Realistic Portrait Research Articles

A portrait photo-to-tattoo transform based on digital tattooing

Tattooing portraits of loved ones is a popular form of love expression and tribute. Tattooing portraits is complicated and challenging because of detailed facial expressions and unique characters of each person. Currently, it is hard for clients to give clear instructions on tattoo designs to tattooists, because there is no effective way to see a portrait tattoo before putting it on the body. In this paper, an algorithm which transforms a given portrait photo to a portrait tattoo is proposed. It takes a portrait photo, a reference portrait tattoo image, a skin image and a set of parameters as inputs. The portrait photo is the person’s face whom the client wants to put on his/her skin. The reference portrait tattoo image is used to control the color and style of the synthetic portrait tattoo. The skin image is taken from the skin region where the client wants to tattoo. By adjusting the parameters, portrait tattoos with different characteristics can be generated. The proposed algorithm uses a series of tailor-made image processing methods and a digital tattoo needle model to perform digital tattooing on the skin image. Comparing with the state-of-the-art style transfer methods, the proposed algorithm produces more realistic portrait tattoos.

Child's Play: Multi-Sensory Histories of Children and Childhood in Japan ed. by Sabine Frühstück and Anne Walthall

Reviewed by: Child's Play: Multi-Sensory Histories of Children and Childhood in Japan ed. by Sabine Frühstück and Anne Walthall Mark Jones (bio) Child's Play: Multi-Sensory Histories of Children and Childhood in Japan. Edited by Sabine Frühstück and Anne Walthall. University of California Press, Oakland CA, 2017. x, 302 pages. $39.95, paper. Open Access. The essays in this edited volume present a series of snapshots of Japanese childhood, from the worlds of acolytes in medieval monasteries to aspiring young soccer players during the "lost decades." Not all contributions deal [End Page 544] directly with child's play, as the title seems to suggest, but all do attempt to reinvigorate a floundering field—the history of childhood in Japan. French Annales historian Phillipe Ariès birthed the field known as the history of childhood. Ariès's classic text L'enfant et la vie familiale sous l'ancien régime was published in 1960 and translated into English in 1962 with the title Centuries of Childhood. Ariès's central conceit was captured in the phrase "the discovery of childhood." This phrase posited that at a particular point in the past—the seventeenth century, in Europe's case—the child came to be seen as a being different in nature and need from the adult. The book and the phrase quickly inspired European and American historians. Their goal was less to recreate a child's-eye view of the world and more to explore the adult actors who distinguished the child from the adult, created a public understanding of the child's nature, and built the child's world. These historians adopted the methodology known as social constructionism, and they intertwined the history of the adults who constructed modern childhood, from child psychologists and highly educated mothers to children's authors and toymakers, with a series of important historical transformations in the family, education, consumer culture, science, mass media, class formation, and state building. Despite its prominence in American and European historiography dating back to the 1970s, the history of childhood only appeared in Englishlanguage scholarship on Japan starting in the late 1990s. The monographs of Kathleen Uno (1999), David Ambaras (2005), and Mark Jones (2010) hewed closely to the methodological approach of social constructionism, and together they illuminated the adult interests at work in the development of child day-care centers (Uno), the policing of juvenile delinquency (Ambaras), and the birth of a middle-class version of childhood (Jones).1 After the publication of these three monographs, the following decade witnessed only sporadic interest in children's history. The field appeared to be fading until this volume appeared. Frühstück and Walthall have gathered a group of scholars interested in deepening our knowledge of the construction of Japanese childhood and also taking up thorny and unresolved issues in the field of children's history. A number of solid essays in this volume follow the established methodology of social constructionism, focusing on the adult construction of the child's image and world. Jinnō Yuki examines the material and philosophical struggles of two Taisho-era interior designers, Kogure Joichi and Moritani [End Page 545] Nobuo, to design a child's room in the home that centered on the needs of the child as opposed to those of the adult. In a point that echoes a similar observation by historian Gary Cross in the case of American childhood toys, Jinnō asserts that the ideology of child-centeredness was pivotal in giving birth to a child-centered industry that catered exclusively to children and, thus, contributed to the gradual process of expelling adults from the child's material, spatial, and social world. Harald Salomon's essay on the golden age of childhood film in wartime Japan explores how popular films and their directors shaped the public understanding of the child's nature. Films such as Tsubota Jōji's 1937 Kaze no naka no kodomotachi (Children in the wind) promoted a psychologically nuanced, realistic portrait of the child, whose essence was associated with resilience and cheerfulness as much as fragility and struggle. Salomon concludes that these sunny films, and their corresponding vision of childhood, were...

