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dressclick97 · 3 years

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Gains Of A Swimming Pool And How To Choose The Best Pool Contractor

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razieltwelve · 5 years

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Voice (Final Rose)

“I understand you have an agent who may be able to infiltrate the facility,” Winter said.

Jihl nodded. “I do.” She nodded at Diana, who was sitting beside her. “She can.”

Winter raised one eyebrow. “I have no doubt that Diana could get into the facility if she wanted to, but my request specified an infiltration specialist, someone who could get into the facility and blend in with its staff for at least a week.”

Jihl’s lips curled. “If you would be so kind, Neo.”

There was a sound like breaking glass, and instead of Diana Yun-Farron, Winter found herself looking at a short teenager with mismatched hair and eyes. It had been an illusion of some kind, one good enough that she hadn’t noticed although in retrospect, ‘Diana’s’ Aura reserves had been lower than normal.

“Impressive.” Winter searched her memory for details about Neo. Ah, yes. Jihl had adopted the girl some time ago and had apparently raised her alongside her own children while training her as an infiltration and espionage specialist. However, there was a complication. “However, unless I’m mistaken, Neo is mute, isn’t she?”

Jihl smiled thinly. “You are very well informed. Neo is indeed incapable of speaking normally. However, she has ways of dealing with that problem.”

“I can speak,” Neo said without moving her lips. “And while I don’t have a voice of my own, I can mimic the voices of others with enough practice.” She grinned impishly, and the next word were spoken in Weiss’s voice. “For instance, I’ve spent enough time around your sister to do this.”

“That… is disturbingly accurate,” Winter said, making a mental note to upgrade Neo’s file later. Visual illusions were rare as Semblances went. Semblances that could also mimic sound were rarer still. “I would ask how you do it, but I know you wouldn’t tell me.”

“Of course, I wouldn’t,” Neo replied, switching to Diana’s voice. “A magician never reveals her secrets.”

“In any case,” Winter said. “I do believe you’ll do.” She nodded at Jihl. “I trust you will be discrete about this.”

“I always am,” Jihl replied. “However, should your mission prove successful, you’re going to need more assets. The rogues within Atlas’s military structure will not take kindly to one of their facilities being infiltrated. They will most likely move against you both politically and with force.”

“I already have assets in place,” Winter said smoothly. “General Ironwood has grown tired of cleaning up their messes, so he has instructed me to deal with them in the appropriate manner. Should the need for… property damage become evident, Caius Ballad has agreed to help in exchange for the right to harvest the Semblances of those involved.”

“As if he needs to grow anymore powerful,” Jihl said. “He is already one of the most powerful people on the planet. Still, I can’t blame him. If I had his Semblance, I would do the same. How secure are your communications?”

“Professor Estheim is handling that,” Winter said. “And he will also be tasked with investigating any technology we recover. There were rumours of the rogues attempting to replicate our research into synthetics, but I doubt they were successful.”

Jihl gave an inelegant snort. “Penny Polendina is the joint creation of some of the most brilliant minds in history. I doubt they got very far. However, any progress they did make might be interesting to review.”

Neo smiled. “What about their backers?”

Winter turned to study the teenager intently. Although Neo had begun moving her mouth to synchronise with her speech, she did seem a tad uncomfortable about it. It was undoubtedly something she could deal with on a mission, but it was unnecessary. Instead of replying in words, Winter offered her reply in sign language. You don’t have to speak. We can converse like this.

Neo’s eyes widened. Thank you. She signed back.

“How considerate of you,” Jihl drawled. “In any case, I can lend you Neo for the duration of the mission although her team will require compensation of some kind for her absence.”

“Ah, yes,” Winter said. “She is currently a student at Beacon. Very well. I will be happy to organise compensatory training for the rest of her team. As for their backers, some of them are very well connected. Moving openly against them would be unwise.”

“Distract them with your mission,” Jihl said. “And I will deal with them covertly. I have assets of my own that specialise in… accidents that mysteriously remove my enemies.”

Winter had a feeling that either Jihl or Jahne would be dealing with those people. "As long as it cannot be connected to any of us, that is acceptable. Atlas cannot afford to have rogues amongst its military. They will be the undoing of us all.”

“Indeed.” Jihl stood. “Good luck with your mission, specialist.” Her gaze sharpened. “And take care of Neo. I expect to receive her back in perfect health.”

X X X

Author’s Notes

There is a lot to cover here, but the most important thing is Neo’s Semblance. In Final Rose, Neo is actually descended from two offshoots of the same bloodlines that eventually gave rise to Lightning and Fang. Her Semblance is the result of two incomplete shards of Saviour and Ragnarok combining and mutating. Indeed, she is extremely fortunate just to be alive. If she’d been any less lucky, her conflicting genes would have killed her either at birth or after she awakened her Semblance.

In Final Rose, her Semblance (at least while she’s at Beacon) is based around the creation of poly-chromatic crystal constructs. These constructs are essentially hollow and are very fragile. However, they allow Neo to create what are basically 3-D screens that can change colour and move. As a result, the ‘illusions’ she create are incredibly realistic from a visual standpoint.

This also explains why the illusions ‘shatter’ when struck. What is breaking are the poly-chromatic crystals that serve as a medium for the illusion. The creation and shaping of the crystals is the part she gets from Saviour, their poly-chromatic and adaptive nature comes from Ragnarok.

The illusions she casts on herself (e.g., to change her appearance) are more durable because the crystal is in direct physical contact with her body, which allows her to saturate it with Aura, making it far more durable than it would normally be. In contrast, her ‘illusions’ are usually not in contact with her, so she cannot reinforce them with her Aura.

Her apparent teleportation is a side-effect of the crystals she creates. Like a lot of things Saviour (or its shards) can create, they can make physics go cry in a corner, and the added boost they get from an adaptive shard of Ragnarok only heightens that effect. When created and then destroyed in a specific way, her crystals can temporarily weaken the laws of physics in her immediate vicinity. This allows her to mimic teleportation although it should be said that her teleportation is strictly inferior in terms of range to what Ruby and Taren can muster. When combined with her ‘illusions’, however, it is a potent escape tool.

