Glossy Images Research Articles

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The 19th century saw a remarkable innovation of the subject-matter of Danish altarpaintings. Frequently depicting the ministry of Christ and his Glory, these paintings have often been criticized for being skillfully executed but lacking drama, being overly sweet or even sentimental. This article argues that, in spite of the glossy façade, these paintings often engage in far more sinister topics of life and of faith. The article argues that Søren Kierkegaard’s theology offers a superb lens for gaining insights into this side of the religious painting of the so-called ‘Golden Age’ of Danish art and explores the ‘shadows of the glossy images’ through close readings of Danish altar pieces ranging from Bertel Thorvaldsen’s seminal Christ and C. W. Eckersberg’s ground-breaking Incredulity of Thomas to late 19th Century works of art by Constantin Hansen and Anton Dorph. The main argument of the article is that a negative understanding of this world and not least the constant struggle between being separated from, but needing to get (spiritually) closer to the Saviour remain very strong themes in the religious paintings throughout the 1800s, albeit mainly offered as a personal experience and not as a part of the ideal Christ figure.

Glossiness Index of Objects in Halftone Color Images Based on Structure and Appearance Distortion.

This paper proposes an objective glossiness index for objects in halftone color images. In the proposed index, we consider the characteristics of the human visual system (HVS) and associate the image’s structure distortion and statistical information. According to the difference in the number of strategies adopted by the HVS in judging the difference between images, it is divided into single and multi-strategy modeling. In this study, we advocate multiple strategies to determine glossy or non-glossy quality. We assumed that HVS used different visual mechanisms to evaluate glossy and non-glossy objects. For non-glossy images, the image structure dominated, so the HVS tried to use structural information to judge distortion (a strategy based on structural distortion detection). For glossy images, the glossy appearance dominated; thus, the HVS tried to search for the glossiness difference (an appearance-based strategy). Herein, we present an index for glossiness assessment that attempts to explicitly model the structural dissimilarity and appearance distortion. We used the contrast sensitivity function to account for the mechanism of halftone images when viewed by the human eye. We estimated the structure distortion for the first strategy by using local luminance and contrast masking; meanwhile, local statistics changing in the spatial frequency components for skewness and standard deviation were used to estimate the appearance distortion for the second strategy. Experimental results showed that these two mixed-distortion measurement strategies performed well in consistency with the subjective ratings of glossiness in halftone color images.

Aesthetic Preference for Glossy Materials: An Attempted Replication and Extension.

The psychology of art and aesthetics has a long-standing interest in how low-level features, such as symmetry, curvature, and color, affect people’s aesthetic experience. Recent research in this tradition suggests that people find glossy, shiny objects and materials more attractive than flat, matte ones. The present experiment sought to replicate and extend research on the attractiveness of images printed on glossy and flat paper. To control for several possible confounding factors, glossiness was manipulated between-person and varied with methods that held constant factors like weight, color quality, and resolution. To extend past work, we explored art expertise and Openness to Experience as potential moderators. A sample of 100 adults viewed landscape photographs on either high-gloss photo paper or on identical paper in which a flat, matte spray finish had been applied. Ratings of attractiveness showed weak evidence for replication. People rated the glossy pictures as more attractive than the matte ones, but the effect size was small (d = −0.23 [−0.62, 0.16]) and not statistically significant. Attractiveness ratings were significantly moderated, however, by individual differences in the aesthetic appreciation facet of Openness to Experience. When aesthetic appreciation was high, people found the images attractive regardless of condition; when it was low, people strongly preferred the glossy images over the matte ones, thus showing the classic glossiness effect. We conclude with some methodological caveats for future research.

