Bad Reception Research Articles

Offensive pass tactics analysis of volleyball setters in olympic finals of 2000 and 2021

The aim of the current study was to analyse offensive pass tactics in Olympic Games finals in 2000 and 2021. The authors of the study were interested how the game of volleyball has developed in 20 years, whether it has become faster or even slower. We were also interested whether setters’ game tactics had changed in 20 years. Therefore, we undertook three tasks: to compare offensive pass tactics according to types of sets; to compare the distribution of offensive passes between zones and to compare the ball flight phase times of offensive passes. Based on videos of two Olympic finals (eight sets), a total of 327 offensive passes were analysed, which were divided into different types of sets, and the ball flight phase time of each offensive pass was fixed. It was also taken into account whether the setter had had an excellent, good or bad reception or first touch before performing the set. The videos were analysed using the Kinovea program; the quality of the first video was 360p and of the second 1080p. The first final studied was played in Sydney, Australia, on 1 October 2000 between the men’s volleyball teams of Yugoslavia and Russia, and the second on 7 August in Tokyo, Japan, between the men’s teams of France and Russia.
 To find statistically significant differences in data, Student’s t-test, p < 0.05, was used. The results revealed that in 20 years setters’ offensive pass tactics had changed; new offensive pass types had been introduced in both back and front zones. As a result of comparison of mean times of ball flight phases, the authors state that in one case the flight phase speed increased, namely in the case of offensive pass into zone 4; in another case, it became slower – in the case of offensive pass tempo forward. In addition to offensive passes played in 2000, new types of offensive pass were played in 2021, such as back line set between zones 6 and 1, back line set between zones 5 and 6, and the shoot set. The tandem combination played in 2000 was not performed once in 2021. The five most popular offensive passes turned out to be sharp sets into zone 4, sharp sets into zone 2, tempo sets forward, sharp back line sets into zone 2, high sets into zone 4. The difference of 2021 compared to 2000 was that the shoot combination was played on the frontline (6% of all the sets), and the back line attack was used 5% more often. The comparison of ball flight phase times revealed that the mean time of the flight phase decreased only in the case of the sharp set into zone 4. Namely, the mean time of the ball flight phase in 2000 was 1.12 seconds, in 2021, however, 0.97 seconds. This can be explained by sharper and faster sets into zone 4. But in the case of the tempo set forward, the mean time of the ball flight phase increased from 0.40 to 0.49 seconds by 2021. The authors’ explanation is that tempo sets were not hit from so near to the setter but, to make blocking more difficult, tempo sets were set longer, or somewhat higher tempo set was used. A statistically significant difference between the two finals was found in the case of sharp set into zone 4 and tempo set forward.

FAME3: good science, bad reception?

FAME3: good science, bad reception?

