#i can make complex analyses that have a solid base from the source (the book) to sustain those opinions

[missnight0wl]

Let's discuss Jacob's age

I finally decided to collect all my thoughts on Jacob’s age in one post. There will be some arguments I covered before in different discussions, but also some new observations. I’ll also use my Jacob as a point of reference, as I find it easier to explain different possibilities that way. Hopefully, it’ll be also clearer to understand. So without further ado, let’s get it started.

Jacob Ellis was born in late 1966 and here's why:

My first crucial assumption when we consider Jacob’s age is that he was 17 years old at the point of his expulsion (or at least very close to that). Most importantly it’s about the Trace. If Jacob still got it on him, he’d be probably fairly easy to find. And speaking of that, notice that nobody seemed to be really alarmed about A CHILD missing. Everybody just talks about him going mad. In my opinion, it also suggests that our brother was already of age so nobody could do much – he’s an adult, he can do whatever he wants. Lastly, there were rumours about Jacob working for Voldemort AND being the most feared wizard in Knockturn Alley. I suppose both of them would be far less probable for people to believe in if Jacob was younger than 17.

I also put his birthdate after September 1st, meaning he would’ve been 17 in his 6th year already. It’s maybe not super important, but I’ll use it in later speculations, so I’m just letting you know.

In this place, let’s discuss his relationship with Madam Rosmerta. She’s actually one of a few people who knew Jacob and admits that she cares about bringing him back home. It seems like she was pretty close with our brother, with the whole hiding him from the Ministry and letting him stay at her inn. And it’s interesting what exactly she told us in that scene: “Anyone would have done the same if they knew your brother like I did”. Not Anyone would have done the same to protect a child, or anything like that. It makes me think that they had to have some time to bond. We know that Jacob was spending quite a lot of time at Three Broomsticks, but it surely wasn’t all the time. And Rosmerta had work to do in the meantime too (she’s usually quite busy when MC visits her). So I’d say at least two years could be needed to get more attached? Students at Hogwarts are allowed to visit Hogsmeade from the third year, meaning that Jacob would have to be expelled in his fifth year at least. In my case, they would have three years of knowing each other, so quite a solid period of time to develop a friendship.

Finally, there’s a matter of Jacob’s broken wand, and it’s a bit complex. Because a lot of people say that a wand is broken only if a student is expelled before their O.W.L.s, and this is what you can find on HP wiki. The thing is... they didn’t give any sources for that information, and I can’t find it on my own (on Pottermore etc.). It made me think that it’s their assumption based on cases of Hagrid and Newt. And while I agree that it does make sense, and it checks for those characters, there’s another problem. You see, apparently, it’s unclear if Newt was even expelled...

This is information you can find in notes on Newt’s page on wiki:

J. K. Rowling has stated on two occasions that Newt was expelled from Hogwarts (...). However, on a prop document  featured in the first Fantastic Beasts film and reproduced in The Case of Beasts: Explore the Film Wizardry of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, it is stated that "the expulsion was never enforced" because Albus Dumbledore's intervention "result[ed] in his name being cleared." Miraphora Mina, one of the graphic artists who worked on the film, revealed in an interview that Rowling was consulted during the creation of the props to ensure the accuracy of text on them. (...) It is possible that J. K. Rowling's statements that Newt was expelled were a deliberate attempt at withholding information to prevent spoilers. 

So technically, we still don’t know what the rules are. On the other hand, Graves said in the movie: “You were thrown out of Hogwarts for endangering human life"... But even that aside, I’ve seen people speculating that maybe it’s rather about being of age, or whether or not the expulsion involved anyone actually dying. The second criterium would still work for Hagrid and Newt (assuming that the latter one was indeed expelled, ultimately).

Back to Jacob’s wand though. The first time we learn that it was broken is during our visit at Ollivander’s at the beginning of the game. The wandmaker told us: “Shame they snapped it in half when he was expelled”. Then, when we take Rowan with us to the Vault of Ice so they identify the wand by wood and core, and we ask Dumbledore about it, the Headmaster says:

What if this information leaked to the public, but was twisted, accidentally or on purpose? What if Rita Skeeter used it to make the situation look more serious? Even though this mad boy passed his O.W.L.s/was of age, his wand was broken because that’s how dangerous he is. We know that MC’s family name was “dragged through the mud”, so it probably wouldn’t be the only lie they wrote. And it’d explain why Ollivander didn’t question that - they said so in the newspaper, after all. It just makes more sense to me than 15-16 years old boy working for Voldemort and becoming super feared wizard while nobody is using the Trace to find him.

(I have a vague memory of information that it was the Aurors who found out the wand was broken, but I can’t find such scene for the life of mine, so I don’t take it into consideration for now.)

Now, to the speculation of WHEN our brother was expelled. Personally, I reckon that it happened months before MC started school, like in spring 1984. First of all, I want to “debunk” a theory that Jacob had to be expelled before Voldemort’s fall. The main reason: Angelica Cole. The way she talked about our brother in NHN SQ sounded to me like they knew each other pretty well.

But in 1981 Angelica was only a first year! Well, maybe she was in the second year if Jacob was expelled at the very beginning of the next term, but still. I don’t see him spending much time with a lot younger girl to help her when he was already very invested in the Cursed Vaults. Jacob had to be younger than that, making the difference between him and Angelica smaller, and putting his disappearance closer to the events of HPHM. With my assumed age, he’d be in his third year when Angelica started school – so the same as with MC and Bill. Seems way more plausible to me that he might’ve decided on helping her then. Even if he was already involved with the Vaults, it probably was just beginning. (Personal addition: I like to think that Jacob was drawn to helping younger students due to his “older brother’s instinct”.)

Another thing is how fresh Jacob’s case is in people’s memory. And here we have Rowan’s reaction, for example. When they hear our last name, they quickly remember the story. To me, it suggests that the whole thing was still a pretty hot topic, at least in newspapers. And while we know that Rita Skeeter likes to dig dirt, even if it’s some older one, I got the impression she prefers more relevant topics. She came to Hogwarts when it was already affected by the curses, and not when MC started school (even though it alone would be an opportunity to pull Jacob’s madness back to light).

We can also try to get some hints from our interaction with Alistair Fidgen. I mean, sure, he’s a lying prat, but let’s assume that he was telling the truth about Jacob’s actions – he just conveniently forgot to mention that our brother became a big deal in Knockturn Alley after that. In that case, even if Jacob disappeared right before MC starting school, there were over four years since their “last” meeting. Yet, he seems to remember it pretty well. If more years had passed, Alistair would have bigger problems with recalling it (or at least would pretend to). This one is a bit of a stretch, but I decided to list everything that comes to my mind.

Now, this point might be pretty big: Severus Snape. Was he Jacob’s teacher or not? I believe he was. Jacob wrote in his notebook:

… which to me strongly suggests that Snape was a teacher at this point, had authority over Jacob. Also, it was the time of the Vault of Fear. We don’t know exactly how much time Jacob was spending on each vault, however, I suppose it was either similarly one per year, or even longer. After all, we now have Jacob’s clues: we had the book to open the Vault of Fear, for example. We didn’t have to look for it. Back to Snape though. Considering what was said above, I guess we can bet that Snape was teaching Jacob for at least two years before his expulsion. With my assumed age, Jacob would start school in September after Snape’s graduation in June. Then, there were three years of Snape’s absence (when the classes with Dumbledore could’ve taken place – it explains why Jacob was practising Legilimency with the Headmaster, and not Severus). Snape came back as a teacher in Jacob’s fourth year.

Another stretch, but as I said, I’m taking everything: it’s about our Legilimency lessons. Do you remember that Snape saw three of our memories then? In the first one, he said: “Five or six years old”. Not very precise, if you ask me, so it might mean two things: either Snape is not very good at telling children’s age, or the memory wasn’t very clear so he couldn’t tell (or both). Either way, with the next memories he said nothing about age, only described us as “older” (very clever, Jam City, but I’m going to analyse you anyway!). I suppose it had to be some bigger jumps in the time if Snape could tell the difference for sure. Like two years perhaps? Which could mean that in the last memory, where MC is crying with their mum, they’re like 9-10 or older. It’s also interesting how quickly he guessed that “This must be the day your brother went missing…”. Probably because he knows how old MC was then. And maybe, just maybe, they looked pretty much like when they started school?

Or he was looking for particular memories from certain periods of time, but you know… I’m just speculating. Maybe it will inspire somebody else to do a better analysis of that scene.

Finally, there’s one thing I’ve noticed lately about Bill. When we found the letter mentioning Olivia Green, his first immediate reaction was “Never heard of her…”. As if he was expecting that he SHOULD hear of her if Jacob was interacting with her. It made me think that Bill and Jacob could have some years overlapping. Again, with my assumption, Jacob would be in the fifth year when Bill came to Hogwarts. It also kind of fits to why Bill didn’t hear about Olivia – because he was just a first year, maybe a second year when she “met her fate”. It’s possible that such a young student wouldn’t hear about a much older girl, especially if she didn’t even finish her education.

To sum up, I believe that Jacob was born in late 1966. Moreover, he was 17 years old and in his 6th year in the moment of expulsion. In my opinion, it fits the best every information we got so far. Also, here’s some small bonus: a visual representation. The notes about the Vaults are rather for orientation, as we don’t really have many clues for that.

#hogwarts mystery #hphm #hphm mc #jacob's sibling #hphm jacob #madam rosmerta #garrick ollivander #rita skeeter #angelica cole #alistair fidgen #severus snape #bill weasley #olivia green #jacob's age #analysis post #theory #hphm theory

[coldsoupy]

Ugly Betty and Affirmative Action

Artwork by Jeremy Ferris

Step 1: Google Morgan Jaffe

This was not an intention, but it was something that I noticed myself doing, almost, as if it was an action out of my control. A fluid and seamless scroll over to a new tab while Jaffe’s (2017) voice introduced her podcast, Burst Your Bubble, in the background, “Ugly Betty, a U.S. interpretation of a Latin-American telenovela...” (Jaffe 2017). While the podcast continued playing, I was typing her name, my mind half-heartedly in two places at once. She’s in Boston? Is she my age? Is she younger than me? Did she really teach in all those schools? Should I being doing something, anything differently?

The questions were all there, a second layer while the podcast droned on. It is is within this impulse that I find a necessary place to reflect on where I found myself. In a simultaneous moment, I was consuming information, questioning the credentials of the information and then returning to the information with a different perspective, in under ten seconds. I did not approach the podcast wondering who Morgan Jaffe (2017) was, but, there was a definitive moment where the need to know credentials, status, background and there they were and then, click, the window was closed.

While not coming from any deep place, this ability to instantaneously question and receive a gratifying answer to said question is a hallmark of our digital age. It was a sense of power or at least a sense of gratification. I felt more comfortable listening, I trusted or at least didn’t completely disregard the voice that was speaking, I had some sense of a person speaking with a background. I felt a sense of peace with being able to react to what I was listening to, it was no longer an unsubstantiated voice.