Music and Neo-Victorian Gothic Tropes: The Glass Armonica in A Slight Trick of the Mind by Mitch Cullin

This contribution analyses the role of music in A Slight Trick of the Mind (2005) by Mitch Cullin, highlighting the way in which the novel contradicts itself in its effort to reject Holmesian stereotypes. Indeed, although the common beliefs inspired by John Watson's authorship are disavowed in order to provide a more realistic portrait of the man behind the legend, the Victorian past keeps haunting Holmes through an old case concerning a glass armonica. Since a parallel can be drawn between the instrument and Holmes's iconic violin, it is argued that the sub-narrative ends up functioning as a neo-Victorian mise en abyme, where those gothic elements potentially related to Holmes's musicianship in the original texts appear to be projected onto the glass armonica and female characters, drawing attention to the gendered codes of music's discourse in neo-Victorian narratives. Indeed, while the violin may serve in the canon as a male signifier, albeit a controversial one, the glass armonica carries feminine connotations that shed new light on the many possible re-presentations of Sherlock Holmes's favourite instrument.

Frustrated Ambition: General Vicente Lim and the Philippine Military Experience, 1910–1944

Richard B. Meixsel wanted to write a biography of Brig. Gen. Vicente Lim for a number of reasons. Primarily, it was because Lim was the first Filipino graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, the U.S. Army Command and Staff College, and the U.S. Army War College. In addition, Lim was considered the most capable Filipino officer, who possessed a unique vision for establishing the military of a newly sovereign nation, and he has been largely forgotten—as are almost all of the Filipino soldiers—in American-centric military histories of the Philippines. Since these soldiers constituted the bulk of the forces that fought there in the 1941–1942 period, however, Meixsel desires to provide the history of the Filipino forces to paint a more realistic portrait of the Philippines during the American period of occupation as well as during and immediately after the war. In particular, Meixsel wants to illustrate the agency of the Filipinos; but the problem with this goal is first illustrated in the chapter on U.S. military defense planning for the Philippines in the 1920s. Lim and other Filipino leaders are barely seen since they were not included in any of the defense planning. Perhaps it is not possible to illustrate Filipino agency if they was no agency, at least at that level? Again, when Douglas MacArthur was hired as military adviser, Lim was in the background and not really seen. President Manuel Quezon and other Filipino political elites wanted MacArthur as the military adviser to build a Philippine army because of his stature, a stature that no Filipino officer could match. Filipino agency was thus demonstrated, but not at Lim's level. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, the situation was similar. During the defense planning for the war, Filipino military officers were hardly present; ultimately, neither were Filipino officials. Agency was still in the hands of American policy makers in Washington, D.C., then the U.S. Army, then MacArthur and the U.S. Military Mission, and finally Quezon, not the small number of highly qualified officers who could have been tapped for their talent.