Modern Architecture and Climate: Design before Air Conditioning by Daniel A. Barber

Reviewed by: Modern Architecture and Climate: Design before Air Conditioning by Daniel A. Barber Matthew Johnson Daniel A. Barber. Modern Architecture and Climate: Design before Air Conditioning. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020. ISBN: 9780691170039 Hardcover: 336 pages Several years ago, I moved to Houston, which has been called the "most air-conditioned city in the world." In the sweltering summer months, when the air parks at 95º F and 90% humidity, the city retreats indoors to a constant climate. Houston is a city of bubbles: cars and restaurants and houses all miraculously thermoregulated at around 72º F. Its postwar growth was enabled by a number of factors, but air conditioning was perhaps the most important catalyst. In cities like Houston, sealed glass towers became the iconic models for a climatically unbounded global architecture. But there was a period before air conditioning was ubiquitous when architects explored visionary modern alternatives to climate design without the use of air conditioning. Daniel Barber's Modern Architecture and Climate: Design Before Air Conditioning engages with this history of what he calls "climactic modernism,"1 where questions of sustainable design were fundamental. Modern architecture, Barber argues, was initially formulated as a "strategy of climactic adaptability."2 It was only later deployed as a means of universalizing global urbanization. Barber proposes a reevaluation not only of the period before air conditioning but also of the interpretation of modern architecture in the decades since, which he describes as a process of "reorienting modernist icons."3 Modern architecture, he suggests, was transformed by later critics who filtered how we understand this work. As he argues, midcentury architects struggled to promote modern architecture's ability to create comfort in varied climates over and against the pressure to disseminate a glossy image of it as a luxury. Air conditioning was a modern convenience, a new emblem of futuristic living. Le Corbusier is a central figure in Barber's argument. Today, Le Corbusier is known most prominently for his innovations in building form, structure, and program. But key to his early thinking—and relatively underexplored—is his engagement with climate. Modern Architecture and Climate's opening chapter describes at length Le Corbusier's unbuilt Barcelona Lotissements from 1931, whose facade was a louvered climatic control system, defining how the residences mediated breeze and light. As Barber shows in Part I of the book, modern architects in India, Brazil, Congo, the Philippines and elsewhere quickly adopted Le Corbusier's sun-shading louver strategy, first developed in the Lotissements project. This strategy provided a way of absorbing diverse cultures into a single, optimizable architectural solution that could be applied anywhere, with its parameters adjusted to local climate in heat, light, and humidity. Barber emphasizes that this concern with building climate was not a "green" movement in the contemporary sense.4 The goal was not necessarily to create deeper connections with nature, nor healthy ecosystems. Instead, Barber repeatedly uses the words optimize and condition. And it was not only air being conditioned, but people and even societies. Climatic modernism instrumentalized the interior environment to create ideal conditions for working and living. Barber points to the much-utilized notion of the comfort zone as evidence that the very idea of comfort becomes a stand-in for idealized architectural space. Barber extends this argument to portray a global colonization by architectural technologies.5 Early paradigmatic models were built in Brazil, such as the 1936 Ministério da Educação e [End Page 133] da Saúde by a team including Lucio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer, and were widely copied across the global south. The US government, similarly, built International Style embassies in climates as varied as New Delhi (Edward Durrell Stone), Accra (Harry Weese), and Stockholm (Ralph Rapson and John van der Muelen). Architecture and its technologies became a tool of post-colonial statecraft, a geopolitical aesthetic telegraphed to distant locales. This geopolitical aesthetic went hand in hand with new notions of the planet as an integrated environmental system, such as Kenneth Boulding's spaceship earth, that arose from both the hard and social sciences. Barber calls this the "planetary imaginary," a way of considering building ecology entwined with global ecosystems. Richard Neutra, whom Barber regards...

Scratching the surface of spectacle: Black hypermasculinity and the Television Talent Show

This study explores the construction of black hypermasculinity in television talent show competitions through the re-valuing of spectacle as an aesthetic experience. Drawing on a screendance analysis of eighteen duet, trio and group performances featured in ITV’s Britain’s Got Talent (BGT) and Sky1’s Got To Dance (GTD) between 2008-2013, this study explores the circulation of black hypermasculinity and the potentiality for an alternate reading of spectacular displays of athleticism. Building upon Kristen Whissel’s concept of the emblematic nature of the special effect in cinema, the re-valuing of televised spectacles reveals themes regarding the black male experience in these competitions. Rather than dismissing these performances as commercial spectacles that recirculate notions of black hypermasculinity, these corporeal and televisual special effects instead highlight the thematic narrative of the reality television journey through themes of aspiration and transformation. Crews constructs images of superheroes, cartoons, animals and cyborgs, manipulated by camera angles and editing, that operate as both light entertainment and a reflection of the young black male experience in mediascope of reality television. The creation of spectacular and glossy images on screen therefore reveals the potentiality of a fluid gender and racialized representation.