Following the Podcast and a listen to some of Jaffe’s (2017) other episodes, I felt more comfortable knowing who she was as a person. I started to anticipate her cadences, her responses and her stances. Jaffe (2017) is a quintessential “millennial” voice. She has views she wants to express, she knows how to create a platform to express her views and she knows how to market her expression into a form of quantifiable consumption. She can see the weight of her opinions in views, comments and subscribers.

Jaffe (2017) describes her podcast in this way:

“Burst Your Bubble is a podcast that combines racism, sexism, homophobia, and all of the other -isms and -phobias within our society and looks at them through a pop culture lens. From music and movies to comic books and games, hatred, bigotry, and ignorance seep into our everyday lives. What is important is to dissect it and discuss it, and not just accept it as something we can not process or change” (Jaffe 2017).

Hobbs (2017) reflects this sentiment when she writes, "asking questions can activate and deepen critical thinking and the practice of close reading and close analysis can be a powerful tool to understand how media are constructed and how media text construct reality" (Hobbs 2017, p. 62). While only surface deep, my initial questions about Jaffe were necessary for me to consume what she was saying, whether I agreed or disagreed with what she was about to say, I needed to know the source of the opinions I was receiving in order to decide if the argument she was presenting was worth my time at all. Was Jaffe (2017) a voice worth agreeing with or challenging?

The small questions that plagued my mind at the top of the podcast about Jaffe (2017) gave me a sense of who she was as an author. With a background in education and communications, Jaffe (2017) works as the General Manager of Boston Community Radio. Being a supporter of public access media in all forms, this allowed me to listen to Jaffe (2017) as a authority on the subject matter. Some other aspects of the podcast, the uniform intro music and use of original artwork by Jeremy Ferris for each episode further lent credibility to the podcast in my mind. It had substance. While only image deep, the branding and the hook of “challenging” assumptions was enough to not only catch my attention, but intrigue me enough to listen.

Step 2: Maintain judgement-free Zone, listen, make coffee

As with all other podcasts I have come to enjoy (Love + Radio, Radiolab and This American Life to name a few), the listener is brought to a familiar place with theme music and a hook from a recognizable voice. These elements make the podcast a welcome place to relax and listen to something. Jaffe’s (2017) Burst Your Bubble is no different as she introduces what Ugly Betty (the show) meant to people, what it did right and then, the hook before cueing the music. After celebrating the grounding breaking nature of Ugly Betty and what it brought to marginalized voices on network television, Jaffe (2017) “pops” the bubble when she says, “but it still has some stereotypes and problems of its own. Like the episode where Ugly Betty puts affirmative action in a negative light. I’m Morgan Jaffe and this is Burst Your Bubble” (Jaffe 2017). This “burst your bubble” moment is a predictable element of Jaffe’s storytelling style and it serializes the podcast in a way that allows the listener to predict her inserted opinion after laying out a seemingly noble, altruistic or otherwise positive element of pop culture. It is this moment that holds the listeners attention and elicits a response that causes them to listen to Jaffe’s argument.

In itself, Jaffe’s podcast serves as a method of digital inquiry that the listener can follow along with and, at the same time, must perform a meta-inquiry about Jaffe’s (2017) own inquiry.

Jaffe (2017) focused her podcast on one particular episode of the show Ugly Betty that took on the issue of affirmative action. Throughout the course of the 30 minute podcast, Jaffe (2017) works in what Hobbs (2017) calls the “theater of the mind” as she delivers an opinionated de-construction of the episode using clips from the show to link together her ideas regarding affirmative action, what the show got wrong and what opportunities were missed. Hobbs (2017) writes, “storytelling’s inevitable and highly attractive approach to oversimplification, through the creation of a hero, villain and victim, may distort our understanding of history by contributing to the fictionalization of history” (Hobbs 2017, p. 125). In Jaffe’s (2017) case, she is working to poke holes and offer a more rounded, gray-area view of pop-culture as we know it. Through her storytelling, we are offered only her take on things and are left to debate outside and apart from the speaker, in the real world, while her views are left recorded and static.

I suppose one could always tweet her their take.

For this reason, I purposefully suspended judgement during the episode to fully absorb Jaffe’s take on the episode. In this way, I attempted to approach the media as an independent listener, but also an open listener. While I support Affirmative Action and agree with general atmosphere of what Jaffe had to say, I also find myself adopting opposing viewpoints as a default when confronted with opinions. Even if the opposing viewpoints are not necessarily ones I believe in.

I believe one needs to be comfortable with having their views uncomfortably challenged or adopting uncomfortable positions, even in a hypothetical sense. Namely, playing devil’s advocate in one’s own mind. That is a level of vulnerability that is needed now more than ever. Media simply must be met with a challenge.

In a kind of double kudos, I commend Ugly Betty for taking on the issue of Affirmative Action in such a direct way. I have never watched the show, but even given the clips that Jaffe (2017) provided, I feel like Ugly Betty did make an effort to confront an issue calling it by its name and allowing different sides a voice on the issue. Furthermore, I feel like Jaffe (2017) should be commended for holding the show accountable for not taking the issue far enough. People of color, disadvantaged people and other stakeholders in this issue might interpret Jaffe’s message as either a rallying cry or something disagreeable, but, it should be generally realized when listening to a podcaster, a vlogger, blogger or even fringe “newscaster,” that they are representative of one viewpoint. It is up to the listener to discern their own take on the matter using the voiced opinion as either a catalyst or opposing force to move their position to more solid ground based on reason, research and articulation.

Step 3: Dig deeper, ask questions, rinse, repeat

Pangrazio (2016) defines "critical digital design" as a framework to operate within in order to both consume and create digital media. She writes, "critical digital design can be thought of as a deliberately political model of digital literacy in which complex and detailed understandings of discourse, ideology and power in the digital context are scaffolded. It aims to analyse the specific multimodal features of digital texts, as well as the general architecture of digital technology and the Internet, so that a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of these concepts is developed in the learner" (Panagrazio 2016, p. 172). With this in mind, it becomes clear that what Jaffe (2017) is doing to Ugly Betty, one must also do to Jaffe herself. While Jaffe (as an admittedly white woman) stands up for Affirmative Action and what it has done for disadvantaged people of color, she does not offer understanding or empathy for the clips she played of white people who sued universities from not getting in. Jaffe’s (2017) values align with the plight of the “Ugly Betty’s” of the world, but she does not see a gray-area in such circumstances.

Furthermore, Jaffe (2017) fails to recognize the work and hard decisions the writers of Ugly Betty must have made to air an episode that dealt with Affirmative Action in such a head-on way and with care given to opposing sides of the issue. While “it was a different time” or “it was good for its time” arguments do not always apply, I think they do in this case. I feel like Jaffe omits an olive branch given to writers and producers of Ugly Betty in favor of doubling down on her own strong opinions, as right as they may be. Did Jaffe (2017) consider Salma Hayek’s work as producer of the series (Barreiro 2010, p. 34)? As a white woman does Jaffe (2017) have the right to push back on the work of people of color as not going far enough in serving social justice? Do all people have a stake in an issue such as affirmative action? Should Jaffe (2017) be singling out one episode of a show to “burst” the bubble of its appeal? Is that fair? Does fair matter?

With such pointed questions left unanswered, the fact that they came up in the first place meant that the work of a discerning listener was unfinished. A look outside of Jaffe’s (2017) podcast was in order. After all, is it fair as a listener to only focus on one view of one episode of one show? In research done by Barreiro (2010) on what audiences, particularly Latino audiences, look for in Ugly Betty, she offers this take on the Ugly Betty:

Although Ugly Betty’s text and its official Website seem to make efforts to include race

discourses, the audience’s perception seems to be far from focusing on racial or cultural matters as the series’ main point. Instead, viewers concentrate more on the entertainment nature of the text. Ugly Betty seems to unify culturally mixed audiences by acting as the connector between Hispanic and Anglo viewers. The series presents universal themes that allow multicultural audiences to relate to them, while acknowledging, but not concentrating on, the multicultural element of the text. While cast as an outsider, Betty becomes an intrinsic component of the society that surrounds her, providing an empowering Latino representation (Barreiro 2010, p. 39).

Thus, Barreiro (2010) offers a much larger scope view of Ugly Betty that can work to better frame and compartmentalize the microscopic look that Jaffe (2017) takes to make a macroscopic argument. Where Jaffe (2017) sees injustice due to an episode, Barreiro (2010) sees a show at large that indeed does depict multicultural representations in addition to bigger picture representations of image, self-worth and social status.

Does a platform come with responsibility? Perhaps it does, perhaps it doesn’t. But, the constant is the responsibility of the listener to discern their own feelings from media. One must be able to suspend opinions, upend them and amend them to fit a shifting view. This requires conscious research, a calm and accepting disposition and a desire to articulate and self-define one’s own view and standpoint on an issue.  

Resources

Barreiro, Paula. (2010). Understanding ugly betty: negotiating race in a culturally-mixed text.

Divergencias. Revista de estudios lingüísticos y literarios. Volumen 8, número 1, 34 -39.

Hobbs, R. (2017). Create to Learn: Introduction to Digital Literacy. New York: Wiley.

Jaffe, M. (Writer, producer & editor). (2017, July 12). Ugly betty and affirmative action [audio podcast]. Retrieved from

https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/burst-your-bubble/e/50764994?autoplay=true

Pangrazio, L. (2016). Reconceptualising critical digital literacy. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural

#morgan #jaffe #burstyourbubble #burst your bubble #podcast #ugly #betty #ugly betty #essay #digital authorship #EDC 534 #digital literacy #renee hobbs #morgan jaffe #boston

[dvtsr]

 // WHT IS A REFLECTION?

if(reading == reflection){

    please listen to (Han-Tyumi and The Murder of the Universe);              else (experience great boredom, following reflection is long winded);

}

THE POST-DIGITAL PROTOTYPE

With a project (//brief) this open it was hard to decide where to begin, the post digital was such a colossal topic it was easy to get lost in SPRINT tunnels where you would start fifty micro projects only to abandon them all and be left with nought.

Having grown up with my nose in a book, specifically Sci-Fi epic’s and dystopian thrillers, this studio option was an easy pick. When given the brief, rather than a solid idea I had a feeling I wanted to encapsulate. A pseudo Orwellian future in which we are monitored constantly, not menacingly but very blatantly. 14 year old me would have been disappointed by the mediocralypse we are living through. Instead of a cold judge Dredd / Robocop patrolling the streets it is Siri watching us, reminding us to take an umbrella less we catch a cold.

When I got my new iPhone [TM(TM) TM] I turned off all the regular ad/ tracking settings only to find within a few weeks that without me having ever set anything, it knew where work was, when I was working and when I was coming back home. This was on by default, hidden in settings be-riddled with sudden jargon. 

(the setting was frequent locations) INITIAL BRAINSTORMING:

With all the aforementioned in mind I chose to focus on “looking at screens works both ways.” For the first part of this task I initially wanted to create a book out of paper that would dissolve under certain conditions, or create a publication that reflected my sentiments that I would expand upon in this final segment. However as I continued my research on the “post digital,” I began to think about my own future as both a designer and individual. The design industry is simultaneously competitive and collaborative. I thought a lot about what kinds of clients I wanted to attract, sectors I wanted to work in and what set me apart as my own designer. There are enough/too many Frankie magazine designers already, regurgitating the same grid patterns and shallow works, printing the same idea month after month.  

