols, and a lesson on table manners from the Red Queen finally triggers rebellion. “I can’t stand this any more,” Alice cries, as she seizes the tablecloth and hurls the entire setting into chaos (279). Then, catching hold of the Red Queen, she gives her a good shaking, until the rigid contours of the imperious figure become fuzzy and soft. At this point, the hold of the dream dissolves and Alice, awakening on the other side of the mirror, realises she is shaking the kitten. Queens have long been associated with ideas of transformation. As Alice is duly advised when she first looks out across the chequered landscape of the looking glass world, the rules of chess decree that a pawn may become a queen if she makes it to the other side. The transformation of pawn to queen is in accord with the fairy tale convention of the unspoiled country girl who wins the heart of a prince and is crowned as his bride. This works in a dual register: on one level, it is a story of social elevation, from the lowest to the highest rank; on another, it is a magical transition, as some agent of fortune intervenes to alter the determinations of the social world. But fairy tales also present us with the antithesis and adversary of the fortune-blessed princess, in the figure of the tyrant queen who works magic to shape destiny to her own ends. The Queen and the mirror converge in the cultural imaginary, working transformations that disrupt the order of nature, invert socio-political hierarchies, and flout the laws of destiny. In “Snow White,” the powers of the wicked queen are mediated by the looking glass, which reflects and affirms her own image while also serving as a panopticon, keep the entire realm under surveillance, to pick up any signs of threat to her pre-eminence. All this turbulence in the order of things lets loose a chaotic phantasmagoria that is prime material for film and animation. Two major film versions of “Snow White” have been released in the past few years—Mirror Mirror (2012) and Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)—while Tim Burton’s animated 3D rendition of Alice in Wonderland was released in 2010. Alice through the Looking Glass (2016) and The Huntsman: Winter’s War, the 2016 prequel to Snow White and the Huntsman, continue the experiment with state-of-the-art-techniques in 3D animation and computer-generated imaging to push the visual boundaries of fantasy. Perhaps this escalating extravagance in the creation of fantasy worlds is another manifestation of the ancient lore and law of sorcery: that the magic of transformation always runs out of control, because it disrupts the all-encompassing design of an ordered world. This principle is expressed with poetic succinctness in Ursula Le Guin’s classic story A Wizard of Earthsea, when the Master Changer issues a warning to his most gifted student: But you must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on that act. The world is in balance, in Equilibrium. A wizard's power of Changing and Summoning can shake the balance of the world. It is dangerous, that power. (48)In Le Guin’s story, transformation is only dangerous if it involves material change; illusions of all kinds are ultimately harmless because they are impermanent.Illusions mediated by the mirror, however, blur the distinction Le Guin is making, for the mirror image supposedly reflects a real world. And it holds the seductive power of a projected narcissism. Seeing what we wish for is an experience that can hold us captive in a way that changes human nature, and so leads to dangerous acts with material consequences. The queen in the mirror becomes the wicked queen because she converts the world into her image, and in traditions of animation going back to Disney’s original Snow White (1937) the mirror is itself an animate being, with a spirit whose own determinations become paramount. Though there are exceptions in the annals of fairy story, powers of transformation are typically dark powers, turbulent and radically elicit. When they are mediated through the agency of the mirror, they are also the powers of narcissism and autocracy. Through a Glass DarklyIn her classic cultural history of the mirror, Sabine Melchior-Bonnet tracks a duality in the traditions of symbolism associated with it. This duality is already evident in Biblical allusions to the mirror, with references to the Bible itself as “the unstained mirror” (Proverbs 7.27) counterpointed by images of the mortal condition as one of seeing “through a glass darkly” (1 Corinthians 13.12).The first of these metaphoric conventions celebrates the crystalline purity of a reflecting surface that reveals the spiritual identity beneath the outward form of the human image. The church fathers drew on Plotinus to evoke “a whole metaphysics of light and reflection in which the visible world is the image of the invisible,” and taught that “humans become mirrors when they cleanse their souls (Melchior-Bonnet 109–10). Against such invocations of the mirror as an intermediary for the radiating presence of the divine in the mortal world, there arises an antithetical narrative, in which it is