Institute for Literary Studies

Subjective video quality assessment (VQA) strongly depends on semantics, context, and the types of visual distortions. Currently, all existing VQA databases include only a small number of video sequences with artificial distortions. The development and evaluation of objective quality assessment methods would benefit from having larger datasets of real-world video sequences with corresponding subjective mean opinion scores (MOS), in particular for deep learning purposes. In addition, the training and validation of any VQA method intended to be ‘general purpose’ requires a large dataset of video sequences that are representative of the whole spectrum of available video content and all types of distortions. We report our work on KoNViD-1k, a subjectively annotated VQA database consisting of 1,200 public-domain video sequences, fairly sampled from a large public video dataset, YFCC100m. We present the challenges and choices we have made in creating such a database aimed at ‘in the wild’ authentic distortions, depicting a wide variety of content.

Preface List of abbreviations List of plates 1. Oligarchy of virtue - liberty and the Roman analogy Civic virtue and the Roman analogy Literary personae: Pope, Swift, Johnson, Thomson, Fielding, Burke 2. Virtue made visible - sensibility, sculpture, political gardens and temples 3. Britannia Romana - Romano-British archaeology: pioneers The Roman Knights and the recruitment of the aristocracy Architect as archaeologist: Burlington 4. Britannia Romana revived - architecture, collections, the numinous in landscape and house 5. Beyond the mainstream: classical nostalgia and freethinking Conclusion Appendix: books on archaeology owned by Burlington: an annotated shelf-list Bibliography Notes Index.

Abstract The bouba/kiki effect—the association of the nonce word bouba with a round shape and kiki with a spiky shape—is a type of correspondence between speech sounds and visual properties with potentially deep implications for the evolution of spoken language. However, there is debate over the robustness of the effect across cultures and the influence of orthography. We report an online experiment that tested the bouba/kiki effect across speakers of 25 languages representing nine language families and 10 writing systems. Overall, we found strong evidence for the effect across languages, with bouba eliciting more congruent responses than kiki. Participants who spoke languages with Roman scripts were only marginally more likely to show the effect, and analysis of the orthographic shape of the words in different scripts showed that the effect was no stronger for scripts that use rounder forms for bouba and spikier forms for kiki. These results confirm that the bouba/kiki phenomenon is rooted in crossmodal correspondence between aspects of the voice and visual shape, largely independent of orthography. They provide the strongest demonstration to date that the bouba/kiki effect is robust across cultures and writing systems. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Voice modulation: from origin and mechanism to social impact (Part II)’.

Abstract Composting is a material labor whereby old scraps are transformed—through practices of care and attention—into nutrient-rich new soil. In this provocation, we develop “composting” as a material metaphor to tell a particular story about the environmental humanities. Building on Donna Haraway’s work, we insist “it matters what compostables make compost.” Our argument is twofold. First, we contend that certain feminist concepts and commitments are foundational to the environmental humanities’ contemporary emergence. Second, we advocate for more inclusive feminist composting for the future of our field. We begin with a critical cartography of some of the field’s origin stories. While we discover that feminism is named or not named in several different ways, what most interests us here is a particular trend we observe, whereby key feminist scholars or concepts may be mentioned, but their feminist investments are not incorporated as such. Following this cartography, we dig into the stakes of these missed opportunities. A failure to acknowledge the feminist context that grows some of our field’s foundational concepts neutralizes their feminist politics and undermines the potential for environmental humanities to build alternative worlds. To conclude, we propose feminist composting as a methodology to be taken up further. We call for an inclusive feminist composting that insists on feminism’s imbrication with social justice projects of all kinds, at the same time as we insist that future composting be done with care. Sometimes paying attention to the feminist scraps that feed the pile means responding to feminism’s own potential assimilations and disavowals, particularly in relation to decolonization. Like both the energy-saving domestic practice and the earlier social justice struggles that inspire it, composting feminism and environmental humanities involves messy and undervalued work. We maintain, however, that it is a mode of scholarship necessary for growing different kinds of worlds.