Valuable and Fallible: A Review Essay on Reception, Ethics and the Media

Valuable and Fallible:A Review Essay on Reception, Ethics and the Media Colum Kenny A Post-Nationalist History of Television in Ireland, Edward Brennan (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), xv+235 pages. Journalism’s Ethical Progression: A Twentieth Century Journey, Gwyneth Mellinger and John P Ferré (eds) (Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 2020), 258 pages. ‘The history of journalism ethics speaks to the present in a variety of ways’. So writes John Patrick Ferré, one of the editors of Journalism’s Ethical Progression, who adds that – at the very least – ‘understanding how predecessors defined the situations they faced, applied principles, appealed to values, and identified stakeholders can help contemporary problemsolvers face issues systematically with the knowledge of past failures and successes’. Some people think that media made a democratising quantum leap with the onset of internet services but, if so, it remains the case that qualitative questions about moral issues are timeless insofar as they concern the truth, motivation or fairness of any communication. Each of the costly volumes considered here is directly relevant to current media developments. Edward Brennan, the author of a new ‘post-nationalist’ study of television in Ireland, raises questions that by extension help citizens to understand and respond to the complexities of a media-saturated society, in which commercial and political forces use remarkably sophisticated means to set agendas by means of gratification and manipulation. Just TV alone is still an intrusive medium, with the average number of hours watched by each person being substantial. Here, Brennan takes a broad view of TV studies by looking beyond the institutional story of particular national broadcasters such as Ireland’s RTÉ and beyond their internally produced programming, and beyond the relationship of broadcasters to advertisers and politicians, each of which provides the focus for other accounts. Brennan’s use of the term ‘post-nationalist’ in his title is by no means an Review Articles Studies • volume 109 • number 434 227 assertion that the concept or reality of the nation-state is somehow redundant, but it is recognition of the contemporary globalised ideology and identity of nation-states and of their citizens’ use and enjoyment of media from sources based outside any single state. He highlights the danger of studying television in Ireland as if Irish viewers had only ever watched, or taken seriously, Irishmade programmes on Irish channels. The history of television in Ireland is not just the history of RTÉ and other Irish channels. Long before some bigger states, Ireland, like Canada, began to experience the widespread reception of TV services and programmes from abroad in a language widely understood by its citizens and not subject to Irish regulation. There have been, in this and other ways, diverse sources for the construction of each citizen’s identity, and no single seamless Irish culture. Like many of the people whom Brennan interviewed for his book, and whose comments are enlightening and amusing, this reviewer recalls as an exciting and special event his first experience of watching live television. In the 1950s my parents brought me and my siblings to the house of acquaintances in Glasnevin, where we struggled through a storm of ‘bad reception’ to watch programmes being transmitted across Northern Ireland, part of the United Kingdom. As was common then, the strength of the blackand -white picture and its accompanying sound waxed and waned, sometimes breaking up into horizontal bars. We waited impatiently to see again the interrupted programmes, but just being in the presence of a working TV set was delightful. Although no television service was yet licensed within the Republic of Ireland, people were buying sets and erecting tall, cumbersome aerials to receive analogue signals that spilled over from the United Kingdom. Brennan found that his interviewees had difficulty remembering what they had actually done during many of the evening hours before television arrived in the home, what there was that TV presumably displaced – besides the rosary and some radio listening and perhaps a little reading. Brennan explores the development of hire-purchase and rental deals that were used to facilitate the acquisition of TV sets in Ireland at a time when citizens had little disposable income. It is a striking fact that the population...

From The Commonplace Book

from The Commonplace Book Maitreyabandhu (bio) i.m. Urgyen Sangharakshita These fitful sayings are, also, of tragedy: The serious reflection is composed Neither of comic nor tragic but of commonplace. —Wallace Stevens, “An Ordinary Evening in New Haven” 1.1 A pheasant kickstarts its rancorous alarmin windless hills gripped by winter’s paw:the sound of rain is like the tentativebeginnings of tumultuous applause. I rang my mother again from the weedycorner of a field near where a crop-sprayer, with rhythmic stutter, threw a wing,an angel wing, across a crop of kale.She was in France, an overnight stopoverbefore the river cruise: meals and foyers,miniature bottles of shampoo, hand soapwrapped in tissue. After her second fallmy brother bought an automatic car:a lifetime of shifting through the gears and shewas nervous again behind the wheel, drivingto Morrisons to get used to it, buyingtoilet paper and Special K. “I can’t talkfor long, love, they’re just about to call us in.”Bad reception. The stuttering angel wing.A pigeon climbed an angle of the light.Cold wind scattered the first few autumn leaves.One can accumulate as much of nothingas one likes, it will all add up to nothing.“I’d better go . . .” A car was changing downat the oak-rigged horizon and the wind [End Page 62] that had been saying serious amongthe hedges, in the treetops, then further offacross the fields, was saying (I seemed to hear it)serious . . . then serious again. 1.3 Friends reported Rainbows! Rainbows! in WhatsAppphotos on my phone, driving alwaystowards and through them with hedges running offto where the local crows creaked the skyabove our unaccommodating heads.We carried folding chairs, arranged ourselvesin rows for the possibility of warmthand then another friend, driving pastthe portaloos, stopped to open hiscar window, wave his phone and shout out Rainbows! 1.7 We should have painted rainbows as well as rain,double and triple rainbows like the onesthat greeted you after the war when you walkedbarefoot from that hill station, burning your passport,having shaven and taken robe and bowl,walking all the way from India to Hampsteadwith Christmas Humphreys muttering dirty habitsand blue films, exchanging Pali studiesfor Soho and the Diamond Sutra’s beat. 1.14 On the way up, the lift plays Handel’sOmbra mai fu (without the solo) beforethe TV dayroom and the corridor’sposter of the Beatles striding likeyoung gods towards Love, love me do.The disabled loo has laminated picturesof tulips blutacked to the tiles. My friend, [End Page 63] marooned between one thought and another,sways like sea-grass in a current he can’twithstand in front of Doris Day and JamesStewart in The Man Who Knew Too Much.A shot rings out. The man, who’s been blacked-up,whispers something, then touches Stewart’s face.Stewart’s eyes aren’t sharp enough to tiethe lost connections as Arabs shout and fightin the crowded market chase to London Heathrowwith low sun over Hounslow and seagulls parkedacross a field all facing the same way,their bonnets glaring in the fading light. [End Page 64] Maitreyabandhu Maitreyabandhu won the Keats-Shelley Prize, the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize, and the Basil Bunting Award. His first pamphlet, The Bond, was shortlisted for the Michael Marks Award. His second pamphlet, Vita Brevis, was a Poetry Book Society Choice. He has published three collections with Bloodaxe Books: The Crumb Road (2013), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation; Yarn (2015); and After Cézanne (2019). Maitreyabandhu lives and works at the London Buddhist Centre, UK, and has been ordained into the Triratna Buddhist Order for twenty-nine years. He has written three books on Buddhism published by Windhorse Publications. Copyright © 2020 Middlebury College Publications