Zen and Material Culture ed. by Pamela D. Winfield and Steven Heine

Reviewed by: Zen and Material Culture ed. by Pamela D. Winfield and Steven Heine Bruce Coats (bio) Zen and Material Culture. Edited by Pamela D. Winfield and Steven Heine. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2017. xxxiv, 316 pages. $99.00, cloth; $34.95, paper. Zen and Material Culture provides a variety of perspectives on how Zen traditions in Japan can be understood. Several essays would be appropriate for undergraduates, while others are clearly intended for specialists more familiar with the history of Chan/Zen in China/Japan. An analysis of artworks by two Buddhist nuns, a survey of the history and arts of the Obaku Zen temple of Manpukuji, interpretations of rags in the Soto Zen tradition, a critical examination of Rinzai Zen retail businesses in the United States, and an essay that challenges the reported relationships of Zen to the Japanese tea ceremony would all have appeal to college students studying the history, arts, and literatures of Zen. Of interest to Buddhist scholars would be the history and symbolism of a monk's walking stick or fly whisk, the changing uses and meanings of prayer beads, historical interpretations of the Buddhist robes, and Dogen's theoretical approaches to temple building. The authors include four art historians and five from Buddhist studies; all are interested in deciphering the material cultures associated with Japanese Zen and dispelling long-held stereotypes in the West that Zen transcends worldly "things." By using interdisciplinary methods, they bring valuable insights on how familiar objects of Zen practice "materialize abstract idea(l)s into concrete form," making this volume an important contribution to cultural studies and Buddhist studies (p. xvi). Patricia Fister provides excellent biographical studies of two nuns who became abbesses of imperial convents, in "Visual Culture in Japan's Imperial Rinzai Zen Convents: The Making of Objects as Expressions of Religious Devotion and Practice." Daitsu Bunchi (1619–97), an imperial princess, was well educated but not trained as an artist. In 1656, she founded the convent Enshō-ji outside Nara and established a rigorous spiritual training program. There she created rather crude clay figurines in memory of her teachers and her father Emperor Go-Mizunoo (1596–1680), and arranged hair and nail clippings from her father into Chinese characters as an act of devotion. She also copied sutras using drops of her own blood mixed with the ink to demonstrate her spiritual sincerity. In contrast, Tokugan Rihō (1672–1745) studied Kano School painting and produced accomplished portraits of famous priests and nuns past and present, as well as images of Sakyamuni, Kannon, and Bodhidharma, for use in the imperial convent Hōkyō-ji, where she became abbess in 1689. For more than a decade, Fister has been carefully documenting the lives of Japanese Buddhist nuns, as [End Page 213] artists, collectors, and spiritual leaders, and her writings have greatly advanced understanding of an important segment of Asian art history. In this article, she provides extensive endnotes that link to photographs of these various artworks, but only three illustrations are published with this essay. Other authors in this volume were similarly limited; for a book on material culture, more illustrations would be appropriate. Patricia Graham's essay "The Importance of Imports: Ingen's Chinese Material Culture at Manpukuji" also only has three illustrations. She too provides endnotes to find images, but most of these refer to Japanese-language publications and limited circulation exhibition catalogues, so this rich field of research is still not well known in the West. Graham has written about Manpukuji in other books, but here she offers a capsule history of an important temple, its founder Yinyuan Longqi (aka Ingen Ryūki 1592–1684) who introduced Huangpo/Obaku sect Zen from China, the Chinese artists he brought with him, and the various objects he imported that have given Manpukuji a distinctive look and importance in later Japanese arts. Because Manpukuji is located close to Kyoto, it has attracted Japanese who are interested in Ming Dynasty culture and has directly affected many generations of visitors who were inspired by the exotic architecture, realistic portrait paintings, and humanistic sculpted figures. At a time when much of Japan was closed to foreign influence, Manpukuji played a...

Abstract Expressionism Techniques in John Ashbery’s "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror"

John Ashbery (1927-) is one of the most prominent postmodern poets in America who is known for his innovative techniques. He continues to be the most controversial poet, as he disregards the laws of logic in picturing reality. Ashbery’s style is deeply influenced by the experimental methods of modern painting. He has been mostly associated with Abstract Expressionism that signifies the great progress in the European avant-garde visual art. The Abstract expressionists often choose to present subjects in graceful distortion, rather than attempt to record life with absolute accuracy. Ashbery’s “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror” is typical of ekphrastic poetry. It is inspired by a painting which has the same title by the sixteenth-century Italian painter, Francesco Mazzola. The painting is not a realistic portrait of the painter, for it is deliberately distorted as it would be in a convex reflection. Ashbery unfolds the essence of postmodern poetry which illustrates the inability of the forms of language to capture the reality beyond the mental image. Like the Abstract Expressionists, he makes of his poems a depiction of the real workings of the mind which is liberated from all the constraints. Furthermore, the poem is a verbal depiction of the painting; it assumes and transforms the inner voice of the portrait.

El tratamiento de Madame, les filles y el ethos discursivo de Maupassant en "Le Plaisir" de Max Ophuls

Max Ophuls propone en Le Plaisir una transposición de tres relatos de Maupassant. La representación discursiva del filme cuenta con numerosos puntos convergentes, aunque es necesario resaltar que Ophuls favorece un reflejo menos realista y naturalista de los personajes, en particular de las prostitutas. Las divergencias más significativas se sitúan en el nivel enunciativo con la inclusión del ethos discursivo de Maupassant, convertido en personaje. La manera de abordar el punto de vista es un balbuceo del cine de voyeurismo cuya esencia es el movimiento. En este sentido, cabe preguntarse si el narrador Maupassant de Max Ophuls una anticipación a la cámara de la Nouvelle Vague.