While 'print culture' and the notion of an 'age of print' have become accepted terms in media theory and early modern historical and literary scholarship, there is much disagreement over what they signify and whether they actually explain much. The present article looks at a number of ways in which the terms have been conceptualised over the last 30 years in each of the disciplinary fields mentioned and tries to assess both the usefulness and the limitations of the models proposed by such scholars as Ong, Eisenstein, Chartier, McKenzie, and Johns. Particular attention is given to print culture as a 'noetic' conception; to its use as a way of describing the social relationships of production and consumption; and to the place of the print media within the wider early modern informational economy. New ways of modelling the second and third of these categories are proposed.

1. Cultural Studies and Cultural Theory 2. Literature and Society: From Culturalism to Cultural Materialism 3. Critical Theory: From Ideology Critique to the Sociology of Culture 4. Semiology: From Structuralism to Post-Structuralism 5. The Cultural Politics of Difference 6. Postmodernism and Cultural Theory 7. Cultural Criticism and Cultural Policy

Perhaps no aspect of filmmaking has been so thoroughly canvassed at every level, from cinema-foyer gossip to learned academic exegeses, as the matter of adaptation of literature into film. It is not as though adaptation is the only kind of relationship that might exist between film and literature, but it is the one that most persistently preoccupies the theorist, the critic, the reviewer, the buff, and the ordinary filmgoer alike. No one feels too awed by it to be willing to risk judgments about the latest adaptation, usually to the film's disadvantage; nor do theorists regard the subject as too simple to engage their attention.

To determine if microwave exposure could elicit a biological effect in the absence of thermal stress, studies were designed in which chick embryos were exposed to athermal microwave radiation (915 MHz) to look for induction of Hsp70, a protein produced during times of cellular stress that aids in the protection of cellular components. Levels of Hsp70 were found to increase within 2 h, with maximum expression ( approximately 30% higher than controls) typically occurring by 3 h from the start of exposure. Other embryos were exposed to microwave radiation prior to being subjected to hypoxic stress, and were found to have significantly higher survival (P < 0.05) following re-oxygenation than non-exposed controls. The results of these studies indicate that not only can athermal microwave exposures activate the stress protein response pathway; they can also enhance survivability following exposure to a subsequent, potentially lethal stress. From a public health standpoint, it is important that more studies be performed to determine if repeated exposures, a condition likely to be found in cell phone use, are still beneficial.

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Feminist Poetics in concerned with all of these questions, but also with the issue of rewriting an older poetics for what it does not say about the marginalisation of the feminine. The first half of the book traces the trajectory of a particular, feminine, academic subject learning to find her voice. The second half uses that differently disciplined voice to re-read the textual traces of the Governor murder stories, murders committed against white women and children by black men in Australia in 1900. This book is a feminist poetics for those who are engaged in the teaching of literacies, and in the making of Knowledge about literacies.

Ranking scholarly journals forms a major feature of the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) initiative. We argue this process is not only a flawed system of measurement, but more significantly erodes the very contexts that produce 'quality' research. We argue that collegiality, networks of international research, the socio-cultural role of the academic journal, as well as the way academics research in the digital era, are either ignored or negatively impacted upon by ranking exercises such as those posed by the ERA.

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Cultural transfer is a swiftly expanding concept in the humanities, yet little research has addressed its compliance with specific disciplinary requirements or its interactions with adjacent concepts in disciplines such as translation studies. This contribution makes a plea for a renewed alliance between the concepts of cultural transfer and translation. Transfer is understood here as an umbrella concept based on Gideon Toury's concept of assumed translation, and more precisely as a tool for the historical study of large sets of correlated discursive and institutional transfer techniques (including translation). I focus on a number of methodological aspects, offering firstly a discussion of the issues raised by linking the concepts of transfer and translation, and secondly a brief illustrative account of the roles of agents and of institutional and discursive transfer techniques during the construction phase of nineteenth-century Belgian literature, followed by a quantitative and qualitative analysis of intracultural Flemish–French translations.

This article explores the synergy of narrative and materiality possible in picture books. Authors like Emily Gravett and Lauren Child create reader-protagonists who, through their interactions with books as physical objects, perform the narrative. Such interactions underscore the values of the material book, particularly as digital publishing expands.

