Online Performances Research Articles

Exploring Japanese students’ e-learning habits

Since 2010, both universities in which the authors teach have integrated PC-based e-learning or mobile learning programs into several English courses. Students’ online performances are evaluated and used in determining the grades for each course. The data accumulated over the years indicates both changing and unchanged e-learning habits among Japanese university students. By analyzing the data, coupled with information obtained from questionnaires, we conclude that while some e-learning habits remain unchanged, several new learning habits have emerged. The unchanged e-learning habits include: predominant use of the iPhone, which remains the most popular mobile learning tool; a deadline rush for completing e-learning tasks; preference for evening and night for e-learning; e-learning diligence, i.e. the frequency of participation and duration of participation remain the same. The data also shows that in recent years some new trends have appeared in students’ e-learning: more students had experience with e-learning before entering university; fewer concerns about the cost of mobile phone Internet connection than previously.

Drag kings in Cape Town: The performance of gendered subjectivities online

The last few decades have seen the development of a large body of scholarly work on drag queens and performances of femininity by men (see Barrett 1995, 1999). However, performances of masculinity by women have largely been overlooked. Research by scholars like Judith Halberstam (1997, 1998) on female masculinity and the drag king performer has attempted to address this imbalance, but the phenomenon has yet to receive any attention from sociolinguists. This study aims to bring attention to online performances of masculinity by women in the South African context through a multimodal analysis of the Facebook pages of performers in the country’s first known drag king troupe, Bros B4 Ho’s. The study has three broad aims: firstly, to demonstrate the way in which the process of entextualisation is used as a key resource in the kings’ performances of masculinity online; secondly, to demonstrate that the masculinities put on display during these events are ‘queer subject position[s] that can successfully challenge hegemonic models of gender conformity’ (Halberstam 1997, 9); and thirdly, to argue that what the kings do is not always a straightforward disruption of heteronormative masculinity – at times they reproduce and reinforce the very structures they seek to critique.

Improvements in Spoken Query System to Access the Agricultural Commodity Prices and Weather Information in Kannada Language/Dialects

Abstract In this paper, the improvements in the recently developed end to end spoken query system to access the agricultural commodity prices and weather information in Kannada language/dialects is demonstrated. The spoken query system consists of interactive voice response system (IVRS) call flow, automatic speech recognition (ASR) models and agricultural commodity prices, and weather information databases. The task specific speech data used in the earlier spoken query system had a high level of background and other types of noises as it is collected from the farmers of Karnataka state (a state in India that speaks the Kannada language) under uncontrolled environment. The different types of noises present in collected speech data had an adverse effect on the on-line and off-line recognition performances. To improve the recognition accuracy in spoken query system, a noise elimination algorithm is proposed in this work, which is a combination of spectral subtraction with voice activity detection (SS-VAD) and minimum mean square error spectrum power estimator based on zero crossing (MMSE-SPZC). The noise elimination algorithm is added in the system before the feature extraction part. In addition to this, alternate acoustic models are developed using subspace Gaussian mixture models (SGMM) and deep neural network (DNN). The experimental results show that these modeling techniques are more powerful than the conventional Gaussian mixture model (GMM) – hidden Markov model (HMM), which was used as a modeling technique for the development of ASR models to design earlier spoken query systems. The fusion of noise elimination technique and SGMM/DNN-based modeling gives a better relative improvement of 7% accuracy compared to the earlier GMM-HMM-based ASR system. The least word error rate (WER) acoustic models could be used in spoken query system. The on-line speech recognition accuracy testing of developed spoken query system (with the help of Karnataka farmers) is also presented in this work.