Interpersonal interactions within couples: Convergences and divergences between self-description and partner’s perception

Abstract Conjugality refers to the shared experience between partners characterized by an enduring bond. It is related to a high degree of intimacy, affective involvement, and different interpersonal strategies, and it is seen by partners as their most significant relationship. Such intensity makes couple interaction different from any other type of relationship. The objective of this study was to verify how interpersonal attitude of the participants toward their spouses are associated with their partners and the independent interviewer’s perception of their attitudes. The results showed that the participants had a perception of themselves that was, in general, congruent with their partners’ and the interviewer’s perception. However, the spouses agreed more about their relationship roles (dominant or submissive) and disagreed on the dedicated affection (friendly or hostile) between them. In contrast, the interviewer overestimated the subjects’ attempts to control but confirmed the presence of statements of affection. The results obtained also provided a realistic portrait of marital interactions, increasing the application spectrum of the Checklist de Relações Interpessoais (Check list of Interpersonal Transactions).

I due horti di Virgilio e il senex Corycius (georg. 4, 116-148): struttura, fonti romane e humanitas (Catone, Varrone, Cicerone)

This analysis of Virgil’s excursus on horti and the senex Corycius aims to advance an interpretation of the text with respect to its internal structure and its intertextual relationship with Roman sources. On the one hand, the bipartite structure of the passage, with its juxtaposition of two opposing images of vegetable- and flower-gardens, will be highlighted; on the other, a thematic, linguistic and cultural comparison with Cato, Varro, and Cicero reveals noteworthy influences and allusions (both analogies and differences) that contribute to a realistic portrait of the senex and a message of humanitas on the part of the poet.

DEMOCRATIC FILM AND THE AESTHETICS OF CHOICE

ABSTRACTBoth the Germans and their American occupiers understood that films were supposed to support a democratic culture and worldview during the occupation following the Second World War. This essay explores how democratic culture comes to be defined at mid‐century through choice, and how two films that played in the Western Zones, Der Apfel ist ab (1948) and The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), take up choice as a formal aesthetic closely tied to a fraught democratic experience. Best Years, praised by German critics as a realistic portrait of American life, also adopts what the film critic André Bazin calls a democratic and liberal film style of deep focus compositions and shots of long duration that allow the spectator to choose what to look at in the frame. Yet, as even Bazin notes, this choice is slyly coercive. Der Apfel was a critical failure and thematises indecision within the narrative. In contrast to Best Years, it turns the optics of choice into vertiginous confusion in which there are no good choices. This essay argues that the democratic refusal in Der Apfel ist ab is an apt critique of ‘democracy as choice’, and that the film opens up new horizons of political invention.

An acoustic perspective on legacy data: Vowels in the digital archive of Southern speech

Speech varies widely in the American South, but the region is argued to share the Southern Vowel Shift, whose various characteristics include monophthongization of upgliding diphthongs, convergence of certain front vowels via raising and lowering, and back-vowel fronting. We investigate the influence of social factors on shift participation using vowel formant and duration data from the Digital Archive of Southern Speech (recorded 1968−1983), which is newly transcribed and segmented by forced alignment. With this corpus of 64 linguistic interviews (372 hours), we study how shifting varies in geographic space, across states from Texas to Florida. The interviews offer large amounts of data from individual speakers, and their semi-spontaneous nature reveals a more realistic portrait of phonetic variability than is typically available. Interviews of European- and African American speakers permit comparison of the Southern Vowel Shift with the African American Vowel Shift. The impacts of other factors on the v...