Funnily enough, her short stature is actually a side effect of the shard of Ragnarok she has. Like most shards of Ragnarok, it is extremely resource hungry. However, Neo never inherited the shards of Ragnarok that allow for the production of absolutely gigantic quantities of Aura and nutrients. As a result, she is on the short side. Her being unable to speak is also a side-effect of her Semblance. The parts of her brain dedicated to producing speech have basically been press-ganged into supporting and controlling her Semblance.

Neo’s ‘speech’ is created by vibrating the crystal constructs in a manner that simulates speech (think of how speakers work). Unfortunately, she finds mimicking speech with her Semblance to be far more taxing than creating illusions. As a result, even if can speak with her Semblance, she prefers to keep her speech to a minimum.

Socially, Neo dislikes using her Semblance to speak. Instead, she prefers to use sign language. This is largely due to the fact that she has no voice of her own. The voices she uses are copied or modelled on the voices of others, and she feels that using them is deceptive. When addressing people she actually cares about, she prefers sign language because that is the method she feels best allows her to express how she feels. However, she isn’t above using her Semblance’s ability to mimic speech to prank people.

You can find me on fanfiction.net, AO3, and Amazon.

#final rose #fanfiction #neopolitan #jihl nabaat #winter schnee

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discovermorepassionharder · 6 years

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Harry Potter and the Muggle Generation

One time at university, I had to write a paper about a book or movie that strongly impacted the subject of English Writing. I convinced my professor to let me write about HP.

Witches. Wizards. Muggles. Voldemort. Hogwarts. Each of these are memorable aspects of the well-known, well-received Harry Potter book series written by J.K. Rowling. The magical adventures of Harry, Ron, and Hermione are considered by some to be a pivotal part of the Millennial Generation’s upbringing. As such, it is hard to come across a single millennial who has never heard of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, regardless of whether or not they have actually read the books or seen the movies. By the time the seventh book in the series was released, the first six books had cumulatively sold over 325 million copies. At 8.3 million copies, the release of the seventh book set the record for most books sold within twenty-four hours in the United States. As a whole, the Harry Potter series has sold roughly 450 million copies worldwide and is the best-selling book series of all time (Vezzali, “Greatest Magic” 1). On top of all that, the Internet is filled with Harry Potter fanfictions, video games, merchandise, and even social media sites: Mugglespace.com, Mugglenet.com, the-leaky-cauldron.org, and Pottermore (to name a few), all of which have been written, designed, and created by passionate fans who just want to keep the magic alive. In fact, if you google the phrase “Harry Potter” you get 143,000,000 results in 0.61 seconds.

Based on those numbers, the widespread circulation of the series is indisputable. However, in some cases, it is more than just a story. Research shows that Harry Potter fans tend to be more tolerant and accepting of others, as well as more likely to promote equality. When we understand the indirect contact hypotheses and apply them to the world of Harry Potter, we are able to further understand the deeply ingrained influences of this widely popular book series in the lives of the Millennial Generation.

There are several different hypotheses and mechanisms that are explored throughout these studies in an effort to determine how Harry Potter manages to have such a lasting impact on its readers. The most broad categorizations of these hypotheses are direct and indirect contact. Direct contact refers to face-to-face contact between intergroup members as a means of reducing prejudices. However, this form of contact is not always ideal, or even possible. Instead, indirect contact often finds more favor as an effective prejudice reduction strategy. This form of contact is easily implemented in situations where there is little to no opportunity for direct contact, or if members of separate groups are unwilling to interact face-to-face with one another. Indirect contact can be further broken down into two strategies: extended contact and vicarious contact. “Extended contact: knowing that an ingroup member is friends with an outgroup member, and vicarious contact: observing an ingroup member interacting with an outgroup member” (Vezzali, “Improving” 315). Wright and colleagues performed a series of studies in order to test the extended contact hypothesis. The first study provided evidence supporting the basic idea that knowing ingroup members with outgroup friends helping in reducing prejudices. The second study replicated the results of the first by considering a minority sample, and thus proved that the effects of extended contact are not limited to majority group members (Vezzali, “Improving” 323). Finally, the third study addressed causality. Evaluations were done on ingroup members both before and after the experiment-- which included conducting two different interactions between ingroup and outgroup members, and then sharing the “results” with other members of the ingroup. The results of this study showed that members of the ingroup, who heard secondhand about a positive experience that other members of their ingroup had just had with outgroup members, displayed less bias in resource allocation and outgroup evaluation (Vezzali, “Improving” 342).

In the study of vicarious contact, there are several different outlets through which this contact can be experienced. The one that applies most to the study of Harry Potter is vicarious contact via the media, namely through reading stories and books. In this case, the intergroup contact is “experienced” through the author, rather than being watched, however the effect proves to be similar (Vezzali, “Improving” 344).

The world of Harry Potter, although fictional, still depicts social hierarchies and resulting prejudices that resemble our own society. In the first book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, we are able to view this exchange between Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy: “And my name’s Malfoy, Draco Malfoy.’ Ron gave a slight cough, which might have been hiding a snigger. Draco Malfoy look at him. ‘Think my name’s funny, do you? No need to ask who you are. My father told me all the Weasleys have red hair, freckles, and more children than they can afford.’ He turned back to Harry. ‘You’ll soon find out some wizarding families are much better than others, Potter. You don’t want to go making friends with the wrong sort. I can help you there’” (Rowling, Sorcerer’s Stone 108). In this brief exchange, the reader has already been introduced to a supposed hierarchy within the wizard world. We can see people claiming superiority over those who are different from them, and, as such, excluding them from their day to day lives. People without magic, also known as Muggles, are often discriminated against in the wizarding world. Wizards and witches who are born to families where only one parent has magical abilities are similarly discriminated against. These half-bloods, occasionally referred to using the slur “mud-blood” are often the subject of name-calling and made to feel inferior to “pure bloods”-- witches and wizards born of two magical parents. Other examples of stigmatized groups include goblins, house elves, and half-giants. In the case of Harry Potter, Hermione, and Ron, each of these characters can be seen interacting and forming friendships with members of the so-called outgroups. “‘If there was a wizard of whom I would believe that they did not seek personal gain,’ said Griphook finally, ‘it would be you, Harry Potter. Goblins and elves are not used to the protection or the respect that you have shown this night. Not from wand-carriers… As the Dark Lord becomes ever more powerful, your race is set still more firmly above mine!... and who amongst the wand-carriers protests’ ‘We do!’ said Hermione. ‘We protest!’” (Rowling, Deathly Hallows 488-489). In this excerpt from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, readers can observe that the kindness which Ron, Harry, and Hermione show to non-wizard creatures in not typical of the customs of their world. Their actions, attitudes, and beliefs are what set them apart from everyone else.