Online staging of femininity: disciplining through public exposure in Brazilian social media

This article analyses the architecture of online environments as facilitating both the performance and the staging, within a Brazilian context, of a sexualised femininity that is stereotypically reductive to hegemonic definitions of body image and bodily practices. While online performances can be considered as postfeminist attempts at reclaiming agency through the reappropriation of traditional signifiers of femininity, this staging of femininity ultimately objectifies women by stabilising boundaries of gendered power relations, thus reinforcing a normative connection between gender and sexuality. By focusing on three recent cases of online harassment that occurred in Brazilian social media, I unravel the connection between misogyny and a neoliberal culture of hypersexualized performance of femininity, which commodifies the signifiers of gendered difference. Despite the differences involved in each of the case-studies analysed, they all demonstrate how digital intimacy articulates “a particular knowledge about the other,” ascribing value to certain bodies over others. Using discourse analysis of corpus data, I investigate how language is used to categorise and identify the female protagonists in these case-studies, so as to include and exclude particular forms of “femininity” from discourse. The article concludes that the subversive potential of social media is constituted, in the Brazilian context, not so much by the postfeminist capacity to playfully create a rupture with a prevalent culture of gendered normativity, but rather by the possibility of surveilling and disciplining the boundaries of femininity, with a punitive dimension of “public exposure” that violently reinforces gendered power relations.

Motor Imagery-Based Brain-Computer Interface Coupled to a Robotic Hand Orthosis Aimed for Neurorehabilitation of Stroke Patients.

Motor imagery-based brain-computer interfaces (BCI) have shown potential for the rehabilitation of stroke patients; however, low performance has restricted their application in clinical environments. Therefore, this work presents the implementation of a BCI system, coupled to a robotic hand orthosis and driven by hand motor imagery of healthy subjects and the paralysed hand of stroke patients. A novel processing stage was designed using a bank of temporal filters, the common spatial pattern algorithm for feature extraction and particle swarm optimisation for feature selection. Offline tests were performed for testing the proposed processing stage, and results were compared with those computed with common spatial patterns. Afterwards, online tests with healthy subjects were performed in which the orthosis was activated by the system. Stroke patients' average performance was 74.1 ± 11%. For 4 out of 6 patients, the proposed method showed a statistically significant higher performance than the common spatial pattern method. Healthy subjects' average offline and online performances were of 76.2 ± 7.6% and 70 ± 6.7, respectively. For 3 out of 8 healthy subjects, the proposed method showed a statistically significant higher performance than the common spatial pattern method. System's performance showed that it has a potential to be used for hand rehabilitation of stroke patients.

The INSIDE project: on-line monitoring and simulation validation with the in-beam PET scanner

The quality assurance of particle therapy treatment is a fundamental issue that can be addressed by developing reliable monitoring techniques and indicators of the treatment plan accuracy. Monitoring using Position Emission Tomography (PET) systems is the only in-vivo non invasive technique employed clinically and has been carried out in particle therapy since 1997. However, the PET monitoring of β+ emitter isotopes is typically done after the treatment, resulting in a large fraction of lost data because of the isotopes rapid physical decay. The INSIDE collaboration has recently installed an in-beam PET scanner at the Italian National Center of Oncologic Hadrontherapy in Pavia, Italy. Here, there is an ongoing project in order to start testing the method on patients. This work focuses on the online performances of the scanner with clinical beams.

A globally enhanced general regression neural network for on-line multiple emissions prediction of utility boiler

Prediction of multiple emissions of boiler such as NOX, SO2 and mercury accurately and quickly can help operating engineers understanding the power unit deeply and controlling harmful emissions efficiently. However, most of existing works did not consider multiple emissions prediction, on-line prediction and accurately prediction in a simple and uniform framework. To this end, a new neural network system, named Globally Enhanced General Regression Neural Network (GE-GRNN), is proposed to solve multiple emissions prediction problem for utility boiler under on-line environment. The proposed GE-GRNN is based on General Regression Neural Network (GRNN), and employs Gaussian Adapted Resonance Theory (GART) as an incremental learning method to reduce memory cost of GRNN emission model, which is very suitable for large-scale real-time input samples. As contributions, three methods are introduced in GE-GRNN: (1) a modified wiggle-method is proposed to adjust smooth factors of GRNN dynamically to enhance both global and local estimations; (2) a fast polynomial extrapolation structure is designed in hidden layers of GRNN to improve the quality of extreme value estimation; and (3) a hybrid estimation mechanism is established to integrate wiggle-method and extrapolation into an uniform estimation framework. The simulation experiments are conducted on mathematical functions and real-world emissions predication of NOX and loss on ignition (LOI) of fly ash in a 600MW boiler. Results show that the proposed system performs attractive on-line performance while keeping agreement with testing samples well. The predicted emission performance of the tested boiler is reasonable, and can provide valuable reference to emission optimization. The proposed framework is domain independent and can be used to other fields for on-line multiple performances prediction.