Le style littéraire comme solution au traumatisme de guerre ? L’exemple de Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Louis-Ferdinand Celine really begins to write after that wounded, he was removed from the front of the First World War. Beside the fact that he was indeed physically wounded, everything suggests that he was also psychologically traumatized by war. This experience, by its dimension of rupture, fits within the biographical trajectory of the author and in his intimate relation with the writing process. A descriptive approach reveals the extent to which Celine's writing carries this traumatic burden, not only in its content but also in its container, embodied even in typography. In connection with its originality, this author's stylistic ambition tends to make use of the trauma to contain something of the excitement generated by the traumatic experience and to produce a form of symbolic recognition in the social field. The anti-semitic publications would represent the limits of this subjective solution, the approach of a new war coupled with the bad reception of a novel, putting back the precarious balance due to the writing process.

‘The Worst Oratorio Ever!’: Colonialist Condescension in the Critical Reception of George Tolhurst’s Ruth (1864)

The oratorio genre was regarded amongst the most edifying and instructive artforms of the Victorian era, and it was to these lofty ideals that George Tolhurst (1827–1877) aspired when composing his 1864 oratorioRuth. The first work of its kind written in the British colony of Victoria, Australia,Ruthreceived an initially favourable local reception; Tolhurst was urged by the Melbourne press to aim higher and present his work to a wider and more discerning audience. Consequently, he took his work to London where it was roundly criticized, widely mocked and eventually dubbed ‘the worst oratorio ever’. It might be assumed that a work so poorly received in the cultural metropolis of London would be, like so much other Victorian music, immediately forgotten. However, through its notoriously bad reception,Ruth– in what Percy Scholes describes as a ‘succès de ridicule’ – found a cult following that has spanned from the nineteenth century to the present day. This article examines the critical reception ofRuththrough the lens of colonial social relations, arguing that the treatment ofRuthin both London and Melbourne is emblematic of broader trends in the nineteenth-century relationship between parent state and settler colony. It also explores the surprising phenomenon of twentieth- and twenty-first-century consumption ofRuthin Britain, questioning whether the legacies of certain Victorian social and cultural prejudices relating to the artistic products of the colonies have been mitigated. Aesthetic and representational decisions made in recent revivals of Ruth suggest that cultural hierarchies forged during the Victorian era continue to be reinforced in the present day.