portrayed as distorting, stained, and clouded, and therefore an instrument of delusion. Narcissus becomes the prototype of the human subject led astray by the image itself, divorced from material reality. What was the mirror if not a trickster? Jean Delumeau poses this question in a preface to Melchior-Bonnet’s book (xi).Through the centuries, as Melchior-Bonnet’s study shows, these two strands are interwoven in the cultural imaginary, sometimes fused, and sometimes torn asunder. With Venetian advances in the techniques and technologies of mirror production in the late Renaissance, the mirror gained special status as a possession of pre-eminent beauty and craftsmanship, a means by which the rich and powerful could reflect back to themselves both the self-image they wanted to see, and the world in the background as a shimmering personal aura. This was an attempt to harness the numinous influence of the divinely radiant mirror in order to enhance the superiority of leading aristocrats. By the mid seventeenth century, the mirror had become an essential accessory to the royal presence. Queen Anne of Austria staged a Queen’s Ball in 1633, in a hall surrounded by mirrors and tapestries. The large, finely polished mirror panels required for this kind of display were made exclusively by craftsmen at Murano, in a process that, with its huge furnaces, its alternating phases of melting and solidifying, its mysterious applications of mercury and silver, seemed to belong to the transformational arts of alchemy. In 1664, Louis XIV began to steal unique craftsmen from Murano and bring them to France, to set up the Royal Glass and Mirror Company whose culminating achievement was the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles.The looking glass world of the palace was an arena in which courtiers and visitors engaged in the high-stakes challenge of self-fashioning. Costume, attitude, and manners were the passport to advancement. To cut a figure at court was to create an identity with national and sometimes international currency. It was through the art of self-fashioning that the many princesses of Europe, and many more young women of title and hereditary distinction, competed for the very few positions as consort to the heir of a royal house. A man might be born to be king, but a woman had to become a queen.So the girl who would be queen looks in the mirror to assess her chances. If her face is her fortune, what might she be? A deep relationship with the mirror may serve to enhance her beauty and enable her to realise her wish, but like all magical agents, the mirror also betrays anyone with the hubris to believe they are in control of it. In the Grimm’s story of “Snow White,” the Queen practises the ancient art of scrying, looking into a reflective surface to conjure images of things distant in time and place. But although the mirror affords her the seer’s visionary capacity to tell what will be, it does not give her the power to control the patterns of destiny. Driven to attempt such control, she must find other magic in order to work the changes she desires, and so she experiments with spells of self-transformation. Here the doubleness of the mirror plays out across every plane of human perception: visual, ethical, metaphysical, psychological. A dynamic of inherent contradiction betrays the figure who tries to engage the mirror as a servant. Disney’s original 1937 cartoon shows the vain Queen brewing an alchemical potion that changes her into the very opposite of all she has sought to become: an ugly, ill-dressed, and impoverished old woman. This is the figure who can win and betray trust from the unspoiled princess to whom the arts of self-fashioning are unknown. In Tarsem Singh’s film Mirror Mirror, the Queen actually has two mirrors. One is a large crystal egg that reflects back a phantasmagoria of palace scenes; the other, installed in a primitive hut on an island across the lake, is a simple looking glass that shows her as she really is. Snow White and the Huntsman portrays the mirror as a golden apparition, cloaked and faceless, that materialises from within the frame to stand before her. This is not her reflection, but with every encounter, she takes on more of its dark energies, until, in another kind of reversal, she becomes its image and agent in the wider world. As Ursula Le Guin’s sage teaches the young magician, magic has its secret economies. You pay for what you get, and the changes wrought will come back at you in ways you would never have foreseen. The practice of scrying inevitably leads the would-be clairvoyant into deeper levels of obscurity, until the whole world turns against the seer in a sequence of manifestations entirely contrary to his or her framework of expectation. Ultimately, the lesson of the mirror is that living in obscurity is a defining aspect of the human condition. Jorge Luis Borges, the blind writer whose work exhibits a life-long obsession with mirrors, surveys a range of interpretations and speculations surrounding the phrase “through a glass darkly,” and quotes this statement from Leon Bloy: “There is no human being on