Visual Workshop Research Articles

Ranking of nuclear data contributions to uncertainties in core physics parameters

Nuclear data uncertainties lead to substantial uncertainties in the predictions of LWR core calculations. Such problems are typically solved using lattice calculations and nodal codes, such as the WIMS-PANTHER system. It is desirable to derive uncertainties of core simulation output parameters (e.g. enthalpy deposition in an REA) to nuclear data uncertainties for specific nuclide-reaction pairs. This allows the key uncertainty contributions to be identified and ranked and facilitates use of data assimilation techniques. Key challenges in ranking the contributions to uncertainty are (1) the large number of input parameters (2) burnup-dependence of nuclide populations and microscopic cross sections, which challenges the use of adjoint methods (3) propagation of uncertainties through a multi-step calculation sequence. In this paper, an integrated methodology for deriving such uncertainties is presented. This comprises the following steps: (1) sensitivity analysis to identify the key reactions in the problem and exclude insignificant reactions (2) orthogonal decomposition of the nuclear data covariance matrix to calculate and rank eigenvectors (3) direct and consistent perturbation of the microscopic cross sections for the eigenvectors with significant eigenvalues (4) separate lattice (WIMS) and core (PANTHER) calculations with nuclear data perturbed for each eigenvector. This method (which assumes linearity of perturbations) is compared to a direct Sobol sample of the nuclear data and for the cases examined gives consistent results for the importance ranking of reactions, while greatly reducing the number of calculations employed. Hence, it can complement sampling-based approaches in developing an overall understanding of the magnitude, distribution, and contributors to uncertainty in core calculations. Both the linear method and the Sobol sampling method are integrated within the Visual Workshop graphical user environment to automate the process with the WIMS and PANTHER codes.

Living Isolated: Coping With COVID-19—Visual Self-Narrative Research

Living Isolated employs Folkman & Lazarus’ (1984) Transactional Model of Stress and Coping utilizing the visual self-narrative methodology (Kwesell, 2020) to explore participant experiences of isolation, uncertainty and risk during the COVID-19 pandemic. 57 participants engaged in visual self-narrative and photo-elicitation workshops to understand coping during the pandemic and to examine implications of reflection on photographs. Findings from 878 photographs revealed participants coped with COVID-19 and changed social environments more emotionally than behaviorally, likely because infection risk may feel out of one’s control. Interestingly, when participants reflected on their own visual self-narratives emotional coping continued to be more salient while the majority of participants felt a sense of overwhelming thankfulness for children, family, self and time to spend with each.

A culturally competent approach to teach humanities in international medical school: potential frameworks and lessons learned

Background: This paper describes the development of a culturally competent medical humanities course for second and third-year medical students at the ethnically diverse College of Medicine at Qatar University. First taught in 2016, the elective seminar “Medicine and the Arts” was restructured in 2017 to cultivate an appreciation of the symbiotic relationship between medicine, art, and humanities, and to foster cultural competence among the students.Methods: Results and tips are based on our experiences and past reports.Results: In designing a course for students immersed in an Arab-Muslim context, we encountered two challenges: the discipline’s privileging of a predominantly Western canon of arts and humanities, and the largely Euro-American-centric and unilateral framing of concepts e.g., the doctor-patient relationship, patient-centered approach, patient experiences, and meanings of health and illness. To circumvent these challenges, we followed the Purnell Model for Cultural Competence, adopted the interdisciplinary approach, and employed an intersectionality framework to build and deliver a culturally competent course exploring the nexus of arts, humanities, and medicine.In addition to these tips on which frameworks to adopt and how to structure the course, we recommend a visual literacy workshop to help them develop the ability to recognize and understand ideas conveyed through art. Furthermore, we recommend deep conversations about artistic portrayals of medicine from different cultural contexts as tools for developing cultural awareness. Lastly, we recommend that these discussions adopt a student-centered approach, where students inform about their experiences and their own health and illness determinants, in order to develop their knowledge and practice of holism and patient centered approach, and other issues related to humanities and social sciences. Conclusions:Adopting and implementing a culturally competent approach to medical education, alongside interdisciplinary and intersectionality concepts, are potential conceptual frameworks to structure a course that uses art to inform about medical humanities.

Remote Instruction for Data Visualization Design-A Report From the Trenches.

In this article, we report on our experiences of running visual design workshops within the context of a master's level data visualization course, in a remote setting. These workshops aim to teach students to explore visual design space for data by creating and discussing hand-drawn sketches. We describe the technical setup employed, the different parts of the workshop, how the actual sessions were run, and to what extent the remote version can substitute for in-person sessions. In general, the visual designs created by the students as well as the feedback provided by them indicate that the setup described here can be a feasible replacement for in-person visual design workshops.