Examining certain problems in physics M. Hosszu [l] obtained the functional equation (1) where x, y, f are real. In another paper M. Hosszu [2] proved that the equation (1) is equivalent to the functional equation of Cauchy; i. e., to the equation (1) under the assumption that x is real and f is real and continuous.

ABSTRACT: This paper studies the Indian English use of clause‐final focus particles also and only in sentences such as ‘He doesn't listen only’ (ICE‐IND) in order to see if this use has spread to Singapore, Philippine or Hong Kong English. The data for these Asian varieties was obtained from the International Corpus of English and the British and American varieties were added for point of reference. Although the main focus of this quantitative study is on the syntactic analysis of the data, some semantic aspects are also discussed. The results suggest that the Indian English way of placing focus particles in a clause‐final position could be a local innovation which has today spread to Singapore, Philippine and possibly to Hong Kong English. In addition, the data was analysed for all subcategories of ICE, which reveals that the frequencies for this use correlate positively with the level of informality of the speech situation in all four Asian varieties, whereas the results for British English suggest the opposite. Thus, the results indicate that clause‐final focus particles have acquired some additional uses, especially in spoken Indian English, and that these features have now spread to other English varieties spoken in Southeast Asia. The paper suggests that the cause for this can be found from the centuries‐old role that India has had as a cultural force in the Southeast Asian region.

In humans, behavioral disinhibition is associated with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Limitations to rodent models of ADHD-like behaviors/symptoms may be augmented by complementary ones, such as the domestic dog. We examined associations between family dogs' (N = 29; of 14 breeds and 12 mongrels) performance on a self-developed touchscreen behavioral Go/No-Go paradigm and their owner-rated inattention and hyperactivity/impulsivity, accounting for relevant covariates. A greater proportion of commission errors was associated with greater hyperactivity/impulsivity. Regardless of accuracy, relative to dogs with no previous training, those with basic training had shorter response latencies. Also, regardless of accuracy, greater confidence and extraversion were associated with shorter latencies, and greater openness was associated with longer latencies. Shorter latency to commission errors was associated with greater inattention. Findings support the dog as a model of the association between behavioral disinhibition and ADHD-like behaviors/symptoms and are early evidence of convergent validity between the behavioral paradigm and the rating scale measure in dogs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

The paper proposes a traffic speed prediction algorithm for urban road traffic networks. The motivation of the prediction is to provide short time forecast in order to support ITS (Intelligent Transport System) functionalities, such as traveler information systems, route guidance (navigation) systems, as well as adaptive traffic control systems. A potential and efficient solution to this problem is the application of a soft computing method. Namely, an artificial neural network (ANN) is used for the forecast by involving the measured speed patterns. The ANN is trained by using data produced by Vissim (a microscopic road traffic simulator) simulations. The proposed algorithm is developed and analyzed on a real-word test network (part of downtown in Budapest).

Nigerian English is a variety of English which has often been suggested to differ significantly from other varieties of English, especially in the area of prosody.This paper analyses the prosody of Nigerian English and compares it to the prosody of British English and three West African tone languages i .Read and semi-spontaneous speech was analysed acoustically.Significant differences were found in speech rhythm, where Nigerian English groups between the West African languages Anyi, Ega and Ibibio and British English.Furthermore, Nigerian English syllable structure is different from that of British English, and the tonal structure of Nigerian English is more similar to that of a tone language than an intonation language.

Iconicity and naturalness remain controversial concepts in recent linguistic research. The present volume aims to scrutinize unresolved issues of iconicity and naturalness in language. The studies discuss topics such as naturalism in the philosophy of language and the epistemology of linguistics, linguistic iconicity in semiotics, iconic structures in Sign Languages, natural and unnatural sound patterns, the iconic nature of parts of speech, the relation between (un)markedness and naturalness, and lexical and syntactic iconicity. The research conducted is based on sound (meta)theoretical analyses and/or original empirical research. The data and innovative views presented are bound to spark discussion in an age-old debate that has lost nothing of its significance.