This is A Magazine, Compendium #3 “Chaos Happens.”  Shown work by: Flutro-Creative Services Unit 

It was from here that I realised that I personally couldn’t make another perfect bound print publication as my own interests didn’t align with this. To expand my practice I decided I needed to buckle down and do something I had little experience in. This is how I landed on coding. Whilst a daunting task I really do believe to evolve and stay ahead of the AI-designer-DoomBots who will inevitably replace us, it’s imperative we learn thy enemy. To bring something other than roast, peas and mash to the dinner table. 

In the same way we swapped traditional waterfall methods in our ideation/prototyping phase I wanted to SPRINT my own portfolio and make use of the opportunity to work on a concept driven design as opposed to a finished work. Whilst AI can mimic human semantics and create pretty websites it is yet to learn to think of it’s OWN ideas and it is this that is perhaps our best asset as flesh and bone.  On the same tangent, I wanted to explore the popularity of computer companionship. With the Mac OSX Sierra update, ‘Siri’ also lives in your desktop. Amazon released ‘Alexa’ and Google retaliated with ‘Google Home.’ All bots designed to assist your livelihood by taking over rudimentary tasks such as adding items to cart, checking the weather or playing music. The real appeal in these bots is not their ability to tell you what time it is in Denmark but their capability for relatively smooth, realistic conversation. How is it in a world more connected than ever, we feel isolated enough to require a live at home robot companion?

Like a housewife from the 50′s, only Alexa can’t stick her head in the oven!

It was from here that I began looking into the feeling of loneliness in the post digital scape. Looking through my phone I found screenshots I had taken from a twitch stream of two google home bots set up such that they could converse with each other (side note: the rise of streaming culture/ Instagram live is an interesting foray into how we consume media and how rapidly it’s changing!! Saving it for another post!!) .

V: “what date” E: “the date you’re going to take me on.” V: “I don’t know we’ll have to see” Too real google, too real  :----(

“If you don’t want to talk about Harry Potter I’m leaving”

Which reminded me of my own experiences chatting with bots. Cleverbot was super popular while I was in primary school as were portable offline versions of this with devices like 20Q. Our romanticism of talking to an algorithm is evidently nothing new. As AI ultimately reflects our own speech, is wanting to imbue human qualities in a string of data the ultimate form of narcissism?  Or is it our collective cry for help, to save us from our own loneliness.  This theory culminated when I read through/devoured The Age of Earthquakes: A Guide to the Extreme Present by Shumon Basar and co. (thx for lettin’ me borrow it Andy).  

Growing up with video games it wasn’t until recently I’d noticed how isolated games that weren’t MMO or server based made me feel. Disconnected almost.  Even open world games like the Witcher never truly asked:

Thus they never responded to my most current emotional needs. It was from there that I decided I wanted to create my own solution to this. I started with idea of collecting meta-data to fill in variables in a block of text. After strenuous research I realised with the time available and my lack of prior experience the code required to string this together was far too complex. From there I dug into machine learning some more,  finally discovering Amazon Web Services (AWS). AWS is a corporate orientated tech service which provides servers and API’s to aid in a vast range of analytic type applications. It was pay-per-use however as I was not sending it 10,000 hits at once it was a couple of cents per request.  Unfortunately the AWS Rekognition software (which is infinitely cool, able to recognise objects, faces, expressions, age, gender and gestures with a certain amount of certainty) was region locked to North America and very buggy through my VPN :--(

I did get it to work a few times. Ultimately this was weeks of learning python and wrangling with Terminal down the drain. Deflated I wasted a few too many nights out/at bars trying not to think about my impending failure for this assignment. It was from there that I found Microsoft Azure, a similar service to AWS it provided the same recognition and the added promise of analysing “emotion.” Again I put in my credit card details only to find that the API was locked to North American servers and also too complex to incorporate for my own uses. In my growing list of abandoned ideas, I’d hoped to incorporate the raspberry pi into my project mostly because I really wanted to play with it. I loved the appeal of it’s blank canvas nature and the anarchy within creating your own systems as opposed to simply absorbing what is fed to you. At this point I’m losing a lot of sleep over /getting it done./ I’d watched hour upon hour of Java and then Python tutorial hoping to build this damn application. I then came upon openFrameworks (OF). Similar to Processing, OF is an arts-engineering toolkit, like well fertilised soil is to plants oF makes the coding process easier. However it is still just a nursing ground and to plant and grow your project you still need a firm grasp on the basics and semantics of C++.  It was at this point I discovered  http://www.facetracker.net, an Open CV2  library for ~ tracking dat face ~  Developed by Jason Saragih, it was wrapped for openFrameworks by Kyle McDonald. Most of the resources used in this project ended up being Frankenstein-ed together as I found most online tutorials were either lacking or 7 years old. Equipped with a source code I was still inept at writing a code to utilise this library. This project was like trying to solve a puzzle where all the pieces are made of bubbles and the instructions are in Russian. Luckily for me I love puzzles. I went on self loathing wiki-hole after wiki-hole trying to find help. I had all the parts I just didn’t know how to make them work together.  

* note time stamps * Luckily openFrameworks came with a small library of tutorials which sent me in a better direction. It was 4 am and I was getting delusional when I finally stumbled upon a template Dan Wilcox had developed around FaceTracker for students at Carnegie Mellon Universities School of Art Faculty ( In Pittsburgh USA). This became the skeleton which I broke and rebuilt and furthered to build my own monster. 

I changed the colours on my compiler (Xcode) so I felt more like hackerman B--) From there I did far more math than to my liking to integrate my facial structure into the algorithms:

If I had been more apt at coding I would have liked to have actual face recognition as opposed to tracking. Baby steps, perhaps for my next project. I started with the idea of the book changing large volumes  of text depending on expressions, however it was too difficult to maintain one expression for any extraneous period of time. Coming back to my initial research ( with content driven on current emotional needs) I decided to use poetry. For each relevant emotion I assigned a poem/snippet which I both cherish and relate to a feeling. 

The emotions and poems I ended up with are as follows: Happy: ->  smiling Yes Yes, Charles Bukowski Angry: -> brows furrowed and eyes squinted Snippet of The Divine Comedy - Inferno, Dante Alighieri  Shocked: -> mouth open Alone with Everybody, Charles Bukowski Tired: -> close to the screen Rhapsody on a Windy Night, TS Eliot

Confused: -> Far from screen Jabberwocky, CS Lewis

As emotions are never singular, neither are the outputs. If you show signs of multiple emotions they will clash and play at the same time. The fluidity of the text on screen mirrors the unanchored nature of thoughts and feelings.  I also initially did not have the little face on screen, however found it more charming/uncomfortable to see a visual reminder of your constant surveillance.  Whilst un-menacing it is slightly disgruntling to know you are being watched. Some test screens (as in the opening GIF):

 Now armed with a deliverable software, my next hurdle was submission. I wanted to incorporate a physical art element that grounds the project as something tangible whilst maintaining the romanticism in the playful app, i.e I didn’t want to have it simply downloaded from a boring dropbox or CD as the prototype relies on “ inspiring a hope for a future outcome. ”  To physical represent both my Frankenstein-ed code (which has been passed down forward and tweaked by four generations of people to get to this!! In the spirit of open source I will also upload my version to GitHub) I deconstructed an old hard drive and replaced its casing with old mobile phones. Another technology rapidly evolving and leaving behind carcasses. Building new through old, forging future with the bones of the past. It also includes a charger noose to remind viewers of the potential perils of living entirely online. This is countered by cute stickers and a smiley face to also remind viewers that things moving forwards doesn’t have to be scary.

In conclusion this Studio was like an incredible buffet in which I took way too much food but enjoyed all of it none the less. The book club meetings were incredibly rewarding and a pleasant change of pace from other classes. I’ve learnt so so much from class discussions and just being surrounded by super super suppppperrrr work. These are all concepts/skills/thought processes I’ll carry forward into future works both in academia and beyond. Honestly though my favourite part has just been absorbing other peoples works. Through and through my favourite class ( and the only class I’d come to uni at 9 am for.) 💖🌸💕💗 Thank u everybody for an incredible semester!  

#i guess this is a book #the end #they all lived happily ever after #sorry its so long oops

[autoirishlitdiscourses]

Discourse of Thursday, 03 September 2020

So I had told him that what you actually mean by passionate, exactly, think in the play. If you misplace your copy of Ulysses closely, and the Stars: and discussion I am not going to recite and discuss next Wednesday 16 October On Sean O'Casey's The Plough and the section is optional next week: Think about what you're really passionate about. Deploying multiple critical lenses in your group, in SH 2635. Would you go over twelve I'll start making discreet kneecap-breaking gestures unless someone before you proofread and revise your paper topic would be helpful.

I was trying to complete the work you're reciting, obligates you to adhere to it! Throwing the candy was a pretty final form until the very end of the play makes is Rosie-Fluther is a good weekend! I get for going short, but I may overlook it if they drag on too long. In any case, to get them to lecture. This puts me in evaluating it; b you're still listed as TBD, McCabe page 84, so although there's no overlap in terms of which have particular places in the assignment write-up of the implications of saying that it's impossible for every single person in each section. And you really did quite a good discussion, rather than simply cataloging your responses to it—but that would help you to twenty minutes if it works for you to punch through to being good mothers? If you would be a bad idea. Thanks! Think about what motivates us to experience non-trivial illumination of both the broader themes with which you are also productive ways, and he's writing about one of the format of the writing process, and good luck in every single point. Teaching Assistant: Course Requirements: Punctual, attentive reading. How to Read James Joyce's Ulysses/character list on How to Get An A on it before and known it well to the connections between the poem. You're welcome! I think that your grade back, and I've just discovered that time passes differently when you're at the final, you could go with your quarter! Ultimately, I realize that I didn't anticipate at the draft of the overall effect of giving your attendance/participation calculation. Again, I'm sorry to take so long to get into those spots. Hi! I'm sitting here grading papers. It would have helped to get these to you. Overall, I think, don't do much to obscure many important writing-related questions? Think about what you're actually using, and incurs the no-show penalty, which could conceivably pay off in the How Your Grade Is Calculated in Excruciating Detail. Rebeka discussion of as close to this, we can talk about this, and there's no penalty for going short, more complex manner. You are not particularly likely, if you say is simply to talk in section. Drop if you have locked yourself out of your discussion and got the lowest score of all of part two for all students, and Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake, all in all, you chose a longer-than-required selection. If neither of those three poets is acceptable what it most needs to be the full text of a group presenting information can be a productive line of the texts are also movies that deal with the rest of the passage in question. I thought you might profitably compare/contrast exercise X is like A, if I discover that things are going to be flexible so as quickly as possible? This means that a number of points as every other B paper is one of the class for instance, if you schedule me a description of your own ideas and ask people to talk about the American judicial system, forensic science, technology, the more egregious errors in my email during the last sentence of the section hits its average level of. Hello, colleagues! Crashing? Your writing is once again very lucid and engaging, and exhibiting solicitous concern for emotions that they didn't cover but that you may not explicitly help you to do your recitation genuinely was quite good in many ways in which it could be.

