Artykuły w czasopismach na temat „Flexible One-dimensional Objects”

Pattern recognition and object detection systems so far developed required the algorithmic description of every detail of the objects to be recognized by bottom-up process from pixel-to-pixel relation to line, corner, and structural description. Because this low-level process does not see global information, feature detection is highly sensitive to noise. To overcome this problem and to give human-like flexibility to machine recognition process, we developed a new system which had non-algorithmic feature detection functions by seeing a comparatively large area at once. It uses a variable size window which is applied to the most plausible parts in an image by a top-down command from an object model, and obtains characteristic features of object parts. This window application is realized mostly in hardware, and has some autonomic ability to detect the best features by a sort of random trial and error search. The system has some other hardware functions such as mutual correlation of one- and two-dimensional patterns, which are also flexible according to the variable size window. The system interprets user's declarative description of objects, and activates the window application functions to obtain characteristic features of the description. This new flexible approach of object detection can be used as a robot eye to recognize many simple two-dimensional shapes.

The present study deals with the analysis of three-dimensional binary objects whose structure is not obvious nor generally clearly visible. Our approach is illustrated through three examples taken from biological microscopy. In one of our examples, we need to extract the osteocytes contained in sixty confocal sections. The cells are not numerous, but are characterized by long branches, hence they will be separated using a directional wavefront The two other objects are more complex and will be analysed by means of a spherical wavefront In the first case, a kidney of a rat embryo, the tissue grows like a tree, where we want to detect the branches, their extremities,and their spatial arrangement. The wavefront method enables us to define precisely branches and extremities, and gives flexible algorithms. The last example deals with the embryonic growth of the chicken shinbone. The central part of the bone (or shaft) is structured as a series of nested cylinders following the same axis, and connected by more or less long bridges. Using wavefronts, we show that it is possible to separate the cylinders,and to extract and count the bridges that connect them.

Abstract. The CryoGrid community model is a flexible toolbox for simulating the ground thermal regime and the ice–water balance for permafrost and glaciers, extending a well-established suite of permafrost models (CryoGrid 1, 2, and 3). The CryoGrid community model can accommodate a wide variety of application scenarios, which is achieved by fully modular structures through object-oriented programming. Different model components, characterized by their process representations and parameterizations, are realized as classes (i.e., objects) in CryoGrid. Standardized communication protocols between these classes ensure that they can be stacked vertically. For example, the CryoGrid community model features several classes with different complexity for the seasonal snow cover, which can be flexibly combined with a range of classes representing subsurface materials, each with their own set of process representations (e.g., soil with and without water balance, glacier ice). We present the CryoGrid architecture as well as the model physics and defining equations for the different model classes, focusing on one-dimensional model configurations which can also interact with external heat and water reservoirs. We illustrate the wide variety of simulation capabilities for a site on Svalbard, with point-scale permafrost simulations using, e.g., different soil freezing characteristics, drainage regimes, and snow representations, as well as simulations for glacier mass balance and a shallow water body. The CryoGrid community model is not intended as a static model framework but aims to provide developers with a flexible platform for efficient model development. In this study, we document both basic and advanced model functionalities to provide a baseline for the future development of novel cryosphere models.

The article deals with the method of classification of real data using the apparatus of fuzzy sets and fuzzy logic as a flexible tool for learning and recognition of natural objects on the example of oil and gas prospecting sections of the Dnieper-Donetsk basin. The real data in this approach are the values for the membership function that are obtained not through subjective expert judgment but from objective measurements. It is suggested to approximate the fuzzy set membership functions by using training data to use the approximation results obtained during the learning phase at the stage of identifying unknown objects. In the first step of learning, each traditional future of a learning data is matched by a primary traditional one-dimensional set whose membership function can only take values from a binary set — 0 if the learning object does not belong to the set, and 1 if the learning object belongs to the set. In the second step, the primary set is mapped to a fuzzy set, and the parameters of the membership function of this fuzzy set are determined by approximating this function of the traditional set membership. In the third step, the set of one-dimensional fuzzy sets that correspond to a single feature of the object is mapped to a fuzzy set that corresponds to all the features of the object in the training data set. Such a set is the intersection of fuzzy sets of individual features, to which the blurring and concentration operations of fuzzy set theory are applied in the last step. Thus, the function of belonging to a fuzzy set of a class is the operation of choosing a minimum value from the functions of fuzzy sets of individual features of objects, which are reduced to a certain degree corresponding to the operation of blurring or concentration. The task of assigning the object under study to a particular class is to compare the values of the membership functions of a multidimensional fuzzy set and to select the class in which the membership function takes the highest value. Additionally, after the training stage, it is possible to determine the degree of significance of an object future, which is an indistinctness index, to remove non-essential data (object futures) from the analysis.

Pursuing an object with smooth eye movements requires an accurate estimate of its two-dimensional (2D) trajectory. This 2D motion computation requires that different local motion measurements are extracted and combined to recover the global object-motion direction and speed. Several combination rules have been proposed such as vector averaging (VA), intersection of constraints (IOC), or 2D feature tracking (2DFT). To examine this computation, we investigated the time course of smooth pursuit eye movements driven by simple objects of different shapes. For type II diamond (where the direction of true object motion is dramatically different from the vector average of the 1-dimensional edge motions, i.e., VA ≠ IOC = 2DFT), the ocular tracking is initiated in the vector average direction. Over a period of less than 300 ms, the eye-tracking direction converges on the true object motion. The reduction of the tracking error starts before the closing of the oculomotor loop. For type I diamonds (where the direction of true object motion is identical to the vector average direction, i.e., VA = IOC = 2DFT), there is no such bias. We quantified this effect by calculating the direction error between responses to types I and II and measuring its maximum value and time constant. At low contrast and high speeds, the initial bias in tracking direction is larger and takes longer to converge onto the actual object-motion direction. This effect is attenuated with the introduction of more 2D information to the extent that it was totally obliterated with a texture-filled type II diamond. These results suggest a flexible 2D computation for motion integration, which combines all available one-dimensional (edge) and 2D (feature) motion information to refine the estimate of object-motion direction over time.

An open-source framework for conducting a broad range of virtual X-ray imaging experiments,syris, is presented. The simulated wavefield created by a source propagates through an arbitrary number of objects until it reaches a detector. The objects in the light path and the source are time-dependent, which enables simulations of dynamic experiments,e.g.four-dimensional time-resolved tomography and laminography. The high-level interface ofsyrisis written in Python and its modularity makes the framework very flexible. The computationally demanding parts behind this interface are implemented in OpenCL, which enables fast calculations on modern graphics processing units. The combination of flexibility and speed opens new possibilities for studying novel imaging methods and systematic search of optimal combinations of measurement conditions and data processing parameters. This can help to increase the success rates and efficiency of valuable synchrotron beam time. To demonstrate the capabilities of the framework, various experiments have been simulated and compared with real data. To show the use case of measurement and data processing parameter optimization based on simulation, a virtual counterpart of a high-speed radiography experiment was created and the simulated data were used to select a suitable motion estimation algorithm; one of its parameters was optimized in order to achieve the best motion estimation accuracy when applied on the real data.syriswas also used to simulate tomographic data sets under various imaging conditions which impact the tomographic reconstruction accuracy, and it is shown how the accuracy may guide the selection of imaging conditions for particular use cases.

Abstract The rigidity in bending of a flexible link (is an important characteristic that should be considered during regular service conditions. The tension and bending with torsion of wire ropes are also significant factors. This study proposed a method to calculate the vectors of the generalised forces of bending of flexible links. One of the causes of torsional stresses in the power plant of underwater tethered systems is the interaction with ship equipment, such as spiral winding on the winch drum, friction on the flanges of the pulleys or winch drums, and bends on various blocks and rolls that cause torsion. The source of torsional stresses in the FL may also be related to manufacturing, storage, transportation, and its placement on the ship’s winch drums. Torsion can lead to a decrease in the tensile strength due to load redistribution between power elements, or even a violation of their structure. In some cases, torsion significantly affects the movement of the underwater tethered system as a whole. The development of a mathematical model to describe the marine tethered systems dynamics, taking into account the effect of torsion, is important and relevant. The mathematical model of the marine tethered systems dynamics was improved and solved by accounting for the generalised forces of the torsion rigidity of the flexible link, using an algorithm and computer program. The influence of the bending and torsional rigidity of the FL on its deflection and tensile strength were considered based on the example of two problems. The developed program’s working window image shows the simulated parameters and the initial position of the flexible link. The results show that torsion has almost no effect on the shape of the a flexible link’s deflection in the X0Z plane, but leads to a deviation from the X0Z plane when calculating the static deflection of the flexible link. When the carrier vessel is stationary and the submersible vehicle has no restrictions on movement and has positive buoyancy, torsion leads to a three-dimensional change in the shape of the flexible link both in the X0Z plane and in the X0Y plane. The tension force of the flexible link along its length is distributed unevenly, and the torsion of the flexible link can lead to significant changes in its shape, the trajectory of towed objects, and the forces acting on the elements of the marine tethered systems

In the article the boundary value problem on the elastic longitudinal waves motion in the load lifting cranes and mine mechanisms variable length ropes is considered. Solutions of the Cauchy problem, which describe longitudinal oscillations propagation in the ropes (flexible suspensions) as in areas with moving boarders, are found. Displacements and stresses dynamic fields in variable length steel ropes of the specified load lifting mechanisms are investigated. Usually the ropes are balanced, and the main rope carries concentrated stress which before the systems movement was at the main ropes lower end. Dynamic forces in perfectly elastic variable length steel ropes estimation is shown, that only when lifting ropes without end loads under non-integrated boundary conditions, their efforts do not increase. However, practical experience shows that this phenomenon is not observed at moderate lifting speeds due to the fact that along with the dynamic forces amplitudes increase. Due to the decrease in length there is a simultaneous decrease in the amplitudes of their oscillations. The object of analysis refers to a wide range of variable length oscillations one-dimensional objects. A classical mathematical model to describe oscillations and waveforms is used. When studying wave fields in areas with moving boundaries the reflection of pulses from such boundaries is established. Elastic type waveforms in variable length rods (rope models) taking into account the fact that these rods have circular cross section of variable (length of rope/rod) area (rods are cylindrical, rotational paraboloids form, conical rods) is considered. Method based on the possibility of constructing wave equation from waves reflected from fixed and moving given boundaries of a semi-infinite domain solutions is applied.

<abstract> <p>Perceptual grouping along well-established Gestalt laws provides one set of traditional methods that provide a tiny set of meaningful parameters to be adjusted for each application field. More complex and challenging tasks require a hierarchical setting, where the results aggregated by a first grouping process are later subject to further processing on a larger scale and with more abstract objects. This can be several steps deep. An example from the domain of forestry provides insight into the search for suitable parameter settings providing sufficient performance for the machine-vision module to be of practical use within a larger robotic control setting in this application domain. This sets a stark contrast in comparison to the state-of-the-art deep-learning neural nets, where many millions of obscure parameters must be adjusted properly before the performance suffices. It is the opinion of the author that the huge freedom for possible settings in such a high-dimensional inscrutable parameter space poses an unnecessary risk. Moreover, few-parameter learning is getting along with less training material. Whereas the state-of-the-art networks require millions of images with expert labels, a single image can already provide good insight into the nature of the parameter domain of the Gestalt laws, and a domain expert labeling just a handful of salient contours in said image yields already a proper goal function, so that a well working sweet spot in the parameter domain can be found in a few steps. As compared to the state-of-the-art neural nets, a reduction of six orders of magnitude in the number of parameters results. Almost parameter-free statistical test methods can reduce the number of parameters to be trained further by one order of magnitude, but they are less flexible and currently lack the advantages of hierarchical feature processing.</p> </abstract>

Abstract. 3D building modelling has been turned to be one of the most interesting and hottest subjects in photogrammetry in last two decades, and it seems that photogrammetry provides the only economic means to acquire truly 3D city-data. Most of the researches proposed methods for 3d building modelling in LoD2 using aerial images and LIDAR data and the produced models will be enriched by oblique images, therefore there is always a demand for a user to interpret the façade or in other manual building reconstruction process the operator should draw boundaries to represent the building model and the process will be too time-consuming for 3d modelling for a whole city. Creating building facade models for a whole city requires considerable work, therefore for decades, much research has been dedicated to the automation of this reconstruction process. Nowadays researchers attempt to recommend a new method which is flexible to model hug variety of buildings and has a solution for several challenges such as irrelevant objects (pedestrians, trees, traffic signs, etc.), occluded areas and non-homogenous data. Based on various 3d building models applications, namely navigation systems, location-based system, city planning and etc. the demand for adding semantic features (such as windows and doors) is increasing and becoming more essential, therefore simple blocks as the representation of 3d buildings aren’t sufficient anymore. Therefore 2.5 models which show the façade details using pixel values have been substituted by LoD3 models recently.The lack of automation in image based approaches can be explained by the difficulties in image interpretation. Specifically, factors like illumination and occlusion can cause considerable confusion for machine understanding and some conditions (relative orientation, feature matching, etc.) need to be accurately determined to transfer image pixels to 3D coordinates. In recent years, terrestrial laser scanning data has been proven as a valuable source for building facade reconstruction. The point density of stationary laser scanning in urban areas can be up to hundreds or thousands of points per square meter, which is high enough for documenting most details on building facades. In comparison with image-based modelling, several steps such as image matching, intersection and resection will be eliminated, while there is no need to image interpret in laser data-based reconstruction approaches, these methods face major challenges such as extracting meaningful structures from a huge amount of data.This paper presents a data-driven algorithm for façade reconstruction, using a handheld laser scanner, Zebedee. The mentioned device is consisting of 2d laser scanner and an inertial measurement unit mounted on one or two springs, it has 270-degree field of view. Its mass is 210 g which makes it ideal for low measurement and it is maximum range is 30 m. The proposed method was implemented by using the Zebedee point cloud in order to determine the challenges of zeb1 data and ensure that the introduced device can be practical for 3d reconstruction.Due to obstacle existence, operator gross errors while data capturing and façade elements arrangement, there will always be occluded area and shadows in produced data. Occluded area cause tribulation in machine understanding and problems for automatic reconstruction algorithms. The proposed method represents a new way to detect occluded area and remove the artificial objects which are produced by them. The 3d point cloud is used to cover all façade elements and details, also image matching and producing 3-dimensional data steps will be omitted from the process.The proposed workflow is indicated in figure 1. Most researches such as road, building or other objects detection and reconstruction put ground points detection in priority in order to decrease data volume and processing time, so as a pre-processing step, point cloud is classified into two separate groups (non-ground and ground points).

Flexible magnetic small-scale robots use patterned magnetization to achieve fast transformation into complex three-dimensional (3D) shapes and thereby achieve locomotion capabilities and functions. These capabilities address current challenges for microrobots in drug delivery, object manipulation, and minimally invasive procedures. However, possible microrobot designs are limited by the existing methods for patterning magnetic particles in flexible materials. Here, we report a method for patterning hard magnetic microparticles in an elastomer matrix. This method, based on ultraviolet (UV) lithography, uses controlled reorientation of magnetic particles and selective exposure to UV light to encode magnetic particles in planar materials with arbitrary 3D orientation with a geometrical feature size as small as 100 micrometers. Multiple planar microrobots with various sizes, different geometries, and arbitrary magnetization profiles can be fabricated from a single precursor in one process. Moreover, a 3D magnetization profile allows higher-order and multi-axis bending, large-angle bending, and combined bending and torsion in one sheet of polymer, creating previously unachievable shape changes and microrobotic locomotion mechanisms such as multi-arm power grasping and multi-legged paddle crawling. A physics-based model is also presented as a design tool to predict the shape changes under magnetic actuation.

An experimental investigation is carried out to study the effect of a flexible splitter plate on the wake dynamics of a circular cylinder. Several regimes of foil motion are imaged and identified in the range of free stream velocities 1e4 < Re < 1e5. Based on the amplitude and the span-wise coherence of the plate motion, the regimes are classified into 4 categories: low oscillations, resonance, chaotic, and bi-stable. Wind-tunnel experiments are conducted on the resonant and chaotic regimes to further explore the cylinder-plate flow. Object surface and flow tracers are tracked by a volumetric Particle Image Velocimetry system based on four high speed cameras and LED illumination. The images are analysed with Lagrangian Particle Tracking techniques and the flow tracers and surface markers are separated based on the different properties of their images. A statistical analysis of the stream-wise and transverse velocity components on the cross-sectional plane compares the pure cylinder flow to the cylinder with the trailing splitter plate. Proper Orthogonal Decomposition is applied to study the most dominant modes from each flow. Results show two different coupling mechanisms pertaining to different aeroelastic regimes. In the resonant regime, the first bending mode of the flexible plate is excited by the shedding frequency. Overall, the results showed a one-way coupling between the flow and the plate, meaning that the motion of the structure was driven by the dominant features of the flow, whereas the flow was mostly unaffected by the presence of the flexible plate. The chaotic regime is an example of full interaction, i.e. 2-way coupling between flow and structure, where the addition of the plate disrupts the shedding structures of the cylinder wake flow. The three-dimensional motion of the flexible plate enhanced the span-wise flow oscillations and so, the three-dimensional features of the wake.