Real-time ocular artifacts removal of EEG data using a hybrid ICA-ANC approach

Removal of ocular artifacts (OA) in real-time is an essential component in electroencephalography (EEG) based brain computer interface (BCI) applications. However, many proposed artifact removal methods are not applicable in real-time applications due to their time-consuming process. In this paper we propose a hybrid approach based on a new combination of independent component analysis (ICA) and adaptive noise cancellation (ANC). A particularly new feature of the proposed approach is the utilization of the ICA decomposition to extract the artifact source signal to be used in ANC based on neural networks. The method performs using a few EEG signals without requiring any additional electrodes (e.g. electrooculography). We show that the proposed approach is capable of effectively reducing the ocular artifacts in a negligible time delay well applicable in real-time BCI. In order to achieve reliable results, the proposed approach is evaluated using data recorded during cue-based BCI. The efficacy of the proposed approach in both offline and online performances is compared to several state of the art methods. The results demonstrate that the proposed approach outperforms the compared methods in terms of removal of OA and recovery of the underlying EEG.

The ordinary celebrity: Italian young vloggers and the definition of girlhood

Abstract This article examines the phenomenon of the ‘ordinary celebrity’ on YouTube and social media in relation to female adolescent fandom of Italian teen vloggers. The aim is to contribute to the debate on celebrity culture, by investigating the role of Web 2.0 in building and defining online performances that are recognized by young audiences as expressions of celebrity status. The young female vloggers studied for this work actively and regularly produce videos and media content to share on social media; their results are very impressive in terms of followers and fan comments, which are comparable to (or even greater than) those of mass media stars. However, vloggers’ daily narratives about their experience in everyday life (at school, with friends, opinions on fashion brands and make-up, etc.) are perceived by teenagers as natural and authentic and as something they can easily relate to, unlike the life of a traditional celebrity; as a consequence, vloggers’ discourses and behaviours are easily appropriated and used as symbolic materials in building girlhood identity. The article discusses the results of a netnographic research conducted on three teen vloggers, who are very famous among Italian teenagers, and on twenty teen fans. Vlogging productions and interviews were all analysed to understand what being a celebrity means in the convergence culture of the Web 2.0 and the role of these ordinary celebrities in defining contemporary girlhood.

Hashtags and hip-hop: exploring the online performances of hip-hop identified youth using Instagram

Despite hip-hop’s popularity, little attention has been paid to its effects on youth gender performances on social media. This study has analyzed how youth who identify with three popular hip-hop songs interpreted the songs’ messages and performed their gender on the social media application Instagram (IG). Posts (N=450) from IG users were examined using modified consensual qualitative research procedures. Ten categories emerged that illustrate the range of gender performances which youth engaged in, each of which occurred within one of four domains: (a) mixed messages (self-love and visibility; relationships); (b) reified messages (party life; provocations; conspicuous consumption); (c) challenged messages (growth; making new meaning; teamwork); and (d) neutral messages (humor; other). The findings from this study illustrate the influential role of hip-hop music on youth gender performance in a natural context (IG). IG posts often mirrored, and in turn contributed to, the narrow range of acceptable gender performances in hip-hop, suggesting the need for youth media literacy skill development.

Virtual Micronesia

This article examines the 'Stars of Micronesia' Facebook community and popular performance contest that ran continuously from August to November 2013. Examining its music and the participatory culture made available through social media, this study explores the role of online performances in negotiating conventional Pacific boundaries and in forging cultural networks in online musical environments. The case of the SOM demonstrates that participants have drawn largely on global musical practices as a means of creating an inclusive community that crosses cultural and national boundaries. Examining online performances and musical engagement on the site I contend that Islanders from Micronesia may be forging identities through music and social media that challenge conventional representations of this Pacific region and its people.