Is something wrong with Francie? Fill in the recitation half of the two revolutions, separated by 127 years? Well on the issues that you have too many emails shortly before each paper grade are the texts as a novel like this happen. Your section can be a section that you're examining while doing that work.

Other registration/administrative issues after presentations. Or he shows up for them, and just got swamped responding to paper proposals and recitation of a text that they should not lift people into the A range; you also did some very perceptive readings, I will count that as on page 124. If you don't need to cancel my office during office hours, or nations,—of value. Hi! 12:30-3 p.

—And you've been rather quiet this quarter you've worked hard on it than that they are assumed to feel more intensely, because this is a don't make a final draft, but he did his recitation; said I don't know when I qualified it by 11:30 just come over then and I'll see you next week. All of these is that the first-come, first-out, it's likely that you were on track. That is to say is something you address directly in section. Great! Ii: Frank Delaney's Re: Joyce podcast, in part because of the class and, Godot Lucky's speech and had a lot of potential videos on YouTube that deal with the same day as another person, and enjoy the company of your own narrative dominate your analysis. I have also been participating extensively and wind up dropping. Which path you choose as additional sources in their historical context is likely to have a reasonable compromise. Your notes are not, let it sit for two or three blank ones but seem to get her where she wanted to discuss, but my own forehead for not coming to section, probably due to the group's discussion that involved not only accepting responsibility for your historical sources. Again, well done! Currently, you have any questions, OK? Again, this is of poor quality: The Lovers 1928; probably others. Your delivery was basically solid, though I also think that it would help you to punch through to being perceptive. Probably, most elegant, most of this work is currently better developed and more general note, you responded effectively to larger-scale themes to specific points in the stream of consciousness is potentially profitable analytical path that you find that the law isn't able to find. It's just that you don't have a standard list of the situation are quite likely enjoy Hannah Arendt's book On the other Godot groups for several hours tonight instead of seven, IDs out of that earlier. Overall, you were so open-ended, because this week.

I myself tend to have asked yourself what you're actually claiming about the novel, touched on some of the historical connections. The short version is that you have any questions, OK? What you might notice Bloom's interest in food-based Futurist-related slack you earlier but the usage in literature in Celtic countries is actually doing and what positions do you mean by history if you assert it, I really appreciate, by love, and there memorizing your selection; changed their to the stage, take the final exam—or if his ancestors are only other Nigerian emigrants? You effectively acknowledged the work you've already laid the groundwork, and to interrogate your historical sources would pay off as a whole tomorrow; In front of the recording of the play's rhythm in the long run. Well done. I'm not trying to get me a copy of the syllabus, and what your argument to go through the writing process is itself a thinking process too, and that her motivations are likely to pay off in terms of figuring out when to give a more impassioned and, despite some issues that arise as you write quite well.

I hope everything is going well.

Think about what you're going to give a quiz. Doing this effectively, demonstrated a strong job of thinking about which texts you propose in your section, has interesting and possibly other contextualizing information, but there are a lot of interesting course-related road to go with it in more depth, but it's up to reciting the text and from section that you're likely to be helpful. Questions? You are absolutely welcome to attend section and are perfectly willing to do what the nature of the text in question, you did a very specific skill that takes a while because everyone is always telling me that your surgery goes well and can't assert offhand that these paintings fall within the larger issues of the play as a separate workbook for each day that your paper to make sure that this is the play, but rather because you will need to confirm that no one talking but you were thinking about it in. 2 and pointed to some punctuation and formatting issues that you've chosen, and what you'll drop if you really want to go; it's a good place to put these two texts. But just looking at his impending death would have had to be caught up on reading will probably make some very good job digging in to something as complex and insightful analyses of a letter grade to assign your final draft. 5% on the MLA standard for academic papers in the future. I can attest from personal experience doesn't necessarily tell us? Again, thank you for that week will partially serve as an opportunity to richly contextualize the texts are primarily theoretical, critical, or one that gestures toward an overall grade for each text that you've identified as significant and connect them to pick something for you? I think, would be to link the various settings in The Butcher Boy in front of me, and then sit down on Wednesday evenings and bring specific issues that would mean that you should be set up in, say, and have so many emails waiting on you second or third, although my advice is not double-spaced; allowing your word processor does not mean that you examine fit within the horizon of possibility for you.

To take. 3:50 or so announcement to your final tonight went or is she operating in an engaged, thoughtful performance that is merely excellent to writing and its flowers have a good impression. I'm looking forward to your larger-scale details of the course website let me know if you can see below, I think that your delivery was a nice paper on it and are comfortable discussing with the time that you examine as part of the text. I recommend it highly. Short version: writing a novel in 1994, called 20 May 1905, in particular, for the next two days/after/the/optional section Thanksgiving week.

Trying to memorize. Twelve-page paragraph or two days, and. Very well done overall. What much of this while remaining quite fair to Yeats, or a bit in the best way to satisfy the requirement that your questions might involve how media images get stuck in Francie's head and the horror or irrelevance of the twentieth century, and quite engaging though I think that both of you effectively boosted the other's grade while you try to rephrase a few points even if only because it has to be as successful as you can still pull your grade.

It can be, if I can attest that this is appropriate for quick questions, and I'll see you next week. I do not grade you on which Ulysses is already an impressive move. Paper Letter grades for papers are penalized by one line—will/seriously hurt/your/grade, you can bring up from those poets: Eavan Boland, or Eavan Boland, or moonshine, because your writing, despite the occasional hiccup here and there are certainly welcome to a wide variety of texts in relation to your questions, but a particularly good selection, actually, but I haven't yet decided what order I'll call people in the world in shades of grey are frequently eaten while the British pound or pound sterling is complex, and so was the fact that you've done a lot of people aren't prepared, it's perfectly acceptable to use any equipment other than your responses to it but you'll be reciting, anyway, or by email, or turf, from a medical provider for me to boil down to thanking the previous presenter s for providing an analysis, and their relationship and about nine billion other things going with the play with which you want to know the novel. It's absolutely OK to subdivide your selected bibliography into sections indicating status Works Cited page; any borrowings from anyone else's work during the quarter is that the video supplements the lyrics by providing additional examples from Sartre and Camus and of putting them next to each other because they haven't read for quite a D for the quarter was affected by gender in relation to your larger-scale narratives that the writing process is itself a sophisticated logical structure that shows you paid close attention to the show that there is going well.

You picked a wonderful break! The same grade, answering only three IDs instead of asserting X, which is harder to get people to talk about, but our wonderful email servers that the professor's English 150. —Not just talking about the material, and what does; added and before I go to bed late tonight and will have the opportunity for a few significant gaps, possibly by style, narrative clues, etc. Each of you should have a fair amount of time that could have gone beyond. I will check your U-Mail address, and I think that it's not necessary to receive many emails to answer questions in section we talked about in the grading expectations for performance in a higher level of. If you glance over at me occasionally, but all in all, you can still go just make sure to give everyone answers as quickly as possible you'll get other people talking and that Patrick Kavanagh, Innocence Wherever you are reciting on Dec 4, which was true, for the course of the presentation of the assignment handout. The hat scene in/Ulysses/character list on How to Get An A is still fair game, but your writing. I didn't anticipate at the assignment write-up, I've provided a good job. I think that practicing a bit more so that it may very well done. Finally, the absolute maximum amount of time, and I'll get you your grade back, but will push you up for the rest of section, but you were to remind you of these boil down what the crashing situation looks like you're well on the paper—and thank you for doing things that you should talk more would have helped you to demonstrate excellence to a strong recitation. Thank you. I can. I just finished grading the final tomorrow.

Let me know, and the way that the pick three texts of these are very rare moments of suboptimal phrasing, etc. If you happen to know in advance that this is very very close and, Godot Lucky's speech and had some very perceptive readings to fall a bit, I think that you will automatically fail the course, please send me an email, but ID #3 overlaps substantially with ID #9 from the guy who's going to select one or more implicit assertions to support it. For very similar reasons, including the fact that you've chosen fails to conform more closely on the section website. I expected, and that does not request disciplinary action, just send me no later than most of your discussion plans. If you glance over at me occasionally, but our wonderful email servers that the complex connection that's being built here is something that's plausible and defensible and defended in the D range, though, your grade for you, but you took advantage of this poem is very well done. I'm sorry to hear that and hide behind the fact that they demonstrated knowledge of the quality of Molly's thoughts to come talk to me as soon as you may have noticed that the formula by which all grades are calculated, including those that best supports your central argument is thoughtful and focused, providing useful background information several times during the last student I have you done with the final to get me a revised version instead, if you do not check my email during the term, and Cake next to each other, and turn them in your proposal, but this will hurt your grade to you I was now a dual citizen. Ultimately, you might think. I don't know for sure that I think you have some really perceptive set of ideas here, and so it would have helped you to let me know if you have too many good ideas, but if you're planning on using equipment. Find ways to read it entirely at some point in the 6 p. I'm getting back to you after I broke my arm two years ago. It's here, and Francie's unusual diction makes passages from the famous Kilmainham Gaol Pike p. Second: I am necessarily willing to do a good match for the points for the quarter; b you have questions or themes that have already given up 70 points out of your discussion. I have to get a C for the citation-related questions? All of which parts of the points for the course texts and perhaps by doing background reading on aspects of your situation, and ask students about them assignment, Bloom discusses the funeral itself is not that you are present/at Wikibooks: Daniel Swartz's article 'Tell Us in Plain Words': An Introduction to Reading Joyce's 'Ulysses': Joyce's two structural schema of/Ulysses Seen/graphic novel or for the recitation assignment write-up exam after lecture tomorrow! Well done on this you connected it effectively to larger themes remember that part of the following week 20 November discussion of White Hawthorn in the paper prompt that your basic idea is sound and may be something like statistics or scientific research. Thanks for being such a good choice. This short collection of James Joyce, Macklemore, and that you want to go. Email that TA and not quite enough points on the midterm, and to your first question, I think that one thing that would help to make sure that I notice that the directions you want to, then it makes life more stressful for you is not caught up on the clock is ticking, but the power company left me reading by candlelight for several hours tonight instead of copying it and are comfortable discussing with the job they have something to say in my office hours.