To facilitate flexible and efficient structural bioinformatics analyses, new functionality for three-dimensional structure processing and analysis has been introduced intoPyCogent– a popular feature-rich framework for sequence-based bioinformatics, but one which has lacked equally powerful tools for handling stuctural/coordinate-based data. Extensible Python modules have been developed, which provide object-oriented abstractions (based on a hierarchical representation of macromolecules), efficient data structures (e.g.kD-trees), fast implementations of common algorithms (e.g.surface-area calculations), read/write support for Protein Data Bank-related file formats and wrappers for external command-line applications (e.g. Stride). Integration of this code intoPyCogentis symbiotic, allowing sequence-based work to benefit from structure-derived data and, reciprocally, enabling structural studies to leveragePyCogent's versatile tools for phylogenetic and evolutionary analyses.

Suffixation and Grammatical Gender. The presence in the Spanish language of words like la silla (chair) and el sillón (armchair), el lago (lake) and la laguna (lagoon), la casa (house) and el caserón (mansion) or la corbata (tie) and el corbatín (bow tie), leads us to wonder if the grammatical gender change in these pairs of non-sexed nouns is justified due to a variation in the size of the object – a type traditionally studied as a dimensional genre – or if it is imposed by the suffix that is added to the root in one of the forms, irrespective of whether or not it is a modification based on the dimensions of the object. Under this approach, we will try to address a topic which pivots on flexive morphology and derivational morphology and to which the etymology of each of the analysed forms will have a great deal to contribute in order to draw conclusive results. Keywords: grammatical gender, suffix, derivational morphology, flexive morphology

For industrial manufacturing, industrial robots are required to work together with human counterparts on certain special occasions, where human workers share their skills with robots. Intuitive human–robot interaction brings increasing safety challenges, which can be properly addressed by using sensor-based active control technology. In this article, we designed and fabricated a three-dimensional flexible robot skin made by the piezoresistive nanocomposite based on the need for enhancement of the security performance of the collaborative robot. The robot skin endowed the YuMi robot with a tactile perception like human skin. The developed sensing unit in the robot skin showed the one-to-one correspondence between force input and resistance output (percentage change in impedance) in the range of 0–6.5 N. Furthermore, the calibration result indicated that the developed sensing unit is capable of offering a maximum force sensitivity (percentage change in impedance per Newton force) of 18.83% N−1 when loaded with an external force of 6.5 N. The fabricated sensing unit showed good reproducibility after loading with cyclic force (0–5.5 N) under a frequency of 0.65 Hz for 3500 cycles. In addition, to suppress the bypass crosstalk in robot skin, we designed a readout circuit for sampling tactile data. Moreover, experiments were conducted to estimate the contact/collision force between the object and the robot in a real-time manner. The experiment results showed that the implemented robot skin can provide an efficient approach for natural and secure human–robot interaction.

Explore3DM will be an online resource to explore the diverse interests behind three-dimensional measurement and three-dimensional metrology (3DM). The motivation has been the development of large-volume and portable 3D methods and systems for applications in manufacturing, an activity which has been growing for the past 40 years. However, the measurement spectrum in Explore3DM will be wider and include, for example, as-built process plant at the large-object end and X-Ray CT inspection at the small-object end. This wider spectrum will support cross-sector research at University College London (UCL) to transfer 3DM developments from one sector to another. Initially, Explore3DM will have a core directory incorporating systems manufacturers, service suppliers, research groups and disseminators of metrology knowledge. Mechanisms for solving end users’ measurement tasks will add to further growth of 3DM. The resource is intended to be free to use and the directory free to join at a basic level. Premium directory sponsorship by commercial companies is expected to provide revenue to sustain and develop the resource and support 3DM development. With regard to standards, LVM and PCM systems and techniques can be difficult to assess with a standardized approach because of the highly flexible ways they can be applied. However, some standards have been developed and there is scope for more, for example in the terminology used. A dictionary will be a component of Explore3DM’s future knowledge base. By presenting a first version in a centralized resource, standardized terminology will be encouraged.

Graphs provide us with a powerful and flexible representation formalism for pattern classification. Many classification algorithms have been proposed in the literature. However, the vast majority of these algorithms rely on vectorial data descriptions and cannot directly be applied to graphs. Recently, a growing interest in graph kernel methods can be observed. Graph kernels aim at bridging the gap between the high representational power and flexibility of graphs and the large amount of algorithms available for object representations in terms of feature vectors. In the present paper, we propose an approach transforming graphs into n-dimensional real vectors by means of prototype selection and graph edit distance computation. This approach allows one to build graph kernels in a straightforward way. It is not only applicable to graphs, but also to other kind of symbolic data in conjunction with any kind of dissimilarity measure. Thus it is characterized by a high degree of flexibility. With several experimental results, we prove the robustness and flexibility of our new method and show that our approach outperforms other graph classification methods on several graph data sets of diverse nature.

Object. The goal of this study was to quantify the reduction in velocity, vorticity, and shear stresses resulting from the sequential placement of stents across the neck of sidewall cerebral aneurysms. Methods. A digital particle image velocimetry (DPIV) system was used to measure the pulsatile velocity field within a flexible silicone sidewall intracranial aneurysm model and at the aneurysm neck–parent artery interface in this model. The DPIV system is capable of providing an instantaneous, quantitative two-dimensional measurement of the velocity vector field of “blood” flow inside the aneurysm pouch and the parent vessel, and its changes at varying stages of the cardiac cycle. The corresponding vorticity and shear stress fields are then computed from the velocity field data. Three Neuroform stents (Boston Scientific/Target), each with a strut thickness between 60 and 65 µm, were subsequently placed across the neck of the aneurysm model and measurements were obtained after each stent had been placed. The authors measured a consistent decrease in the values of the maximal averaged velocity, vorticity, and shear stress after placing one, two, and three stents. Measurements of the circulation inside the sac demonstrated a systematic reduction in the strength of the vortex due to the stent placement. The decrease in the magnitude of the aforementioned quantities after the first stent was placed was remarkable. Placement of two or three stents led to a less significant reduction than placement of the first stent. Conclusions. The use of multiple flexible intravascular stents effectively reduces the strength of the vortex forming in an aneurysm sac and results in a decrease in the magnitude of stresses acting on the aneurysm wall.

The study of prismatic bodies with constants along one of the coordinates of mechanical and geometric parameters is most appropriate to conduct on the basis of the semianalytical finite element method (NMSE). Its essence is a combination of finite element sampling and decomposition of displacements in the characteristic direction by a system of trigonometric coordinate functions.In [8, 15], a variant of the semivanalytic finite element method for the calculation of prismatic bodies when used as a system of coordinate functions of Fourier series was developed. The use of trigonometric series provides maximum efficiency of the semi-analytical finite element method, however, only the boundary conditions corresponding to the object's support on an absolutely rigid in its plane and flexible diaphragm can be satisfied at the ends of the body.As a result of the performed researches, the basis of the representation of displacements by polynomials is obtained, which allows to significantly expand the range of boundary conditions at the ends of the body. In this case, it isnot possible to reduce the solution of the initial spatial boundary value problem to a sequence of two-dimensional problems, so a reasonable choice of appropriate polynomials becomes especially important.Both the conditionality of the matrix of the system of separate equations and, consequently, the convergence of integration algorithms for its solution, and the universality of the approach to the possibility of satisfying different variants of boundary conditions at the ends of the body depend on their correct choice.In addition, the question of methods of integration in the calculation of the coefficients of the stiffness matrix of a finite element (CE), which is quite common, due to the significant complexity of this procedure.

The "information revolution" of our time affects our entire generation. While a vision of the "Information Society," with its financial, legal, business, privacy, and other aspects has emerged in the past few years, the "traditional scene" of information technology, that is, industrial automation, maintained its significance as a field of unceasing development. Since the old-fashioned concept of "Hard Automation" applicable only to industrial processes of fixed, repetitive nature and manufacturing large batches of the same product1)was thrust to the background by keen market competition, the key element of this development remained the improvement of "Machine Intelligence". In spite of the fact that L. A. Zadeh already introduced the concept of "Machine Intelligence Quotient" in 1996 to measure machine intelligence2) , this term remained more or less of a mysterious meaning best explicable on the basis of practical needs. The weak point of hard automation is that the system configuration and operations are fixed and cannot be changed without incurring considerable cost and downtime. Mainly it can be used in applications that call for fast and accurate operation in large batch production. Whenever a variety of products must be manufactured in small batches and consequently the work-cells of a production line should be quickly reconfigured to accommodate a change in products, hard automation becomes inefficient and fails due to economic reasons. In these cases, new, more flexible way of automation, so-called "Soft Automation," are expedient and suitable. The most important "ingredient" of soft automation is its adaptive ability for efficiently coping with changing, unexpected or previously unknown conditions, and working with a high degree of uncertainty and imprecision since in practice increasing precision can be very costly. This adaptation must be realized without or within limited human interference: this is one essential component of machine intelligence. Another important factor is that engineering practice often must deal with complex systems of multiple variable and multiple parameter models almost always with strong nonlinear coupling. Conventional analysis-based approaches for describing and predicting the behavior of such systems in many cases are doomed to failure from the outset, even in the phase of the construction of a more or less appropriate mathematical model. These approaches normally are too categorical in the sense that in the name of "modeling accuracy," they try to describe all structural details of the real physical system to be modeled. This significantly increases the intricacy of the model and may result in huge computational burden without considerably improving precision. The best paradigm exemplifying this situation may be the classic perturbation theory: the less significant the achievable correction is, the more work must be invested for obtaining it. Another important component of machine intelligence is a kind of "structural uniformity" giving room and possibility to model arbitrary particular details a priori not specified and unknown. This idea is similar to that of the ready-to-wear industry, whose products can later be slightly modified in contrast to the custom-tailors' made-to-measure creations aiming at maximum accuracy from the beginning. Machines carry out these later corrections automatically. This "learning ability" is another key element of machine intelligence. To realize the above philosophy in a mathematically correct way, L. A. Zadeh separated Hard Computing from Soft Computing. This revelation immediately resulted in distinguishing between two essential complementary branches of machine intelligence: Hard Computing based Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing based Computational Intelligence. In the last decades, it became generally known that fuzzy logic, artificial neural networks, and probabilistic reasoning based Soft Computing is a fruitful orientation in designing intelligent systems. Moreover, it became generally accepted that soft computing rather than hard computing should be viewed as the foundation of real machine intelligence via exploiting the tolerance for imprecision, uncertainty and partial truth to achieve tractability, robustness, low solution cost and better rapport with reality. Further research in the past decade confirmed the view that typical components of present soft computing such as fuzzy logic, neurocomputing, evolutionary computation and probabilistic reasoning are complementary and best results can be obtained by their combined application. These complementary branches of Machine Intelligence, Artificial Intelligence and Computational Intelligence, serve as the basis of Intelligent Engineering Systems. The huge number of scientific results published in journals and conference proceedings worldwide substantiates this statement. Three years ago, a new series of conferences in this direction was initiated and launched with the support of several organizations including the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society and IEEE Hungary Section in technical cooperation with IEEE Robotics & Automation Society. The first event of the series hosted by Bdnki Dondt Polytechnic, Budapest, Hungary, was called "19997 IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Engineering Systems " (INES'97). The Technical University of Vienna, Austria hosted the next event of the series in 1998, followed by INES'99 held by the Technical University of Kosice, Slovakia. The present special issue consists of the extended and revised version of the most interesting papers selected out of the presentations of this conference. The papers exemplify recent development trends of intelligent engineering systems. The first paper pertains to the wider class of neural network applications. It is an interesting report of applying a special Adaptive Resonance Theory network for identifying objects in multispectral images. It is called "Extended Gaussian ARTMAP". The authors conclude that this network is especially advantageous for classification of large, low dimensional data sets. The second paper's subject belongs to the realm of fuzzy systems. It reports successful application of fundamental similarity relations in diagnostic systems. As an example failure detection of rolling-mill transmission is considered. The next paper represents the AI-branch of machine intelligence. The paper is a report on an EU-funded project focusing on the storage of knowledge in a corporate organizational memory used for storing and retrieving knowledge chunks for it. The flexible structure of the system makes it possible to adopt it to different SMEs via using company-specific conceptual terms rather than traditional keywords. The fourth selected paper's contribution is to the field of knowledge discovery. For this purpose in the first step, cluster analysis is done. The method is found to be helpful whenever little or no information on the characteristics of a given data set is available. The next paper approaches scheduling problems by the application of the multiagent system. It is concluded that due to the great number of interactions between components, MAS seems to be well suited for manufacturing scheduling problems. The sixth selected paper's topic is emerging intelligent technologies in computer-aided engineering. It discusses key issues of CAD/CAM technology of our days. The conclusion is that further development of CAD/CAM methods probably will serve companies on the competitive edge. The seventh paper of the selection is a report on seeking a special tradeoff between classical analytical modeling and traditional soft computing. It nonconventionally integrates uniform structures obtained from Lagrangian Classical Mechanics with other simple elements of machine intelligence such as saturated sigmoid transition functions borrowed from neural nets, and fuzzy rules with classical PID/ST, and a simplified version of regression analysis. It is concluded that these different components can successfully cooperate in adaptive robot control. The last paper focuses on the complexity problem of fuzzy and neural network approaches. A fuzzy rule base, be it generated from expert operators or by some learning or identification schemes, may contain redundant, weakly contributing, or outright inconsistent components. Moreover, in pursuit of good approximation, one may be tempted to overly assign the number of antecedent sets, thereby resulting in large fuzzy rule bases and much problems in computation time and storage space. Engineers using neural networks have to face the same complexity problem with the number of neurons and layers. A fuzzy rule base and neural network design, hence, have two important objectives. One is to achieve a good approximation. The other is to reduce the complexity. The main difficulty is that these two objectives are contradictory. A formal approach to extracting the more pertinent elements of a given rule set or neurons is, hence, highly desirable. The last paper is an attempt in this direction. References 1)C. W. De Silva. Automation Intelligence. Engineering Application of Artificial Intelligence. Vol. 7. No. 5. 471-477 (1994). 2)L. A. Zadeh. Fuzzy Logic, Neural Networks and Soft Computing. NATO Advanced Studies Institute on Soft Computing and Its Application. Antalya, Turkey. (1996). 3)L. A. Zadeh. Berkeley Initiative in Soft Computing. IEEE Industrial Electronics Society Newsletter. 41, (3), 8-10 (1994).

Powder bed methods of additive manufacturing (AM) use an electron beam (EBM) to sequentially melt powder, layer by layer, to build up a 3-dimensional object directly from a powder bed according to a computer aided design file. With EBM. there are four steps to build each layer in a build. First, the beam is scanned to preheat the powder bed without melting, second, the contours (outer edge) of the area to be melted is traced and powder melted, third, the hatch (area within the contours) is melted and finally any supports that need to be built to support higher layers of the part being built are added. The major concerns for incorporation of AM into structural parts are (1) microstructural anisotropy/inhomogeneity, (2) porosity and (3) surface finish that is strongly dependent on the orientation of the surface relative to the build direction. Improving the surface finish is critical for certain applications. While finish machining can be used where surfaces are accessible, one benefit of the complexity of part shape is the possibility of building parts with internal passages, inaccessible to machining. Therefore, this paper will discuss recent developments toward the demonstration of a process to electrochemically finish the feedhorn arrays produced with Mo by EBM additive manufacturing. Specifically, we will discuss developments toward achieving optimal electrochemical processing conditions, surface finish, nominal tooling, and performance. Unlike conventional surface finishing processes that either use media or machine tools to physically modify the surface, electrochemistry can be used as a non-contact flexible approach, to finish hard to reach surfaces such as the internal channels of refractory materials that maybe inaccessible to conventional processes. This paper will focus on pulse/pulse reverse electrofinishing processes developed by Faraday Technology and the technique to scale this approach to functional parts of interest. Acknowledgements: The financial support of DOE Contract No. DE-SC0020783 is acknowledged.

In this paper, modelling and simulation of a control-oriented plant-dynamics tool for the molten salt fast reactor (MSFR) is presented. The objective was to develop a simulation tool aimed at investigating the plant response to standard control transients, in order to support the system design finalization and the definition of control strategies. The simulator was developed employing the well tested, flexible and open-source object-oriented Modelica language. A one-dimensional modelling approach was used for thermal-hydraulics and heat transfer. Standard and validated thermal-hydraulic Modelica libraries were employed for various plant components (tubes, pumps, turbines, etc.). An effort was spent in developing a new MSR library modelling the 1D flow of a liquid nuclear fuel, including an ad-hoc neutron-kinetics model which properly takes into consideration the motion of the Delayed Neutron Precursors along the fuel circuit and the consequent reactivity insertion due to the variation of the effective delayed fractions. An analytical steady-state 2-D model of the core and the fuel circuit was developed using MATLAB in order to validate the Decay Neutron Precursors model implemented in the plant simulator. The plant simulator was then employed to investigate the plant dynamics in response to three transients (variation of fuel flow rate, intermediate flow rate and turbine gas flow rate) that are relevant to control purposes. Simulation outcomes highlight the typical reactor-follows-turbine behavior of the MSFR, and they show the small influence of fuel and intermediate flow rate on the reactor power and their strong effects on the temperatures in their respective circuits. Starting from the insights on the reactor behavior gained from the analysis of its free dynamics, the plant simulator here developed will provide a valuable tool in support to the finalization of the design phase, the definition of control strategies and the identification of controlled operational procedures for reactor startup and shutdown.