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PROBING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PROCESS OF SPATIAL PROBLEMS SOLVING AND SCIENCE LEARNING: AN EYE TRACKING APPROACH

There were two purposes in the study. One was to explore the cognitive activities during spatial problem solving and the other to probe the relationship between spatial ability and science concept learning. Twenty university students participated in the study. The Purdue Visualization of Rotations Test (PVRT) was used to assess the spatial ability, whose items were divided into different types of problems with respect to the rotation angles and levels of plane invisibility. The eye tracking technology and the interview technique were employed to analyze subjects’ the online cognitive processes and problem solving strategies. Students’ concept gains were examined by content analysis after reading a science report. The result shows that, first, the interview analysis shows that students of different PVRT performances employed different problem solving strategies. Second, rotation angles as well as levels of plane invisibility inserted significant effects on the online processes and performances of the spatial problem solving. Third, the accuracy performance of PVRT was correlated with eye movement patterns. At last, it was found that concept performance was not correlated with PVRT performance but associated with spatial memory and problem solving strategies.

A Novel Adaptive Operation Mode based on Fuzzy Logic Control of Electrical Vehicle

This research study presents an Adaptive Operation Mode (AOM) of an Electric Vehicle (EV) in order to reduce its energy con- sumption. This AOM can be Economic, Dynamic or Eco-Dynamic (EOM, DOM or EDOM) according to the battery State Of Charge (SOC). The control principle is based on specific Adaptive Fuzzy Logic (AFL) combined with the Maximum Control Structure (MCS) of EMR simulator of the studied vehicle. The AFL-MCS contributes to the robustness of motor drives of the vehicle and is used to meet the required autonomy regarding to the SOC. Also, to ensure the reaching and sustaining of speed and stability of the EV control with the on-line adaptive EV performances. Finally, the computer simulation results verify the valid- ity of the proposed controller and developped AOM and demonstrate that the proposed control scheme provides robust dynamic characteristics with saving 10% of SOC.

Control and Surrender: Negotiating the Risks and Rewards of Online Performances and Images

Control and Surrender: Negotiating the Risks and Rewards of Online Performances and Images

Extracting Signals Robust to Electrode Number and Shift for Online Simultaneous and Proportional Myoelectric Control by Factorization Algorithms

Previous research proposed the extraction of myoelectric control signals by linear factorization of multi-channel electromyogram (EMG) recordings from forearm muscles. This paper further analyses the theoretical basis for dimensionality reduction in high-density EMG signals from forearm muscles. Moreover, it shows that the factorization of muscular activation patterns in weights and activation signals by non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) is robust with respect to the channel configuration from where the EMG signals are obtained. High-density surface EMG signals were recorded from the forearm muscles of six individuals. Weights and activation signals extracted offline from 10 channel configurations with varying channel numbers (6, 8, 16, 192 channels) were highly similar. Additionally, the method proved to be robust against electrode shifts in both transversal and longitudinal direction with respect to the muscle fibers. In a second experiment, six subjects directly used the activation signals extracted from high-density EMG for online goal-directed control tasks involving simultaneous and proportional control of two degrees-of-freedom of the wrist. The synergy weights for this control task were extracted from a reference configuration and activation signals were calculated online from the reference configuration as well as from the two shifted configurations, simulating electrode shift. Despite the electrode shift, the task completion rate, task completion time, and execution efficiency were generally not statistically different among electrode configurations. Online performances were also mostly similar when using either 6, 8, or 16 EMG channels. The robustness of the method to the number and location of channels, proved both offline and online, indicates that EMG signals recorded from forearm muscles can be approximated as linear instantaneous mixtures of activation signals and justifies the use of linear factorization algorithms for extracting, in a minimally supervised way, control signals for simultaneous multi-degree of freedom prosthesis control.

A study of the existing problems of estimating the information transfer rate in online brain–computer interfaces

Objective. Today, the brain–computer interface (BCI) community lacks a standard method to evaluate an online BCI's performance. Even the most commonly used metric, the information transfer rate (ITR), is often reported differently, even incorrectly, in many papers, which is not conducive to BCI research. This paper aims to point out many of the existing problems and give some suggestions and methods to overcome these problems. Approach. First, the preconditions inherent in ITR calculation based on Wolpaw's definition are summarized and several incorrect ITR calculations, which go against the preconditions, are indicated. Then, the issues affecting ITR estimation during the test of online BCI systems are discussed in detail. Finally, a task-oriented online BCI test platform was proposed, which may help BCI evaluations in real-world applications. Main results. The guidelines for ITR calculation in online BCIs testing are proposed. The platform executed in the Beijing BCI Competition 2010 shows that it can be used as a common way to compare the online performances (including the ITR) of existing BCI paradigms. Significance: The proposed guidelines and task-oriented test platform may reduce the uncertainty and artifacts of online BCI performance evaluation; they provide a relatively objective way to compare different BCI's performances in real-world BCI applications, which is a forward step toward developing standards for BCI performance evaluation.