In the context of this research, the extended contact hypothesis suggests that simply knowing that a member of the in-group is friends with members of an out-group is enough to reduce prejudice (Vezzali, “Greatest Magic” 2). This hypothesis can be put to the test in regards to Harry, Ron, and Hermione befriending Hagrid the half-giant. When other Hogwarts students see the trio interacting with and becoming friends with Hagrid, it is likely to reduce their preconceived judgments, and even motivate them to pursue friendships of their own.

Loris Vezzali proposes a new type of extended contact, similar to vicarious contact, which suggests that when a reader connects and relates to a character, they are able to adopt that character’s morals, prejudices, or attitudes of acceptance (Vezzali, “Greatest Magic” 3). This new extended contact theory insinuates that when a reader relates to Harry, Ron, or Hermione they are able to let go of some of their preconceived prejudices and begin to adopt more tolerance towards out-group members, similar to the way the Harry and his friends treat the characters they come into contact with. Vezzali conducted three studies to test her theories. The first study was among 34 fifth-grade elementary schoolers, in which they were read selected passages from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and then took part in a group discussion. Part of the selected passage in this study includes a tense exchange between Draco Malfoy, and a number of Harry’s friends: “‘No one asked your opinion, you filthy little Mudblood, [Draco] spat… Flint had to dive in front of Malfoy to stop Fred and George jumping on him, Alicia shrieked, ‘How dare you!’, and Ron plunged his hand into his robes, pulled out his wand, yelling, ‘You’ll pay for that one, Malfoy!’ and pointed it furiously under Flint’s arm at Malfoy’s face” (Rowling, Chamber 112). The selected text goes on to include Ron explaining to Harry why being called a “Mudblood” is so offensive: “‘It’s about the most insulting thing he could think of,’ gasped Ron, coming back up. ‘Mudblood’s a really foul name for someone who is Muggle-born… There are some wizards-- like Malfoy’s family-- who think they’re better than everyone else because they’re what people call pure-blood’” (Rowling, Chamber 116). The results of this study determined that when children identified more with Harry Potter and his friends they exhibited improved attitudes towards immigrants. If the reader sees Malfoy’s use of a slur as utterly offensive as the other characters, then they are likely to adapt those morals into their own lives, and as a result will be more accepting or kind towards those who are different from them. Conversely, when students associated more with characters such as Draco Malfoy or Voldemort they were likely to display negative out-group attitudes (Vezzali, “Greatest Magic” 6).

The second study done by Vezzali aimed to replicate the effects of study 1 by using the same passage, only this time among older, high school students in reference to a different out-group, namely homosexuals. This second study concluded that book reading only improved the attitudes of those who identified more with Harry Potter, and had little to no effect on those who did not identify with the main character (Vezzali, “Greatest Magic” 7). In the final third study, Vezzali aimed to understand the underlying factors of perspective taking on the potential effects of the Harry Potter series. The results of this study showed that “Harry Potter book reading was positively associated with perspective taking toward refugees only among those less identified with Voldemort” (Vezzali, “Greatest Magic” 11).

In a similar series of studies, Anthony Gierzynski and Kathryn Eddy hoped to prove that Harry Potter fans are more likely to exhibit political perspectives that parallel the lessons and character traits that are prominent in the series (Gierzynski, 6). Overall, they found that “Harry Potter fans tend to be more accepting of those who are different, to be more politically tolerant, to be more supportive of equality…” (Gierzynski 6). The first hypothesis tested questioned whether the fans of Harry Potter would exhibit greater acceptance than non-fans of diversity and differences. They asked respondents to rate on a five point scale how they felt about several commonly discriminated groups in the United States-- Muslims, African Americans, undocumented immigrants, and homosexuals. The findings of this study suggest that those who read the books or saw the movies, typically rated “warmer” feelings towards the minority groups in question. (Gierzynski 52). The second hypothesis that was tested questioned if Harry Potter fans would exhibit greater levels of political tolerance than non-fans. This study compared fans and non-fans on a test designed to measure their political tolerance. The respondents were asked a series of questions to assess their tolerance of minority groups (similar to the list of minority groups used in the first study). Their responses to each question were added together to create an “intolerance score” for each individual. The results showed that “those who read all the books exhibited higher levels of tolerance than those who did not” and that Harry Potter fans seem to express “more support for government promotion of equality than nonfans” (Gierzynski 52-55). This result is important to note, especially in today’s culture where the fight for equality-- both in terms of gender and sexuality-- is on the rise and has become an integral part of our society.

While it is essential to understand the impact that Harry Potter and his friends have had on the millennials that grew up reading about them, it is now just as important that understand that these studies do have their own limitations. It is easy to observe the widespread circulation of the Harry Potter series among the Millennial Generation, and thus be interested in understanding the impact the books have had on its readers. However, if one were to measure the impact of Harry Potter on generations that have come after the Millennials, the effects may be different. The future generations will not be growing up in the midst of the excitement of each book or movie release, so they might not be as deeply impacted by the morals and values of the series. Because of this “it is important to identify and test other popular novels that can have similar effects and that can be equally appealing to young readers” (Vezzali, “Greatest Magic” 14). This limitation can be overcome, not only by finding similar popular novels, but also be encouraging book reading among young students. Whether this means encouraging students to read the Harry Potter series or promoting books with similar values, not only will this increase their literacy levels, but it will also increase their prosocial attitudes and intergroup relationships.

There is no doubt that the Harry Potter series has had a powerful effect on the Millennial Generation. Millions of children and young teenagers grew up alongside the adventures of a boy wizard-- reading the books, going to movie releases, dressing up in the costumes, and even playing and competing in real-life games of Quidditch. But the popularity of this series evidently stretches far beyond a story and some magical, made-up adventures. The effects of this series can be seen in the results, which show that Harry Potter fans have grown up to become more tolerant, more accepting adults.Each member of the Harry Potter Millennial Generation can find peace in knowing that they have been able to keep the magic alive. And that the effect of the Harry Potter series can even be used to impact the lives of generations to come.