Short films and complex cases for education of primary health care professionals

This article was migrated. The article was not marked as recommended. Since 2009, the Federal University of Health Sciences of Porto Alegre (UFCSPA), participant of the Brazil's Open Health University (UNA-SUS), has offered an e-learning Family Health Specialization (FHS) Course which has graduated 1902 students (physicians, dentists and nurses). The FHS is a Distance Learning Course (DLC) arranged in two areas. In the first one, general content concerning public health is covered. The second is based on a problem-based-learning strategy in which professionals are exposed to complex clinical cases. The aim of this article is to share a methodological experience in teaching in a Family Health Specialization Distance Learning Course by using complex cases and their adaptation to short films. Forty-two cases designed by the UNA-SUS/UFCSPA's team were used in the FHS course. From these, six were adapted to short films. They have scripted narratives in which literary elements were used to organize the stories and make scenes more similar to what is experienced at work, preserving the clinical aspects to represent the daily life of professionals, patients and their conditions. Topics covered in the films include clinical, social, and family aspects, as well as community-related ones. The scenes depict a realistic portrait of health services provided by Brazil's Universal Health System, they help to develop observation and communication skills, critical analysis of the attitudes, besides clinical knowledge.Complex Cases represent an expressive way to learn and interact with different knowledge and skills which are required of health professionals. Students are able to identify with real-life situations projected into the screen and their imagination to learn about them.

Autoportrait et emblématique princière à la fin du Moyen Âge

Self-Portraiture and Princely Iconography at the End of the Middle AgesIn all civilizations the very purpose of an emblem is to represent a physical or moral individual with a sign, thus producing a representation of this individual through an image, a portrait in the original meaning of the word. The Middle Ages in the West also generated various systems of signs – heraldry especially, but crests, devices, and other ancillary emblematic forms as well – intended to make people and things known and recognized. The arrival of the realistic portrait – the ultimate emblem – in some way completes these successive attempts at designating the individual. The combined exploitation of these numerous signs of identity, more or less controlled by the person being represented, produced a kind of self-portrait which included a variety of facets of the remarkable being that was the medieval individual. Projection into an image, a true duplication of the self, which was often intended for self-celebration or, more accurately, as an empathic projection of spiritual significance, often allowed a prince to transcend his being, which appears to be one of the principles of self-portraiture.

Facing Old Age and Searching for Regeneration in a Dying American West: Gregory Martin’s Mountain City

Contemporary western American literature is increasingly departing from the traditional association between the West and youth in classical frontier mythology, showing an aging, gray and often ill West, as illustrated by authors such as Cormac McCarthy, Marilynne Robinson, Wallace Stegner and Ken Haruf, to name just a few examples. This perspective also plays a powerful role in Gregory Martin’s Mountain City (2000), an impressive memoir about a decaying Nevada mining town and its aging population. This article explores the interaction between living and aging in Martin’s book. It is often a continuous dialogical process of exchange and overlap where Martin revises western mythology centered on the youth trope and deconstructs negative images of old age and disease. Martin offers a realistic portrait of a fading western way of life. However, his emphasis on the vanishing condition of traditional western stereotypes turns out to be problematic. In fact, Martin’s bleak vision of the Old West and its broken promises coexists in Mountain City with his recognition of the pervasive quality of the archetypal western regenerative influence, as exemplified by the power of this declining community to heal the narrator’s placelessness and provide him with a sense of “homeplace” and a cultural identity. Keywords: American West; non-fiction; Gregory Martin; old age; place; identity; home

Editor's Introduction: The Politics of Urban Reform in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, 1870–1920

Editor's Introduction: The Politics of Urban Reform in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, 1870–1920