Assessing gloss perception of human facial skin across subject

We propose novel techniques for the evaluation of perceived facial gloss across subjects with varying surface reflections. Given a database of facial skin images from multiple subjects, ordered according to perceived gloss within each subject, we propose a head-tail (least and most glossy image of each subject) selective comparison approach for ordering the entire database. We conducted a two-alternative forced-choice empirical study to compare the facial gloss across subjects within each group. Using the gloss scores of selected candidates and the gloss range of a reference subject, we fit each within-subject gloss range to a global gloss range and quantized the scores into distinct gloss levels. We then conducted another empirical study to validate the quantized gloss levels. The results show that in 90% of the cases, the levels are consistent with human judgments. Based on the database with quantized gloss levels, we develop a max-margin learning model for facial skin gloss estimation. The model relies on gloss related statistics extracted from surface and subsurface reflection images obtained using multimodal photography. The predicted gloss level is decided by the nearest neighbors using the learned scoring function. Performance tests demonstrate that the best performance, with 82% accuracy, is obtained when we combine local statistics from both surface and subsurface reflections.

A Concept Analysis Scheme of Simple Stories for Learning Resources through Extraction of Domain-based Multimedia Elements

Children with special needs face major difficulties to understand the script of stories. They cannot comprehend the words’ meaning properly. Instructors use different techniques to explain them. They read the script several times, use glossy images, symbols, and short clips. The instructors spend a lot of time searching for these elements. The preparation of every tutorial requires several hours of hard work. The objective of this work is to build a system to assist the instructor finding multimedia elements in real time that can be used during the learning sessions. The proposed system is based on a domain-oriented architecture focusing on animals and food. We use different techniques for text processing including concept analysis, key words extraction and sentence ranking. We can then determine the most significant words and sentences and generate the corresponding multimedia elements. Instructors and children can use smart devices in learning inside and outside the classroom.

