Scene Looks Research Articles

Germany's attitude to start-up firms is undergoing profound change.

The country has been slow to welcome start-up science culture, but the scene looks set to take off. The country has been slow to welcome start-up science culture, but the scene looks set to take off.

Level-2 perspectives computed quickly and spontaneously: Evidence from eight- to 9.5-year-old children.

It has been widely assumed that computing how a scene looks from another perspective (level-2 perspective taking, PT) is an effortful process, as opposed to the automatic capacity of tracking visual access to objects (level-1 PT). Recently, adults have been found to compute both forms of visual perspectives in a quick but context-sensitive way, indicating that the two functions share more features than previously assumed. However, the developmental literature still shows the dissociation between automatic level-1 and effortful level-2 PT. In the current paper, we report an experiment showing that in a minimally social situation, participating in a number verification task with an adult confederate, eight- to 9.5-year-old children demonstrate similar online level-2 PT capacities as adults. Future studies need to address whether online PT shows selectivity in children as well and develop paradigms that are adequate to test preschoolers' online level-2 PT abilities. Statement of Contribution What is already known on this subject? Adults can access how objects appear to others (level-2 perspective) spontaneously and online Online level-1, but not level-2 perspective taking (PT) has been documented in school-aged children What the present study adds? Eight- to 9.5-year-olds performed a number verification task with a confederate who had the same task Children showed similar perspective interference as adults, indicating spontaneous level-2 PT Not only agent-object relations but also object appearances are computed online by eight- to 9.5-year-olds.

How to give a talk

This is a practical guide to help you stand up and deliver talk to a room full of strangers. Just as there are no naturally gifted sportsmen, there is no...

The Image Characteristics for Perceived Naturalness

To identify the visual characteristics that make a scene looks nature, we investigated the relationship between the distribution of spatial frequency spectrum of an image and its perceived naturalness. The image database contains outdoor images whose perceived naturalness were rated by human observers. Each image was Fourier transformed to the frequency domain. The power spectrum of each image was radial averaged across orientation and then fit with a straight line on log-log coordinates. The slope of the fitted line represents the characteristics of the spatial frequency spectrum of the image. The perceived naturalness increased with the decrease of the spectrum slope. The correlation between these two factors was significant. That is, our result suggests that increasing high spatial frequency content makes a scene more nature for observers. Thus, increase high spatial frequency content in an urban visual environment by planting more trees and adding more detail object or separation line to the architecture façade should make it more like nature environment.

Vauxhall’s Post-industrial Pleasure Gardens: ‘Death Wish’ and Hedonism in 21st-century London

In recent years Vauxhall in south London has been transformed and rebranded as an urban leisure zone for gay men. Disused railway arches and warehouses have been converted into nightclubs and a significant night-time economy has developed rivalling Soho's existing gay village. However, with its commodified forms of public sex and high levels of recreational drug use, Vauxhall's club scene looks rather different from the British gay villages of the 1990s. This article examines how the area's nightlife entrepreneurs have capitalised on the recent liberalisation of licensing laws while drawing on the historical associations with the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens (1660-1859) in attempts to market the area as a site of embedded hedonism. Overall, the aesthetic and cultural themes of Vauxhall's club scene seem to contradict earlier assumptions about the desexualisation and sanitisation of contemporary gay culture.

Munich: ‘Musica Rediviva’

At least one institution of Germany's contemporary music scene looks likely to survive the government's current austerity schemes: Munich's Musica Viva series. The second concert of its 2003–4 season, held in Hercules Hall on 7 November, remained true to the great tradition of this venerable series by treating a packed auditorium to two world premières and the first German performance of a ‘modern classic’. Presiding at the rostrum with the Bavarian RSO was Musica Viva's current director Udo Zimmermann, himself a composer of note and an open-minded champion of the pan-European avantgarde. In a talk broadcast in the interval, Zimmermann emphasized the series' new alignment on co-operative ventures with other state broadcasting companies, specifically in France and the Baltic countries. Besides allowing radio orchestras to pool their straitened resources, this tactic also has the highly desirable advantage of giving further hearings to new works after their premières. The size and attentiveness of Zimmermann's audiences suggest that he has found the right tack to steer Musica Viva out of its doldrums of previous decades and through the cost-slashings of the new millennium.

China's Troubled Workers

For financial managers monitoring trade from the tall towers of Wall Street, China's high-growth economy inspires awe and investments. To the men and women employed on the factory floor of the People's Republic, however, the economic scene looks grimly different. China's workers are in trouble, some in deep trouble. Since their inauguration in 1978, Deng Xiaoping's economic re forms have wrought vast changes in the nation's labor force. While diversifying the types of enterprises in China, the reforms have exac erbated labor problems across all of them: state-owned firms, joint ventures, urban, township, and village collectives, domestic private firms, and foreign-funded enterprises. A key innovation of Deng's socialism with Chinese characteristics was that some people would get rich first. But most workers, the supposed masters of the country, are still waiting for their share. Some economists claim that the workers' day will come with fur ther growth, but double-digit growth rates do not necessarily trans late into a better life for workers. After a decided improvement in living standards during the first half of the 1980s, income inequal ity has widened, with workers' social status declining apace. In 1978, 27 percent of the members of the National People's Congress were worker representatives. Their numbers declined to 15 percent in 1983,12 percent in 1988, and 11 percent today. Worse yet, many so

Setting the scene: the great Hollywood art directors

Accompanied by more than 160 illustrations, Setting the Scene surveys the careers of the great Hollywood art directors and examines their work in detail. After a brief history of the role played by the art director in the Hollywood studio system, Setting the Scene looks at the particular art directors' productions and sets, analyzing how the art direction contributes to the success of the finished film. The book covers such memorable movies as The Birth of a Nation, 1915, where head carpenter Frank (Huck) Wortman utilized the painted flats and two-dimensional, boxlike sets of the stage. In contrast, in a recent big-budget production, Batman, 1989, one key element to the film's success was art director Anton Furst's highly sophisticated, surreal sets and designs using the most advanced technology available to film. A bibliography and index round out the volume.

A COMMON MARKET FOR POST-APARTHEID SOUTHERN AFRICA: PROSPECTS AND PROBLEMS

ABSTRACT The abolition of statutory apartheid, and Pretoria's commitment to negotiate a constitutional future, have helped restore South Africa's acceptability as a partner for economic co-operation. South Africa's policy of destabilizing the countries of southern Africa has been abandoned, and the scene looks set for co-operation and co-ordination to replace conflict and confrontation. Whilst there is broad agreement on the desirability of co-operation, regional economic integration covers a multitude of complex agreements ranging from preferential trade areas to political-economic unions. The paper examines the relevance of traditional economic integration theory or customs union theory to southern Africa. After exploring the theoretical and practical limitations of traditional integration theory, the paper examines how the three most important regional groupings within southern Africa relate to this theory, and how they may adapt to the post-apartheid situation.