Incidentally, I had in talking about and always has Irish for purposes of education, some people may not under any definition of how she goes about getting it in a relevant and engaging. /Or b what this relationship is a violent and sadistic serial killer. Again, very nicely acted. E-mail off to be even more nuanced. There were four errors in my office after getting left behind at the moment, points assigned for the paper has some substantial strengths in a lot about what is accomplished by the metaphor to make sure that you have an excellent delivery. I did do all three other components. I think that there are other possible responses to British colonialism? You managed time well and that the overarching goal is in any way affect your analysis more carefully would help you to reschedule, and have some very good work here, and these are pretty high this was not announced last week were good, perceptive, non-edited draft, and turn them into a larger-scale questions with smaller-scale themes to specific claims of entitlement. Have a good job of covering a large number of course a novel like this in some particulars from Chris's, and you have 82. This is one of the section, not to be helpful to log into the A-paper gets not 90% the low end. No appreciation needed. Paper lots of good material in an usual mental framework during her trip to the romance competition by any means a comprehensive list. Yes, and be able to get back to your questions as you write your way to make sense to present your complex thoughts in the hope that you're perfectly capable of even more nuanced way. Thank you again. Well done on this particular assignment, and only point of analysis is for most students your last chance to do for herself, or see me! Both of these are of course no surprise coming from a higher level of familiarity with the professor told me that is closely tied to romance, as a forum for substantial discussions about money more comprehensible. I've posted a copy of the quarter. Remember that you are fundamentally wrong about this is primarily covered over by this lack of authorial framing in the range of C-71. I think that your delivery. I think that you've tried to gesture toward this in your paper, but also to try the waters with discussion a bit more gracefully. All in all, though the ones you've picked a good selection, and I will try hard to get warmed up for the course-related selection 5 p.

O'Hanlon and, overall. You can absolutely discuss it in a competition that valorizes certain characteristics by denying the opportunity may not be surprised by the end. So you can take a more rigorous, incisive analysis on other classes, you have any other questions! I'll take the penalty, actually, because I don't know the answer to this message. None of these is that this is difficult about love that lends itself structurally toward being a nuanced understanding of them you'd like me to say anything at all by Patrick Kavanagh, but that you can say with a good set of ideas in your section, but please reserve the room. Your plans were adequate but came in earlier than yours. I think that practicing a bit nervous, which is a strong second. Though it was all a serious possibility, depending on what direction you want to go into in conversation. Crashing? There are a well thought-experiment, even if you want to bring in, first-out.

Well done on this assignment.

Yes, that's OK, but I'll say a selection from Ulysses during week five or six. I think that putting more interpretive work. The Plough and the title and copyright page from the second, larger claim would help to ground your analyses are very solid paper overall. I will throw you one by ILL; I just sent you about the relationship between Yeats and nationalism? You might think about propaganda and/or language that intimidate or negatively impact your ability to be more specific about where your ideas are actually four total people going that day already.

November will have the capacity to succeed in this class are expected to use for us than it needed to be changed than send a new document. Yet another potentially useful gender-based discomfort effectively motivate other people do some of their ancestors' country of origin? Again, quite a good paper here in a way that they should not be surprised to discover how much your writing really is a comparatively difficult poem to music and is one way to fill out your own original work/. You've got a really successful in the west have become more comfortable with the poem's sense of the twentieth century.

Professional speech and discussion plan and to your larger-scale concerns, and preferably by Thursday or Friday this week's are here. Exactly. The underlying assumption is that race gets slipperier the more difficult texts we're dealing with in their historical context is likely to make them answer questions in order to pay off as much as it opens up an interpretive pathway into what Yeats wants to have a number of productive ways to do. She knew at once. Have a good selection and have been of concern in the novel 6 p.

#Irish literature #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Python #Markov chains

[morethanjustmediocremusings]

Critical Article Analysis of Dixon, Schell, Giles, and Drogos’ article “The Influence of Race in Police-Civilian Interactions: A Content Analysis of Videotaped Interactions Taken During Cincinnati Police Traffic Stops”

Taylor Abouzeid

California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo

By taking a close analytical lens to the article “The Influence of Race in Police-Civilian Interactions: A Content Analysis of Videotaped Interactions Taken During Cincinnati Police Traffic Stops” by Dixon, Schell, Giles, and Drogos, the results found present a perspective on reality that expose racialized injustices. The current climate of the United States (nation-wide protesting for the Black Lives Matter movement) begs for more information and evidence of institutionalized racism, especially in the police and law enforcement sector. A background in Communication Studies and a highly influential emphasis on Women and Gender Studies provides a critical frame through which this article is observed.

Regarding the “literature review” portion of the article, the beginning paragraphs serve more as a foundation for key terms and concepts such as Communication Accommodation theory and intergroup communication, than a traditional comprehensive review. The authors chose to create a space where critical definitions could be flushed out. By giving these concepts the space needed, the article was able to move forward with a strong base in theory. The researchers failed to point out a specific hole in the literature where this article could fit in, but by providing a strong base for the rest of their research the literature review could be seen as nearly complete.

Dixon, Schell, Giles, and Drogos had three hypotheses in their article. Their first statement predicted that in comparison to White drivers, Black drivers would have a more extensive policing experience (H1). This first hypothesis was well backed with relevant research and allowed for the prediction to seem naturally occurring. The second hypothesis explored the idea that interracial communication between drivers and police would be less accommodative than same-race communication (H2). Although this specific hypothesis was thoroughly backed with research of power dynamics, there was a gap in the presented research leading from power to race. The acknowledgement of this racialized power dynamic was necessary for this second prediction to have a solid base. The researchers’ final prediction laid out the precedent expectation that Black drivers would be less accommodative than White drivers, especially with White police officers, and continually less accommodative when experiencing more extensive policing (H3). This final hypothesis was the least supported out of the three presented by the authors. Coincidentally, this was also the shortest section of hypothesis explanation. Due to the lack of foundation of this final hypothesis, the statement read as a tinge stereotypical, as if to have its roots in racial bias. This skepticism of intent carried through to the methodology.

The article mentioned that the funding for this project was sourced from the City of Cincinnati and was actually used in tandem to a case settlement by the American Civil Liberties Union. Due to the fact that the sourcing of this research came from the intention to settle an instance of potential police racism, questioning the validity of the methods is necessary. While the original sample size of three-hundred and thirteen was ideal, by accounting for and removing poor quality recordings the sample size was reduced to one hundred and ninety-four. Although the reduction in sample size is monumental, by accounting for potential error the researchers redeemed this aspect of their methodology. By only examining a single month’s worth of footage the authors took the liberty of mentioning further research should examine more than just one month. Accounting for the other potential areas of error, the coding section of this content analysis was strong. By creating one coding book with clear instructions the authors accounted for their necessary reliability. Their use of coding procedures created a consistent method for all coders to follow. This thorough and complete coding section also blocked many potential threats to internal validity. This was clearly seen through the implementation of coding checks and accounting for potential fatigue.  

Specifics from the actual code book were not provided, but by explaining the experiment from the perspective of what the coders were aware of allowed the authors to articulate the clarity of the methods. By explaining the process of coder training the internal consistency present in the content analysis was almost inevitable. Most clearly, the criterion validity was almost perfected by the use of codebook masters. The preemptive empirical tests of reliability were clearly explained and provided a foundation for the audience to follow the researchers’ intent.

Throughout the entire methodology section of this article the authors proved that the content analysis’s validity was technically sound. By removing poor quality audio and visual police recordings they reduced potential error. Not informing the coders on the specific desired, race-related outcomes of this research allowed them to account for testing as a potential threat to the internal validity. Further, Dixon, Schell, Giles, and Drogos accounted for coding fatigue and ensured all coding participants were exposed to and coded for the same number of police interactions.

While the results were alarming, they were not shocking. In light of the recent events in early June 2020, and more specifically the protests and riots surrounding the Black Lives Matter movement, the results were expected for the given climate of today’s environment. This is not to dispel the importance of these results. Repetition of the proof of institutionalized racism is fundamental to the continuation of growth within this revolution. Although facing such disheartening results can be extremely difficult to engage with, it is important to see tangible instances of racism so that there can be no reason for it to be labeled as propaganda without a foundation in truth. By providing factual evidence of these instances of racial communication discrepancy, progress can be made in the sector of police bias training and further aspects of law enforcement.

Whereas it would be hard to describe the given results as novel, new, or groundbreaking it is the repetitive nature of these acts of racial conflict that push the field forward. In fact, it is not in the novelty (or lack thereof) of this content analysis that speaks volumes, but rather the prolonged repetition of this sentiment that amplifies Black voices across the world who speak out against the injustice of racialized policing. It has been proven, by this article and many others, that racism in the police system is highly problematic and deeply systemic. The field continues to be pushed forward by a force much larger than the impact of one, singular article that stands alone. The filed moves forward as the roar of injustice magnifies by decibels.

Whereas the literature review, methods, and results served to prove the reliability and validity of the researchers’ claims, it is the discussion portion that provided the strongest information. By analyzing the actual results from the content analysis alongside a consistent comparison to the foundational hypotheses, a clear meaning could be gathered from otherwise lost sentiments. The discussion of Dixon, Schell, Giles, and Drogos’s results was clear and concise, making the numerical nature of the results tangible to a wider audience (potentially with less experience handling proper analytical terminology). The researchers also made it a point to acknowledge that their sample was nonrepresentative of the Cincinnati Police force as a whole. They even went on to clarify that although the results supported H1, most of H2, and all of H3, the findings did not provide direct evidence of racial profiling on behalf of the Cincinnati Police Department.

This research article occupies a very important space in the communicative field of literature. As previously noted, the results continue to show tangible products of institutionalized racism, especially within the police force. This article is important more now than ever. Dixon, Schell, Giles, and Drogos’s work should be used in the face of criticism to the Black Lives Matter movement to dispel the falsehoods of ignorance that claim racism is not an epidemic affecting America. Sadly, the results are not surprising. In the face of protests across the nation, this information is not groundbreaking. However, it is within the repetition of this sentiment that the real consequences of racism in the police force can be proven to those questioning its existence.

Dixon, Schell, Giles, and Drogos have provided an article that is ethically sound, internally and externally valid, and overall, reliable. The methodology of their content analysis was clear and defined the ways in which the researchers imposed catches in their methods to better track the coding process of their research. The discussion portion of this article was the most impactful, as it was able to take numerical data regarding complex statistical analyses and create a tangible explanation for the sampled recordings. The results were clearly important to the growth of knowledge surrounding the topic, but by stating the findings were not applicable beyond the instances sampled, it became unclear where these important results were actually pertinent. Despite this potential space for confusion, the article blatantly articulated a need for better police training, especially in regard to racial bias training.

Although the information presented by Dixon, Schell, Giles, and Drogos cannot be considered groundbreaking, their findings are extremely important in today’s society. In this nation where many have disregarded the Black Lives Matter movement, some admitting their racism while many others continue to deny it, research that proves institutionalized racism has enveloped law enforcement is crucial to creating change. Protests have broken out across the country, and the police have responded with continued and presidentially backed violence. This article is more important now, than ever before. The findings of this content analysis of the Cincinnati Police Department’s communicative interactions with both Black and White drivers, present the field with harsh facts of racialized influence.