Works Cited

Gierzynski, Anthony, and Kathryn Eddy. Harry Potter and the Millennials: Research Methods and the Politics of the Muggle Generation. Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 2013. Print.

Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. New York: Arthur A. Levine Books, 1999. Print.

Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. New York: Arthur A. Levine Books, 2007. Print.

Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. New York: Arthur A. Levine Books, 1998. Print.

Vezzali, Loris, Miles Hewstone, Dora Capozza, Dino Giovannini, and Ralf Wolfer. “Improving Intergroup Relations with Extended and Vicarious Forms of Indirect Contact.” European Review of Social Psychology 25.1. (2014): 314-89. Web.

Vezzali, Loris, Sofia Stathi, Dino Giovannini, Dora Capozza, and Elena Trifiletti. “The Greatest Magic of Harry Potter: Reducing Prejudice.” J Appl Soc Psychol Journal of Applied Social Psychology 45.2 (2014): 105-21. Web.

#Harry Potter #muggles #wizards #pottermore #gryffindor #ravenclaw #slytherin #hufflepuff #ron weasley #hermione granger #voldemort #hogwarts #tolerance #pop culture #english writing #essays

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trendtshirtnewposts · 4 years

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biofunmy · 4 years

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Why Didn’t She Get Alzheimer’s? The Answer Could Hold a Key to Fighting the Disease

The woman’s genetic profile showed she would develop Alzheimer’s by the time she turned 50.

A member of the world’s largest family to suffer from Alzheimer’s, she, like generations of her relatives, was born with a gene mutation that causes people to begin having memory and thinking problems in their 40s and deteriorate rapidly toward death around age 60.

But remarkably, she experienced no cognitive decline at all until her 70s, nearly three decades later than expected.

How did that happen? New research provides an answer, one that experts say could change the scientific understanding of Alzheimer’s disease and inspire new ideas about how to prevent and treat it.

In a study published Monday in the journal Nature Medicine, researchers say the woman, whose name they withheld to protect her privacy, has another mutation that has protected her from dementia even though her brain has developed a major neurological feature of Alzheimer’s disease.

This ultra rare mutation appears to help stave off the disease by minimizing the binding of a particular sugar compound to an important gene. That finding suggests that treatments could be developed to give other people that same protective mechanism.

“I’m very excited to see this new study come out — the impact is dramatic,” said Dr. Yadong Huang, a senior investigator at Gladstone Institutes, who was not involved in the research. “For both research and therapeutic development, this new finding is very important.”

A drug or gene therapy would not be available any time soon because scientists first need to replicate the protective mechanism found in this one patient by testing it in laboratory animals and human brain cells.

Still, this case comes at a time when the Alzheimer’s field is craving new approaches after billions of dollars have been spent on developing and testing treatments and some 200 drug trials have failed. It has been more than 15 years since the last treatment for dementia was approved, and the few drugs available do not work very well for very long.

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The woman is entering her late 70s now and lives in Medellín, the epicenter for an extended Colombian family of about 6,000 people whose members have been plagued with dementia for centuries, a condition they called “La Bobera” — “the foolishness” — and attributed to superstitious causes.

Decades ago, a Colombian neurologist, Dr. Francisco Lopera, began painstakingly collecting the family’s birth and death records in Medellín and remote Andes mountain villages. He documented the sprawling family tree and took dangerous risks in guerrilla and drug-trafficking territory to cajole relatives of people who died with dementia into giving him their brains for analysis.

Through this work, Dr. Lopera, whose brain bank at the University of Antioquia now contains 300 brains, helped discover that their Alzheimer’s was caused by a mutation on a gene called Presenilin 1.

While this type of hereditary early-onset dementia accounts for only a small proportion of the roughly 30 million people worldwide with Alzheimer’s, it is important because unlike most forms of Alzheimer’s, the Colombian version has been traced to a specific cause and a consistent pattern. So Dr. Lopera and a team of American scientists have spent years studying the family, searching for answers both to help the Colombians and to address the mounting epidemic of the more typical old-age Alzheimer’s disease.

When they found that the woman had the Presenilin 1 mutation, but had not yet even developed a pre-Alzheimer’s condition called mild cognitive impairment, the scientists were mystified.

“We have a single person who is resilient to Alzheimer’s disease when she should be at high risk,” said Dr. Eric Reiman, executive director of the Banner Alzheimer’s Institute in Phoenix and a leader of the research team.

The woman was flown to Boston, where some of the researchers are based, for brain scans and other tests. Those results were puzzling, said Yakeel Quiroz, a Colombian neuropsychologist who directs the familial dementia neuroimaging lab at Massachusetts General Hospital.

The woman’s brain was laden with the foremost hallmark of Alzheimer’s: plaques of amyloid protein.

“The highest levels of amyloid that we have seen so far,” said Dr. Quiroz, adding that the excessive amyloid probably accumulated because the woman has lived much longer than other family members with the Alzheimer’s-causing mutation.

But the woman had few other neurological signs of the disease — not much of a protein called tau, which forms tangles in Alzheimer’s brains, and little neurodegeneration or brain atrophy.

“Her brain was functioning really well,” said Dr. Quiroz, who, like Dr. Reiman, is a senior author of the study. “Compared to people who are 45 or 50, she’s actually better.”

She said the woman, who raised four children, had only one year of formal education and could barely read or write, so it was unlikely her cognitive protection came from educational stimulation.

“She has a secret in her biology,” Dr. Lopera said. “This case is a big window to discover new approaches.”

Dr. Quiroz consulted Dr. Joseph Arboleda-Velasquez, who, like her, is an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School (he is also Dr. Quiroz’s husband). Dr. Arboleda-Velasquez, a cell biologist at Massachusetts Eye and Ear, conducted extensive genetic testing and sequencing, determining that the woman has an extremely rare mutation on a gene called APOE.

APOE is important in general-population Alzheimer’s. One variant, APOE4, present in about 14 percent of people, greatly increases risk and is present in 40 percent of people with Alzheimer’s. People with another variant, APOE2, occurring in about 7 percent of the population, are less likely to develop Alzheimer’s, while those with the most common variant, APOE3, are in the middle.