Quaking Cantos: Nepal Earthquake Poems

Night Alone in a Motel,” which begins: “I gaze into an evening ocean branded with clouds. / Waves from my unsalvageable wreck swell toward another wreck.” Such imagery reveals more than mere confession ever could. Shim may remind American readers of John Ashbery’s emotive impressionism. Lines like “A flower falls. / Wandering in time, whirling around / the earlobe of a brief moment,” from the poem “A Flower Falls,” could have been written by Ashbery in his more tender mode. It would be easy to mistake Shim, as it is easy to mistake Ashbery, for a purveyor of cheap surrealism, an easy enough poetic trick. A closer look, however, reveals that Shim’s relationship with the irrational is closer to symbolist than surrealist , or it is surrealist only in the purest sense of the original French movement, in that the oddness of image moves the reader toward a deeper reality, one worth exploring. Benjamin Myers Oklahoma Baptist University Yuyutsu Sharma. Quaking Cantos: Nepal Earthquake Poems. New Delhi. Nirala. 2016. 81 pages. On what seemed like an ordinary day in 2015, a series of rumbles jostled the Nepali region, killing thousands and thrusting countless more into homelessness. An encounter with this disorientating rift produced Quaking Cantos, a visual and verbal response to the wreckage that emerged when planet ground against earth. Much like the title itself, Quaking Cantos—either an epic poem or a quavering song, depending on orientation—is a stunningly heartwrenching , albeit healing, rendezvous with torment of the highest order. In this compilation , photography by Prasant Shrestha joins the verse of Himalayan poet Yuyutsu Sharma to produce a slim rejoinder to an otherwise blind and mute confrontation with chaos. Sleek and glossy images smolder from behind the eyes and intersperse this rubblelike arrangement of verse, the cover of which prominently demands an immediate reckoning with unexpected tumult. Bricks, dust, and the unrecognizable remains of a once-normal life confront the reader before the title page to part 1, “I generally do not cry . . .” and once again in the middle of part 2, “Seven Things That Caused the Quakes.” (The title page to part 1 likewise locates itself before the table of contents, another disjunction.) Two etchings of the writer’s face directly follow the epilogue, “A Song of Extinguished Hearths,” and portray the writer with eyes shut and, later, wide open. With eyes wide shut, emotions tremor from page to page throughout two parts and their summation. Somnolent images of an ancestral grandmother shuffle from one world to the next, leaving Sharma, as it were, to mull over the collective remains of grief under a vast dome of sky. Paradox meets fate when, in an initial poem entitled “Twisted Galaxies,” Sharma soulfully pens: “My bed shakes / as I prepare to reclaim / fractured / fragments of my sleep.” Like many collections of verse, Quaking Cantos ends in epilogue. What is different is that the grandmother, once again, instructs the scribe to sing, as he recalls, “A song of livid flames / rising out of clay hearths / in makeshift shacks / along the mule paths.” A spiritual quest in search of explanation journeys through a cacophony of images yet ends under the flames of the unknown of what was once possessed but has been lost. Transient and reflective, Quaking Cantos distills loss into revelation as only a shaman and photographer can envisage. Andrea Dawn Bryant Georgetown University Nora Iuga. The Hunchbacks’ Bus. Trans. Adam J. Sorkin & Diana Manole. Fayetteville, New York. Bitter Oleander Press. 2016. 117 pages. The Hunchbacks’ Bus marks the first published collection of Nora Iuga’s poetry in English, a reminder that too many prominent Romanian authors remain underrepresented in translation. Born in 1931, Iuga has written over thirty books of poetry and prose, a prolific output made all the more remarkable considering Romania’s Communist government censored her from 1971 to 1978. This volume serves as a fine introduction to Iuga’s singular poetic style. The fantastic adventures of the hunchback sam (the author is dedicated in her resistance to capitalization) and his idiosyncratic family read like an absurdist parable, instructing readers to look carefully and World Literature in Review 110 WLT MAY–AUGUST 2017 ...

It's Not Easy Being Green: Integrating Refugees in German Environmentalist Culture

The solidarity crisis has prompted many initiatives for refugees in Germany, among them quite a few local and state-funded environmental education programs. Many of these initiatives are framed as measures of cultural integration and issue bold statements such as “recycling has become a cultural value in Germany.” Media depictions of these programs therefore inadvertently detail the cultural specificity of “environmentalism made in Germany” and reveal institutionalized idiosyncrasies of a long-standing green leader. The news coverage as well as the online self-presentations of these initiatives seem to embody the ideals of Willkommenskultur with glossy images of people of color among their blond neighbors and with captions that feature moments of mutual learning. Yet despite ample evidence of good intentions driving the programs, their feel-good depictions are problematic for many reasons: they are invariably dominated by German voices and specifically German environmental concerns, rendering the (homogenized) refugees and the global dimension of climate change secondary yet somehow responsible. Many of the articles begin with the imagery of trash surrounding refugee housing, seemingly not realizing that these portrayals suggest a linkage between refuse and refuge – between discarded objects and displaced human beings. Largely ignoring pressing issues of asylum housing and employment, it is not always clear whose problems these programs set out to solve, and the more tone-deaf reporting about them brings to light many difficult notions, such as conceiving of German environmentalism as thepath to integration (a problematic concept to begin with) and as a universal good despite its apparent localism. This article analyzes available media representations of a set of environmentalist initiatives for refugees, which tell us as much, if not more, about German perceptions of cultural values and related conversations in the publics sphere as about refugees and the environment.Keywordssolidarity crisis, refugees, German environmental culture, environmental education, recycling, Will

The House of Cards of Corporate Governance: Re-Thinking Transparency and Disclosure of Ownership