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> The paper considers three scientific approaches and outlines a new concept of systematic cartography.</p><p>The first approach &amp;ndash; systems theory</p><p>Systems theory has long been concerned with the study of complex systems (in recent times, complexity theory and complex systems have also been used as names of the field). Complex systems are present in the research of various disciplines, including geosciences, economics, social studies and technology. Recently, complexity has become a natural domain of interest in real-world socio-cognitive systems and emerging systemics research. Complex systems tend to be high-dimensional, non-linear, and challenging to study. Organised complexity is the degree of both the organisation and complexity of a system. When organisation and complexity are not part of the same system they each undoubtedly can occur naturally, but when both organisation and complexity are found in the same system, the odds of their occurring drop considerably, and the more of both that a system has, the less probable it becomes.</p><p>It is often useful to consider spatial problems through a general systems approach. A general system is a group of fundamental elements bound together by specific linkages. Systems may be open or closed and may change through time. The earth is an open system in which there are inputs, outputs, and flow-through mechanisms. The linkages, or connections, that bind entities together into a system are paths through which matter, energy, ideas, and people pass from one element to another. General Systems Theory is useful to any approaches describing the earth &amp;ndash; cartography is one of them.</p><p>Cartography employs systems to develop analytical models with which they seek to understand and explain spatial patterns and interactions. Cartographers use the systems model, for example, to examine human migration patterns, the diffusion of ideas, and the spread of information. Moreover, research about maps relies on understanding the systems in which information and communication processes operate. Cartographers are interested in identifying, explaining, and predicting information flows in maps. They also seek to identify, describe, and explain cycles and patterns in both maps and map collections.</p><p>The second approach &amp;ndash; atlases</p><p>Atlases are, probably, the best known and the most flexible of popular cartographic products. Atlases are used to address different issues and to target different audiences. Historically, atlases have played different roles &amp;ndash; from instruments of power, in the Renaissance to a current decision and planning support tools. Atlases are used for general reference, education, research and business. As they evolved, atlases were produced in different ways, from the initial manual compilation to current computer-generated processing. Atlases have experienced many changes in the way they are conceived, produced, disseminated and used.</p><p>Many definitions of an atlas exist, and all of them involve words “systematic collection” or similar expression that an atlas is not a set of map randomly chosen maps and their random arrangement as a book. After a rapid ICT development provides fast map compilations, it seems that atlas cartography is much more comfortable. Various types of atlases can be distinguished by the region, theme, dissemination concept, presentation medium and interaction with users. All these kinds of atlases share the overall objective to communicate geographic knowledge and facilitate new insight into geographic phenomena.</p><p>The third approach &amp;ndash; Tobler's first law of geography</p><p>The Tobler's first law of geography was introduced into the geographical literature in an article that Waldo Tobler (1930&amp;ndash;2018) published in the journal Economic Geography in 1970. He described a simulation of population growth in Detroit and invoked the law: “everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things.”</p><p>It considers the following questions for cartographers: Can the Tobler's law be applied in cartography when we replace objects with maps? How can “near” and “distant” be measured in an atlas? Is it right for Euclidean and network space?</p><p>A concept of systematic cartography</p><p>Systematic cartography is a set of interrelated approaches for visualising a wide range of spatial data sources by various techniques. A traditional field of systematic geovizualisation is the atlas production. At present, advanced display techniques and distributed spatial data sources multiply the possibilities and range of visualization outputs. A theoretical systematic approach plays a crucial role for content, designing, compilation and symbology of any atlas. This calls for the implementation of system theory into an atlas conceptualisation.</p><p>Can atlas be described as a system? If a system consists of elements and relationships between them, then an atlas consists of maps and relationships between them. As a system has a structure and behaviour, an atlas has a structure and usage. In the system theory, a system has a language (information is passed through the information channels). In systematic cartography, an atlas passes spatial information through map language. If we describe an atlas as a system we might measure atlas and then to improve it, redesign it, reuse it etc.</p><p>If an atlas is a system according to the theory of systems (a system universum A involves maps, symbols, map elements, graphs, texts, etc. and a system characteristics R involves all relationships between them) it make us possible to measure “a rate of systematization”, and make atlas taxonomy better. It will also provide a view into an atlas structure and tools for its imporving. And it is really worth!</p><p>Maps in atlases are organized gradually (i) from simple analytical maps (of the main theme components), (ii) to the complex and synthetic maps, (iii) the content of the thematic atlas is arranged like a storybook, (iv) from simple to complex, (v) from basic information to the culmination as the main message in sense of spatial synthesis (typology and regionalization). The relationships relate to map language either in map series, in atlas structure and design and between maps vs. graphs, tables and figures.</p>

A human being can carry on his activities flexibly in his three-dimensional environment by grasping and judging objects and various situations in the external world through his senses. Of these senses, the visual sense plays the most important role. And almost all the processing of visual information is carried out by the brain, just as the saying, ""The eye is a branch of the brain,"" goes. We see things not with the eye but rather with the brain. The mechanism of information processing inside the brain is an ultimately fine example of an information system, and in recent years, attention has increasingly been paid to the elucidation of this mechanism among information scientists as well as information processing engineers. In the past, studies on the visual function have been carried out and developed energetically by neuro-physiologists and anatomists, as well as by psychologists and psycho-physicists. In recent years, new research techniques and measurement methods have been developed and refined and, so, past knowledge has been corrected or new discoveries made; for this reason, it is now _ cnsidered necessary to carry out studies from new standpoints, including ng information science and other scientific fields. It is desired that automatic systems, such as robots and the like, be also equipped with a visual system corresponding to the human visual sense. Studies on the artificial realization of visual functions and their applications, which started roughly in the latter half of the 1960s, were concerned, at the initial stages, with the reading of characters and figures as pattern recognition and image processing. After that time, various fields of research have been formed and developed, such as image understanding as well as robot vision and computer vision as visual systems for intelligent robots. From about 1985, research called ""Shape from X"" based on computational vision by Marr1) has been carried out actively. Recently, however, the research in this field has collide with a mysterious wall, and has therefore been somewhat in a stagnant state. For this reason, a new breakthrough is strongly desired just about now. In order to make clear the true nature of this wall and bring about a breakthrough, this special issue concerning ""new development of vision systems"" has been planned with the view to constructing a new paradigm in the artificial realization of visual functions, such as computer vision, etc., and their applications. It is our wish that progress be made not only in the construction of a new paradigm for promoting themes and studies in robot vision, stereo vision, etc., including recent knowledge and simulation of the human visual system, but also in research and development work with future research advances taken into account. Now, the present author would like to reminisce about research situations in this field at about the time when he was a student. In the latter half of the 1960s, the automatic reading of marks and characters under the name of pattern recognition was being pushed forward as a national project. It was around that time that an automatic zip code reading system was created. And, attempts were started on image processing and on intelligent robots furnished with a visual capability. A little before that time, efforts had been seen to learn and apply the mechanisms of living creatures in engineering fields, such as cybernetics, bionics,etc., with the result that studies using animals have been carried out in earnest. At that time, a large number of cats, rabbits, and others were forced to cooperate (?) in a sacrificial and devoted way as ""volunteers(?)"" in studies by engineers. At about the time when the enthusiasm for this bionics cooled off, the present author as a graduate school student was fortunate enough to pay a visit at national research institute which was playing a leading role in research on robots and pattern recognition in Japan. An image-acquiring device based on a TV camera, which can be obtained cheaply nowadays, was priced at that time at more than several million yen in spite of its slow input speed (taking a dozen or so minutes for inputting a single image) and low performance. At that time, there were only a handful of universities and research institutes which were in possession of an image-acquiring device using a TV camera. For this reason, a stereo vision system equipped with a pair of TV cameras was considered a dream beyond a dream. The research who was giving a tour at that time said by way of an explanation, ""If another TV camera image acquiring device were available, it would be possible to realize a stereo vision system capable of recognizing three-dimensional objects through binocular stereo viewing, but we have been able to purchase only a single unit due to a low budget and a high cost of the unit."" At that time, the author, who was also interested in stereo vision in connection with the development of ""a system for generating solid figures from three-dimensional drawings""2), had been convinced that binocular stereo viewing was not such a simple topic. For this reason, this arrogant student was audacious enough to ask, ""I think that the use of two TV cameras will make possible the input of a pair of two-dimensional pictures but will not lead to the realization of stereo vision, so do you have any new idea?"" Incidentally, it is now possible to obtain a device that costs only a 200th of the price charged at that time but has a level of performance (input speed) more than 200 times as high as before. In the case of computers, too, the performance has improved dramatically, and the price has become remarkably cheaper. From the situation as existed at that time, today's situation appears totally to be a dream, and is one in which stereo vision would be a simple matter. What is surprising, however, is that unfortunately stereo vision has not been so simple as was thought at that time and is far from being realized even now. And, as stated previously, studies in this field have recently crashed an inexplicable wall, and are somewhat in a stagnant state. A new breakthrough is desired at about this time, and it is getting increasingly more opportune to make use of results achieved in fields, such as psychology, brain science, and the like. This is by itself a very good thing, but blind adoption may be somewhat disputable. It is not the case that all the past knowledge in these fields is totally correct, and a great deal of that knowledge may have to be corrected for studies to be conducted from a new point of view. In introducing such results, it is strongly desired to review the current situation from a new standpoint; in other words, rather than repeating the age of cybernetics or bionics of that time, the present age is hoped to become an age of ""neo-cybernetics"" or ""neo-bionics"" in the true sense of the word.

Abstract Background Entrepreneurial decision-making plays an important role in the development of new enterprises and has become the central topic of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurial decision logic describes how entrepreneurs make decisions, which refers to the thinking and cognitive process triggered in a specific entrepreneurial situation. Efficiency is one of the main logic of enterprise decision-making. However, the existing studies have not reached a consistent conclusion on the effectiveness of the results. In particular, few studies have explored how efficiency affects the emergence of new enterprises. Based on the theory of cognitive psychology, this paper investigates the impact of entrepreneurial effect on entrepreneurial enterprises and the regulatory effect of entrepreneurial resource scarcity. Research Objects and Methods This paper uses hierarchical logistic regression to analyze 202 entrepreneurs in the first two rounds of China Entrepreneurial Dynamics Group Research (CPSED). CPSED adopts large-scale random sampling. The sample was screened using the following criteria: (a) entrepreneurial activity, (b) owning a new business, (c) in the early stages of entrepreneurship, and (d) failure to achieve first-time sales. CPSED contacted 69990 Chinese families by telephone and interviewed 22045 people. Among them, 974 new entrepreneurs were selected. 601 of them completed the first wave of interviews. A year later, 321 entrepreneurs completed the second round of interviews. Before the task, whether the emotional states of the control group, conscious distraction group and unconscious distraction group were the same in the high and low depressed population at baseline Two factor ANOVA of PA index 2 (population: depression, non depression) * 3 (grouping: conscious, unconscious, control group) showed no significant group main effect (f (2112) = 0.58, P = 0.57) and interaction between group * population (f (2112) = 0.11, P = 0.89), indicating that there was no significant difference in the initial PA scores of the three groups for both depressed and non depressed people; In addition, the main effect of the population was significant (f (1112) = 10.41, P &lt; 0.05, η P2 = 0.16), the PA score of depressed people was significantly lower than that of non depressed people The two factor ANOVA of Na index 2 (population: depression and non depression) * 3 (grouping: conscious, unconscious and control group) showed no significant group main effect (f (2112) = 0.01, P = 0.99) and group interaction (f (2112) = 0.23, P = 0.80), indicating that there was no significant difference in the initial Na scores of the three groups for both depressed and non depressed people; In addition, the main effect of the population was significant (f (1112) = 10.23, P &lt; 0.05, η P2 = 0.16), the Na score of depressed people was significantly higher than that of non depressed people The above results show that for depressed and non depressed people, the emotional states of the three groups are the same before the experiment. Results This paper divides the impact into four dimensions: means driven logic, partnership logic, tolerable loss logic and leverage contingency logic. The empirical results show that entrepreneurs who follow the means driven logic are unlikely to promote the emergence of new enterprises. Entrepreneurs who follow the logic of partnership are more likely to promote the emergence of new enterprises. The logic of tolerable losses and occasional leverage will not significantly affect the emergence of new enterprises. When entrepreneurial resources are scarce, entrepreneurs who follow the logic of affordable loss are more likely to promote the emergence of new enterprises. The scarcity of entrepreneurial resources has no significant regulatory effect on the relationship between means driven logic, partnership logic, leverage contingency logic and the emergence of new enterprises. Conclusion This paper shows that the effectiveness of entrepreneurial decision-making logic affects the emergence of entrepreneurial enterprises, and the scarcity of entrepreneurial resources has a certain regulatory effect. Based on the theory of cognitive psychology, this study breaks through the existing view that effectiveness is regarded as a one-dimensional structure, and discusses how the sub dimensions of effectiveness affect the emergence of new enterprises. Break through the existing research and explore the direct impact of the scarcity of entrepreneurial resources on entrepreneurial performance. This paper helps to clarify the results of effectiveness and inspire scholars to explore the law of decision-making from the perspective of psychology. This has important enlightenment for entrepreneurs to improve the efficiency of entrepreneurial decision-making and rational entrepreneurship. In short, we should actively pay attention to the changes of entrepreneurs' psychology, emotion and behavior, and become builders, managers, coordinators and collaborators of innovation and entrepreneurship. According to the psychological characteristics of these groups, we should actively and flexibly organize rich activities, strive to create a relaxed and harmonious entrepreneurial atmosphere, create friendly and mutually beneficial entrepreneurial relations, encourage and guide these groups to adjust their psychological state to the best state, and promote the healthy development of their good cognition and good life. Acknowledgements Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No.71772055), Humanities and Social Sciences of Ministry of Education Planning Fund of China (Grant No.17YJA630067), and Anhui Philosophical and Social Science Program (Grant No. AHSKY2019D030).

Abstract There is a set of statistical measures developed mostly in corpus and computational linguistics and information retrieval, known as keyness measures, which are generally expected to detect textual features that account for differences between two texts or groups of texts. These measures are based on the frequency, distribution, or dispersion of words (or other features). Searching for relevant differences or similarities between two text groups is also an activity that is characteristic of traditional literary studies, whenever two authors, two periods in the work of one author, two historical periods or two literary genres are to be compared. Therefore, applying quantitative procedures in order to search for differences seems to be promising in the field of computational literary studies as it allows to analyze large corpora and to base historical hypotheses on differences between authors, genres and periods on larger empirical evidence. However, applying quantitative procedures in order to answer questions relevant to literary studies in many cases raises methodological problems, which have been discussed on a more general level in the context of integrating or triangulating quantitative and qualitative methods in mixed methods research of the social sciences. This paper aims to solve these methodological issues concretely for the concept of distinctiveness and thus to lay the methodological foundation permitting to operationalize quantitative procedures in order to use them not only as rough exploratory tools, but in a hermeneutically meaningful way for research in literary studies. Based on a structural definition of potential candidate measures for analyzing distinctiveness in the first section, we offer a systematic description of the issue of integrating quantitative procedures into a hermeneutically meaningful understanding of distinctiveness by distinguishing its epistemological from the methodological perspective. The second section develops a systematic strategy to solve the methodological side of this issue based on a critical reconstruction of the widespread non-integrative strategy in research on keyness measures that can be traced back to Rudolf Carnap’s model of explication. We demonstrate that it is, in the first instance, mandatory to gain a comprehensive qualitative understanding of the actual task. We show that Carnap’s model of explication suffers from a shortcoming that consists in ignoring the need for a systematic comparison of what he calls the explicatum and the explicandum. Only if there is a method of systematic comparison, the next task, namely that of evaluation can be addressed, which verifies whether the output of a quantitative procedure corresponds to the qualitative expectation that must be clarified in advance. We claim that evaluation is necessary for integrating quantitative procedures to a qualitative understanding of distinctiveness. Our reconstruction shows that both steps are usually skipped in empirical research on keyness measures that are the most important point of reference for the development of a measure of distinctiveness. Evaluation, which in turn requires thorough explication and conceptual clarification, needs to be employed to verify this relation. In the third section we offer a qualitative clarification of the concept of distinctiveness by spanning a three-dimensional conceptual space. This flexible framework takes into account that there is no single and proper concept of distinctiveness but rather a field of possible meanings depending on research interest, theoretical framework, and access to the perceptibility or salience of textual features. Therefore, we shall, instead of stipulating any narrow and strict definition, take into account that each of these aspects – interest, theoretical framework, and access to perceptibility – represents one dimension of the heuristic space of possible uses of the concept of distinctiveness. The fourth section discusses two possible strategies of operationalization and evaluation that we consider to be complementary to the previously provided clarification, and that complete the task of establishing a candidate measure successfully as a measure of distinctiveness in a qualitatively ambitious sense. We demonstrate that two different general strategies are worth considering, depending on the respective notion of distinctiveness and the interest as elaborated in the third section. If the interest is merely taxonomic, classification tasks based on multi-class supervised machine learning are sufficient. If the interest is aesthetic, more complex and intricate evaluation strategies are required, which have to rely on a thorough conceptual clarification of the concept of distinctiveness, in particular on the idea of salience or perceptibility. The challenge here is to correlate perceivable complex features of texts such as plot, theme (aboutness), style, form, or roles and constellation of fictional characters with the unperceived frequency and distribution of word features that are calculated by candidate measures of distinctiveness. Existing research did not clarify, so far, how to correlate such complex features with individual word features. The paper concludes with a general reflection on the possibility of mixed methods research for computational literary studies in terms of explanatory power and exploratory use. As our strategy of combining explication and evaluation shows, integration should be understood as a strategy of combining two different perspectives on the object area: in our evaluation scenarios, that of empirical reader response and that of a specific quantitative procedure. This does not imply that measures of distinctiveness, which proved to reach explanatory power in one qualitative aspect, should be supposed to be successful in all fields of research. As long as evaluation is omitted, candidate measures of distinctiveness lack explanatory power and are limited to exploratory use. In contrast with a skepticism that has sometimes been expressed from literary scholars with regard to the relevance of computational literary studies on proper issues of the humanities, we believe that integrating computational methods into hermeneutic literary studies can be achieved in a way that reaches higher explanatory power than the usual exploratory use of keyness measures, but it can only be achieved individually for concrete tasks and not once and for all based on a general theoretical demonstration.