The Colombian woman has two copies of APOE3, but both copies have a mutation called Christchurch (for the New Zealand city where it was discovered). The Christchurch mutation is extremely rare, but several years ago, Dr. Reiman’s daughter Rebecca, a technologist, helped determine that a handful of Colombian family members have that mutation on one of their APOE genes. They developed Alzheimer’s as early as their relatives, though — unlike the woman with mutations on both APOE genes.

“The fact that she had two copies, not just one, really kind of sealed the deal,” Dr. Arboleda-Velasquez said.

The woman’s mutation is in an area of the APOE gene that binds with a sugar-protein compound called heparan sulfate proteoglycans (HSPG), which is involved in spreading tau in Alzheimer’s disease.

In laboratory experiments, the researchers found that the less a variant of APOE binds to HSPG, the less it is linked to Alzheimer’s. With the Christchurch mutation, there was barely any binding.

That, said Dr. Arboleda-Velasquez, “was the piece that completed the puzzle because, ‘Oh, this is how the mutation has such a strong effect.’”

Researchers were also able to develop a compound that, in laboratory dish experiments, mimicked the action of the mutation, suggesting it’s possible to make drugs that prevent APOE from binding to HSPG.

Dr. Guojun Bu, who studies APOE, said that while the findings involved a single case and more research is needed, the implications could be profound.

“When you have delayed onset of Alzheimer’s by three decades, you say wow,” said Dr. Bu, chairman of the neuroscience department at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla., who was not involved in the study.

He said the research suggests that instead of drugs attacking amyloid or tau, which have failed in many clinical trials, a medication or gene therapy targeting APOE could be promising.

Dr. Reiman, who led another newly published study showing that APOE has a bigger effect on a person’s risk of getting Alzheimer’s than previously thought, said potential treatments could try to reduce or even silence APOE activity in the brain. People born without APOE appear to have no cognitive problems, but they do have very high cholesterol that requires treatment.

Dr. Huang, who wrote a commentary about the study and is affiliated with two companies focusing on potential APOE-related treatments, said the findings also challenge a leading Alzheimer’s theory about the role of amyloid.

Since the woman had huge amounts of amyloid but few other Alzheimer’s indicators, “it actually illustrates, to my knowledge for the first time, a very clear dissociation of amyloid accumulation from tau pathology, neurodegeneration and even cognitive decline,” he said.

Dr. Lopera said the woman is just beginning to develop dementia, and he recently disclosed her genetic profile to her four adult children, who each have only one copy of the Christchurch mutation.

The researchers are also evaluating a few other members of the Colombian family, who appear to also have some resistance to Alzheimer’s. They are not as old as the woman, and they do not have the Christchurch mutation, but the team hopes to find other genetic factors from studying them and examine whether those factors operate along the same or different biological pathways, Dr. Reiman said.

“We’ve learned that at least one individual can live for very long having the cause of Alzheimer’s, and she’s resistant to it,” Dr. Arboleda-Velasquez said. “What this patient is teaching is there could be a pathway for correcting the disease.”

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isaacbewleystopmotion · 6 years

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Researching stop motion animation

Stop motion animation is an animation technique where physical objects are captured in frames to give the illusion of them moving on their own. This is primarily done by taking many pictures of the objects and moving them slightly for each photo and then playing the images very fast, somewhat similar to zoetrope animations.

Due to the nature of stop motion animation being for physical objects, the use of physical materials are mostly used to make the models and objects. Clay was used primarily in the early days of stop motion and is still used to an extent in the modern age of stop motion, although the discovery of new alternatives has led to materials such as foam latex and plaster to be used for covering clay bases of models and making the objects look more aesthetically pleasing. Wires are often used with clay to make the models more stable and give more potential when moving the objects around. However, even the most basic of materials used in everyday arts and crafts can be used in stop motion very effectively, with films being created out of things made of LEGO bricks, and models made of felt held together with pipe cleaners.

There are several methods to doing stop motion animation, with the most popular and prominent technique being claymation. This technique is where the models and objects are made of clay, hence the name. Most of the set from backdrop to models will be made of clay for claymation, due to the versatility of the material. Puppet animation is very similar to this, with the clay models being replaced with puppets made out of felt, latex or other similar materials. Wires are often used in both techniques to make sure the models are positioned correctly and move easier, which makes production more smooth.

Cut-out animation is a subgenre of stop motion that is used much less, but is still utilised to an extent in modern films. For this, flat characters and backgrounds are created on paper, cardboard or other materials and manipulated on a flat surface to appear to move. A notable example of this technique is on the show South Park - while the animation style is now digitally created to replicate cut-out animation, the original pilot for the show was created with physical cut-out animation.

Pixilation and object stop motion animation are very similar subgenres, with the subject matter of the animation styles being the main difference. Pixilation is a method where actual human actors are used, and the same photo frame technique is used to capture them. Due to the use of human actors, this method is commonly seen as the most difficult form of stop-motion due to how time-consuming and inaccurate it can be when moving for new frames. Object animation is essentially the same - however the use of human actors is swapped for physical objects that are premade, such as rubiks cubes, dice and tinfoil.

Silhouette animation is another subgenre, although it is much rarely used compared to other methods, even pixilation. It involves characters who are only seen as black silhouettes, with a plain white background to make the silhouettes stand out. The silhouettes tend to just be cardboard cutouts or paper with back lighting, making this technique similar to cut-out animation. The use of silhouettes and a stark colour scheme seem to be heavily referenced and inspired from shadowplay (an example of shadowplay is the ‘shadow’ segments in the children’s show ‘Big Bear in the Big Blue House’).

The Nightmare before Christmas is a extremely well-known stop motion film created in 1993 by Henry Selick. It is regarded very highly and has excellent reviews, remaining a classic horror/christmas film for decades after it was released. It took around a week to make one minute of the film, and took 3 overall years to finish. The Tim Burton style of the models and overall theming make the film very popular and stand out from other more lighthearted stop motion films, and marked a new trend in using stop motion for more horror-relating films. The film shows how stop motion can not only be used for innocent and funny plots and characters, but can also support more creepy plots and designs well.