EVASÃO E RETENÇÃO ESCOLAR NO CURSO DE LICENCIATURA EM QUÍMICA DO INSTITUTO DE QUÍMICA DA UFRGS

Nos últimos anos a discussão sobre as questões educacionais no país têm enfatizado os cursos de formação de professores como fator preponderante para que possamos impactar positivamente em mudanças na área educacional. Sabe-se por outro lado, que num curso como o de Química, dificilmente os licenciandos conseguem concluir sua formação no prazo previsto pela Instituição acabando também por evadir antes do período. Este trabalho se propõe a estudar a evasão e a retenção escolar dos alunos do curso de Licenciatura em Química noturno, do Instituto de Química da UFRGS (Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul), com ingresso no período de 2009 a 2013, entendendo a primeira como a saída definitiva do aluno de seu curso de origem, e a segunda como a suspensão da progressão regular discente dentro das etapas de formação acadêmica, geralmente associado ao rendimento (aproveitamento e/ou frequência) insatisfatório ou situação de trancamento de matrícula. Itens como metodologia, didática, reprovações, currículo, oferta de horários limitados, acolhimento por parte de colegas e professores, e infraestrutura são alguns dos itens investigados como possíveis razões que contribuem para evasão e retenção dos estudantes. Pôde-se notar que em alguns dos casos, um acolhimento ruim por parte de colegas, professores e IES (Instituições de Ensino Superior), associado com a falta de identidade relacionada ao curso, falta de estratégias metodológicas alternativas, didática ineficaz por parte dos professores e alto índice de reprovações iniciais, são fatores contribuintes para evasão e retenção dos estudantes.

Designing the Amplifon. A locative sound medium to supplement DAB radio

Radio has always had communicative concern for its listeners. It is characterized by personal address, liveness and acoustic moods that reach audiences in a variety of listening situations. Radio's communicative concern should be available for all citizens, but in fact there is rather bad reception for DAB and FM in cities due to narrow streets and other physical interference, and in addition the prominent iPhone lacks both DAB- and FM-receivers. The design project reported here aims to increase sound media's communicative concern in urban settings by 1) replacing one-way FM and DAB with two-way mobile data, 2) replacing loudspeakers with headphones, and 3) replacing the temporal news agenda with one that is locative. The article reports on the theoretical basis, design methods and empirical findings of the Amplifon prototype.

Cognitive radio assisted quality compensation for scalable video multicast in cellular networks

Existing multicast schemes always employ the scalable video coding (SVC) to accommodate heterogeneous channel conditions. Although this method achieves a high spectral efficiency, it will lead to serious quality imbalance problem, i.e., the viewers who hold a better link conditions can obtain high video quality, but the viewers with bad reception conditions can only receive the video with poor quality. In this paper, we propose a novel Cognitive Radio Assisted Quality Compensation (CRAQC) scheme for enhancing the video quality of bad reception viewers. In CRAQC, the bad reception viewers can obtain from the good reception viewers the video content they cannot receive directly from the base station using cognitive relay links. One novel and promising design of the proposed scheme is that it considers a cooperative transmission style in relay process, in which viewers with the same relay content can simultaneously broadcast this content in the same channel, and therefore achieve the benefits of space diversity to the receiver. Through extensive simulations, we demonstrate that CRAQC is able to significantly improve the video performance of the bad reception viewers.

Receptive to bad reception: Jerky motion can make persuasive messages more effective

When used deliberately in television and film, jerky motion captures attention. However, it can be distracting in the movements of characters in digital video. To what extent does this kind of jerkiness influence message processing? Based on a limited-capacity model of message processing, jerky character motion was predicted to increase compliance to a persuasive message. The present experiment manipulated the jerkiness of an actor’s movements in a computer-delivered video to examine its effect on responses to a hypothetical medical scenario. Jerkiness, whether subtle or obvious, increased self-reported compliance. It also decreased heart rate variability, indicating attentional mediation. Though counterintuitive, these findings indicate that jerky character motion can make computer-mediated messages more persuasive.