The entire architecture of contemporary corporate governance is reminiscent of a house of cards. This particular metaphor invokes two ideas that are important for understanding the current state of the debate surrounding corporate governance. Firstly, it captures the fragile facade of corporate governance today. There is no doubt that a house of cards is impressive, but the removal of one card reveals the fundamental weakness of the whole structure. Beneath the impressive outward facade of contemporary corporate governance, there are similar structural weaknesses.Secondly, the metaphor of a house of cards alludes to the recent Netflix TV show and the Machiavellian intrigues that surround the power-hungry Democratic congressman, and later President, Francis Frank Underwood, as portrayed by Kevin Spacey. His self-serving machinations seem designed to expose the gap between the glossy image and base reality of contemporary US politics. The pertinent point in this context is the way in which the discourse and practice of contemporary corporate governance contributes to the creation of a similar false reality surrounding business regulation.In order to clarify the metaphor in more detail, this paper focuses on the issues of disclosure, transparency and as examples of how the current framework is broken. The problems with the current approach to transparency and ownership - namely more rules leading to a one-size-fits-all approach, herd behavior and standardization - are illustrative of some more general problems with the contemporary regulation of corporate governance. But rather than simply diagnose the problem with the existing framework, this paper develops an alternative regulatory approach that is more likely to be effective. The paper begins by reviewing contemporary discussion on ownership and control (II-III), before discussing the results of an extensive empirical survey of the annual reports of 280 companies in fourteen jurisdictions (IV) and introducing an alternative disclosure model for new generation firms (V-VI).

Development of Printing Method to Produce High-glossy Images with UV Inkjet Printer

While UV-curable inkjet printers have come into wide use, these printing systems have a few problems to be solved. We took notice that the printed images showed relatively low gloss. The decrease in gloss is known to be caused by the fact that UV-curable ink changes into solid before leveling off under irradiation of UV light. We have been trying to develop the new application of UV-curable inkjet printing to obtain high glossy images on the surface of various articles. We had already presented a prototype as one of such trials at ICJ2012, the annual conference of the Imaging Society of Japan in 2012. The process was called DVT which was the decompression transfer printing process with a UV-curable inkjet printer and a vacuum chamber. The DVT had some problems such as low image quality and troublesome process with manual operation. The first improved process which was called DVT-I was proposed at ICJ2013 held in Tokyo last June. However there still remained a few problems, so that we have continued our study and then developed an automated machine in this study. High image gloss has been obtained by excluding air bubbles during the decompression process. Thus we have been able to create products with high quality and glossy images on the surface of various articles.

Development of Digital Quasi-embossing Technology with an Inkjet Printer-2

Conventional embossing printing technology which can be used to produce metallic glossy images on stereo-shaped objects needs a pressing plate with the image patterns specially arranged. Accordingly, the embossing system is relatively expensive and lacks the adaptability for high-mix low-volume production. Considering these facts, we developed the Digital Quasiembossing Technology (DQT) which consisted of the technology combined with UV-curable inkjet printing and hot foil-stamping. We reported the DQT for the first time at NIP 28 in Quebec City last year. This paper is a continuation of the last report and describes the following facts. (a) We have improved the adhesion of UV-curable ink to a metallic foil, and consequently we can make not only relatively small-sized products but also large-sized ones with pictures and letters printed thereon. (b) The improved DQT system can produce higher gloss than the last system reported at NIP 28.

P1-27: Localizing Regions Activated by Surface Gloss in Macaque Visual Cortex by fMRI

Surface properties of objects such as gloss provide important information about the states or materials of objects in our visual experiences. Previous studies have shown that there are cortical regions responding to shapes, colors, faces etc. in the macaque visual cortex. However, we still lack the information about where the surface properties are processed in the macaque visual cortex. In this study, we examined whether there are regions activated by surface gloss, an important surface property, in the macaque visual cortex by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We trained two monkeys to fixate on a small spot on the screen in MRI scanner, while the images of glossy and matte objects were presented. As a control condition for low-level image features, such as spatial frequency or luminance contrast, we generated scrambled images by locally randomizing the luminance phases of images using wavelet filters. By contrasting the responses to glossy images to those to matte and scrambled images...