Coraline was made much later in 2009 but is very similar in theme and popularity to Nightmare before Christmas. Directed again by Henry Selick and taking twenty months to complete, this film has achieved cult status much like Nightmare did before it after using creepy theming through the stop motion style. Unlike Nightmare, Tim Burton was not involved in this project, however the production team was extremely large and had at peak 450 people helping. People were even hired to make miniature clothing for the models, even using knitting needles as thin as hairs in order to make realistic looking clothing.

Kubo and the Two Strings was also made by the same company that directed Coraline. It was completed in 2016 after being directed by Travis Knight for 5 years, with several being dedicated to the animation aspect alone. One of very few modern stop motion films, it recounts a tale based in asian culture around the power of music and magic, and was critically acclaimed for the intricate animation - the crew even went as far as to build a 16ft animatronic of a skeleton for the film. It was the second animated film ever to be nominated for Best Visual Effects in the Academy Awards, alongside the Nightmare before Christmas.

Another notable film in stop motion was the Wallace and Gromit film, Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Released in 2005 by the duo directors Nick Park and Steve Box, it received critical acclaim and success and won numerous awards including the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature (the only other Dreamworks film to win besides Shrek). After the failure of Flushed Away, this classic W&G film was a critical and commercial success for the Aardman and Dreamworks partnership. It shows the classic slapstick and charm of stop motion animation alongside the rest of the animated shorts, although this is the first feature film.

Chicken Run was created in 2000 by Peter Lord and Nick Park from Aardman. It was the company’s first feature length film, and was released to critical acclaim and is the highest grossing animated film ever. It recounts the tale of chickens trying to escape from a farm before being turned into chicken pot pies, and uses classic clay models in order to achieve a charming soft style. The film took 18 months to fully shoot, and shows good examples of special effects in stopmotion that I can take into account when creating my final piece.

Lego Movie was also a groundbreaking film released in 2014, directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller from Warner Bros. While the film is not created fully by actual stopmotion, the animation style is made to replicate that method and is worthy of study for that purpose. It uses 3D computer generated animation rather than traditional stopmotion, but makes use of choppy, blocked movements to replicate the actual look of real stopmotion, Whether it achieved the look well is up for debate, but it shows that it isn’t too hard to replicate stopmotion by other methods and other alternatives can be used in my project if I cannot create a effect I want with plain stopmotion alone.

Corpse Bride is another cult classic film with Tim Burton influences. Made in 2005 under the direction of Mike Johnson and Tim Burtion, it tells the story of a man who is thrust into a love triangle between a dead corpse and an alive woman whom he does not love. The film is another excellent use of stopmotion style to be creepy and unnerving, with the puppets used having bold, outlined and sunken features to almost appear dead and sickly, like the subject matter of the film.

Fantastic Mr Fox was created in 2009 by Wes Anderson in American Emperical Pictures, based of Roald Dahl’s book of the same name. It gained commercial success, with a high score on internet critic website Rotten Tomatoes. This film is especially interesting as it used a vastly different style of stopmotion modelling to create the animal models, which makes it stand out from other films done with the same technique. This could be interesting to learn from as I want my piece to be different from every other stopmotion film, and something as simple as a model style change could be the key to achieving a unique look,

James and the Giant Peach is an older film, shot in 1996 by Henry Selick for Disney. It is once again based off a Roald Dahl book of the same name, and incorporates live action and stopmotion into one singular film. This technique created an interesting effect when the divide between live action and stopmotion is shown side by side, and this interests me as I could create something similar by using humans in my stopmotion. However to avoid outright copying of this, I could try using this method through pixilation or cut-out stopmotion instead of simply filming live action alongside the actual stopmotion.

Jason and the Argonauts is a classic film created in 1963 by Don Chaffey. The majority of the film is shot in live action, but the film gained fame for including stopmotion creatures in fight scenes - the most iconic use of stopmotion is the famous skeleton scene where they rise from the ground to attack the soldiers. Again, this film is interested to study when considering the possibility of combining humans and stopmotion, although I think that it would be easier for me to use a method like pixilation for this instead of shooting live action and then shoot actual stopmotion.

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uniteordie-usa · 6 years

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It’s Time to Rethink Education – Part 2 (Unschooling)

http://uniteordie-usa.com/its-time-to-rethink-education-part-2-unschooling/ https://libertyblitzkrieg.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Screen-Shot-2017-12-14-at-12.04.46-PM.jpg It’s Time to Rethink Education – Part 2 (Unschooling) Michael Krieger | Posted Thursday Dec 14, 2017 at 12:57 pm There are several components, but the real shocker is that more of us aren’t embracing the current age of access to mastery of any topic. But that may not be so surprising—most of us were taught to be passive learners, to just “get throu...

Michael Krieger | Posted Thursday Dec 14, 2017 at 12:57 pm

There are several components, but the real shocker is that more of us aren’t embracing the current age of access to mastery of any topic. But that may not be so surprising—most of us were taught to be passive learners, to just “get through” school. It’s easy to be lazy. The rewards of becoming an autodidact, though, include igniting inner fires, making new connections to knowledge atnd skills you already have, advancing in your career, meeting kindred spirits, and cultivating an overall zest for life and its riches.

One good reason to dive head first into self-initiated learning is that much of what you were taught is already obsolete. “Knowledge workers succeed not based on what they know, but rather how they learn,” writes James Marcus Bach in his book, Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar. He dropped out of school when he was 14 and, in the early days of home computing, taught himself enough to become a software tester for Apple. He’s now an independent consultant.

Bach’s philosophy is rebellious yet inclusive: “Intellectual buccaneering is about self-education, but schools are OK, too. I’ve learned in schools, and I’ve learned from people who were trained in schools. I happily plunder knowledge wherever I find it. I don’t seek the destruction of schools. I am out to dismantle something else—the popular belief that schooling is the only route to a great education and that the best students are those who passively accept the education their schools offer.”

– From the Psychology Today article: The Golden Age of Teaching Yourself Anything

While some of you will be familiar with the educational concept of unschooling, it’ll probably be new to most of you. Personally, I never looked into the concept until I became a parent a couple of years ago, and it was my wife who first became fascinated with the idea and bought a bunch of books on the topic. I’m really glad she did.