earth capable of declaring with certitude who he is. No one knows what he has come into this world to do . . . or what his real name is, his enduring Name in the register of Light” (212).The mirror will never really tell you who you are. Indeed, its effects may be quite the contrary, as Alice discovers when, within a couple of moves on the looking glass chessboard, she finds herself entering the wood of no names. Throughout her adventures she is repeatedly interrogated about who or what she is, and can give no satisfactory answer. The looking glass has turned her into an estranged creature, as bizarre a species as any of those she encounters in its landscapes.Furies“The furies are at home in the mirror,” wrote R. S. Thomas in his poem “Reflections” (265). They are the human image gone haywire, the frightening other of what we hope to see in our reflection. As the mirror is joined by technologies of the moving image in twentieth-century evolutions of the myth, the furies have been given a new lease of life on the cinema screen. In Disney’s 1937 cartoon of Snow White, the mirror itself has the face of a fury, which emerges from a pool of blackness like a death’s head before bringing the Queen’s own face into focus. As its vision comes into conflict with hers, threatening the dissolution of the world over which she presides, the mirror’s face erupts into fire.Computer-generated imaging enables an expansive response to the challenges of visualisation associated with the original furies of classical mythology. The Erinyes are unstable forms, arising from liquid (blood) to become semi-materialised in human guise, always ready to disintegrate again. They are the original undead, hovering between mortal embodiment and cadaverous decay. Tearing across the landscape as a flock of birds, a swarm of insects, or a mass of storm clouds, they gather into themselves tremendous energies of speed and motion. The 2012 film Snow White and the Huntsman, directed by Rupert Sanders, gives us the strongest contemporary realisation of the archaic fury. Queen Ravenna, played by Charlize Theron, is a virtuoso of the macabre, costumed in a range of metallic exoskeletons and a cloak of raven’s feathers, with a raised collar that forms two great black wings either side of her head. Powers of dematerialisation and rematerialisation are central to her repertoire. She undergoes spectacular metamorphosis into a mass of shrieking birds; from the walls around her she conjures phantom soldiers that splinter into shards of black crystal when struck by enemy swords. As she dies at the foot of the steps leading up to the great golden disc of her mirror, her face rapidly takes on the great age she has disguised by vampiric practices.Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen in Burton’s Alice in Wonderland is a figure midway between Disney’s fairy tale spectre and the fully cinematic register of Theron’s Ravenna. Bonham Carter’s Queen, with her accentuated head and pantomime mask of a face, retains the boundaries of form. She also presides over a court whose visual structures express the rigidities of a tyrannical regime. Thus she is no shape-shifter, but energies of the fury are expressed in her voice, which rings out across the presence chamber of the palace and reverberates throughout the kingdom with its calls for blood. Alice through the Looking Glass, James Bobin’s 2016 sequel, puts her at the centre of a vast destructive force field. Alice passes through the mirror to encounter the Lord of Time, whose eternal rule must be broken in order to break the power of the murdering Queen; Alice then opens a door and tumbles in free-fall out into nothingness. The place where she lands is a world not of daydream but of nightmare, where everything will soon be on fire, as the two sides in the chess game advance towards each other for the last battle. This inflation of the Red Queen’s macabre aura and impact is quite contrary to what Lewis Carroll had in mind for his own sequel. In some notes about the stage adaptation of the Alice stories, he makes a painstaking distinction between the characters of the queen in his two stories.I pictured to myself the Queen of Hearts as a sort of embodiment of ungovernable passion—a blind and aimless Fury. The Red Queen I pictured as a Fury, but of another type; her passion must be cold and calm—she must be formal and strict, yet not unkindly; pedantic to the 10th degree, the concentrated essence of governesses. (86)Yet there is clearly a temptation to erase this distinction in dramatisations of Alice’s adventures. Perhaps the Red Queen as a ‘not unkindly’ governess is too restrained a persona for the psychodynamic mythos surrounding the queen in the mirror. The image itself demands more than Carroll wants to accord, and the original Tenniel illustrations give a distinctly sinister look to the stern chess queen. In their very first encounter, the Red Queen contradicts every observation Alice makes, confounds the child’s sensory orientation by inverting the rules of time and motion, and assigns her the role of pawn in the game. Kafka or Orwell would not have