Operation of a brain-computer interface walking simulator for individuals with spinal cord injury

BackgroundSpinal cord injury (SCI) can leave the affected individuals with paraparesis or paraplegia, thus rendering them unable to ambulate. Since there are currently no restorative treatments for this population, novel approaches such as brain-controlled prostheses have been sought. Our recent studies show that a brain-computer interface (BCI) can be used to control ambulation within a virtual reality environment (VRE), suggesting that a BCI-controlled lower extremity prosthesis for ambulation may be feasible. However, the operability of our BCI has not yet been tested in a SCI population.MethodsFive participants with paraplegia or tetraplegia due to SCI underwent a 10-min training session in which they alternated between kinesthetic motor imagery (KMI) of idling and walking while their electroencephalogram (EEG) were recorded. Participants then performed a goal-oriented online task, where they utilized KMI to control the linear ambulation of an avatar while making 10 sequential stops at designated points within the VRE. Multiple online trials were performed in a single day, and this procedure was repeated across 5 experimental days.ResultsClassification accuracy of idling and walking was estimated offline and ranged from 60.5% (p = 0.0176) to 92.3% (p = 1.36×10−20) across participants and days. Offline analysis revealed that the activation of mid-frontal areas mostly in the μ and low β bands was the most consistent feature for differentiating between idling and walking KMI. In the online task, participants achieved an average performance of 7.4±2.3 successful stops in 273±51 sec. These performances were purposeful, i.e. significantly different from the random walk Monte Carlo simulations (p<0.01), and all but one participant achieved purposeful control within the first day of the experiments. Finally, all participants were able to maintain purposeful control throughout the study, and their online performances improved over time.ConclusionsThe results of this study demonstrate that SCI participants can purposefully operate a self-paced BCI walking simulator to complete a goal-oriented ambulation task. The operation of the proposed BCI system requires short training, is intuitive, and robust against participant-to-participant and day-to-day neurophysiological variations. These findings indicate that BCI-controlled lower extremity prostheses for gait rehabilitation or restoration after SCI may be feasible in the future.

Comparison of paper‐pencil and online performances of students with learning disabilities

Literature in the United States provides many examples of no difference in student achievement when measured against the mode of test administration i.e., paper‐pencil and online versions of the test. However, most of these researches centre on ‘regular’ students who do not require differential teaching methods or different evaluation processes and techniques. This research provides evidence that students who have learning disabilities, like their counterparts in the regular educational programme, do not lag behind in computer adaptation and use. The study, using differential item functioning analysis with an ‘external’ variable and an analysis of covariance, shows that items and tests can be created to have no practical differences in the mode of administration for this special group of students, and as such, is in keeping with the trend for using online testing with its many advantages (cost savings, flexibility in administration, etc.) in lieu of the paper and pencil version of the test.

Performing ‘Girl’ in the Facebook Era: Drama as a Safe Space for Negotiating Adolescent Identities and Agency

This paper examines the place of drama education in providing a safe space for teens to develop more agentive storylines and performances, both on and offline. It explores the way online performances via social media impact contemporary girlhood and considers the implications for school based drama education. In the current Facebook era, adolescents and girls in particular invest substantial time and effort in ‘impression management’ (Goffman, 1959), often managing complex ‘networked publics’ (boyd, 2006) in the process. The necessary identity play that Erikson theorised long ago has now shifted online, where social networks provide new spaces for identities to be constructed and performed. Rather than a sign of identity confusion or breakdown the teen identity status of moratorium seems more than ever a necessity in these technology-saturated times. This paper considers drama as a site for adolescent identity work, particularly for adolescent girls, where dramatic process provides a ‘potential space’ for teen role repertoires to be expanded, stories to be re-imagined and agency to develop.