Rigid bronchoscopy is a procedure that is performed in order to directly visualize the upper and lower airway, and is carried out for either a diagnostic or therapeutic purpose. Suspected foreign body (FB) aspiration is the most common indication for performing this procedure in the pediatric age group at the Philippine Children’s Medical Center where a recent census (May 2008 to April 2009) showed that of 21 cases where rigid bronchoscopy was performed, 10 were for suspected FB aspiration. A review of 101 cases in the same institution showed that the average age of patients with FB aspiration was 2 years and the most common item aspirated was a peanut followed by the atis (sweetsop) seed and chicken bone chips. The most common inorganic foreign body was an earring and “whistle” (which broke off from a toy).1 It is more common in males probably because of their usually more active nature and is frequently found in the right mainstem bronchus, where the FB more easily lodges - being straighter, shorter and wider in diameter. FBs are life-threatening events in children that require early diagnosis and prompt successful management.2 A good history, physical examination and analysis of diagnostic tests are vital in every situation. In most cases, the child’s aspiration of the foreign object is a witnessed event 3 and this history of aspiration is the most sensitive diagnostic tool. The main symptoms include choking, prolonged cough, and dyspnea. Abnormal physical examination findings are found in 67% to 80% of cases and include unilaterally decreased breath sounds, wheezing and stridor.2, 4 Radiographic procedures may show abnormal findings in only about 68-86% of cases.4 5 The most useful radiographs requested are the chest posteroanterior (anteroposterior in infants and small children) and lateral views which may help localize the impaction site when the object aspirated is radiopaque.3 However, most inhaled FBs are radiolucent, and their presence can be suspected by obtaining inspiration and expiration views to demonstrate unilateral hyperinflation. Other suggestive features include atelectasis, pneumothorax and pneumonia. These indirect radiologic features of FB inhalation are present in 76% of cases.2, Where inspiration and expiration views cannot be obtained, as in very young children, left and right decubitus views may be helpful. 6 Fluoroscopic studies may also be obtained along with the plain radiographs, however, specificity and sensitivity are not very high.4 Virtual bronchoscopy may also be used in patients with suspected FB aspiration. Virtual bronchoscopy which uses multislice computerized tomography (MDCT) with realistic 3-dimensional reconstruction may be helpful in detecting and localizing the FB prior to any surgical procedure and thus decreasing the number of patients needing diagnostic bronchoscopies.7 Flexible fiberoptic bronchoscopy under local anesthesia and premedication may also be performed in cases of suspected FB aspiration wherein clinical and radiologic findings are not consistent with FB aspiration. When no FB is visualized, the patient is saved a rigid bronchoscopic procedure under general anesthesia.8 Flexible fiberoptic bronchoscopy is also used therapeutically to remove FBs in the bronchus, however, successful removal is more common with rigid bronchoscopy. All the necessary instruments needed for the procedure must be prepared. As much as possible 2 of each instrument are prepared: 2 bronchoscopes (one estimated from the age and size of the child and one smaller than that – just in case!), 2 suction devices (if one gets clogged up, the other one is ready) and 2 forceps. The peanut forceps is ideal, not only for peanuts but usually for other nuts as well; the alligator forceps is useful for relatively flat foreign bodies; while the “jaw type” forceps appears to be useful for everything else.9 The instruments are then tried, to check if they are in working order before commencement of anesthesia. This involves checking the transparency of the glass window plug, ensuring that the light source and the proximal prismatic light deflector are both illuminating, and trying out all the forceps and suction tips. It is best to try the instruments on an object similar to what the child aspirated.3 The surgical assistant, nurse and instruments are usually on the right (if the surgeon is right-handed) and anesthesiologist on the left. The suction and bronchoscope are then made ready. Knowledge of the anatomy of the tracheobronchial tree is imperative to be able to navigate through this area while looking for the FB. The use of optical forceps with mounted rod-lens telescopes has made the removal of airway FBs simpler, quicker and safer. These new devices have led to decreased complication rates and fewer missed or incomplete FB removals. While access to FBs located in the distal small segmental bronchi especially in very young children may be limited with the use of optical forceps,10 this can be overcome by removal of the connecting bridge to allow the optical forceps to be passed distal to the tip of the bronchoscope. An anesthesiologist familiar with the procedure must be called in. It is very important to have discussed the case and the procedure with the anesthesiologist prior to the operation to minimize confusion and promote harmony. Most anesthesiologists have become at ease with giving intravenous general anesthesia which circumvents the use of potentially noxious gases. Assisted spontaneous ventilation can avoid the need for muscle relaxation and paralysis so that the wake-up time is shortened. Intravenous general anesthesia with propofol and assisted spontaneous ventilation is currently the frequently used anesthetic technique for rigid bronchoscopy although volatile agents and gases are still used.11,12 The patient is placed supine on the operating table. A shoulder roll is not required. After induction of anesthesia, the patient is hyperventilated to 100% oxygen saturation to take full advantage of operating time.3 A topical anesthetic (lidocaine or tetracaine) is sprayed into the laryngeal area and distally into the trachea to lessen stimulus and pain, thus lowering the level of the anesthetic agent used and minimizing the possible occurrence of laryngospasm after the procedure.12 The state of dentition is inspected and a tooth guard placed over the upper teeth. Although it is possible to do bronchoscopy directly without using a laryngoscope, it is more expedient to use the laryngoscope (with the left hand) to visualize the larynx. The assistant (most likely the ORL resident but occasionally, a nurse) hands over the bronchoscope (to the right hand) without the glass window plug initially (because it may fog up or fall off) and the bronchoscope is inserted by looking through the bronchoscope as it passes through the larynx. Rotating the bronchoscope by 900 (with the axis of the lip in the anteroposterior axis of the glottis chink) is often useful for easier bronchoscopic insertion.2 Never force the bronchoscope into the larynx – if there is difficulty, reposition the laryngoscope to better visualize the larynx. Where exposure of the larynx is adequate, inability to pass the bronchoscope may be due to the bronchoscope lip hitting a vocal fold instead of entering the glottic chink. Another possibility is that the bronchoscope is too large to fit through a narrowed subglottis. The laryngoscope is removed once the bronchoscope has been inserted and the anesthesiologist connects the anesthetic tube to the standard 15-mm adapter of the bronchoscope and the glass window plug is inserted (this is again removed when the forceps is introduced or suctioning needed). A 0o telescope of the appropriate size may be inserted at this time or even during the initial insertion of the bronchoscope. The left hand is placed over the tooth guard and the thumb and index finger are used to support the bronchoscope being held in the right hand, much like a billiard cue. The left thumb lifts the bronchoscope off the tooth guard to enable the bronchoscope to be advanced without resistance. The bronchoscope is advanced slowly, always ensuring that the lumen is clearly in view, and suctioning whenever needed. Once the carina is seen, the main bronchus, where the FB is likely to be located, is then entered. Turn the head to the left to enable passage into the right main bronchus, and then to the right to enter the left main bronchus. Some degree of neck flexion can also be helpful in aligning the main bronchus. The bronchoscope is advanced until it is as near as possible to the FB to allow accurate suction of secretions so that the surgeon can determine how best to orient the forceps during application. The bronchoscope is then slightly withdrawn to allow the forceps to be freely inserted beyond the bronchoscope. The forceps are opened as widely as possible as this stretches the airway walls and allows the foreign body to fall into the jaws of the forceps which is then firmly grasped. Care must be taken not to push the FB further down the airway. If the FB fits through the bronchoscope, then it is pulled right through without removing the bronchoscope. However, if the FB does not fit through the bronchoscope, then the bronchoscope has to be withdrawn with the FB trailing behind held by the forceps. It is important to keep your eyes (and hands) on the bronchoscope and forceps at all times. The FB may become caught in the larynx or dropped into the trachea, causing complete airway obstruction. This possibility should always be anticipated and equipment be able to deal with this needs to be readily at hand. To prevent the FB being lost at the laryngeal inlet, the bevel of the bronchoscope is moved around over the FB by rotating the bronchoscope 900 and the bronchoscope is slightly tilted down at this area. A firm grip on the forceps with the FB must be maintained and hopefully, it is still there when the forceps is removed from the oral cavity. If the FB has been removed from the tracheo-broncial tree, but is not found in the forceps, the naso-oro-hypo pharynx should be checked in addition to a repeat bronchoscopy. All throughout the procedure, it is imperative to listen to the sound of the oxygen saturation monitor for signs of desaturation and to inquire from the anesthesiologist regarding the condition of the patient. If desaturation occurs, the bronchoscope is moved back out of the bronchus and into the trachea to allow the anestheshiologist to ventilate the patient through the bronchoscope adaptor. If this is due to a large FB that slipped while in the trachea, then, the FB must be removed right away or pushed back into the bronchus to regain the airway. Once the FB is removed , a second bronchoscopic examination is done to check for any pooling of secretions or blood that may need to be suctioned or for any remnant of the FB- which may have accidentally separated from the bigger piece- that has to be retrieved. Small pieces can often be removed by suctioning. Rarely, a tracheostomy may have to be performed for a FB that, during extraction, will not fit through the laryngeal inlet. Tracheotomy is performed while the bronchoscope is in place and with the forceps grasping the FB. The FB is extracted through the tracheostoma. Afterwards, tracheostoma is closed with sutures and regular wound care is initiated. If the procedure took less that an hour with minimal trauma, then the child is assisted with ventilation until he/she recovers full spontaneous respiration. A dose ofteroids may also be given (I.V. Dexamethasone, 1.0 to 1.5 mg/kg; maximum, 20 mg). The patient is brought to the post-anesthesia room and observed. Delayed diagnosis and intervention (24 hours or more) were found to be related to higher complication rates such as recurrent or chronic pulmonary infections and prolonged hospital stay. 13 Thus the need for early diagnosis and treatment of cases with suspected FB aspiration.

AbstractThis study develops forces equilibrium differential equations for the geometric modeling of 1D flexible objects with surface constraints. These second-order equations are an extension of the Cosserat elastic rod theory and include both bending and torsion. Variables were established for the centerline and attitude in the Cartesian coordinate system of the cross section. This paper specifically investigates the case of a 1D flexible object constrained by a cylindrical surface. To solve this problem, a novel hybrid semi-analytical numerical method is proposed. In this process, a Hamiltonian function and an initial integral operator are introduced in a cylindrical coordinate system. The analytical solution, decoupled in polar coordinates, is then derived. The improved finite difference method was then used to obtain three cylindrical coordinates, which ensured numerical stability and efficiency. The results of a geometric shape simulation with differing boundary conditions demonstrate that this proposed method is capable of real-time modeling. As such, this technique could be a promising new tool for use in graphics simulations of elongated structures, such as DNA molecules, drill pipes, and submarine cables.

This study presents a topology optimization method to synthesize an innovative compliant finger for grasping objects with size and shape variations. The design domain of the compliant finger is a trapezoidal area with one input and two output ports. The topology optimized finger design is prototyped by three-dimensional (3D) printing using flexible filament, and be used in the developed gripper module, which consists of one actuator and two identical compliant fingers. Both fingers are actuated by one displacement input, and can grip objects through elastic deformation. The gripper module is mounted on an industrial robot to pick and place a variety of objects to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed design. The results show that the developed compliant finger can be used to handle vulnerable objects without causing damage to the surface of grasped items. The proposed compliant finger is a monolithic and low-cost design, which can be used to resolve the challenge issue for robotic automation of irregular and vulnerable objects.

The ability of acoustic waves to manipulate objects without contact has gained increasing attention due to their potential applications in various fields, such as cell sorting, organoid construction, material assembly, etc. In general, high-throughput manipulation of microparticles relies on a large number of active transducers and phase-shifting circuits to create standing wave patterns, thus significantly inducing system complexity. Recently, we realized the parallel manipulation of microparticles by using an acoustic field modulated by a one-dimensional phononic crystal plate. The concept is based on the phononic crystal plate can resonant excite the zero-order asymmetric (A₀) Lamb wave, inducing highly localized periodic radiation force on the particles. In this paper, we further show that by using a two-dimensional phononic crystal plate (TDPCP), parallel manipulation of massive particles can be achieved with only a single transducer. The A₀ Lamb wave can be excited by a TDPCP and form a two-dimensional periodic localized field, and then particles can suffer negative vertical force and stable zero horizontal force, inducing two-dimensional periodic trapping on the surface of the plate. Combined with a PZT source with a TDPCP consisting of a brass plate patterned with periodical brass stubs, we observed the capture and arrangement of glass microspheres, achieving two-dimensional arrangement manipulation of particles on the TDPCP. This system represents a significant advancement in developing high-throughput, rapid, and flexible devices for particles and cell manipulation.

The urban geographic information system includes a wide range of different types of complex data collected from various sources. Objects described vary from industrial to ecological as city itself being tied to environment also affects nature. Preventing pollution and other emergency situations caused by industrial and human activity in general is both topical and burning that is widely recognized so there is need for a comprehensive study of the possibilities to develop geographic information system in order to increase efficiency of city design. The purpose of the article is to develop urban geographic information system that provides a solution to the problem and also helps to reduce city planning costs as a system representing city on different levels and obtaining all the necessary information in one source. Urban geographic information system developed with the latest digital technologies allows to make city planning more flexible to technical, economical, social and other changes. Three-dimensional visualization is one of the up-to-date ways to expand geographic information system functionality and this paper gives information of the subject area: research on nowadays data models and data processing methods was conducted. And on this basis urban geographic information system extended data model including underground infrastructure level was offered and possible approaches to increase efficiency of data processing in it were formed. The three-dimensional model provides a solution for complex underground and overground design with digital technologies on a basis of geographic information system that includes multilevel data organization.

The Russian-Ukrainian war, which took on a full-scale form in February 2022, became a tragedy and set the question of restoring lost monuments with new vigour. Therefore, the publication which aims to identify the specific features of symbolic reconstructions’ use for the representation of lost architectural monuments becomes especially relevant. Based on a comprehensive architectural-typological and comparative analysis of the renovation of architectural structures and non-existent objects, open-air exhibiting methods in Ukraine and the world (fixation, interpretation, revitalisation, reconstruction, and modelling), the study reflects on the possibilities to preserve the history of destroyed monuments. Open-air museums offer a wide range of activities allowing to include monuments that are not subject to further functional adaptation into the expositions. The study proposes to use symbolic reconstructions to reproduce and exhibit lost monuments. Graphic (the simplest and most universal, consist of the two-dimensional image demonstration), physical (larger-scale, permanent, three-dimensional stylised installations that carry information about the lost monument’s nature), virtual (the most flexible and the most promising, do not require the direct impact on the exhibit, include the use of augmented reality technologies), and performative (one-time or temporary activities, most often are used in the associative landscapes’ territories) symbolic reconstructions on the example of their use in museums and open-air exhibitions were examined in detail. The effectiveness of these measures in open-air museums was considered and recommendations for their use, which can become the basis for further implementation in practice in Ukrainian exhibition institutions, were formulated

One of the problems associated with vibration pollution is ground vibration. In view of the isolation of objects protected from ground-transmitted vibrations, a novel type of vibration isolation barrier, an open trench–wave impedance block, is proposed. Based on the perfectly matched layer absorbing boundary, the two-dimensional finite element method in the frequency domain is used to investigate the vibration isolation performance of the open trench–wave impedance block barrier system for reducing the vibration generated by a vibration source. Firstly, the governing equation of the perfectly matched layer absorbing boundary is established in the frequency domain by using complex coordinate stretching. Secondly, using Galerkin approximation technology, the calculation formula of the second-order non-splitting perfectly matched layer with the displacement as the basic unknown quantity is given for the finite element method in the frequency domain. Finally, the influence of the physical parameters (modulus ratio between ground and wave impedance block), geometric parameters (dimension and layout of an open trench–wave impedance block barrier, including embedded length and width) and the load parameters (exciting frequency of the vibration source) on its vibration isolation performance is researched. The results show that the open trench–wave impedance block barrier system can provide a more flexible and efficient isolation barrier for ground vibration control.