been at all relaxed about an authority figure who practises mind control, language management, and identity reassignment. But here Carroll offers a brilliant modernisation of the fairy story tradition. Under the governance of the autocratic queen, wonderland and the looking glass world are places in which the laws of science, logic, and language are overturned, to be replaced by the rules of the queen’s games: cards and croquet in the wonderland, and chess in the looking glass world. Alice, as a well-schooled Victorian child, knows something of these games. She has enough common sense to be aware of how the laws of gravity and time and motion are supposed to work, and if she boasts of being able to believe six impossible things before breakfast, this signifies that she has enough logic to understand the limits of possibility. She would also have been taught about species and varieties and encouraged to make her own collections of natural forms. But the anarchy of the queen’s world extends into the domain of biology: species of all kinds can talk, bodies dissolve or change size, and transmutations occur instantaneously. Thus the world-warping energies of the Erinyes are re-imagined in an absurdist’s challenge to the scientist’s universe and the logician’s mentality.Carroll’s instinct to tame the furies is in accord with the overall tone and milieu of his stories, which are works of quirky charm rather than tales of terror, but his two queens are threatening enough to enable him to build the narrative to a dramatic climax. For film-makers and animators, though, it is the queen who provides the dramatic energy and presence. There is an over-riding temptation to let loose the pandemonium of the original Erinyes, exploiting their visual terror and their classical association with metamorphosis. FashioningThere is some sociological background to the coupling of the queen and the mirror in fairy story. In reality, the mirror might assist an aspiring princess to become queen by enchanting the prince who was heir to the throne, but what was the role of the looking glass once she was crowned? Historically, the self-imaging of the queen has intense and nervous resonances, and these can be traced back to Elizabeth I, whose elaborate persona was fraught with newly interpreted symbolism. Her portraits were her mirrors, and they reflect a figure in whom the qualities of radiance associated with divinity were transferred to the human monarch. Elizabeth developed the art of dressing herself in wearable light. If she lacked for a halo, she made up for it with the extravagant radiata of her ruffs and the wreaths of pearls around her head. Pearls in mediaeval poetry carried the mystique of a luminous microcosm, but they were also mirrors in themselves, each one a miniature reflecting globe. The Ditchely portrait of 1592 shows her standing as a colossus between heaven and earth, with the changing planetary light cycle as background. This is a queen who rules the world through the mediation of her own created image. It is an inevitable step from here to a corresponding intervention in the arrangement of the world at large, which involves the armies and armadas that form the backdrop to her other great portraits. And on the home front, a regime of terror focused on regular public decapitations and other grisly executions completes the strategy to remaking the world according to her will. Renowned costume designer Eiko Ishioka created an aesthetic for Mirror Mirror that combines elements of court fashion from the Elizabethan era and the French ancien régime, with allusions to Versailles. Formality and mannerism are the keynotes for the palace scenes. Julia Roberts as the Queen wears a succession of vast dresses that are in defiance of human scale and proportion. Their width at the hem is twice her height, and 100,000 Svarovski crystals were used for their embellishment. For the masked ball scene, she makes her entry as a scarlet peacock with a high arching ruff of pure white feathers. She amuses herself by arranging her courtiers as pieces on a chess-board. So stiffly attired they can barely move more than a square at a time, and with hats surmounted by precariously balanced ships, they are a mock armada from which the Queen may sink individual vessels on a whim, by ordering a fatal move. Snow White and the Huntsman takes a very different approach to extreme fashioning. Designer Colleen Atwood suggests the shape-shifter in the Queen’s costumes, incorporating materials evoking a range of species: reptile scales, fluorescent beetle wings from Thailand, and miniature bird skulls. There is an obvious homage here to the great fashion designer Alexander McQueen, whose hallmark was a fascination with the organic costuming of creatures in feathers, fur, wool, scales, shells, and fronds. Birds were everywhere in McQueen’s work. His 2006 show Widows of Culloden featured a range of headdresses that made the models look as if they had just walked through a flock of birds in full flight. The creatures were perched on their heads with outstretched wings askance across the models’ faces, obscuring