The book we’re currently reading is by a fascinating individual named Ben Hewitt, titled Home Grown. Back in 2014, Ben wrote an excellent article for Outside Magazine in which he provided a concise description of what unschooling is. It’s quite distinct from home-schooling, which most people are already familiar with.

In the piece, We Don’t Need No Education, he explains:

There’s a name for the kind of education Fin and Rye are getting. It’s called unschooling, though Penny and I have never been fond of the term. But “self-directed, adult-facilitated life learning in the context of their own unique interests” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, so unschooling it is.

It is already obvious that unschooling is radically different from institutionalized classroom learning, but how does it differ from more common homeschooling? Perhaps the best way to explain it is that all unschooling is homeschooling, but not all homeschooling is unschooling. While most homeschooled children follow a structured curriculum, unschoolers like Fin and Rye have almost total autonomy over their days. At ages that would likely see them in seventh and fourth grades, I generously estimate that my boys spend no more than two hours per month sitting and studying the subjects, such as science and math, that are universal to mainstream education. Not two hours per day or even per week. Two hours per month. Comparatively speaking, by now Fin would have spent approximately 5,600 hours in the classroom. Rye, nearly three years younger, would have clocked about half that time.

If this sounds radical, it’s only because you’re not taking a long enough view, for the notion that children should spend the majority of their waking hours confined to a classroom enjoys scant historical precedent.

Even to someone like me, an individual who finds the concept of authority and involuntary activity revolting, unschooling seemed a bit radical for our family when I first read about it. Nevertheless, as I’ve considered it in more over the past few months, it’s become more and more appealing. To get an even better sense of what it’s all about, let’s read some more excerpts from the Outside article referenced above:

The boys will pay the bus no heed because its passing is meaningless to them. Maybe they have never ridden in a school bus, and maybe this is because they’ve never been to school. Perhaps they have not passed even a single day of their short childhoods inside the four walls of a classroom, their gazes shifting between window and clock, window and clock, counting the restless hours and interminable minutes until release.

Maybe the boys are actually my sons, and maybe their names are Fin and Rye, and maybe, if my wife, Penny, and I get our way, they will never go to school.

Hey, a father can dream, can’t he?…

The first incidence of compulsory schooling came in 1852, when Massachusetts required communities to offer free public education and demanded that every child between the ages of 8 and 14 attend school for at least 12 weeks per year. Over the next seven decades, the remaining states adopted similar laws, and by 1918, the transition to mandated public education was complete.

It was not long before some parents and even educators began to question the value of compulsory education. One of those was John Holt, a Yale graduate and teacher at the Colorado Rocky Mountain School who published his observations in How Children Fail in 1964. Ultimately selling more than a million copies, it was an indictment of the education system, asserting that children are born with deep curiosity and love of learning, both of which are diminished in school.

Holt became a passionate advocate for homeschooling, which existed in a legal gray area, but he quickly realized that some parents were simply replicating the classroom. So in 1977, in his magazine, Growing Without Schooling, he coined a new term: “GWS will say ‘unschooling’ when we mean taking children out of school, and ‘deschooling’ when we mean changing the laws to make schools noncompulsory and to take away from them their power to grade, rank, and label people, i.e. to make lasting, official, public judgments about them.”

In addition to fundamental curricular differences, there is also something of a cultural schism between the two styles. Home-schooling is popularly associated with strong religious views (in a 2007 survey by the National Center for Education Statistics, 83 percent of homeschooling parents said that providing “religious or moral instruction” was part of their choice), while unschooling seems to have no such association. “Unschooling has always been sort of code for being secular,” explains Patrick Farenga, who runs the unschooling website JohnHoltGWS.com. “It’s about understanding that learning is not a special skill that happens separate from everything else and only under a specialist’s gaze. It’s about raising children who are curious and engaged in the world alongside their families and communities.”

I can almost hear you thinking, Sure, but you live in the sticks, and you both work at home. What about the rest of us? And it’s true: Penny and I have made what most would consider an extreme choice. I write from home, and we both run our farm, selling produce and meat to help pay the bills. Everyone we know who unschools, in fact, has chosen autonomy over affluence. Hell, some years we’re barely above the poverty line. But the truth is, unschooling isn’t merely an educational choice. It’s a lifestyle choice.

Unschooling is also perfectly legal in all 50 states, so long as certain basic stipulations—from simple notification to professional evaluations, “curriculum” approval, and even home visits—are met. But many unschoolers have been reticent to stand up and be counted, perhaps because the movement tends to attract an independent-thinking, antiauthoritarian personality type.

Of course, unschooling is not the only choice. Increasingly, families are turning to options like Waldorf, the largest so-called alternative-education movement in the world. It was founded in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1919, based on the teachings of Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner, who believed that children learn best through creative play. In 1965, there were nine Waldorf schools in the U.S.; today there are 123.

Still, perhaps the best answer I can give to the question of what price my children might pay is in the form of another question: What price do school-going children pay for their confinement? The physical toll is easy enough to quantify. Diabetes rates among school-age children are sky-high, and the percentage of 6-to-11-year-olds who qualify as obese has nearly tripled since 1980. And what do children do in school? Exactly.

They sit.

So what prompted me to shift from, “this seems interesting, but it’s probably not for us,,” to “this might work for our family,” in just a matter of months? For one thing, I have a fundamental issue with forcing kids to sit in a classroom all day with other kids of the exact same age, while being forced to learn in the same way and at the same pace. Second, with all the information currently available online, the resources for thoughtful parents and curious kids is simply extraordinary and unprecedented. Typical schooling seems very outdated in this reality, and I’m not the sort of person who just does things because it’s what everybody else does. Finally, I started to ponder some less obvious downsides to traditional schooling. What if we want to go on an adventure as a family. Whether desert camping in Morocco, or a drive up to Montana, our ability to do such trips would be confined by school schedules. We’d have to take trips at the same time as all the other kids, which just rubs me the wrong way.

Ultimately, my wife and I haven’t decided on exactly what we’re going to do, and we plan on keeping an open mind about all options and taking cues from our kids themselves as they are each unique individuals with their own desires and needs. This post isn’t about making the case for a particular type of educational path, but to get people aware of the various options out there and inspire everyone to think outside of the box.