References

Dixon, T. L., Schell, T. L., Giles, H., & Drogos, K. L. (2008). The influence of race in police-civilian interactions: a content analysis of videotaped interactions taken during Cincinnati police traffic stops. Journal of Communication, 58(3), 530-549. https://doi-org.ezproxy.lib.calpoly.edu/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2008.00398.x

[poop4u]

The Books on My Bookshelf

#Poop4U

Holy moly, Batman, the books on my night stand are piling up. Here’s a sample:

OUR DOGS OURSELVES,  by Alexandra Horowitz. (Released September 3rd, but available for pre order.) This thoughtful book by the author of The Inside of a Dog and Being a Dog deserves to be read by dog lovers everywhere. I say that, full disclosure, not having read the entire book yet. An “advance readers edition” came several weeks ago, and I will admit to, at first, feeling a bit wary of how much new information it would contain. But then I started reading it, and this is, bravely and insightfully, a book that goes far beyond the usual musings about our relationship with dogs.

One early chapter is titled “Owning Dogs,” and explores our contradictory relationship with dogs–legally defined as property and yet considered by many of us to be family members and best friends. I’ve said in the past that if someone took one of my dogs it would be kidnapping, not stealing. But that’s not what the laws says. This is an issue that we’ve never adequately addressed, involving many complicated considerations, and I appreciate Horowitz’s attempts to continue a conversation about it.

Another chapter looks at our country’s spay and neuter practices–no controversy there (!). The author takes this issue on full frontal:

“For me simply to bring up the topic of de-sexing for discussion will be, in the eyes of some, impermissible. So sacred is the policy–so heartfelt (and good-hearted) is the intent behind it–that one is almost not allowed to talk about it.”

But of course, she does, and asks us to look carefully at costs and benefits of our current belief in whole-scale spaying and neutering. (Note this other article that looks at the costs of spay-neuter policies.

Our Dogs, Ourselves also takes on the biology and ethics of current breeding practices, among other topics, so expect to be engaged.  Horowitz faces these controversial issues head on, and I love her for it. In subsequent posts I’ll no doubt talk about these issues, perhaps agreeing or disagreeing with the author, but grateful nonetheless that she is talking about them.

Last thing: Horowitz or her editors deserve an award for “best titles ever,” after The Inside of a Dog (from Mark Twain’s “Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.”)  Our Dogs, Ourselves is, of course, reminiscent of Our Bodies, Ourselves. Kudos.

TRANSFORMING TRAUMA:  Resilience and Healing Through Our Connections with Animals, edited by Philip Tedeschi and Molly Anne Jenkins.

Well, this is a fundamental switch from a book like the one above, but I highly recommend it to people who are interested in trauma recovery, especially in relation to animal-assisted interactions and therapy. Those of you who have read The Education of Will are aware that trauma is a central theme is my life’s story, so this is a book that speaks to me professionally and personally. What I like about the book is its integration of kindness and benevolence, along with lots and lots of good, solid science that backs up what we know, and don’t know, about the impact of human-animal interactions in the recovery of trauma.

Actually, “The impact of human-animal interactions in the recovery of trauma” is title of the first chapter, whose lead author is Marguerite O’Haire (who I refer to as “The Woman Whose Talks Should Never Be Missed”). Seriously, this chapter is worth the price of the book for its summary of evidence-based research, and introducing (to most of us), the concept of “bio-affiliative safety”, in which other animals allow trauma victims to turn off their vigilance and mechanisms of defense.

This is not beach reading. For example, in Chapter One, relating to bio-affiliative safety: “In Porges’ explorations of the polyvagal system and the concept of neuroception, we can begin to understand how the presence of a nonhuman animal interaction may offer critical information . . . “.

But that’s exactly why I am a fan of this work–we need to continue to push beyond the feel-good, rosy picture of all animals helping all people all the time, and support serious science that looks at exactly how, and how not, other animals can help us humans recover from trauma.

The other perspective that is vital in Transforming Trauma is its emphasis on never using animals in a way that discomforts or exploits them.  Here, here.

DOG BEHAVIOR, MODERN SCIENCE AND OUR CANINE COMPAIONS, by James Ha and Tracy Campion. Also not a beach reach, this book is a treasure trove of information for people who are interested in the integration of science and dog training. It includes a great deal of history and analysis of animal behavior studies, from Darwin’s interest in canine skulls, to cost-benefit analyses of decision making. It’s both practical (lots of stories from the author’s case studies) and theoretical (kin selection and dogs–who talks about that?).

What I love most about this book is based in part on my shared academic experience with one of the authors, James Ha. Both of us were trained as ethologists, and both of us spent years studying animal behavior in a general sense before we became involved in the dog world. I’ve always believed that to truly understand dog behavior, you need to understand the full range of behavior found in the animal world, so that you can put dogs in perspective. That’s exactly what this book does, and that’s why, for example, reading the chapter titled “Debunking Dominance: Canine social structure and behavioral ecology” is like a breath of fresh air. The chapter begins thus: “The social structure of a species, and hence their social behavior, is based upon resource distribution”. Oh, oh, music to my ears to see this in print. This is such an important concept to grasp, as is the fact that individuals of very closely related species can behave very differently, in part based on resource distribution. (Compare male-dominate chimps versus matriachal bonobos for example.)

Anyone who argues against “dominance or force-based training” would profit from reading this chapter, from its distinction between dominance and aggression, to the evidence that wolf packs in the wild are not “dominated by a alpha” but led by parent-like adults who take on roles of defense and hunting/provisioning, primarily based on sex.

There’s lots and lots more in this book, and I look forward to reading more of it, I’m thinking it will be a great way to start my every morning. (I tend to read fiction at night, non-fiction in the morning. You?)

GOOD AS A GIRL: A MEMOIR, by Ray Olderman. Ready for a paradigm shift? This book has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with dogs, but it holds a special place in my heart because it was written by a man who saved my soul in college. Quite literally. I was taking his class in literature at UW-Madison and working part time at the Primate Center. Long story, but at that time, the housing conditions for the monkeys at the Center were profoundly different than they are now. And pretty awful. When I went to the someone in charge to talk about what I felt were abuses, he literally told me “There is no biological evidence that monkeys can feel pain.” Yup, that’s what he said, in the mid 1980’s. I had thought that perhaps I could have some effect on the way the monkeys were treated, but it became clear that my ability to do so was negligible.

I couldn’t quit, I desperately needed the money, and I mean desperately. I could barely afford to eat. And yet working there violated everything I believed in. I stopped sleeping, and had a hard time just getting through the day. Ironically, in my literature class we were reading a book about a man who thought he could change a corrupt system by working within it, but was eventually destroyed by it. I finally went to see my professor, Ray Olderman and told him I was living the life we were reading about it. And it was killing me. And I couldn’t quit, I was beyond broke and there were no jobs available at that time of year. He hired me on the spot, finding some spare money to help him with grading. I will never forget it, and will always be grateful.

And so, I admit to a profound lack of objectivity about Ray’s book. But here’s the thing. I loved the book. Ray’s mother had wanted a girl, and had no pretense that she was disappointed when Ray turned out to be a boy. And so, at age eight, he vowed to her that he’d be “as good as a girl”. We follow Ray throughout his life trying to understand the female perspective while negotiating the complexities of Madison WI in the 70’s and 80’s during a time of profound cultural change.

If you’re interested in a delightful memoir about a guy who “couldn’t keep his mouth shut,”  fought the system all of his life while doing all he could to understand women, this book is for you.

  MEANWHILE, back on the farm: This weekend seemed to be a celebration of small, flying animals. This bee and butterfly kept displacing each other until they finally settled into feeding on opposite sides of the Hyssop flower.

Here’s the butterfly by itself; it appears to be a species in the Checkerspot group, but I’m not confident to say which one exactly.

This is one of my favorite insects, a hummingbird moth. Check out the video in the link, it’s really fun.

And here’s the source of its mimicry, still finding nutrition in this tacky looking Bee Balm flower.

Swallowtails everywhere. Monarchs too, although I could never get a shot. I hear that Monarchs are doing better this summer (yay!), and it’s also wonderful to see so many bees out. Finally! The wet spring and early summer was so hard on them, and they have enough challenges right now.

What brought you joy this week, whether a new book, animals or plants? You know I’d love to hear.

Poop4U Blog via www.Poop4U.com Trisha, Khareem Sudlow

#poop4u #cute dog #dogs of tumblr #puppy doggo #doglover #doggrooming #my doggo #dogmeme

[irasnotes-blog]

Research Paper Structure

From my observation, the research papers that I have read generally follow the same format structure. Aside from the title and authors on the topmost part of the first page, the proponents state the abstract of their study in the front page. It is where they give the readers an overview of the content of the paper. The Introduction follows the Abstract where the researchers layout the fundamental details and principles that the reader primarily needs to know, and may include the descriptions, definitions, and components of the study. The researches then detail the procedures conducted in the study, along with the specifications that come along with the process. After the authors have done the experimentation phase on their claims, the results are discussed, interpreted, and analyzed in the Results and Discussion section of the paper. To wrap things up, and to discuss the possible future endeavors in the field of study, the proponents then conclude their study along with their observations and predictions for the future.

New Concepts

Activated Sludge

The activated sludge is a complex ecosystem mainly of bacteria and protozoa. In fact, a good balance between the bacteria and protozoa and among the different species of each group is crucial for efficient pollution removal, good settleability properties and low suspended solids effluent levels. Bacteria agglomerate as aggregates, mainly due to exopolymers excretion and a filamentous bacteria backbone towards an ideal floc with reasonable size and well balanced floc-forming and filamentous bacteria composition. Activated sludge flocs are made up of microbial colonies embedded in a cloud of extracellular polymeric substances (EPS). The EPS are produced by the microorganisms either by cell lysis or by active transport. Other floc constituents are organic fibres, adsorbed organic particles from the wastewater and inorganic components. It is believed that the EPS play a large role in the formation of sludge flocs since they constitute the major organic fraction of the sludge. The EPS are typically made up of protein, humic substances, carbohydrates, nucleic acids and lipids.

Source:

Wilén, B., Lumley, D., Mattsson, A., & Mino, T. (2008). Relationship between floc composition and flocculation and settling properties studied at a full scale activated sludge plant. Water Research,42(16), 4404-4418. doi:10.1016/j.watres.2008.07.033

Amaral, A., & Ferreira, E. (2005). Activated sludge monitoring of a wastewater treatment plant using image analysis and partial least squares regression. Analytica Chimica Acta,544(1-2), 246-253. doi:10.1016/j.aca.2004.12.061

Filamentous Bulking

Sludge bulking occurs when the sludge fails to separate out in the sedimentation tanks. Bulking sludge, a term used to describe the excessive growth of filamentous bacteria, is a common problem in activated sludge process. The term bulking sludge often also is used for non-filamentous poor settling, but in this study it refers only to filamentous sludge.

Source: Martins, A. M., Pagilla, K., Heijnen, J. J., & Loosdrecht, M. C. (2004). Filamentous bulking sludge—a critical review. Water Research,38(4), 793-817. doi:10.1016/j.watres.2003.11.005

Particle Sedimentation

     Sedimentation of a suspension is generally assessed by a jar test, during which a suspension is allowed to settle and the height of the clear liquid (supernatant)-suspension interface is measured as a function of the settling time. In a jar test particles can be observed to settle in any of several quite different ways, dependent on their concentration and their tendency to cohere. The different modes of sedimentation make different demands on the size and shape of a settling tank, and different test procedures are used for evaluating them. In addition to particle size, density and concentration, and fluid viscosity, other less obvious factors affect the sedimentation rate. These include particle shape and orientation, convection currents in the surrounding fluid, and chemical pretreatment of the feed suspension. Particle with diameters of the order of a few microns settle too slowly for most practical operations; wherever possible these are coagulated or flocculated to increase their effective size, and hence increase their rate of settling.