Taylor–Couette flow (TCF) is often used as a simplified model for complex rotating flows in the interior of stars and accretion discs. The flow dynamics in these objects is influenced by magnetic fields. For example, quasi-Keplerian flows in Taylor–Couette geometry become unstable to a travelling or standing wave in an external magnetic field if the fluid is conducting; there is an instability even when the flow is hydrodynamically stable. This magnetorotational instability leads to the development of chaotic states and, eventually, turbulence, when the cylinder rotation is sufficiently fast. The transition to turbulence in this flow can be complex, with the coexistence of parameter regions with spatio-temporal chaos and regions with quasi-periodic behaviour, involving one or two additional modulating frequencies. Although the unstable modes of a periodic flow can be identified with Floquet analysis, here we adopt a more flexible equation-free data-driven approach. We analyse the data from the transition to chaos in the magnetized TCF and identify the flow structures related to the modulating frequencies with dynamic mode decomposition; this method is based on approximating nonlinear dynamics with a linear infinite-dimensional Koopman operator. With the use of these structures, one can construct a nonlinear reduced model for the transition. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Taylor–Couette and related flows on the centennial of Taylor’s seminal Philosophical Transactions paper (part 1)’.

To determine material body’s deformation is usual to solve Newton’s equation, under assigned boundary conditions; but this is not the only possibility to obtain a plausible description of the phenomenon. In recent years, position-based dynamic (PBD) concept has consolidated its success. The idea has its roots in computer graphic graphics aimed at saving processing time in computing object’s deformation and breakage in video games applications; PBD tries to give a plausible description of the deformation taking into account only the relative point’s positions to describe the action of internal forces. The aim is to obtain an algebraical equation capable of calculating the position of a point using as input the position of some other points. This kinematic approach has the advantage to work with simple algebraical equations; the complexity of the system increases linearly, rather than quadratically, with increasing the point’s number. Working on swarm robotics we have addressed the problem concerning flocking rules, to determine the behaviour of a single element to achieve an assigned configuration of the group. One possibility to perform this task, for each single robot, is to see what some of its neighbours are doing. We then use these rules to reproduce some behaviour of bi-dimensional deformable bodies both consistent with the standard Cauchy model and according to the second-gradient theory. All constitutive properties of the material are hidden within the rules, determining the displacements of the particles each relative to the others. The tool has an advantage in terms of computational cost and is very flexible to be adapted to objects of complex geometry and problems of different nature. The results are encouraging and fracture can be easily managed. However, a connection between the parameters of the tool and the constitutive parameters of the materials is not yet provided and our efforts are addressed in this direction, to validate the tool by a solid classical theory.

With the rapid development of information and communication techniques, dam structural health assessment based on data collected from structural health monitoring systems has become a trend. This allows for applying data-driven methods for dam safety analysis. However, data-driven models in most related literature are statistical and shallow machine learning models, which cannot capture the time series patterns or learn from long-term dependencies of dam structural response time series. Furthermore, the effectiveness and applicability of these models are only validated in a small data set and part of monitoring points in a dam structural health monitoring system. To address the problems, this article proposes a new modeling paradigm based on various deep learning and transfer learning techniques. The paradigm utilizes one-dimensional convolutional neural networks to extract the inherent features from dam structural response–related environmental quantity monitoring data. Then bidirectional gated recurrent unit with a self-attention mechanism is used to learn from long-term dependencies, and transfer learning is utilized to transfer knowledge learned from the typical monitoring point to the others. The proposed paradigm integrates the powerful modeling capability of deep learning networks and the flexible transferability of transfer learning. Rather than traditional models that rely on experience for feature selection, the proposed deep learning–based paradigm directly utilizes environmental monitoring time series as inputs to accurately estimate dam structural response changes. A high arch dam in long-term service is selected as the case study, and three monitoring items, including dam displacement, crack opening displacement, and seepage are used as the research objects. The experimental results show that the proposed paradigm outperforms conventional and shallow machine learning–based methods in all 41 tested monitoring points, which indicates that the proposed paradigm is capable of dealing with dam structural response estimation with high accuracy and robustness.

The utopian vision is of a future where a digital representation of each object in our collections is accessible through the internet and sustainably linked to other digital resources. This is a long term goal however, and in the meantime there is an urgent need to share data about our collections at a higher level with a range of stakeholders (Woodburn et al. 2020). To sustainably achieve this, and to aggregate this information across all natural science collections, the data need to be standardised (Johnston and Robinson 2002). To this end, the Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) Collection Descriptions (CD) Interest Group has developed a data standard for describing collections, which is approaching formal review for ratification as a new TDWG standard. It proposes 20 classes (Suppl. material 1) and over 100 properties that can be used to describe, categorise, quantify, link and track digital representations of natural science collections, from high-level approximations to detailed breakdowns depending on the purpose of a particular implementation. The wide range of use cases identified for representing collection description data means that a flexible approach to the standard and the underlying modelling concepts is essential. These are centered around the ‘ObjectGroup’ (Fig. 1), a class that may represent any group (of any size) of physical collection objects, which have one or more common characteristics. This generic definition of the ‘collection’ in ‘collection descriptions’ is an important factor in making the standard flexible enough to support the breadth of use cases. For any use case or implementation, only a subset of classes and properties within the standard are likely to be relevant. In some cases, this subset may have little overlap with those selected for other use cases. This additional need for flexibility means that very few classes and properties, representing the core concepts, are proposed to be mandatory. Metrics, facts and narratives are represented in a normalised structure using an extended MeasurementOrFact class, so that these can be user-defined rather than constrained to a set identified by the standard. Finally, rather than a rigid underlying data model as part of the normative standard, documentation will be developed to provide guidance on how the classes in the standard may be related and quantified according to relational, dimensional and graph-like models. So, in summary, the standard has, by design, been made flexible enough to be used in a number of different ways. The corresponding risk is that it could be used in ways that may not deliver what is needed in terms of outputs, manageability and interoperability with other resources of collection-level or object-level data. To mitigate this, it is key for any new implementer of the standard to establish how it should be used in that particular instance, and define any necessary constraints within the wider scope of the standard and model. This is the concept of the ‘collection description scheme,’ a profile that defines elements such as: which classes and properties should be included, which should be mandatory, and which should be repeatable; which controlled vocabularies and hierarchies should be used to make the data interoperable; how the collections should be broken down into individual ObjectGroups and interlinked, and how the various classes should be related to each other. which classes and properties should be included, which should be mandatory, and which should be repeatable; which controlled vocabularies and hierarchies should be used to make the data interoperable; how the collections should be broken down into individual ObjectGroups and interlinked, and how the various classes should be related to each other. Various factors might influence these decisions, including the types of information that are relevant to the use case, whether quantitative metrics need to be captured and aggregated across collection descriptions, and how many resources can be dedicated to amassing and maintaining the data. This process has particular relevance to the Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo) consortium, the design of which incorporates use cases for storing, interlinking and reporting on the collections of its member institutions. These include helping users of the European Loans and Visits System (ELViS) (Islam 2020) to discover specimens for physical and digital loans by providing descriptions and breakdowns of the collections of holding institutions, and monitoring digitisation progress across European collections through a dynamic Collections Digitisation Dashboard. In addition, DiSSCo will be part of a global collections data ecosystem requiring interoperation with other infrastructures such as the GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility) Registry of Scientific Collections, the CETAF (Consortium of European Taxonomic Facilities) Registry of Collections and Index Herbariorum. In this presentation, we will introduce the draft standard and discuss the process of defining new collection description schemes using the standard and data model, and focus on DiSSCo requirements as examples of real-world collection descriptions use cases.

Abstract Human categorization is one of the most important and successful targets of cognitive modeling, with decades of model development and assessment using simple, low-dimensional artificial stimuli. However, it remains unclear how these findings relate to categorization in more natural settings, involving complex, high-dimensional stimuli. Here, we take a step towards addressing this question by modeling human categorization over a large behavioral dataset, comprising more than 500,000 judgments over 10,000 natural images from ten object categories. We apply a range of machine learning methods to generate candidate representations for these images, and show that combining rich image representations with flexible cognitive models captures human decisions best. We also find that in the high-dimensional representational spaces these methods generate, simple prototype models can perform comparably to the more complex memory-based exemplar models dominant in laboratory settings.

Flexible tactile neuromorphic devices are becoming important as the impetus for the development of human-machine collaboration. However, accomplishing and further transcending human intelligence with artificial intelligence still confront many barriers. Here, we present a self-powered stretchable three-dimensional remote tactile device (3D-RTD) that performs the depth-of-field (DOF) sensation of external mechanical motions through a conductive-dielectric heterogeneous structure. The device can build a logic relationship precisely between DOF motions of an external active object and sensory potential signals of bipolar sign, frequency, amplitude, etc. The sensory mechanism is revealed on the basis of the electrostatic theory and multiphysics modeling, and the performance is verified via an artificial-biological hybrid system with micro/macroscale interaction. The feasibility of the 3D-RTD as an obstacle-avoidance patch for the blind is systematically demonstrated with a rat. This work paves the way for multimodal neuromorphic device that transcends the function of a biological one toward a new modality for brain-like intelligence.

ABSTRACTUltra small angle x-ray scattering is used to probe the morphology of highly dispersed montmorillonite (MMT) in water and polyamide-66. In water the scattered intensity, I(q) shows a q-2 dependence for q > 0.01 Å-1, where q is the magnitude of the scattering vector. This is as expected for a two dimensional sheet-like object. On larger scales (smaller q) mass-fractal character is evident up to the radius-of-gyration of the individual scattering entities. The scattering profile is interpreted using a semi-flexible sheet model in which flat, disk-like entities of radius = 80 Å (an areal persistence length) are fractally distributed on large scales with a mass fractal dimension of 2.65. These size scales correspond to a scattering entity comprised of one or a few crumpled sheets. No evidence of inter-particle correlations is found at concentrations below the gel point. In polyamide-66 loaded with organically modified MMT long-range fractal behavior is also observed but with larger fractal dimension.

AbstractAn experimental methodology is proposed to study aeroelastic systems with optical diagnostics. The approach locally evaluates the three physical mechanisms that produce the forces involved in Collar’s triangle, namely aerodynamic, elastic, and inertial forces. Flow and object surface tracers are tracked by a volumetric particle image velocimetry (PIV) system based on four high-speed cameras and LED illumination. The images are analysed with Lagrangian particle tracking techniques, and the flow tracers and surface markers are separated based on the different properties of their images. The inertial and elastic forces are obtained solely analysing the motion and the deformation of the solid object, whereas the aerodynamic force distribution is obtained with pressure from PIV techniques. Experiments are conducted on a benchmark problem of fluid–structure interaction, featuring a flexible panel installed at the trailing edge of a cylinder. Data are collected in the resonant regime, where the panel exhibits a two-dimensional motion. The estimation of inertial and elastic forces is obtained enforcing a high-order polynomial fit to the surface motion and deformation. The aerodynamic loads on the panel are challenged by the need to devise adaptive boundary conditions complying with the panel motion. The closure of Collar’s triangle yields overall residuals of about one-half of the inertial force taken as reference. The simultaneous measurement of the three forces paves the way to assessing the equilibrium of forces closing the Collar’s triangle. The latter can be intended for uncertainty evaluation or, when only two forces are measured, for estimation of the remaining Collar element. Graphical Abstract

AbstractThe recognition of cutting state of coal-rock is the key technology to realize “unmanned” mining in coal face. In order to realized real-time perception and accurate judgment of coal-rock cutting state information, this paper combined the field test sampling, construction technology of complex coal seam, virtual prototype technology, bidirectional coupling technology, data processing theory, image fusion method, and deep learning theory to carry out multi domain deep fusion experimental research on multi-source heterogeneous data of coal and rock cutting state. The typical complex coal seam containing gangue, inclusion, and minor fault in Yangcun mine of Yanzhou mining area was taken as the engineering object. The high-precision three-dimensional simulation model of the complex coal seam that can update and replace particles was constructed. Based on the simulation results of Discrete Element Method-Multi Flexible Body Dynamics (DEM-MFBD), the one-dimensional original vibration acceleration signals of the key components of the shearer cutting part were determined, including spiral drum, rocker arm shell, and square head. After transforming one-dimensional original signal data into two-dimensional time–frequency images by Short-time Fourier Transform, morphological wavelet image fusion technology was used to realize the effective fusion of characteristic information of spiral drum, rocker arm shell, and square head under different working conditions. Based on the deep learning theory, the DCGAN-RFCNN (Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Networks-Random Forest Convolutional Neural Networks) coal and rock cutting state recognition network model was constructed. Combining convolution neural network with random forest recognition classifier, RFCNN coal and rock cutting state recognition classification model was constructed, and the recognition network model was trained to obtain the model recognition results. Through the comparative experimental analysis of the RFCNN network model with different recognition network models and different synthetic sample numbers in the recognition network, the effectiveness of the recognition network model was verified. The results show that: When synthetic samples are not included in each working condition in the RFCNN model, the average recognition rate is 90.641%. With the increase of the number of synthetic samples, the recognition rate of coal and rock cutting state increases. When the number of synthetic samples added to each working condition reaches 5000, the recognition effect is the best, and the average recognition rate reaches 98.344%, which verifies the superiority of enriching the data set by using the improved DCGAN network. Also, the RFCNN outperformed the other variants: it obtained higher recognition accuracy by 25.085, 21.925 and 19.337%, respectively, over SVW, CNN, and AlexNet. Also, the experimental platform of shearer cutting coal and rock was built, where the coal and rock cutting state recognition network was trained and tested based on the migration learning theory. Through the statistical test results, the accuracy of coal and rock cutting state recognition is 98.64%, which realizes the accurate recognition of coal and rock cutting state.