From a societal perspective, the reality is unschooling necessitates at least one person to be a stay at home parent. In the case of Ben Hewitt, he works from home and his wife is also there. That’s the ideal situation in my opinion, and it’s simply not an option for the overwhelming majority of U.S. families. In fact, most households consist of two parents working full-time just to make ends meet. This is a tragedy since it stifles household creativity and forces everybody into a stressed out box where family becomes an afterthought.

My wife and I are in a fortunate position which gives us options, and we will explore them all. That said, the choice to potentially unschool is not something I take lightly. If we decided to go down that route, I’d have to change a lot about how I do things. At the moment I spend most of my day reading and writing for the purposes of this website. If we accepted the enormous responsibility that comes with having kids at home, I’d want to dedicate far more time during the day to interacting with our children. My everyday life would be affected in a very significant way.

Parenthood is a tremendous honor and responsibility, and it saddens me that so many parents don’t have the opportunity we do to be so engaged with our children on daily basis. Given this reality, it’s important that those of you fortunate enough to be home with your kids think deeply about the options available before doing something just because everybody else does. The world’s changing fast and it’s crucial we raise as many children as possible who can think independently and ensure the future looks very different in a positive way from the one we’re living in. Humanity depends on it.

Finally, here are a few resources readers pointed me to on the subject of unschooling. If you have any other good ones, please share in the comment section.

Lazy Mill Farm

John Taylor Gatto

Living Joyfully

Dayna Martin

#adult-facilitated life learning #self-directed #unschooling

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emilyelizabethbcuillustration · 7 years

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Final Evaluation

This project was based around exploring meaning through narrative, we had to create a flip book/animation based off an art piece being displayed in the ‘I want I want’ exhibition in the Birmingham museum and art gallery. Our animation had to have a baseline of engagement e.g. ‘Does this make you happy?’ Aimed at a specific target audience, and a backspace where users can comment on my work. Our options for target audiences were; under 5s, primary school children, secondary school children, arts aware adults, a BAME audience, a special educational needs or disability audience, LGBT+ or over 50s. I decided to base my work off Fiona Rae’s Dark Star, which is a large scale piece in the exhibition created from both traditional and digital media. I chose this piece because it gave me a feeling of nostalgia, the symbols, airbrushing and glitter reminded me of the 90s and 2000s and retro space movies, anime and Daft punk (which will come into play a bit later). This helped snowball my ideas and come up with a baseline and target audience, I chose to direct my work towards art aware adults, and sticking with the theme of nostalgia, my baseline of engagement would be “nostalgia trip.” My reasons for this would be that I would consider myself a member of my chosen audience, and I feel like if I want to portray a message of feeling, I have to be fully invested in it too and childhood was a very influential time for members of this audience, and everyone else for that matter of course, but what surrounds in media and design growing up will have a definite influence on how we create art and the development of the future of the arts. Growing up in the late 90s/ early 2000s, it was very much about bright colours, flowers, aliens, smiley faces, glow sticks, glitter, poor fashion choices and music, this is where DaftPunk comes into play, one of their most popular albums ‘Discovery’ was released in 2000 and it was then developed into visual realisation, which was in the style of Japanese anime, called Interstella5555 and it pretty much encapsulates all that I have listed above. I posted an image of the poster girl for the movie ‘Stella’ on my Facebook and asked my friends to guess her name, I was surprised that a lot people knew who she was, not just from my generation but from older generations too. I wanted my animation to be a throwback for my audience so I decided to include Stella in my animation. I pretty much had an idea in my head of what I wanted my animation to look like from the start, after getting my bearings together with initial ideas, I wanted to have Stella playing guitar on loop and essentially have the animation glitch out and have multiple flowers and smiley faces appear on screen over said animation, I wanted it to be ‘trippy’ this also ties in with the early 2000s because rave culture and drug culture was also very popular at the time. The only problem I had with this is that the style Stella is drawn in is very intricate, I tried replicating the style with a “quick sketch” which turned into 3 hours of trial and error, and I had never properly taken a crack at animation, so I felt it would be too ambitious to try and completely copy the style she was drawn in and translate it into motion, thus I attempted to combine the style of Interstella5555 with my own and it worked out pretty well, it was a simple portrait of her with her guitar, the only mistake I made was colouring it in with watercolour paints, I did rectify this later on, it was time consuming and it made some of the colours a bit muddy and less vibrant than I would of liked, however it wasn't a waste, I began to play around with the image in photoshop, mainly focusing on changing the hue, as I had decided I wanted to add colour change to my animation, to see what transitioned well into the other in what order, I filmed myself scrolling through these images on the touch screen TV at the university and it became one of my tester animations. Fixing my previous problem of time consuming media, I decided to switch to watercolour markers to create the traditional aspect of my animation with, I could achieve vibrant colours and shading more easily in less time, so that was a win win situation for me. I then moved onto creating a tester animation to get the general movement down for my traditional cels, to test the water and see if I was heading in the right direction, I was able to convert my iPad Pro into a Lightbox and sketched out Stella’s basic form playing guitar over the span of 6 frames, I was actually very pleased with the outcome of this, so I decided to base my final animation on the movement of these 6 frames. Once I had put down some solid lines and added colour, I felt like things were really coming together at this point, the traditional aspect of my animation was done, and I had anchored Stella to one point in the frame so her movement flowed more, I then used an app called procreate to edit the hue of the individual cels and photoshop to edit in the smiley faces, flowers and visual disturbances over my traditional work to give the glitch like effect. In total my final animation consists of 109 frames and is 18 seconds long when not on loop. As a whole I found this project to be short, sweet and more enjoyable than the last, there is something very rewarding about seeing your work come to life and swing into motion from being a static image. Unfortunately I wasn't able to add music to my animation, ideally I wanted DaftPunk’s song ‘One more time’ to play over the animation, as that's the song that plays to the opening of the movie, but I couldn't get it to translate into any of the animation/ video editing apps I was using because the music is licensed and one is not allowed to use it undisclosed, but I feel that my final animation stands on its own pretty well without sound anyway. I feel like my time keeping has gotten better as well, I would of liked the project to have a longer time span so I could of played around with my animation more though, but all in all I feel like this was a stronger project for me in comparison to my last.

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