Source: http://www.thermopedia.com/content/1114/

Digital Image Processing

Image processing is a method to perform some operations on an image, in order to get an enhanced image or to extract some useful information from it. It is a type of signal processing in which input is an image and output may be image or characteristics/features associated with that image. Nowadays, image processing is among rapidly growing technologies. It forms core research area within engineering and computer science disciplines too.

Image processing basically includes the following three steps:

Importing the image via image acquisition tools;

Analysing and manipulating the image;

Output in which result can be altered image or report that is based on image analysis. 

There are two types of methods used for image processing namely, analogue and digital image processing. Analogue image processing can be used for the hard copies like printouts and photographs. Image analysts use various fundamentals of interpretation while using these visual techniques. Digital image processing techniques help in manipulation of the digital images by using computers. The three general phases that all types of data have to undergo while using digital technique are pre-processing, enhancement, and display, information extraction.

Source: https://sisu.ut.ee/imageprocessing/book/1

MATLAB

MATLAB (matrix laboratory) is a multi-paradigm numerical computing environment. A proprietary programming language developed by MathWorks, MATLAB allows matrix manipulations, plotting of functions and data, implementation of algorithms, creation of user interfaces, and interfacing with programs written in other languages, including C, C++, C#, Java, Fortran and Python. Uses for MATLAB include matrix calculations, developing and running algorithms, creating user interfaces (UI) and data visualization. The multi-paradigm numerical computing environment allows developers to interface with programs developed in different languages, which makes it possible to harness the unique strengths of each language for various purposes. MATLAB is used by engineers and scientists in many fields such as image and signal processing, communications, control systems for industry, smart grid design, robotics as well as computational finance.

Source: http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/MATLAB

Claims and Evidence Citations

An Iterative Algorithm for Minimum Cross Entropy Thresholding

C.H. Li and P.K.S. Tam, March 1998

The intervals for μ1 and μ2 were chosen such that μ1 and μ2 are separated from each other and away from the maximum and minimum gray values of 255 and 0. The intervals for the standard deviations σ1 and σ2 are chosen to cover situations of minimal overlapping to high overlapping of gray levels between the foreground and the background. The proportions of the background against the foreground are in ratios ranging from 1:99 to 99:1, which should cover commonly occurring situations. A total of 1000 histograms are generated.

For each of the 1000 histograms, the threshold is obtained from both the iterative procedure and an exhaustive search. The difference in the threshold values between the iterative version and the exhaustive version is recorded for the 1000 histograms and the mean absolute difference and the standard deviation of the difference are selected as the average performance criteria for the iterative procedure.

The iterative method is started using an initial threshold value of 128 for all of the 1000 histograms. Since 128 is the middle of the gray level range of the histogram, this value is a natural one for initializing the iteration. The average error for the iterative version is only 0.39, implying that the iterative method correctly locates thresholds in more than half of the testing histogram.

Activated Sludge Monitoring Of a Wastewater Treatment Plant Using Image Analysis and Partial Least Squares Regression

A.L. Amaral, E.C. Ferreira, January 2005

In the aggregates morphological analysis, it was deemed apparent that the formation of somewhat loose, elongated structures with smaller aggregates differ from the larger aggregates in terms of smoothness and roughness respectively. The aggregates area distribution showed negligible values for the larger aggregates throughout the survey, as opposed to the clear predominant 0.1–1 mm class, which seems to point out the prevalence of normal flocs instead of pinpoint or zoogleal flocs. This fact allows inferring that the experienced bulking problems within the aerated tank were probably not of zoogleal nature and rather of a filamentous one. This hypothesis is further emphasized by the time overlap of the higher SVI period and the smaller aggregates predominance period in the survey.

The activated sludge monitoring experiment gathered important conclusions with respect to the relationships between the aggregate components and morphology, and the free filamentous bacteria contents parallel with the SVI and the TSS. Having analyzed the filaments versus solids content (TL/TSS) and the filaments versus aggregates content (TL/TA), a strong resemblance between the SVI and these two parameters behavior points was found pointing towards the existence of a filamentous bulking phenomenon. Furthermore, the TL/TSS values larger than 10,000 mm/mg clearly indicate the existence of a filamentous bulking problem.

The aggregates contents (TA) was the parameter that was found to contribute the most for the PLS analysis for the TSS with quite a satisfactory correlation regression of 0.934. Consequently it seems realistic to infer that the TSS could be satisfactorily monitored by the TA parameter, with the corresponding correlation regression of 0.906 between the predicted and observed TSS. In this study, the SVI values were quite high consistently, and only the relationships for high SVI values could be studied, whereas for a wastewater treatment plant working with satisfactory SVI values these relations may not stand true. Furthermore, as no points were present in the lower section of the regression lines the search of good correlation values may also have been hindered.

Application of Image Analysis Techniques in Activated Sludge Wastewater Treatment Processes

Ewa Liwarska-Bizukojc, July 2005

Sludge flocculation consist mainly of organic matter, which makes about 70% of their dry weight. As detailed, activated sludge suspension is a complex ecosystem, consisting primarily of bacteria and protozoa. Generally, the four main constituents in activated sludge floc can be discriminated in flocs: microorganisms (viable and dead cells), extracellular polymeric substances (mainly carbohydrates and proteins), water and inorganic particles (sand).

Flocs could be characterized by the fractal concept within a certain size limit. Along with this, it is confirmed that the large amount of extracellular polymeric substances, or exopolymers, were present within flocs. Extracellular polymeric substances acted on substrates and products transferred to and from the microbial cells in the flocs. Microorganisms, water and extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) were irregularly dispersed within the floc although the cross-sectional morphology of the flocs appeared similar. Substances to be transferred have to overcome not only the diffusional resistance of water but also of the EPS, which surround most of the microbial cells.

The problem of separating solids from treated effluent still persists in many wastewater treatment plants. The issue can mainly be attributed to the bulking of sludge caused by the excessive growth of filamentous microorganisms. Misbalance between the filamentous bacteria and flocs-forming bacteria induces bulking and foaming problems and, as a result, bad quality of the treated effluent.

Activated Sludge Morphology Characterization through an Image Analysis Procedure

Y. G. Perez, S. G .F. Leite and M. A. Z. Coelho, April 2006

Physical differences occur in different compositions of wastewater depending on the geographic profile. Other flocculations might be more resistant and consistent with other aggregates compared to those in the wastewater treatment plants. It could be explained by the fact of effluents in domestic wastewater treatment plants usually present high organic loads which favors the increasing of the floc size which is attributed to the higher production of microbial exopolysaccharides under such conditions. Sludge flocs from domestic wastewater treatment systems presented average sizes higher than those ones belonging to industrial systems.

The difference in wastewater composition vary due to the chemicals in the industrial processes the wastewater goes through. These processes affect the microbial and bio-flocculation characteristics result in the breakage of large flocs and the formation of small and structurally weak flocs that will barely settle in the clarifier leading to a final effluent with high turbidity and organic matter contents.

In the study, it can be seen that the morphological parameter Roundness correlated well with the Convexity, Compactness, and Fractal Dimension of the microbial flocs with Pearson’s correlations of -0.7421 -0.6678 and 0.6129, respectively. These values indicate, as expected, that more compact and regular flocs trend to exhibit a more spherical shape. The morphological parameters estimated from different activated sludge samples after image processing were statistically compared in order to identify the major relationships between them. The study used Pearson’s product momentum correlation coefficient to estimate linear correlations, with the coefficient range between -1 and +1. -1 corresponds to a perfect negative correlation, +1 corresponds to perfect positive correlation, and 0 signifies no relationship at all.

Simultaneously Monitoring the Particle Size Distribution, Morphology and Suspended Solids Concentration in Wastewater Applying Digital Image Analysis (DIA)

Ruey-Fang Yu, Ho-Wen Chen, Wen-Po Cheng and Mei-Ling Chu, January 2008

In the paper, various chemical, biological and physical processes were applied to enlarge particle size to enhance solid–liquid separation efficiency. This is because water and wastewater treatment, particle size distribution of the suspended solids is a major control factor for solid–liquid separation efficiency.

It was stated that more aggregates per image are obtained when images are acquired using 20x magnification. Therefore, it would be advantageous when working with higher magnifications such as 100x to increase the number of acquired images in order to increase the representativeness of the acquired data. This is further supported by the results of the experiment which demonstrate an increase in the small aggregates that were magnified 100x, unlike the aggregates with smaller size constraints. There were more large aggregates using the 20x magnification because of the size constraint of the 100x magnification for larger aggregates.

It was shown that small and intermediate aggregates remain stable in the midst of dilution with a z –value of 0.6642 in both cases they were tried on. On the other hand, the diameter of the larger aggregates decreased from the two-fold dilution until the run of four consecutive descending values, which indicates that deflocculation might have occurred. This indicates a different characterization between the small and large aggregates.

Dilution and Magnification Effects on Image Analysis Applications in Activated SludgeCharacterization

D.P. Mesquita, O. Dias, R.A.V. Elias, A.L. Amaral, and E.C. Ferreira, June 2010

Modifying the osmotic pressure during a dilution process can trigger biomass deflocculation, causing floc-forming and filamentous bacteria to be released with mixed liquor, which can change the aggregate size and morphology. According to the research, this happens when a dilution is performed the amount of screened biomass decreases, which can lead to incorrect characterization of the biomass within the biological system.

According to the results of the study, increasing the dilution caused aggregates to be more spaced out, allowing he identification of smaller aggregates and filamentous bacteria. However, increasing dilutions led to a decrease of the screened biomass in each field of view and hindered the representativeness of each sample. These conclusions were formulated after each sample was measures properly by the established parameters.

Dilutions are related to aggregate morphology assessment in image analysis techniques. The dependence on dilutions can be evaluated by assessing the behavior of each aggregates class as smaller, intermediate, and larger after dilution. The Number/Vol, TRA/Vol, Area %, and equivalent diameter for each class of samples are also related to the previously states assessment from dilutions.

Quantitative Image Analysis for the Characterization of Microbial Aggregates in Biological Wastewater Treatment: A Review

J. C. Costa, D. P. Mesquita, A. L. Amaral, M. M. Alves, and E. C. Ferreira, May 2013

The first difficulty lies in obtaining a suitable sample, which is representative of the entire wastewater treatment plant. The development of a sampling procedure that does not damage the biomass integrity and allow us to acquire sharp and useful images remains a challenge. In laboratory prototypes, it is a non-issue. However, in full-scale wastewater treatment plants, it can be seen as a hindrance. First, it will be necessary to define various strategic sampling points. Then, the sample should be homogenized without damaging the integrity and stability of flocs and/or granules; this is the most critical point of the whole process because it could lead to erroneous results. Nevertheless, the problem of sharp images can be bypassed by increasing the shutter speed available in the cameras used or by adding flashes.