Review: American Glamour and the Evolution of Modern Architecture, by Alice T. Friedman

Alice T. Friedman . American Glamour and the Evolution of Modern Architecture . New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010, ix +262 pp., 40 color and 125 b/w illus. $65.00, ISBN 9780300116540 You might imagine, from a quick glance at the dust jacket, that this volume would fall into the category of coffee-table book. Certainly the glossy image of poolside entertaining at Richard Neutra's Kaufmann Desert House in Palm Springs would suggest a title like Hot Resorts of Southern California or The New American Desert Style . The first part of the title, American Glamour , rendered in large letters that pick up the tint of the swimming pool, does nothing to dispel this impression. Title and image appear calculated to suggest that this is not a stuffy work of scholarship. Left at that, the reader might well assume it was another breezy romp through the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Only with the second line of the title is there an indication of how much higher the author has set her sights. In fact, this book is one of the most intriguing and compelling studies to date on modern architecture, at least on a key group of American midcentury examples of it. American architecture after World War II has inspired a great wave of recent work ranging from the ponderously erudite to the breathlessly enthusiastic. With this book Alice Friedman, a professor of art history at Wellesley College, weighs in …

From Jugendbewegung to RAF: Youth, Friendship, and Protest in Post-Wall German Cinema

From Jugendbewegung to RAF: Youth, Friendship, and Protest in Post-Wall German Cinema

Transitions of a Still Life: Ceramic Work by Tam Irving (review)

Reviewed by: Transitions of a Still Life: Ceramic Work by Tam Irving Sandra Alfoldy (bio) Carol E. Mayer. Transitions of a Still Life: Ceramic Work by Tam Irving. Anvil Press / Burnaby Art Gallery. 127. $32.95 Carol E. Mayer’s Transitions of a Still Life: Ceramic Work by Tam Irving is a delight to read as she situates Irving in the context of contemporary Canadian ceramics. It is clear from the introduction that Carol E. Mayer and Tam Irving are friends with many shared experiences. Mayer notes that they first met in 1989 when she called upon Irving for advice on installing a kiln at the Museum of Anthropology, where Mayer is a senior curator. Their rapport is evident in the ease with which Mayer discusses Irving’s life and work, and the access she enjoyed to his intimate thoughts on surviving as a ceramist. While this may run counter to the scholarly imperative that demands neutral subjectivity, the approach is charming and effective. She has distilled her many conversations with Irving into fluid descriptions of his ceramic works, which come to life through glossy images. This conversational tone is underpinned by substantial research into Tam Irving’s career progression, and Mayer is careful to present historical references to support her arguments. The book is broken up into six chapters that trace a linear chronology of Irving’s life. A remarkable story emerges of a determined man who fell deeply in love with clay. Born in Portugal to a mother who practised maiolica ceramics, Irving received a degree in agriculture from Edinburgh University in 1952. He moved to Vancouver, then Winnipeg, where he took night classes in ceramics at the Winnipeg School of Art and rented a basement studio from the renowned ceramist Jack Sures. Irving was accepted into the University of California–Berkeley, to work with Peter Voulkos, a guru in the world of conceptual clay. Mayer recounts how Irving realized he was in love with the notion of the ‘pot,’ rather than sculptural, non-functional ceramics. Here the book is a departure from much of the literature on contemporary ceramics; whereas many publications celebrate Voulkos and his Canadian counterparts in the California Funk/Regina Clay ceramics movements (Marilyn Levine, David Gilhooly), Mayer offers an important counter-narrative – the story of the production studio potter. She does a good job outlining the difficult realities faced by Irving the production potter, and how they [End Page 446] contradicted the utopian vision of studio pottery put forward by Bernard Leach. This theme runs through the chapter on Irving’s transition into a pottery instructor at the Vancouver School of Art (now Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design) in 1974. As a studio potter turned ceramic professor, Irving struggled to adapt his self-sufficiency into effective teaching for students. In addition, ‘It wasn’t long before he started to realize that craft at the art school was marginalized.’ Mayer offers a glimpse into the tensions between ceramic’s emphasis on skill and the school’s conceptual art focus. Irving developed ‘a series of objectives for his teaching that were based on his own practice,’ including an understanding of history, emphasis on skill, constant experimentation, individualism, self-criticism, and technical competency. Throughout the book, images of Irving’s ceramic works accompany the text, providing important reminders of the luscious surfaces, architectural forms, and utilitarian ergonomics that remain central to Irving’s clay sensibilities. Mayer dedicates a chapter to Irving’s still lifes. These are a series of compositions ‘investigating how he might thematize the vessel,’ made up of a backdrop, a shelf, and clay vessels. These are remarkable studies derived from still life paintings that featured clay vessels. Irving’s former studio assistant, Ron Vallis, argues that by copying the painted ceramics forms of artists such as Giorgio Morandi and William Bailey, Irving was responding to ‘being at the art school.’ The book ends with the chapter ‘New Works,’ and here Irving surprises us by introducing colour and hard-edged forms. While these look miles from his humble brown pots, Mayer has carefully led the reader into understanding why Irving headed in this direction. The art historical monograph is a tricky beast...