This paper will compare the metaphoric structuring of the ecological concept of resilience—with its roots in Holling's 1973 paper; with psychological concepts of resilience which followed from research—such as Werner, Bierman, and French and Garmezy and Streitman) published in the early 1970s. This metaphoric analysis will expose the difference between complex adaptive systems models of resilience in ecology and studies related to resilience in relation to climate change; compared with the individualism of linear equilibrium models of resilience which have dominated discussions of resilience in psychology and economics. By examining the ontological commitments of these competing metaphors, I will show that the individualistic concept of resilience which dominates psychological discussions of resilience is incompatible with the ontological commitments of ecological concepts of resilience. Because the ontological commitments of the concepts of ecological resilience on the one hand, and psychological resilience on the other, are so at odds with one another, it is important to be clear which concept of resilience is being evaluated for its adequacy as a concept. Having clearly distinguished these competing metaphors and their ontological commitments, this paper will show that it is the complex adaptive systems model of resilience from ecology, not the individualist concept of psychological resilience, that has been utilised by both the academic discussions of adaptation to climate change, and the operationalisation of the concept of resilience by social movements like the permaculture, ecovillage, and Transition Towns movements. Ontological Metaphors My analysis of ontological metaphors draws on insights from Kuhn's (114) account of gestalt perception in scientific paradigm shifts; the centrality of the role of concrete analogies in scientific reasoning (Masterman 77); and the theorisation of ontological metaphors in cognitive linguistics (Gärdenfors). Figure 1: Object Ontological commitments reflect the shared beliefs within a community about the sorts of things that exist. Our beliefs about what exists are shaped by our sensory and motor interactions with objects in the physical world. Physical objects have boundaries and surfaces that separate the object from not-the-object. Objects have insides and outsides, and can be described in terms of more-or-less fixed and stable “objective” properties. A prototypical example of an “object” is a “container”, like the example shown in Figure 1. Ontological metaphors allow us to conceive of “things” which are not objects as if they were objects by picking “out parts of our experience and treat them as [if they were] discrete entities or substances of a uniform kind” (Lakoff and Johnson 25). We use ontological metaphors when we imagine a boundary around a collection of things, such as the members of a team or trees in a forest, and conceive of them as being in a container (Langacker 191–97). We can then think of “things” like a team or forest as if they were a single entity. We can also understand processes and activities as if they were things with boundaries. Whether or not we characterise some aspect of our experience as a noun (a bounded entity) or as a verb (a process that occurs over time) is not determined by the nature of things in themselves, but by our understanding and interpretation of our experience (Langacker 233). In this paper I employ a technique that involves examining the details of “concrete images” from the source domains for metaphors employed in the social sciences to expose for analysis their ontological commitments (Harrison, “Politics” 215; Harrison, “Economics” 7). By examining the ontological metaphors that structure the resilience literature I will show how different conceptions of resilience reflect different beliefs and commitments about the sorts of “things” there are in the world, and hence how we can study and understand these “things.” Engineering Metaphors In his discussion of engineering resilience, Holling (“Engineering Vs. Ecological” 33) argues that this conception is the “foundation for economic theory”, and defined in terms of “resistance to disturbance and the speed of return to the equilibrium” or steady state of the system. Whereas Holling takes his original example of the use of the engineering concept of resilience from economics, Pendall, Foster, & Cowell (72), and Martin-Breen and Anderies (6) identify it as the concept of resilience that dominates the field of psychology. They take the stress loading of bridges to be the engineering source for the metaphor. Figure 2: Pogo stick animation (Source: Blacklemon 67, CC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pogoanim.gif). In order to understand this metaphor, we need to examine the characteristics of the source domain for the metaphor. A bridge can be “under tension, compression or both forces at the same time [and] experiences what engineers define as stress” (Matthews 3). In order to resist these forces, bridges need to be constructed of material which “behave much like a spring” that “strains elastically (deforms temporarily and returns to its original shape after a load has been removed) under a given stress” (Gordon 52; cited in Matthews). The pogostick shown in Figure 2 illustrates how a spring returns to its original size and configuration once the load or stress is removed. WGBH Educational Foundation provides links to simple diagrams that illustrate the different stresses the three main designs of bridges are subject to, and if you compare Computers & Engineering's with Gibbs and Bourne's harmonic spring animation you can see how both a bridge under live load and the pogostick in Figure 2 oscillate just like an harmonic spring. Subject to the elastic limits of the material, the deformation of a spring is proportional to the stress or load applied. According to the “modern theory of elasticity [...] it [is] possible to deduce the relation between strain and stress for complex objects in terms of intrinsic properties of the materials it is made of” (“Hooke’s Law”). When psychological resilience is characterised in terms of “properties of individuals [that] are identified in isolation” (Martin-Breen and Anderies 12); and in terms of “behaviours and attributes [of individuals] that allow people to get along with one another and to succeed socially” (Pendall, Foster, and Cowell 72), they are reflecting this engineering focus on the properties of materials. Martin-Breen and Anderies (42) argue that “the Engineering Resilience framework” has been informed by ontological metaphors which treat “an ecosystem, person, city, government, bridge, [or] society” as if it were an object—“a unified whole”. Because this concept of resilience treats individuals as “objects,” it leads researchers to look for the properties or characteristics of the “materials” which individuals are “made of”, which are either elastic and allow them to “bounce” or “spring” back after stress; or are fragile and brittle and break under load. Similarly, the Designers Institute (DINZ), in its conference on “Our brittle society,” shows it is following the engineering resilience approach when it conceives of a city or society as an object which is made of materials which are either “strong and flexible” or “brittle and fragile”. While Holling characterises economic theory in terms of this engineering metaphor, it is in fact chemistry and the kinetic theory of gases that provides the source domain for the ontological metaphor which structures both static and dynamic equilibrium models within neo-classical economics (Smith and Foley; Mirowski). However, while springs are usually made out of metals, they can be made out of any “material [that] has the required combination of rigidity and elasticity,” such as plastic, and even wood (in a bow) (“Spring (device)”). Gas under pressure turns out to behave the same as other springs or elastic materials do under load. Because both the economic metaphor based on equilibrium theory of gases and the engineering analysis of bridges under load can both be subsumed under spring theory, we can treat both the economic (gas) metaphor and the engineering (bridge) metaphor as minor variations of a single overarching (spring) metaphor. Complex Systems Metaphors Holling (“Resilience & Stability” 13–15) critiques equilibrium models, arguing that non-deterministic, complex, non-equilibrium and multi-equilibrium ecological systems do not satisfy the conditions for application of equilibrium models. Holling argues that unlike the single equilibrium modelled by engineering resilience, complex adaptive systems (CAS) may have multi or no equilibrium states, and be non-linear and non-deterministic. Walker and Salt follow Holling by calling for recognition of the “dynamic complexity of the real world” (8), and that “these [real world] systems are complex adaptive systems” (11). Martin-Breen and Anderies (7) identify the key difference between “systems” and “complex adaptive systems” resilience as adaptive capacity, which like Walker and Salt (xiii), they define as the capacity to maintain function, even if system structures change or fail. The “engineering” concept of resilience focuses on the (elastic) properties of materials and uses language associated with elastic springs. This “spring” metaphor emphasises the property of individual components. In contrast, ecological concepts of resilience examine interactions between elements, and the state of the system in a multi-dimensional phase space. This systems approach shows that the complex behaviour of a system depends at least as much on the relationships between elements. These relationships can lead to “emergent” properties which cannot be reduced to the properties of the parts of the system. To explain these relationships and connections, ecologists and climate scientists use language and images associated with landscapes such as 2-D cross-sections and 3-D topology (Holling, “Resilience & Stability” 20; Pendall, Foster, and Cowell 74). Figure 3 is based on an image used by Walker, Holling, Carpenter and Kinzig (fig. 1b) to represent possible states of ecological systems. The “basins” in the image rely on our understanding of gravitational forces operating in a 3-D space to model “equilibrium” states in which the system, like the “ball” in the “basin”, will tend to settle. Figure 3: (based on Langston; in Walker et al. fig. 1b) – Tipping Point Bifurcation Wasdell (“Feedback” fig. 4) adapted this image to represent possible climate states and explain the concept of “tipping points” in complex systems. I have added the red balls (a, b, and c to replace the one black ball (b) in the original which represented the state of the system), the red lines which indicate the path of the ball/system, and the black x-y axis, in order to discuss the image. Wasdell (“Feedback Dynamics” slide 22) takes the left basin to represents “the variable, near-equilibrium, but contained dynamics of the [current] glacial/interglacial period”. As a result of rising GHG levels, the climate system absorbs more energy (mostly as heat). This energy can force the system into a different, hotter, state, less amenable to life as we know it. This is shown in Figure 3 by the system (represented as the red ball a) rising up the left basin (point b). From the perspective of the gravitational representation in Figure 3, the extra energy in the basin operates like the rotation in a Gravitron amusement ride, where centrifugal force pushes riders up the sides of the ride. If there is enough energy added to the climate system it could rise up and jump over the ridge/tipping point separating the current climate state into the “hot earth” basin shown on the right. Once the system falls into the right basin, it may be stuck near point c, and due to reinforcing feedbacks have difficulty escaping this new “equilibrium” state. Figure 4 represents a 2-D cross-section of the 3-D landscape shown in Figure 3. This cross-section shows how rising temperature and greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations in a multi-equilibrium climate topology can lead to the climate crossing a tipping point and shifting from state a to state c. Figure 4: Topographic cross-section of possible climate states (derived from Wasdell, “Feedback” 26 CC). As Holling (“Resilience & Stability”) warns, a less “desirable” state, such as population collapse or extinction, may be more “resilient”, in the engineering sense, than a more desirable state. Wasdell (“Feedback Dynamics” slide 22) warns that the climate forcing as a result of human induced GHG emissions is in fact pushing the system “far away from equilibrium, passed the tipping point, and into the hot-earth scenario”. In previous episodes of extreme radiative forcing in the past, this “disturbance has then been amplified by powerful feedback dynamics not active in the near-equilibrium state [… and] have typically resulted in the loss of about 90% of life on earth.” An essential element of system dynamics is the existence of (delayed) reinforcing and balancing causal feedback loops, such as the ones illustrated in Figure 5. Figure 5: Pre/Predator model (Bellinger CC-BY-SA) In the case of Figure 5, the feedback loops illustrate the relationship between rabbit population increasing, then foxes feeding on the rabbits, keeping the rabbit population within the carrying capacity of the ecosystem. Fox predation prevents rabbit over-population and consequent starvation of rabbits. The reciprocal interaction of the elements of a system leads to unpredictable nonlinearity in “even seemingly simple systems” (“System Dynamics”). The climate system is subject to both positive and negative feedback loops. If the area of ice cover increases, more heat is reflected back into space, creating a positive feedback loop, reinforcing cooling. Whereas, as the arctic ice melts, as it is doing at present (Barber), heat previously reflected back into space is absorbed by now exposed water, increasing the rate of warming. Where negative feedback (system damping) dominates, the cup-shaped equilibrium is stable and system behaviour returns to base when subject to disturbance. [...]The impact of extreme events, however, indicates limits to the stable equilibrium. At one point cooling feedback loops overwhelmed the homeostasis, precipitating the "snowball earth" effect. […] Massive release of CO2 as a result of major volcanic activity […] set off positive feedback loops, precipitating runaway global warming and eliminating most life forms at the end of the Permian period. (Wasdell, “Topological”) Martin-Breen and Anderies (53–54), following Walker and Salt, identify four key factors for systems (ecological) resilience in nonlinear, non-deterministic (complex adaptive) systems: regulatory (balancing) feedback mechanisms, where increase in one element is kept in check by another element; modularity, where failure in one part of the system will not cascade into total systems failure; functional redundancy, where more than one element performs every essential function; and, self-organising capacity, rather than central control ensures the system continues without the need for “leadership”. Transition Towns as a Resilience Movement The Transition Town (TT) movement draws on systems modelling of both climate change and of Limits to Growth (Meadows et al.). TT takes seriously Limits to Growth modelling that showed that without constraints in population and consumption the world faces systems collapse by the middle of this century. It recommends community action to build as much capacity as possible to “maintain existence of function”—Holling's (“Engineering vs. Ecological” 33) definition of ecological resilience—in the face of failing economic, political and environmental systems. The Transition Network provides a template for communities to follow to “rebuild resilience and reduce CO2 emissions”. Rob Hopkins, the movements founder, explicitly identifies ecological resilience as its central concept (Transition Handbook 6). The idea for the movement grew out of a project by (2nd year students) completed for Hopkins at the Kinsale Further Education College. According to Hopkins (“Kinsale”), this project was inspired by Holmgren’s Permaculture principles and Heinberg's book on adapting to life after peak oil. Permaculture (permanent agriculture) is a design system for creating agricultural systems modelled on the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems (Mollison ix; Holmgren xix). Permaculture draws its scientific foundations from systems ecology (Holmgren xxv). Following CAS theory, Mollison (33) defines stability as “self-regulation”, rather than “climax” or a single equilibrium state, and recommends “diversity of beneficial functional connections” (32) rather than diversity of isolated elements. Permaculture understands resilience in the ecological, rather than the engineering sense. The Transition Handbook (17) “explores the issues of peak oil and climate change, and how when looked at together, we need to be focusing on the rebuilding of resilience as well as cutting carbon emissions. It argues that the focus of our lives will become increasingly local and small scale as we come to terms with the real implications of the energy crisis we are heading into.” The Transition Towns movement incorporate each of the four systems resilience factors, listed at the end of the previous section, into its template for building resilient communities (Hopkins, Transition Handbook 55–6). Many of its recommendations build “modularity” and “self-organising”, such as encouraging communities to build “local food systems, [and] local investment models”. Hopkins argues that in a “more localised system” feedback loops are tighter, and the “results of our actions are more obvious”. TT training exercises include awareness raising for sensitivity to networks of (actual or potential) ecological, social and economic relationships (Hopkins, Transition Handbook 60–1). TT promotes diversity of local production and economic activities in order to increase “diversity of functions” and “diversity of responses to challenges.” Heinberg (8) wrote the forward to the 2008 edition of the Transition Handbook, after speaking at a TotnesTransition Town meeting. Heinberg is now a senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute (PCI), which was established in 2003 to “provide […] the resources needed to understand and respond to the interrelated economic, energy, environmental, and equity crises that define the 21st century [… in] a world of resilient communities and re-localized economies that thrive within ecological bounds” (PCI, “About”), of the sort envisioned by the Limits to Growth model discussed in the previous section. Given the overlapping goals of PCI and Transition Towns, it is not surprising that Rob Hopkins is now a Fellow of PCI and regular contributor to Resilience, and there are close ties between the two organisations. Resilience, which until 2012 was published as the Energy Bulletin, is run by the Post Carbon Institute (PCI). Like Transition Towns, Resilience aims to build “community resilience in a world of multiple emerging challenges: the decline of cheap energy, the depletion of critical resources like water, complex environmental crises like climate change and biodiversity loss, and the social and economic issues which are linked to these. […] It has [its] roots in systems theory” (PCI, “About Resilience”). Resilience.org says it follows the interpretation of Resilience Alliance (RA) Program Director Brian Walker and science writer David Salt's (xiii) ecological definition of resilience as “the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and still retain its basic function and structure.