Shanghai Redemption

struggling with contemporary life, all three grapple with the Big Questions of the existence of God, fate, and suffering. Jiří Pehe, an esteemed Czech novelist and feuilletoniste , weaves the action with themes of national identity in the ever-changing central European landscape and highlights how language is tied in from one regime to the next. Nothing wrong with showcasing a little patriotism, either. Angel is a thoroughly Czech story. Witness Josef: “I have always felt more Czech than German.” Daughter Hanna admits that “I have a dreadful urge to speak Czech.” And the westernized Alex? “I have to write in Czech.” Josef and Hanna lead difficult lives. At key points during distress, the angel Ariel appears, providing solace and promises. Even though Alex lives a modern, “cushy life,” his center eventually does not hold and he encounters Ariel himself, thus fulfilling the book’s title. All three generations of the Brehme family feel the need to record life’s events and feelings in order to make sense (if any) of the absurdity taking place around them. After reading his grandfather’s and mother’s accounts of atrocities, Alex feels ashamed of his own “easy” circumstances, wishing that he, too, had led “a real life.” This novel works very well because all three disparate voices ring true. Pehe paints a realistic portrait of Josef as a Czech Legionnaire while Alex’s struggle with postmodern culture exudes sincerity. If there is one quibble, it would be that the feminine voice of Hanna could be more nuanced from the others, to make her character more plausible. Josef’s hope that happiness can still result despite a life of suffering and unfairness will eventually resound in his daughter and grandson as well. We’re never quite sure, though, as choice and fate linger on to the last word of the story, which may be Pehe’s way of winking at his reader. Talented veteran translator Gerald Turner turns in yet another laudatory performance here. Virginia Parobek Lancaster, Ohio Qiu Xiaolong. Shanghai Redemption. New York. Minotaur Books. 2015. 320 pages. Those unfamiliar with Qiu Xiaolong’s Inspector Chen series may want to read all or some of the earlier novels prior to reading this newest one, if only to better appreciate the ways in which the central character and his circumstances are brilliantly developed with each installment (see WLT, May 2009, 55–58). Of them all, World Literature in Review 84 WLT MARCH / APRIL 2016 this is one of the finest novels in the series, matched only by The Mao Case. Inspector Chen is a police detective in modern China who is frequently called upon to handle cases that have political sensitivity; he has risen to a position of substantial authority and recognition precisely because in solving cases, he has been able to keep the Communist Party interests and public image in mind. Chen is a man who loves Yang poetry and that of T. S. Eliot; he is somewhat introverted and private but also fully competent in dealing with people and the complexities of the cases he handles. As might be expected, his sensitivity and intellectuality are frequently struggling against the compromises his position requires. Being fair-minded, he is constantly striving for legal and moral justice in situations that require finesse, discretion, and sometimes compromise. He is often asking himself where his main loyalties and responsibilities lie, with his conscience or the greater good stipulated by party bosses. Sometimes they match, but frequently they do not neatly coincide. Reading these novels, one feels a deeper understanding of contemporary China as well as some sense of how an intelligent, sensitive individual might feel inside the current political, post–Mao system, especially the ways in which one might have to navigate among the delicate and notalways -clear boundaries of political correctness . One of the greatest consequences, psychologically speaking, is exampled page after page in the internal contemplations of Chen himself, his constant self-counsel , and his careful editing of his speech to cloak some of his motivations and thoughts, which if shared publicly could result in imprisonment or worse. While these internal precautions are part of any thoughtful person’s process, the political system in...

A ‘Names-and-Faces Approach’ to Stakeholder Identification and Salience: A Matter of Status

Despite its increasing popularity across management disciplines, stakeholder theory holds an important shortcoming in terms of its guidance for understanding the heterogeneity of stakeholder interests, claims, and behavior toward firms. Specifically, scholars note the inadequacy of generic categories of stakeholders (e.g., customers, employees, shareholders, and suppliers) in providing a realistic portrait of the groups and individuals that interact with the firm, opening the theory to much criticism for a ‘simplistic’ and ‘meaningless’ stakeholder concept. In face of this challenge, recent research is pointing to social identity as a mechanism to refine our understanding of stakeholders as names-and-faces, however we argue that despite the advancements offered by the social identity approach, it too presents limitations in its ability to guide managers in prioritizing stakeholder claims. Building on these nascent efforts to offer much needed nuance to a theory of stakeholder identification and prioritization, this paper draws from new advances in the management literature and offers status as an attribute that helps explain and predict how managers accord attention to their various constituents. We set forth five propositions connecting stakeholder status to the attention stakeholders receive from managers. We argue that status is a superior attribute of stakeholder identification and prioritization because it (1) accounts for groups and individuals’ uniqueness within broad categories of stakeholders in a dynamic way, (2) reconciles the dual nature of stakeholders as holding simultaneously a social and an economic identity in their claim toward the firm, and (3) provides a plausible explanation of, and intuitive guidance to, how managers accord attention to their firm’s stakeholders. Implications and future directions for research complete this article.