Coleridge and Communication

Although much has been written about Coleridge’s ideas concerning language, less has been said about the role that communication plays in his work, particularly his use of language as a medium for bridging the distance between himself and others. Coleridge felt that great poetry could successfully overcome this gap, and in his poetry there are moments when he felt that he was fully tuned-in to an intelligible universe created by an all-loving and all-communicating God. Such moments, when the “One Life” was revealed to him were based upon a theory of communication in which the universe was the medium of divine communication. More frequently, however, Coleridge was troubled by bad reception, by what he understood to be a failure of communication, times when he was denied complete participation in a fully intelligible world and when the gap separating himself from others and from nature appeared as a chasm. “Sometimes when I earnestly look at a beautiful Object or Landscape,” he writes in a notebook, “it seems as if I were on the brink of a Fruition still denied--as if Vision were an appetite: even as a man would feel, who having put forth all his muscular strength in an act of prosilience, at that very moment held back -- he leaps & yet moves not from his place” (Notebooks III, no 3767). At such times, Coleridge felt “held back,” wanting desperately to move forward from his sense of isolation but unable to do so. This state of tension, in the desire for complete communication in a context of communication breakdowns, characterizes Coleridge’s best writing. For Coleridge, poetry was the highest form of human communication, and the task of a poet was to use language to move his readers beyond the need for words. When communication failed, he felt that he was a failed poet. This essay will examine Coleridge’s commitment to the idea of perfect communication at the same time as it suggests that one aspect of Coleridge’s strength as a writer lies in those moments when he grappled with the fallibility of human communication and sought to build community in a world in which our relationship to others also includes isolation, misdirection, darkness, strangeness, and ghosts.

GPS and IMU (inertial measurement unit) as a navigation system for the visually impaired in cities

PurposeThe aim of this work is to improve navigation solutions for the visually impaired, specifically problems with the heading given by the current GPS antennas. This heading is not reliable when the speed of the pedestrian or of the car is less than 10 km/h. The solution proposed is the use of one inertial measurement unit (IMU) coupled to a GPS, giving the navigation information in the way of heading and distance to the final destination.Design/methodology/approachThe authors have developed their system using their IMU (compass, gyroscope and accelerometer) developed in the laboratory. They have also developed the user interface in one Smart Phone in the Android operating system coupled to the IMU using the Bluetooth transmission. Furthermore, the authors have tested their system in bad GPS reception conditions in Paris. They also used two other GPS systems (Navigon and Ariadne GPS) for testing the best way of giving the information: either “car navigation information: turn left or right at 100 meters … ” or “heading and distance to the final destination: destination at 2 o'clock, 150 meters”.FindingsThe main finding is that we can have a better way of navigation (for the visually impaired in pedestrian navigation) using one IMU, coupled to a compass and a GPS antenna in cities even in the case of hesitation of the user, using the information of “heading and distance to the final destination”.Originality/valueThis paper demonstrates how GPS coupled to an IMU can give a better way of navigating for the visually impaired; in especial using the information about heading and distance to the final destination.

Incentive Auctions: A Tool to Be Used with Caution in the FCC’s Battle Against Spectrum Scarcity