“ Conclusion This paper has analysed the ontological metaphors structuring competing conceptions of resilience. The engineering resilience metaphor dominates in psychological resilience research, but is not adequate for understanding resilience in complex adaptive systems. Ecological resilience, on the other hand, dominates in environmental and climate change research, and is the model of resilience that has been incorporated into the global permaculture and Transition Towns movements. References 2nd year students. Kinsale 2021: An Energy Descent Action Plan. Kinsale, Cork, Ireland: Kinsale Further Education College, 2005. 16 Aug. 2013 ‹http://transitionculture.org/wp-content/uploads/KinsaleEnergyDescentActionPlan.pdf>. Barber, Elizabeth. “Arctic Ice Continues to Thin, and Thin, European Satellite Reveals.” Christian Science Monitor 11 Sep. 2013. 25 Sep. 2013 ‹http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2013/0911/Arctic-ice-continues-to-thin-and-thin-European-satellite-reveals>. 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Introduction – Polish GrungeThe main objective of this article is to examine the grunge scene of the 1990s in Poland in the context of acculturation and assimilation processes. Polish grunge was, on the one hand, the expression of trends that were observable in music industry since the late 1980s. On the other hand, it was symptomatic of a rapid systemic transformation. Youth culture was open for the diffusion of cultural patterns and was ready to adopt certain patterns from the West.Thus, we suggest that the local grunge scene was completely modelled on the American one: the flow of cultural practices and subcultural fashion were the manifestations of the assimilation processes in Poland, observable not only in art (i.e. rock music), but also in the domains of politics and economy, as well as in the broader social sphere. We explore how young people were ready to adopt only the surface level of the phenomenon as they were familiar with it through the media coverage it received. Young people in Poland circa the early ‘90s primarily wanted to gain access to an imaginary Western lifestyle rather than learn about real living conditions in capitalist societies, and they could do this through their involvement in grunge culture.Grunge as a Cultural PhenomenonGrunge as a popular music trend arose in the USA during the late 1980s and early 1990s, in the work of bands such as Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, Soundgarden, and Alice in Chains. Grunge was initially opposed to consumerism and capitalist values. Nevertheless, A&R scouts recognised the commercial potential of this music: for example, Nirvana’s Nevermind was released by Geffen Company, and Pearl Jam’s Ten by Epic. As Grzegorz Brzozowicz and Filip Łobodziński put it (313),the success of Nirvana was a post-mort triumph of punk rock and, more importantly, it indicated the potential of alternative music, which suddenly stepped outside an aesthetic ghetto and became a hot stuff. This influence was also visible as regards fashion and customs – Dr. Martens’ shoes, flannel shirts, frayed jeans, and wool caps became an outfit common for the young (…). Grunge influenced visual art, film and photography.In Poland, grunge as a subculture and sub-genre of rock music emerged in the early 1990s following the international commercial success of bands such as those listed above, and it entailed the assimilation of the Western cultural patterns. Although assimilation processes were typical primarily for youth culture, they were observed in the wider context of the changes and adaptations that Polish system underwent after the fall of the centrally planned economy and subjugation to the communist party power after the Yalta agreements (1945-1989/1990).In this context, the concept Centre/Periphery (Gopinathan, Saravanan and Altbach; Hannerz; Langholm; Pisciotta) appears as the field for the dissemination of popular culture. Popular culture is a battlefield for creating and negotiating the meanings that are inherent within cultural practices (Barker). Cultural practices play a double role in the dissemination of ideas or objects. Firstly, they come as a result of adaptation in a defined culture, and secondly, they make new cultural patterns stabile, visible, and easy to practice by people as flexible patterns of behaviour. This point is clearly visible in the context of the East European states that underwent rapid acculturation processes in which new patterns of economic and social solutions were established in centre-planned economies: the tensions of the “old” and the “new” patterns dominating in the political and social systems of those countries (e.g. Poland, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, etc.) were visible and affected societies to a considerable degree (Pisciotta). Thus, the practices generated in cultural Centres tend to disseminate easily and to “conquer” other cultural systems, especially in the Periphery.In the case of popular culture, the flow of influences usually takes a one-dimensional form and is disseminated from the Centre to the Periphery. As Marek Jeziński (162-163) argues, both Centre and Periphery are functional systems. These systems have generated their own mythology, which separates one from another. However, as in the case of mythological systems in general, Centre and Periphery tales overlap frequently, and there are evidence that the bands that originated in the Periphery were assimilated by the Centre. For example, Nirvana and Pearl Jam were both successful in market terms and both built their own status based on the Peripheral components that were skilfully overtaken by the Centre narrative. While the Peripheral narratives are concentrated mainly on the undermining of the definition of situation and present dysfunctional character towards cultural system as such, the Centre narratives aim to maintain the definition of situation supporting mainstream values and their prevailing position in a system (Jeziński 164). Grunge is the epitome of such an implementation of cultural patterns. That is, grunge started as a fringe peripheral cultural phenomenon. The major records companies, however, recognised its potential and provided the space in the music market to support the new bands. Most of the groups in the US started as independent local acts related to independent record companies that built their status.In relation to the assimilation of grunge culture in Poland, we can distinguish two key phenomena. The first is concerned with the adaptation of general subcultural components, e.g. fashion and group identification. Here, the acculturation processes run as a primary form of mimicry, as the Polish grunge scene adopted elements typical of the grunge subculture, such as oversize sweaters, flannel shirts, Dr. Martens shoes or Converse trainers, long hair, and beanies. A newly formed subculture was different from the others popular in the 1990s. For example, punk and metal subcultures implied strong group identity, style homogeneity, rigid group limitations, and firm membership rules. Conversely, it seems that the grunge subculture was based more on a level of liquid and fragmented patchwork identity than on very inflexible group values and internal ideology or political attitudes (cf. Muggleton). Such patchwork identity formation was a result of a rapid clash between the adaptation of grunge cultural patterns from the West and the Polish economic transformation of the early 1990s.Poland underwent rapid changes that were also visible in the politics, culture and social domain, joining liberal democracies and liberal free market economies of the West. These changes resulted from a transformation of the system as a whole: from a central planned system to decentralisation of the power at both local and state levels (Sarnecki). Equally important were the changes in the political culture of Poles and their value system: they accepted the democratic changes but simultaneously, the mentality of Poles remained traditionalist (which is visible in surveys— the most important values for them were “family” and “work”), and their attitude towards the processes of cultural and institutional changes was impermanent (Garlicki; Jasińska-Kania).During the transformation, the changes were visible in the everyday lives of Polish citizens: examples include the shortages in the market that were evident after the socialist regime ended, and the easy availability of Western clothes such as jeans, shirts, denim jackets in ordinary stores. Consequently, the economic rates in the 1990s were higher in comparison to the previous decade (Bałtowski and Miszewski). Those changes resulted in a phase shift in the modernisation process, where patterns of economic and cultural development and were faster than the enculturation and socialisation processes.On the one hand, the free market allowed for almost unlimited commodification with unprecedented access to goods and services. On the other hand, the low cultural capital and economic possibilities of the citizens evolved rapidly. The communist-shaped social division fell apart, and the new class designations based of consumption/commodification patterns were established (Jeziński; Wojtkowski). Those factors resulted in high cross-generational mobility, lower entrance barriers, and higher openness indicators (cf. Polska klasa średnia; O ruchliwości społecznej w polsce).Hence, in cultural conditions based on capitalist consumption practices, the grunge subculture evolved with a commodified sense of style rather than with a firm identity. Yet, in the case of grunge style, relatively high costs of subculture commodities (e.g. Dr. Martens shoes, Converse trainers, or band t-shirts) led to DIY practices such as buying cheaper no-name shoes, and sewing badges with the names of bands and albums on jackets or backpacks.The second phenomenon encompasses the adaptation of music patterns. The Polish grunge scene was not as diversified in terms of genre variations as its US counterpart. In the beginning, the Polish grunge scene was more distressed geographically, with no specific Centre-Periphery relations. However, one of the most important bands, Hey, was established in the Northwest. When one looks at Polish grunge evolution as a ‘clash’ of American genre and the specific character of a time and place where Polish bands were recording, she or he will notice multiple similarities with the US scene.Firstly, we could name two approaches to grunge music among Polish performers: ‘intellectual’ and ‘rebel’. The ‘intellectual’ approach encompasses the group Hey. This band was established in Szczecin (the Northwest Poland), but after the success of their first album – Fire (1993), they moved to Warsaw. Hey released 11 studio records, but only the first three could be classified as “grunge” (cf. Sankowski). On the level of musical references, Fire sounds like a mixture of early Pearl Jam combined with Alice in Chains. With English lyrics and song topics that were typical for grunge— e.g., The Choice (“You’ve got a gun/You can use it now”)—similarities with Pearl Jam, in particular, are striking. The band evolved, and on their second album, Ho! (1994), Hey mixed equally Polish and English lyrics with the dynamic and specific Seattle sound (cf. Prato). Hey’s most distinctive feature comparing with other Polish grunge bands is its highly developed melodic approach to music and the poetic, sensual style of its lyrics. The third record, ? (1995), closes the band’s early stage. The next album, Karma (1997), opens the period when the amalgamation of electronics, hard rock and grunge dominated Hey’s music, with the album [sic!] (2001) representing the turning point in the group’s music style. The band suspended their work in 2017 and will probably never reunite.Over time, Hey gained one of the most dedicated audiences in Polish rock music. The music industry and critics have acknowledged Hey as one of the best Polish groups in the post-communist period. Hey has received the most nominations in the history of Fryderyki, the key Polish music awards. The group and Nosowska have won twenty-three times in multiple categories. As the longest-operating grunge-origin band in the country, Hey could be considered as a most important trend setting and scene-forming group.The more “rebellious” approach to grunge encompasses bands such as Illusion (1992-1999, 2014-present) and Houk. The former was based on the grunge and hardcore mixture of influences from Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, and Rage Against the Machine (especially in terms of rap-oriented lyrics). With the preservation of certain consistency, the band named first three albums: Illusion (1993), Illusion II (1994), and Illusion III (1995). Illusion marks the band’s aggressive style and lyrics simplicity but the studio production flattens the whole and gives an impression of a post-punk DIY venture rather than a coherent composition. The second record, however, is entirely conceptualised and thought out in terms of music and lyrics. Sharp riffs, hard rock tuning of instruments and aggressive lyrics that were focused on Polish life gave the album a needed consistency. The band’s third record is the most varied stylistically and politically engaged in their history. The harder-edged tunes from previous releases are accompanied by more psychedelic compositions (Wrona) that recall Alice in Chains’ slow songs and Layne Staley’s voice.Houk’s music similarly to other Polish grunge bands was the amalgamation of various genres and their style evolved in time. Initially, the band was regarded as an example of alternative rock music. The first album Soul Ammunition (1992) was named by music monthly Tylko Rock as a debut of the year (polskirock.art.pl). The combination of grunge, hardcore, hard rock, reggae and socio-politically engaged lyrics helped the group to establish a strong fan base. The band’s unique style was recognised internationally and Houk supported New Model Army and Bad Brains during the performances in the mid-1990’s (polskirock.art.pl). The band’s second studio release Generation X (1995) was recorded prior the multiple membership reorganizations that finally ended the grunge-orientation period of Houk’s history. One of the songs, Sleep, was dedicated to Kurt Cobain and reflected Nirvana’s approach to songwriting, which can be heard in songs such as “Lithium” (1991). Such a commemoration of Cobain’s figure is characteristic of Polish grunge culture’s establishment of strong ties with the American equivalent. Here and in many similar cases, Cobain serves not only as a grunge hero (or even a martyr) but also as a commodified pop culture figure (cf. Strong). Concerning both spheres - that is, the adaptation of grunge subculture and a development of the music scene -Polish grunge follows a different pattern to the US genre. Grunge was introduced to Poland after it was popularised and commodified by the major labels and media industry in the USA, so the adopted version was the mainstream one rather than the underground movement. Hence, the simplistic dichotomy between “underground” and “mainstream” culture does not function in terms of the Polish grunge culture, and probably is misstated even when it comes to the American phenomenon. Grunge could be perceived in Poland as both the first and the last “true” subcultural trend. At the same time, though, it was an affirmation not of ‘the rebel’ and ‘the underground’ but of capitalism and the cultural values of the West. Indeed, the Polish grunge culture couldn’t be fully aware of what grunge was warning us against while Polish society faced the rapid market and cultural transformation that allowed for its opening to Western trends.Conclusion – Is Grunge Really Dead?Although the popularity of grunge phenomenon in Poland was relatively short, the most important groups of this sub-genre - Illusion, Hey, Ahimsa, Houk, and Kr’shna Brothers - widely contributed to the emergence of the new wave of fashion for rock and hard-rock music in Poland in the mid-1990s. The most successful group of the era, Hey epitomises the transformation of grunge in Poland. Starting as a typical grunge band (modelled heavily on the US groups), they underwent a serious transition, substantially changing their music into more mainstream-oriented rock (that is, as music that was considered acceptable by rock music and AOR-focused radio stations). At the same time, grunge as a rock sub-genre underwent the contrary changes: it broke into the mainstream relatively quickly in the first half of the 1990s, establishing new rock stars of the scene (Illusion, Houk, Ahimsa, Hey), but in the late 1990s it went back to being a rock niche again. It seems that today grunge serves as a point of reference (in fact, it was an important period of rock history) for the new bands that intentionally use this sub-genre as a form of commodified, media-friendly nostalgia.ReferencesBałtowski, Maciej, Miszewski, Maciej. Transformacja gospodarcza w Polsce. Warszawa: PWN, 2006.Biografia Houk. 25 Nov. 2018 <https://www.polskirock.art.pl/houk,z346,biografia.html>.Brzozowicz, Grzegorz, and Filip Łobodziński. Sto płyt, które wstrząsnęły światem: Kronika czasów popkultury. Warszawa: Iskry, 2000.Domański, Henryk. Polska klasa średnia. Wrocław: FNP i W. Wrocławskie, 2002.Domański, Henryk. O ruchliwości społecznej w Polsce. Warszawa: IFiS PAN, 2004.Garlicki, Jan. “Tradycje i dynamika kultury politycznej społeczeństwa polskiego.” Dylematy polskiej transformacji. Ed. Jan Błuszkowski. Warszawa: DW Elipsa, 2007. 155-174.Gopinathan, Saravanan, and Philip G. Altbach. “Rethinking Centre–Periphery.” Asia Pacific Journal of Education 25.2 (2005): 117-123.Hannerz, Ulf. “Culture between Center and Periphery: Toward a Macroanthropology.” Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology 54.3-4 (1989): 200-216.Houk. Soul Ammunition. 23 Nov. 2018 <https://www.polskirock.art.pl/soul-ammunition,houk,3051,plyta.html>.Jasińska-Kania, Aleksandra. “Dynamika zmian wartości Polaków na tle europejskim: EVS 1990-1999-2008.” Polska po 20 latach wolności. Eds. Marta Bucholc, Sławomir Mandes, Tadeusz Szawiel and Joanna Wawrzyniak. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 2011. 225-239.Jeziński, Marek. Mitologie muzyki popularnej. Toruń: WN Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika, 2014.Jeziński, Marek, and Łukasz Wojtkowski. “Nostalgia Commodified: Towards the Marketization of the Post-Communist Past through the New Media.” Medien und Zeit 4 (2016): 96–104.Langholm, Sivert. “On the Concepts of Center and Periphery.” Journal of Peace Research 8.3-4 (1971): 273-278.Muggleton, David. Inside Subculture. The Postmodern Meaning of Style. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000.Pisciotta, Barbara. “The Center-Periphery Cleavage Revisited: East and Central Europe from Postcommunism to Euroscepticism.” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 22.2 (2016): 193-219.Sankowski, Robert. “Hey, czyli któtka historia polskiego popu.” Wyborcza.pl, 3 Nov. 2012. 1 Aug. 2018 <http://wyborcza.pl/1,75410,12788097,Hey__czyli_krotka_historia_polskiego_popu.html>. Sarnecki, Paweł. “Od kumulacji do podziału władzy.” Transformacja ustrojowa w Polsce 1989-2009. Eds. Maria Kruk and Jan Wawrzyniak. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Scholar, 2011. 37-58.Strong, Catherine. Grunge and the Memory. London: Routledge, 2016.