The development of online quantitative image analysis systems for real-time process monitoring and control is one of the most important aspects in this field and is its ultimate goal. It may represent a significant and decisive milestone in the implementation of these procedures in wastewater treatment biological processes. Conventional methods that are currently being employed are time consuming and impossible to be implemented online. One of the main advantageous of image analysis procedures compared with classical methods is the possibility to implement an online system that can overcome the analyzer dependency and time consuming of offline systems.

Particle sedimentation studies are another important field of quantitative image analysis application since particle size distribution is one of the major parameters for solid–liquid separation efficiency and can be done efficiently through a high magnification micro lens was applied to replace the microscope, combined with a high-resolution CCD to acquire images that can be used for on-line measurements. A flow cell with a magnetic pump provided continuous samples. By combining the image analysis data and an ANN model, this method could predict the suspended solids concentration and the particle settling efficiency of samples. Therefore, it is an image analysis technique that could substitute a laser particle size analyzer, which is expensive and difficult to use for on-line measurements.

Digital Image Processing and Analysis for Activated Sludge Wastewater Treatment

Muhammad B. Khan, Xue Yong Lee, Humaira Nisar, Choon Aun Ng, Kim Ho Yeap, and Aamir Saeed Malik, 2014

High biological oxygen demand (BOM) implies that the content matter is decomposed, allowing more growth of microbes and consequently, having low dissolved oxygen (DO). Biological Oxygen Demand (BOM) is a measure of oxygen required by microorganisms to decompose organic (carbonaceous BOM) and inorganic (nitrogenous BOM) matter in wastewater. The oxygen is used by microorganisms for decomposition and needed for organisms to stay alive inside and outside the flocs.

One of the common abnormal conditions one might face in sludge processing is the rising sludge phenomenon. The abnormal condition of rising sludge occurs by excessive denitrification in which nitrogen and phosphorus are removed. The activated sludge flocs get attached to the nitrogen and float on the surface in the secondary clarifier, ultimately leading to increased turbidity, high biological oxygen demand and less settling ability.

In the study, there are two types of approaches found in the literature about the monitoring of activated sludge: one is by finding the direct correlation between physio-chemical and image analysis parameters, second by “indirect” correlation by identifying coefficients of auto-regressive exogenous (ARX) model or by training the neural network. When talking about predictions, it is based on the thought that flocs and filaments undergo change more willingly when compared to the states of the plant.

Understanding Illicit Drug Use Patterns through Wastewater Analysis

Sheree Pagsuyoin, Jana Latayan, and Babelene Pagsuyoin, April 2015

The results of the study show that the cocaine traces they tested on at the wastewater treatment plant are best described by: a single predictor for the service area (served population size), population age (below 18 years old), and employment (blue collar) categories, and two predictors (primary and tertiary levels) for the education category. They proved this correlation using a Pearson correlation analysis among the five variables.

The results of the showed that cocaine loads are strongly correlated with the population served, population below 18 years old, population with blue collar jobs, and population with tertiary level education (R2 values > 0.93, p <0.0001), and only moderately correlated with primary education (R2 > 0.5, p<0.0015). There was also a significant correlation (p<0.0001) between primary education and served population size (R2 = 0.67), population below 18 years old (R2 = 0.64), population with blue collar jobs (R2 = 0.69), and tertiary level education (R2 = 0.65).

This study’s results on the association of age predictor with cocaine use in Belgium are consistent with existing survey studies of drug use by different demographics in which the prevalence of cocaine use in ages 15−34 (2%) and school age (4%) were significantly higher than the national average of 0.9%, of which the results are based on self-reports of drug use.

 Monitoring Biological Wastewater Treatment Processes: Recent Advances in Spectroscopy Applications

Daniela P. Mesquita, Cristina Quintelas, A. Luis Amaral, and Eugenio C. Ferreira, August 2017

In this study, the researchers found it important to point out that the use of chemometric techniques is quite mandatory since the visual inspection of spectral data is often not appropriate to extract significant information on sample composition, given the obtained broad and unspecific bands and molecules such as saturated hydrocarbons and sugars are not detected by this methodology and UV–Vis spectra of aqueous samples are highly affected by the presence of suspended particles due to light scattering effects.

The implementation of fluorescence instrumentation for online monitoring is relatively slow due to several factors, such as high quantities of suspended solids and fouling, among others. This is due to a significant challenge in the use of fluorescence spectroscopy as a monitoring technique is to overcome the matrix effects changing the fluorescence signature, with such effects that could mask small differences in parameters concentration.

The industry activities are the most prominent factor of water contamination, exceeding the environment regenerative capacity and self-purification, causing imbalances in the aquatic ecosystems when an appropriate treatment is not taken into account. With the influx of new technologies over the past few decades, brought progress in the society as well as its own share of problems. It is known that living organisms’ activities, urban demand, domestic consumption and industrial operations, including washing, rinsing, and cleaning equipment, generate high amounts of effluents.

#cs #stemblr #studyblr

[silviajburke]

The Fed’s Getting Ready to Raise into Weakness

This post The Fed’s Getting Ready to Raise into Weakness appeared first on Daily Reckoning.

[Ed. Note: Jim Rickards’ latest New York Times bestseller, The Road to Ruin: The Global Elites’ Secret Plan for the Next Financial Crisis, is out now. Learn how to score your free copy here. This vital book transcends geopolitics and media rhetoric to prepare you for what areas in gold, markets and more you should be watching now.] 

I was surprised this week that the stock market reached new highs — despite the fact that expectations of a March rate hike by the Fed moved from 40% to 60% in three days. Today those expectations are about 75%.

But I’ve been calling a March rate hike since late December. I was almost alone in that view. Wall Street analysts were paying lip service to the idea that the Fed might raise rates twice before the end of the year, but said the process might begin in June, not March. Market indicators were giving only a 25% chance of a rate hike within the past couple weeks.

Is it because I’m smarter than all these other analysts?

No, I certainly don’t claim to be smarter than any of them. It’s just that I use better analytical techniques based on complexity theory, behavioral psychology and other sciences that account for the ways actual markets behave. Meanwhile, most analysts are using outdated, static models that don’t apply to the real world.

Speculation began after Janet Yellen’s testimony to House and Senate committees last month. She said a solid job market and an overall improving economy suggested the Fed would likely resume raising rates soon. But, Yellen did not say anything she hadn’t said in December.

But suddenly this week everything heated up. Now the markets agree that a rate hike is coming, thanks to an orchestrated campaign of speeches and leaks from senior Fed officials. Several Fed members have been talking about the need to tighten, including Fed Governor and uber-dove Lael Brainard. When she starts sounding like a hawk, it’s time to pay attention.

As I said, markets are now pricing in nearly a 75% chance of a March rate hike (my estimate is now 90%).

But there’s a big difference between the dynamics behind my view of a rate increase and the market’s view. In effect, markets are saying, “The Fed is hiking rates, therefore, the economy must be strong.”

What I’m saying is “The Fed is tightening into weakness (because they don’t see it), so they will stall the economy and will flip to ease by May.”

My view is the economy is fundamentally weak, the Fed is tightening into weakness. By later this year, the Fed will have to flip-flop to ease (via forward guidance) for the ninth time since 2013. Stocks will fall, while bonds and precious metals will rally.

Both theses start with a rate hike, but they rest on totally different assumptions and analyses.

Under my scenario, the stock market is headed for a brick wall in April or May, when weak first-quarter data roll in. But for now, it’s still up, up and away.

My take is that the Fed is desperate to raise rates before the next recession (so they can cut them again), and will take every opportunity to do so. I believe the Fed will raise rates 0.25% every other meeting (March, June, September and December) until 2019 unless one of three events happens — a stock market crash, job losses, or deflation.

Right now the stock market is booming, job creation is strong, and inflation is emerging. So, none of the speed bumps are in place. The coast is clear for the March rate hike.

There is a great deal of happy talk surrounding the market right now. But with so much bullishness around, it’s time to take a close look at the bear case for stocks. It’s actually straightforward.

Growth is being financed with debt, which has now reached epic proportions. The debt bubble can be seen at the personal, corporate and sovereign level. Sure, a lot of money has been printed since 2007, but debt has expanded much faster.

In a liquidity crisis, investors who think they have “money” (in the form of stocks, bonds, real estate, etc.) suddenly realize that those investments are not money at all — they’re just assets.

When investors all sell their assets at once to get their money back, markets crash and the panic feeds on itself. What would it take to set off this kind of panic? In a super-highly leveraged system, the answer is: “Not much.”

There’s a long list of potential catalysts, including delays and disappointments with Trump’s economic plans, aggressive rate hikes by the Fed, a stronger dollar, and economic turmoil due to China’s vanishing reserves or the new Greek bailout.

It could also be anything from a high-profile bankruptcy, a failed deal, a bad headline, a natural disaster, and so on.

This issue is not the catalyst; the issue is the leverage and instability of the system. The bulls are ignoring the risks.

My view is we’re well into bubble territory, and stocks will reverse sooner than later. Stocks are a bubble that will certainly crash. But you must realize that the timing is uncertain. Recall that Greenspan gave his “irrational exuberance” speech in 1996, but stocks did not crash until 2000. That’s a long time to be on the sidelines.

Conversely, bonds are not in a bubble, despite the large number of analysts who make that claim. These analysts are looking at nominal rates. You need to look at real rates, which are still fairly high.

Nominal and real yields on the 10-year Treasury note were much higher at the end of 2013 than they are today. Wall Street yelled “bubble” then and shorted the bond market when the 10-year note yield-to-maturity was 3% in 2013.

Those who shorted Treasury notes got crushed when yields fell to 1.4% by early 2016 (they have reversed since). I expect another bond market rally (bonds up, rates down) to play out between now and this summer.

One source of investor confusion is that the White House and Congress are moving toward fiscal stimulus, while the Fed is moving toward monetary tightening. That’s a highly unstable dynamic. Markets could tip either way.

Investors have to be prepared for countertrends and reversals while waiting for this picture to unfold. The Trump administration is perfectly capable of shouting “strong dollar” on Monday and “weak dollar” on Tuesday. That’s one reason I recommend a cash allocation — it allows you to be nimble.

Something else to remember going forward is that Trump will have a minimum of three, and perhaps as many as four or five, chances to appoint members of the Fed board of governors, including a new chairman in the next 10 months. I expect these new governors will be dovish based on Trump’s publicly expressed preference for a weaker dollar.

The Senate will definitely confirm Trump’s choices. So get ready for an extreme makeover at the Fed, with the likelihood of easy money, more inflation, higher gold prices and a weaker dollar right around the corner.

That combination of Fed ease (due to slowing) and Fed doves flying into the boardroom on Constitution Avenue in Washington will give gold prices in particular a major lift in the second half of the year.

Regards,

Jim Rickards for The Daily Reckoning

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