In its Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voiced current anxiety over the future of wireless services, which while being in increasing demand, are constrained by a limited and essential resource — spectrum. Spectrum is an invisible infrastructure consisting of electromagnetic airwaves that allow for the transmission of voice between cell phones, television shows from broadcasters to televisions, and online information from one computer to the next, wirelessly. As a result of this spectrum crunch, the FCC previews higher prices and bad reception in cell phone services, as well as a stifling of innovation and growth in mobile communications. The FCC plans to address this problem in part by getting the authority from Congress to carry out incentive auctions. Such auctions would consist on broadcasters voluntarily giving up some or their entire current licensed spectrum to the FCC; which would then put the spectrum up for auction to wireless broadband services, and in turn, reward broadcasters with part of the auction proceeds. In this way, the FCC would allow the spectrum now used only for broadcasting, to be used for other needed services. The FCC’s proposal entails relying on the voluntariness of broadcasters to give up their spectrum. There is an important problem with this approach. The FCC already has the power to withdraw broadcasters’ right to use the spectrum without the need to compensate them for it. In fact, broadcasters only have a license to use the spectrum for eight years, after which they may ask for a license renewal. At this moment, the FCC can deny them a license renewal if it finds that it is in the public interest to do so. Nevertheless, the Agency has not used this power effectively and, as a result, broadcasters have obtained license renewals almost as a matter of course, leading to an inefficient use of the spectrum. The FCC’s current proposal is problematic because it may give this Agency an incentive to use only incentive auctions as a tool to get the needed spectrum for the wireless industry, instead of also using its regulatory power to deny license renewals effectively. This result would not be desirable: it would undermine the FCC’s regulatory role and it would in turn let broadcasters, even those who have not served the public interest, benefit from the incentive auction proceeds, when they could have been denied the right to stay in the spectrum without any compensation.After presenting a brief background and the risks of the FCC allowing all broadcasters to participate in incentive auctions, this Comment will argue that Congress should condition such participation on each broadcaster’s record of compliance with public interest obligations. Furthermore, the FCC should assess compliance with these obligations according to a stricter public interest standard, assessed via a two-step test. First the FCC would assess whether a broadcaster has complied with present statutory and regulatory programming requirements, including a stricter showing of an offering of programming that addresses community interests. Second, the FCC would use a system to rate the different programs offered by broadcasters in terms of their desirability to consumers. In this way, the Agency would assess whether broadcasters have used their spectrum efficiently. Only those broadcasters that pass the test would be able to participate in the incentive auctions. Those who do not, would risk having their license renewal denied at the end of their license term and return their spectrum to the FCC. The Agency would in turn auction off such spectrum, but instead of sharing with the broadcaster some of the auction proceeds, it would give them all to the Treasury. In this way, the FCC can balance its desire to use incentive auctions as a means to address the current spectrum crunch while at the same time protecting its regulatory role in the use of the spectrum.

Volleyball technical skills as winning and qualification factors during the Olympic Games 2008

The purpose of this study was to examine the technical skills that emerged as statistically important for volleyball men teams’ progress into the qualification round, semi-final and final in the Beijing Olympic Games of 2008. Collection of data included the use of the statistical recording program Data Volley 2 Professional (2005) for games evaluated. Additional statistical analyses included the use of SPSS 15.0. Kruskal-Wallis nonparametric test use revealed statistically significant differences among the teams concerning the “attack errors following bad receptions” factor. Additional statistical analyses using Mann - Whitney U test showed statistically important differences between the teams playing in each semi-final and the final with the qualification round teams regarding the “attack errors following bad receptions” factor. Statistically important differences were also noticed in the “attack after bad reception” between qualification round teams and teams playing in the final (Brazil-USA)

Comparison of error concealment techniques for an MPEG-2 video decoder in terrestrial TV-broadcasting

In terrestrial broadcasting the received power fluctuation might be in the order of 10 dB, where a non-hierarchical TV-transmission scheme may fail at bad reception conditions. A two layer hierarchical transmission system, also specified by the European digital terrestrial TV-broadcasting standard, may help to have better reception conditions especially for fixed receivers. However, the portable/mobile receiver that only needs the base layer of this hierarchical signal may risk a total loss of picture. Since no time interleaving is foreseen in the standard, the situation is more critical in the case of shadowing, high Doppler (mobile reception), or impulsive noise, whereas even for fixed receivers with two hierarchical levels a good quality of service cannot be guaranteed. Therefore, in order to assume a continuous service with higher quality, some post-processing techniques such as error concealment at the receiver side will be desirable. These techniques, for instance even in the case of hierarchical transmission, may offer better results by concealing the errors instead of using only the most robust stream. The aim of this article is to study different error concealment techniques for the European digital terrestrial TV-broadcasting standard where the source coding is based on MPEG-2. These techniques are based on temporal, spatial and frequency error concealment techniques and on the combination of them. Simulations showed that motion compensated temporal error concealment provides best results for P- and B-pictures, whereas a combination of temporal error concealment and re-synchronization or the use of shorter slices provides best results for I-pictures.