From elephants to ABBA fans, silicon to hormone, the following discussion uses a new research method to look at printed text, motion pictures and a teenage rebel icon. If by ‘print’ we mean a mechanically reproduced impression of a cultural symbol in a medium, then printing has been with us since before microdot security prints were painted onto cars, before voice prints, laser prints, network servers, record pressings, motion picture prints, photo prints, colour woodblock prints, before books, textile prints, and footprints. If we accept that higher mammals such as elephants have a learnt culture, then it is possible to extend a definition of printing beyond Homo sapiens. Poole reports that elephants mechanically trumpet reproductions of human car horns into the air surrounding their society. If nothing else, this cross-species, cross-cultural reproduction, this ‘ability to mimic’ is ‘another sign of their intelligence’. Observation of child development suggests that the first significant meaningful ‘impression’ made on the human mind is that of the face of the child’s nurturer – usually its mother. The baby’s mind forms an ‘impression’, a mental print, a reproducible memory data set, of the nurturer’s face, voice, smell, touch, etc. That face is itself a cultural construct: hair style, makeup, piercings, tattoos, ornaments, nutrition-influenced skin and smell, perfume, temperature and voice. A mentally reproducible pattern of a unique face is formed in the mind, and we use that pattern to distinguish ‘familiar and strange’ in our expanding social orbit. The social relations of patterned memory – of imprinting – determine the extent to which we explore our world (armed with research aids such as text print) or whether we turn to violence or self-harm (Bretherton). While our cultural artifacts (such as vellum maps or networked voice message servers) bravely extend our significant patterns into the social world and the traversed environment, it is useful to remember that such artifacts, including print, are themselves understood by our original pattern-reproduction and impression system – the human mind, developed in childhood. The ‘print’ is brought to mind differently in different discourses. For a reader, a ‘print’ is a book, a memo or a broadsheet, whether it is the Indian Buddhist Sanskrit texts ordered to be printed in 593 AD by the Chinese emperor Sui Wen-ti (Silk Road) or the US Defense Department memo authorizing lower ranks to torture the prisoners taken by the Bush administration (Sanchez, cited in ABC). Other fields see prints differently. For a musician, a ‘print’ may be the sheet music which spread classical and popular music around the world; it may be a ‘record’ (as in a ‘recording’ session), where sound is impressed to wax, vinyl, charged silicon particles, or the alloys (Smith, “Elpida”) of an mp3 file. For the fine artist, a ‘print’ may be any mechanically reproduced two-dimensional (or embossed) impression of a significant image in media from paper to metal, textile to ceramics. ‘Print’ embraces the Japanese Ukiyo-e colour prints of Utamaro, the company logos that wink from credit card holographs, the early photographs of Talbot, and the textured patterns printed into neolithic ceramics. Computer hardware engineers print computational circuits. Homicide detectives investigate both sweaty finger prints and the repeated, mechanical gaits of suspects, which are imprinted into the earthy medium of a crime scene. For film makers, the ‘print’ may refer to a photochemical polyester reproduction of a motion picture artifact (the reel of ‘celluloid’), or a DVD laser disc impression of the same film. Textualist discourse has borrowed the word ‘print’ to mean ‘text’, so ‘print’ may also refer to the text elements within the vision track of a motion picture: the film’s opening titles, or texts photographed inside the motion picture story such as the sword-cut ‘Z’ in Zorro (Niblo). Before the invention of writing, the main mechanically reproduced impression of a cultural symbol in a medium was the humble footprint in the sand. The footprints of tribes – and neighbouring animals – cut tracks in the vegetation and the soil. Printed tracks led towards food, water, shelter, enemies and friends. Having learnt to pattern certain faces into their mental world, children grew older and were educated in the footprints of family and clan, enemies and food. The continuous impression of significant foot traffic in the medium of the earth produced the lines between significant nodes of prewriting and pre-wheeled cultures. These tracks were married to audio tracks, such as the song lines of the Australian Aborigines, or the ballads of tramping culture everywhere. A typical tramping song has the line, ‘There’s a track winding back to an old-fashion shack along the road to Gundagai,’ (O’Hagan), although this colonial-style song was actually written for radio and became an international hit on the airwaves, rather than the tramping trails. The printed tracks impressed by these cultural flows are highly contested and diverse, and their foot prints are woven into our very language. The names for printed tracks have entered our shared memory from the intersection of many cultures: ‘Track’ is a Germanic word entering English usage comparatively late (1470) and now used mainly in audio visual cultural reproduction, as in ‘soundtrack’. ‘Trek’ is a Dutch word for ‘track’ now used mainly by ecotourists and science fiction fans. ‘Learn’ is a Proto-Indo-European word: the verb ‘learn’ originally meant ‘to find a track’ back in the days when ‘learn’ had a noun form which meant ‘the sole of the foot’. ‘Tract’ and ‘trace’ are Latin words entering English print usage before 1374 and now used mainly in religious, and electronic surveillance, cultural reproduction. ‘Trench’ in 1386 was a French path cut through a forest. ‘Sagacity’ in English print in 1548 was originally the ability to track or hunt, in Proto-Indo-European cultures. ‘Career’ (in English before 1534) was the print made by chariots in ancient Rome. ‘Sleuth’ (1200) was a Norse noun for a track. ‘Investigation’ (1436) was Latin for studying a footprint (Harper). The arrival of symbolic writing scratched on caves, hearth stones, and trees (the original meaning of ‘book’ is tree), brought extremely limited text education close to home. Then, with baked clay tablets, incised boards, slate, bamboo, tortoise shell, cast metal, bark cloth, textiles, vellum, and – later – paper, a portability came to text that allowed any culture to venture away from known ‘foot’ paths with a reduction in the risk of becoming lost and perishing. So began the world of maps, memos, bills of sale, philosophic treatises and epic mythologies. Some of this was printed, such as the mechanical reproduction of coins, but the fine handwriting required of long, extended, portable texts could not be printed until the invention of paper in China about 2000 years ago. Compared to lithic architecture and genes, portable text is a fragile medium, and little survives from the millennia of its innovators. The printing of large non-text designs onto bark-paper and textiles began in neolithic times, but Sui Wen-ti’s imperial memo of 593 AD gives us the earliest written date for printed books, although we can assume they had been published for many years previously. The printed book was a combination of Indian philosophic thought, wood carving, ink chemistry and Chinese paper. The earliest surviving fragment of paper-print technology is ‘Mantras of the Dharani Sutra’, a Buddhist scripture written in the Sanskrit language of the Indian subcontinent, unearthed at an early Tang Dynasty site in Xian, China – making the fragment a veteran piece of printing, in the sense that Sanskrit books had been in print for at least a century by the early Tang Dynasty (Chinese Graphic Arts Net). At first, paper books were printed with page-size carved wooden boards. Five hundred years later, Pi Sheng (c.1041) baked individual reusable ceramic characters in a fire and invented the durable moveable type of modern printing (Silk Road 2000). Abandoning carved wooden tablets, the ‘digitizing’ of Chinese moveable type sped up the production of printed texts. In turn, Pi Sheng’s flexible, rapid, sustainable printing process expanded the political-cultural impact of the literati in Asian society. Digitized block text on paper produced a bureaucratic, literate elite so powerful in Asia that Louis XVI of France copied China’s print-based Confucian system of political authority for his own empire, and so began the rise of the examined public university systems, and the civil service systems, of most European states (Watson, Visions). By reason of its durability, its rapid mechanical reproduction, its culturally agreed signs, literate readership, revered authorship, shared ideology, and distributed portability, a ‘print’ can be a powerful cultural network which builds and expands empires. But print also attacks and destroys empires. A case in point is the Spanish conquest of Aztec America: The Aztecs had immense libraries of American literature on bark-cloth scrolls, a technology which predated paper. These libraries were wiped out by the invading Spanish, who carried a different book before them (Ewins). In the industrial age, the printing press and the gun were seen as the weapons of rebellions everywhere. In 1776, American rebels staffed their ‘Homeland Security’ units with paper makers, knowing that defeating the English would be based on printed and written documents (Hahn). Mao Zedong was a book librarian; Mao said political power came out of the barrel of a gun, but Mao himself came out of a library. With the spread of wireless networked servers, political ferment comes out of the barrel of the cell phone and the internet chat room these days. Witness the cell phone displays of a plane hitting a tower that appear immediately after 9/11 in the Middle East, or witness the show trials of a few US and UK lower ranks who published prints of their torturing activities onto the internet: only lower ranks who published prints were arrested or tried. The control of secure servers and satellites is the new press. These days, we live in a global library of burning books – ‘burning’ in the sense that ‘print’ is now a charged silicon medium (Smith, “Intel”) which is usually made readable by connecting the chip to nuclear reactors and petrochemically-fired power stations. World resources burn as we read our screens. Men, women, children burn too, as we watch our infotainment news in comfort while ‘their’ flickering dead faces are printed in our broadcast hearths. The print we watch is not the living; it is the voodoo of the living in the blackout behind the camera, engaging the blood sacrifice of the tormented and the unfortunate. Internet texts are also ‘on fire’ in the third sense of their fragility and instability as a medium: data bases regularly ‘print’ fail-safe copies in an attempt to postpone the inevitable mechanical, chemical and electrical failure that awaits all electronic media in time. Print defines a moral position for everyone. In reporting conflict, in deciding to go to press or censor, any ‘print’ cannot avoid an ethical context, starting with the fact that there is a difference in power between print maker, armed perpetrators, the weak, the peaceful, the publisher, and the viewer. So many human factors attend a text, video or voice ‘print’: its very existence as an aesthetic object, even before publication and reception, speaks of unbalanced, and therefore dynamic, power relationships. For example, Graham Greene departed unscathed from all the highly dangerous battlefields he entered as a novelist: Riot-torn Germany, London Blitz, Belgian Congo, Voodoo Haiti, Vietnam, Panama, Reagan’s Washington, and mafia Europe. His texts are peopled with the injustices of the less fortunate of the twentieth century, while he himself was a member of the fortunate (if not happy) elite, as is anyone today who has the luxury of time to read Greene’s works for pleasure. Ethically a member of London and Paris’ colonizers, Greene’s best writing still electrifies, perhaps partly because he was in the same line of fire as the victims he shared bread with. In fact, Greene hoped daily that he would escape from the dreadful conflicts he fictionalized via a body bag or an urn of ashes (see Sherry). In reading an author’s biography we have one window on the ethical dimensions of authority and print. If a print’s aesthetics are sometimes enduring, its ethical relationships are always mutable. Take the stylized logo of a running athlete: four limbs bent in a rotation of action. This dynamic icon has symbolized ‘good health’ in Hindu and Buddhist culture, from Madras to Tokyo, for thousands of years. The cross of bent limbs was borrowed for the militarized health programs of 1930s Germany, and, because of what was only a brief, recent, isolated yet monstrously horrific segment of its history in print, the bent-limbed swastika is now a vilified symbol in the West. The sign remains ‘impressed’ differently on traditional Eastern culture, and without the taint of Nazism. Dramatic prints are emotionally charged because, in depicting Homo sapiens in danger, or passionately in love, they elicit a hormonal reaction from the reader, the viewer, or the audience. The type of emotions triggered by a print vary across the whole gamut of human chemistry. A recent study of three genres of motion picture prints shows a marked differences in the hormonal responses of men compared to women when viewing a romance, an actioner, and a documentary (see Schultheiss, Wirth, and Stanton). Society is biochemically diverse in its engagement with printed culture, which raises questions about equality in the arts. Motion picture prints probably comprise around one third of internet traffic, in the form of stolen digitized movie files pirated across the globe via peer-to-peer file transfer networks (p2p), and burnt as DVD laser prints (BBC). There is also a US 40 billion dollar per annum legitimate commerce in DVD laser pressings (Grassl), which would suggest an US 80 billion per annum world total in legitimate laser disc print culture. The actively screen literate, or the ‘sliterati’ as I prefer to call them, research this world of motion picture prints via their peers, their internet information channels, their television programming, and their web forums. Most of this activity occurs outside the ambit of universities and schools. One large site of sliterate (screen literate) practice outside most schooling and official research is the net of online forums at imdb.com (International Movie Data Base). Imdb.com ‘prints’ about 25,000,000 top pages per month to client browsers. Hundreds of sliterati forums are located at imdb, including a forum for the Australian movie, Muriel’s Wedding (Hogan). Ten years after the release of Muriel’s Wedding, young people who are concerned with victimization and bullying still log on to http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0110598/board/> and put their thoughts into print: I still feel so bad for Muriel in the beginning of the movie, when the girls ‘dump’ her, and how much the poor girl cried and cried! Those girls were such biartches…I love how they got their comeuppance! bunniesormaybemidgets’s comment is typical of the current discussion. Muriel’s Wedding was a very popular film in its first cinema edition in Australia and elsewhere. About 30% of the entire over-14 Australian population went to see this photochemical polyester print in the cinemas on its first release. A decade on, the distributors printed a DVD laser disc edition. The story concerns Muriel (played by Toni Collette), the unemployed daughter of a corrupt, ‘police state’ politician. Muriel is bullied by her peers and she withdraws into a fantasy world, deluding herself that a white wedding will rescue her from the torments of her blighted life. Through theft and deceit (the modus operandi of her father) Muriel escapes to the entertainment industry and finds a ‘wicked’ girlfriend mentor. From a rebellious position of stubborn independence, Muriel plays out her fantasy. She gets her white wedding, before seeing both her father and her new married life as hollow shams which have goaded her abandoned mother to suicide. Redefining her life as a ‘game’ and assuming responsibility for her independence, Muriel turns her back on the mainstream, image-conscious, female gang of her oppressed youth. Muriel leaves the story, having rekindled her friendship with her rebel mentor. My methodological approach to viewing the laser disc print was to first make a more accessible, coded record of the entire movie. I was able to code and record the print in real time, using a new metalanguage (Watson, “Eyes”). The advantage of Coding is that ‘thinks’ the same way as film making, it does not sidetrack the analyst into prose. The Code splits the movie print into Vision Action [vision graphic elements, including text] (sound) The Coding splits the vision track into normal action and graphic elements, such as text, so this Coding is an ideal method for extracting all the text elements of a film in real time. After playing the film once, I had four and a half tightly packed pages of the coded story, including all its text elements in square brackets. Being a unique, indexed hard copy, the Coded copy allowed me immediate access to any point of the Muriel’s Wedding saga without having to search the DVD laser print. How are ‘print’ elements used in Muriel’s Wedding? Firstly, a rose-coloured monoprint of Muriel Heslop’s smiling face stares enigmatically from the plastic surface of the DVD picture disc. The print is a still photo captured from her smile as she walked down the aisle of her white wedding. In this print, Toni Collette is the Mona Lisa of Australian culture, except that fans of Muriel’s Wedding know the meaning of that smile is a magical combination of the actor’s art: the smile is both the flush of dreams come true and the frightening self deception that will kill her mother. Inserting and playing the disc, the text-dominant menu appears, and the film commences with the text-dominant opening titles. Text and titles confer a legitimacy on a work, whether it is a trade mark of the laser print owners, or the household names of stars. Text titles confer status relationships on both the presenters of the cultural artifact and the viewer who has entered into a legal license agreement with the owners of the movie. A title makes us comfortable, because the mind always seeks to name the unfamiliar, and a set of text titles does that job for us so that we can navigate the ‘tracks’ and settle into our engagement with the unfamiliar. The apparent ‘truth’ and ‘stability’ of printed text calms our fears and beguiles our uncertainties. Muriel attends the white wedding of a school bully bride, wearing a leopard print dress she has stolen. Muriel’s spotted wild animal print contrasts with the pure white handmade dress of the bride. In Muriel’s leopard textile print, we have the wild, rebellious, impoverished, inappropriate intrusion into the social ritual and fantasy of her high-status tormentor. An off-duty store detective recognizes the printed dress and calls the police. The police are themselves distinguished by their blue-and-white checked prints and other mechanically reproduced impressions of cultural symbols: in steel, brass, embroidery, leather and plastics. Muriel is driven in the police car past the stenciled town sign (‘Welcome To Porpoise Spit’ heads a paragraph of small print). She is delivered to her father, a politician who presides over the policing of his town. In a state where the judiciary, police and executive are hijacked by the same tyrant, Muriel’s father, Bill, pays off the police constables with a carton of legal drugs (beer) and Muriel must face her father’s wrath, which he proceeds to transfer to his detested wife. Like his daughter, the father also wears a spotted brown print costume, but his is a batik print from neighbouring Indonesia (incidentally, in a nation that takes the political status of its batik prints very seriously). Bill demands that Muriel find the receipt for the leopard print dress she claims she has purchased. The legitimate ownership of the object is enmeshed with a printed receipt, the printed evidence of trade. The law (and the paramilitary power behind the law) are legitimized, or contested, by the presence or absence of printed text. Muriel hides in her bedroom, surround by poster prints of the pop group ABBA. Torn-out prints of other people’s weddings adorn her mirror. Her face is embossed with the clown-like primary colours of the marionette as she lifts a bouquet to her chin and stares into the real time ‘print’ of her mirror image. Bill takes the opportunity of a business meeting with Japanese investors to feed his entire family at ‘Charlie Chan’’s restaurant. Muriel’s middle sister sloppily wears her father’s state election tee shirt, printed with the text: ‘Vote 1, Bill Heslop. You can’t stop progress.’ The text sets up two ironic gags that are paid off on the dialogue track: “He lost,’ we are told. ‘Progress’ turns out to be funding the concreting of a beach. Bill berates his daughter Muriel: she has no chance of becoming a printer’s apprentice and she has failed a typing course. Her dysfunction in printed text has been covered up by Bill: he has bribed the typing teacher to issue a printed diploma to his daughter. In the gambling saloon of the club, under the arrays of mechanically repeated cultural symbols lit above the poker machines (‘A’ for ace, ‘Q’ for queen, etc.), Bill’s secret girlfriend Diedre risks giving Muriel a cosmetics job. Another text icon in lights announces the surf nightclub ‘Breakers’. Tania, the newly married queen bitch who has made Muriel’s teenage years a living hell, breaks up with her husband, deciding to cash in his negotiable text documents – his Bali honeymoon tickets – and go on an island holiday with her girlfriends instead. Text documents are the enduring site of agreements between people and also the site of mutations to those agreements. Tania dumps Muriel, who sobs and sobs. Sobs are a mechanical, percussive reproduction impressed on the sound track. Returning home, we discover that Muriel’s older brother has failed a printed test and been rejected for police recruitment. There is a high incidence of print illiteracy in the Heslop family. Mrs Heslop (Jeannie Drynan), for instance, regularly has trouble at the post office. Muriel sees a chance to escape the oppression of her family by tricking her mother into giving her a blank cheque. Here is the confluence of the legitimacy of a bank’s printed negotiable document with the risk and freedom of a blank space for rebel Muriel’s handwriting. Unable to type, her handwriting has the power to steal every cent of her father’s savings. She leaves home and spends the family’s savings at an island resort. On the island, the text print-challenged Muriel dances to a recording (sound print) of ABBA, her hand gestures emphasizing her bewigged face, which is made up in an impression of her pop idol. Her imitation of her goddesses – the ABBA women, her only hope in a real world of people who hate or avoid her – is accompanied by her goddesses’ voices singing: ‘the mystery book on the shelf is always repeating itself.’ Before jpeg and gif image downloads, we had postcard prints and snail mail. Muriel sends a postcard to her family, lying about her ‘success’ in the cosmetics business. The printed missal is clutched by her father Bill (Bill Hunter), who proclaims about his daughter, ‘you can’t type but you really impress me’. Meanwhile, on Hibiscus Island, Muriel lies under a moonlit palm tree with her newly found mentor, ‘bad girl’ Ronda (Rachel Griffiths). In this critical scene, where foolish Muriel opens her heart’s yearnings to a confidante she can finally trust, the director and DP have chosen to shoot a flat, high contrast blue filtered image. The visual result is very much like the semiabstract Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock prints by Utamaro. This Japanese printing style informed the rise of European modern painting (Monet, Van Gogh, Picasso, etc., were all important collectors and students of Ukiyo-e prints). The above print and text elements in Muriel’s Wedding take us 27 minutes into her story, as recorded on a single page of real-time handwritten Coding. Although not discussed here, the Coding recorded the complete film – a total of 106 minutes of text elements and main graphic elements – as four pages of Code. Referring to this Coding some weeks after it was made, I looked up the final code on page four: taxi [food of the sea] bq. Translation: a shop sign whizzes past in the film’s background, as Muriel and Ronda leave Porpoise Spit in a taxi. Over their heads the text ‘Food Of The Sea’ flashes. We are reminded that Muriel and Ronda are mermaids, fantastic creatures sprung from the brow of author PJ Hogan, and illuminated even today in the pantheon of women’s coming-of-age art works. That the movie is relevant ten years on is evidenced by the current usage of the Muriel’s Wedding online forum, an intersection of wider discussions by sliterate women on imdb.com who, like Muriel, are observers (and in some cases victims) of horrific pressure from ambitious female gangs and bullies. Text is always a minor element in a motion picture (unless it is a subtitled foreign film) and text usually whizzes by subliminally while viewing a film. By Coding the work for [text], all the text nuances made by the film makers come to light. While I have viewed Muriel’s Wedding on many occasions, it has only been in Coding it specifically for text that I have noticed that Muriel is a representative of that vast class of talented youth who are discriminated against by print (as in text) educators who cannot offer her a life-affirming identity in the English classroom. Severely depressed at school, and failing to type or get a printer’s apprenticeship, Muriel finds paid work (and hence, freedom, life, identity, independence) working in her audio visual printed medium of choice: a video store in a new city. Muriel found a sliterate admirer at the video store but she later dumped him for her fantasy man, before leaving him too. One of the points of conjecture on the imdb Muriel’s Wedding site is, did Muriel (in the unwritten future) get back together with admirer Brice Nobes? That we will never know. While a print forms a track that tells us where culture has been, a print cannot be the future, a print is never animate reality. At the end of any trail of prints, one must lift one’s head from the last impression, and negotiate satisfaction in the happening world. References Australian Broadcasting Corporation. “Memo Shows US General Approved Interrogations.” 30 Mar. 2005 http://www.abc.net.au>. 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