their field of vision. As avatars from the spirit realm, birds are emblems of otherness, and associated with metempsychosis, the transmigration of souls. These resonances give a potent mythological aura to Theron’s Queen of the dark arts.Mirror Mirror and Snow White and the Huntsman accordingly present strikingly contrasted versions of self-fashioning. In Mirror Mirror we have an approach driven by traditions of aristocratic narcissism and courtly persona, in which form is both rigid and extreme. The Queen herself, far from being a shape-shifter, is a prisoner of the massive and rigid architecture that is her costume. Snow White and the Huntsman gives us a more profoundly magical interpretation, where form is radically unstable, infused with strange energies that may at any moment manifest themselves through violent transformation.Atwood was also costume designer for Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, where an invented framing story foregrounds the issue of fashioning as social control. Alice in this version is a young woman, being led by her mother to a garden party where a staged marriage proposal is to take place. Alice, as the social underling in the match, is simply expected to accept the honour. Instead, she escapes the scene and disappears down a rabbit hole to return to the wonderland of her childhood. In a nice comedic touch, her episodes of shrinking and growing involve an embarrassing separation from her clothes, so divesting her also of the demure image of the Victorian maiden. Atwood provides her with a range of fantasy party dresses that express the free spirit of a world that is her refuge from adult conformity.Alice gets to escape the straitjacket of social formation in Carroll’s original stories by overthrowing the queen’s game, and with it her micro-management of image and behaviour. There are other respects, though, in which Alice’s adventures are a form of social and moral fashioning. Her opening reprimand to the kitten includes some telling details about her own propensities. She once frightened a deaf old nurse by shouting suddenly in her ear, “Do let’s pretend that I’m a hungry hyaena and you’re a bone!” (147). Playing kings and queens is one of little Alice’s favourite games, and there is more than a touch of the Red Queen in the way she bosses and manages the kitten. It is easy to laud her impertinence in the face of the tyrannical characters she meets in her fantasies, but does she risk becoming just like them?As a story of moral self-fashioning, Alice through the Looking Glass cuts both ways. It is at once a critique of the Victorian social straitjacket, and a child’s fable about self-improvement. To be accorded the status of queen and with it the freedom of the board is also to be invested with responsibilities. If the human girl is the queen of species, how will she measure up? The published version of the story excludes an episode known to editors as “The Wasp in a Wig,” an encounter that takes place as Alice reaches the last ditch before the square upon which she will be crowned. She is about to jump the stream when she hears a sigh from woods behind her. Someone here is very unhappy, and she reasons with herself about whether there is any point in stopping to help. Once she has made the leap, there will be no going back, but she is reluctant to delay the move, as she is “very anxious to be a Queen” (309). The sigh comes from an aged creature in the shape of a wasp, who is sitting in the cold wind, grumbling to himself. Her kind enquiries are greeted with a succession of waspish retorts, but she persists and does not leave until she has cheered him up. The few minutes devoted “to making the poor old creature comfortable,” she tells herself, have been well spent.Read in isolation, the episode is trite and interferes with the momentum of the story. Carroll abandoned it on the advice of his illustrator John Tenniel, who wrote to say it didn’t interest him in the least (297). There is interest of another kind in Carroll’s instinct to arrest Alice’s momentum at that critical stage, with what amounts to a small morality tale, but Tenniel’s instinct was surely right. The mirror as a social object is surrounded by traditions of self-fashioning that are governed by various modes of conformity: moral, aesthetic, political. Traditions of myth and fantasy allow wider imaginative scope for the role of the mirror, and by association, for inventive speculation about human transformation in a world prone to extraordinary upheavals. ReferencesBorges, Jorge Luis. “Mirrors of Enigma.” Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings. Eds. Donald A. Yates and James Irby. New York: New Directions, 2007. 209–12. Carroll, Lewis. Alice through the Looking Glass. In The Annotated Alice. Ed. Martin Gardner. London: Penguin, 2000.The King James Bible.Le Guin, Ursula. The Earthsea Quartet. London: Penguin, 2012.Melchior-Bonnet, Sabine. The Mirror: A History. Trans. Katherine H. Jewett. London: Routledge, 2014.Thomas, R.S. “Reflections.” No Truce with the Furies, Collected Later Poems 1988–2000. Hexham, Northumberland: Bloodaxe, 2011.