On Safari in the File Format Jungle—Why Can't You Visualize My Data?

Lots of glossy images and striking movies on the one side, lots of numbers and full hard disks on the other—seems like a natural pair. So why can't visualization people just visualize some data?

Gurus and Indian Epistemologies

This article intertwines pedagogy and Indian epistemologies by offering the use of parables in the education of management consultants, particularly those seeking to work in India. Through the presentation of a field report in the form of parables constructed from lived-in and lived-through consultancy assignments, this article highlights the labor-intensive textile sector of India that employs approximately 35 million people. The parables are presented in a format that can be utilized to understand and unpack the complexity of India that is a far cry from the glossy images of India's expanding IT prowess. The article argues for the need to develop consultants who, in grappling with knowledge and action, can move beyond Western templates in management consulting.

Advanced Color Toner for Fine Image Quality

Application of full color printers has spread rapidly in the office environment, and demands on the full color printer have been also increasing; especially, high-speed printing, oilless fusing and fine image quality are strongly requested. Recently, several types of chemical toner have been launched. Because they have small and narrow particle size distributions, they have an advantage in fine image quality. However, the resin of chemical toners are usually styrene-acrylic, which is not suitable for high-speed printing and glossy images for pictorial applications because the styrene-acrylic has to be high molecular weight to make toner have sufficient durability. On the other hand, polyester has better properties for high-speed printing than styrene-acrylic because of the existence of a polar group that enhances a compatibility with the cellulose of paper. Polyester has good durability even if it has a low molecular weight and thus can provide a glossy image. Thus polyester has several advantages over styrene-acrylic. In general, it is difficult to use polyester as the binder resin of chemical toner. On the other hand, it is easy to make polyester color toner by the pulverization method, but it is difficult to make pulverized toner having small and narrow particle size distribution for fine image quality, and it is also difficult to make pulverized toner having both oilless fusing ability and sufficient durability. In this article, design of oilless fusable, pulverized color toner with small and narrow particle size distribution was investigated. This advanced color toner named "MC toner" can provide high-speed printing, oilless fusing, and also fine image quality.

The Advanced Color Toner for the Fine Image Quality II

As color printer becomes to be widely used, demand for fine image quality is also increasing. Therefore, toner with small and narrow size distribution for high-resolution development and small adhesion force to photoconductor for faithful transfer is required.In this paper, design of pulverized toner with small and narrow particle size distribution for oil-less fusing system is reported. To pulverize toner to small size, the combination of fine wax dispersion and pre-condition method, or the pulverization in the existence of silica is important. This advanced pulverized toner using polyester resin also shows low-temperature fusing property, glossy image and fine durability. And an approach to the toner having small adhesion force to photoconductor is also reported. Both of control of the shape of toner and surface treatment by proper silica is effective.