Sniffing the city: issues of sousveillance in inner city London

This article reflects on a series of workshops run by the art/media/hacktivist collective Deptford.TV in collaboration with the Centre for Urban and Community Research (CUCR), Goldsmiths, University of London in 2009–2010 and in 2012. The aim of the workshops was to create short films using hacked CCTV material. Participants, equipped with digital video signal receivers, were led through the city by incoming surveillance camera signals. Receivers cached surveillance camera signals making a range of city spaces visible. The material was then stored on a shared video platform and reshuffled in personal narratives and montages of the city. Hackers and media artists call it ‘sousveillance’ and frame it as a critique of the ‘panopticon society’. I argue that this practice reveals an unusually realistic portrait of inner city London and its working-class population at their everyday work. My contention is that the absence of such activities in narratives of gentrification and the presumed end of manual work make this portrait particularly valuable. The article evaluates this emerging and ethically controversial practice of video recording, asking to what extent it can become a useful tool for urban scholars, visual sociologists and media artists. In conclusion, I argue that the exercise provides moments of self-discovery for the urban stroller, who – while practicing a sort of heroic immersion in inner city London – paradoxically becomes a watcher of scenes from life fabricated at a ‘safe’ distance; a middle way between urban ethnographer and flâneur.

Character and Critique in the Ethics of War

As its title suggests, Nigel Biggar’s In Defence of War offers a strong response to pacifists who argue that the use of armed force can never be morally justified. However, though it is cogently and convincingly made, this argument is not really the heart of In Defence of War. Indeed, it constitutes only one chapter of the book, which is primarily dedicated to the defense of a particular kind of extremely pleased that several soldiers with battlefield experience have found empirically plausible my claim in chapter 2 that the use of lethal violence can be motivated, not at all by hatred, but by love—even for the enemy. So, there you have what the author thinks that In Defence of War is about. But as with life, so with books: authors are not always the best judges of what they are doing.

Chemical Fingerprinting of Medicinal and Aromatic Plant Extracts: HPTLC Bioautographic Assays as Preliminary Research Tool to Match Chemical and Biological Properties

Chemical plant fingerprintin g generally identifies the distribution of compounds within a plant matrix defining its chemical imaging in relation to the different extraction approach adopted. The chemical picture obtained with fingerprinting target needs to represent the highest number of chemical compounds as possible, giving the most realistic portrait of the chemical identity of the plant matrix. The fingerprinting of plant matrices is a research approach aimed to point out chemical evidences related to biological researches and applications of natural compounds in many productive fields, from human, animal health and phytoiatry to environmental biomonitoring and bioremediation. The chemical portrait given by a fingerprinting is representative of the ecosphere where the plant grows, evidencing secondary metabolite patterns which are driven in quality and amount of compounds by the sensitivity of the plant to ecological variables. A chemical fingerprinting could allow to better understand the grown capacity of a plant species in a particular environment, to point out and select that particular genotype able to express a particular chemical phenotype useful for a particular applicative field for e.g. the production of bioactive compounds against particular human or plant pathogens to determine pollution levels and risk assessment for ecosystems by the presence/ accumulation of pollutants or particular qualitative and quantitative expression of secondary metabolites [1]. The plant fingerprinting focused on the secondary metabolites is particularly relevant because of the important applicative relapses that this particular chemical portrait concerns. Plant secondary metabolites, infact, represent from a biological point of view the capacity of plant species to relate to environment complexity and to control many metabolic functions, for e.g. the known role of supporting plant electron transports [2]. These aspects are particularly important for studying the physiology of officinal plants to improve their cultivation and quality. Moreover, from applicative points of view, for e.g. those relating pharmaceutical-healthy applications and agricultural relapses of plant compounds, the study of secondary metabolism through mapping the quality and amount of the occurring molecules to have a complete chemical fingerprinting, may lead to discover more effective and safer bioactive chemicals, and officinal plants with a chemical profile more fitting with specific applicative needs [3]. For all these last applicative aspects, with particular relevance to health and plant defense/biostimulation (phytoiatric applications), also chemical fingerprinting related to some primary metabolites (for e.g. poly-unsaturated fatty acids, proteins, fixed oils, waxes and butters) has been considered [4]. However, besides the general considerations about the meaning of chemical fingerprinting, it should be stressed that its scientific importance and applicative relevance are linked to the extraction approaches adopted. In general, a complete chemical fingerprinting of a plant matrix is given by the chemical qualitative and quantitative profile of large polarity spectrum of the extraction strategies. A complete chemical fingerprinting of the secondary metabolites profile of a plant matrix is given by the combination of the qualitative and quantitative evidences of low, medium and high polarity extracts obtained using specific solvents and strategies with appropriate physical-chemical properties. However, for the most known plant species, as for example those with medicinal and aromatic properties, the chemical fingerprinting is limited to that secondary metabolites fractions known for traditional healthy properties and uses, generally characterizing aqueous or hydro-alcoholic preparations [5].