Notes on evaluation in visual arts workshops of the superior level.

Education for the training of artists, outside the format of academies of the 19th century, is an activity that from the second half of the 20th century has been inserted in the curricula and formal study programs, since then, questions and Concerns about which are the best teaching and evaluation strategies regarding the research / creation processes approached in arts workshops (because artistic creation is hardly considered research), the above presents a challenge: to objectify with a critical sense , not only products and results, but also the practices and meanings of issues that, due to their constant evolution and nature, can become subjective. This article is born from the observations made during the January-June 2019 semester in a visual arts program of the higher level in Mexico, is based on the exploration and analysis of previous studies on education and evaluation in artistic disciplines, to analyze information that provides ideas that clarify aspects that can be evaluated by observing processes of Research and Artistic Creation (CI) born in school programs; the implicit possibilities and responsibilities, not only to students, but also to teachers and governing bodies, influencing through their practice, the society that embraces and supports them.

Hands-on and digital origami “trip”: the case of a visual arts workshop in Higher Education

The present study refers to an origami workshop of visual arts activities and interdisciplinary research, implemented during COVID-19 pandemics in online distance education in Higher Education. The aim of the workshop was to engage pre-service preschool teachers in origami activities which should then be used and implemented in activities mainly in early childhood and primary education. The paper presents: a. the structure and the content of the workshop with activities by hand and in digital form, and b. the students’ responses regarding their experience and perceptions about origami based on quantitative data. The results revealed that the interplay of physical and digital art and space composed an inter-media origami experience with various potential implementations in education.

A short course in visual literacy can improve residents' observation and descriptive skills in cytopathology.

Visual literacy is an essential skill in Anatomical Pathology. However, there appears to be a dearth of literature that engages explicitly with how to teach or learn visual skills with respect to Anatomical Pathology residents. Using a variety of modalities, with a focus on practical arts-based methodologies, three-two hour workshops were designed to explore the complexity of precise observation and structured description. This intervention was based on the hypothesis that cytopathology and analyzing an artwork share a language and set of formal processes. Evaluation of the workshops was both quantitative and qualitative. The former assessed pre- and post-workshop descriptions of cytology images and artworks while the latter was in the form of a focus group. An actual improvement in both cytopathology and artwork description was demonstrated while the focus group discussion revealed the majority of residents considered the workshops as having a positive impact on the observation and description skills required in Anatomical Pathology. Some felt the purpose and approach of these workshops was not made explicit enough. Thematic analysis of the focus group showed robust discussion regarding who should conduct these workshops and when they should be conducted in resident training. Unanticipated benefits of the workshops such as personal creativity and pleasure formed a significant theme that requires serious consideration. Introducing visual literacy workshops into residency training appears to be valuable and improved observation and description skills in cytopathology. The focus group discussion will be used to improve on this first set of workshops.

Poli-Plex-Icon: A Tool for the City Image Visualization in the Age of Complexity

Poli-Plex-Icon is a visualization tool that combines ideas of urban science and visual arts. It was initially developed in a Ph.D. research (2013–2018) that explored the perception of the city (city image) in history via its visualizations. Poli-Plex-Icon current applications include cultural projects, visual art exhibitions and urban visualization workshops. Poli-Plex-Icon visualizes the city image with respect to complexity science and therefore it describes the city as a system of organized complexity. Accordingly, the complex city image presents properties, such as visual ambiguity and bottom-up formation process. Poli-Plex-Icon combines interdisciplinary theories, techniques, and practices, such as urban mapping, textual analysis, visual semiotics, and layer superimposition. The incorporation of elements from planning, mapping and painting, make the visualizations both informative and communicative. They adopt thus a double, scientific and artistic role. They serve both as facts and artworks. In the paper, we will briefly discuss the concept of city image and its visualization in plans, maps, and paintings, unveiling the path to the current connection of the city with complexity. Then we will present the Poli-Plex-Icon tool. Firstly, we will describe the tool model, which was developed based on Calvino’s novel the Invisible Cities. Secondly, we will briefly discuss Poli-Plex-Icon applications, and will postulate some thoughts and reflections for its further development.

ANSWERS® TOOLS FOR UNCERTAINTY QUANTIFICATION AND VALIDATION

ANSWERS® is developing a set of uncertainty quantification (UQ) tools for use with its major physics codes: WIMS/PANTHER (reactor physics), MONK (criticality and reactor physics) and MCBEND (shielding and dosimetry). The Visual Workshop integrated development environment allows the user to construct and edit code inputs, launch calculations, post-process results and produce graphs, and recently uncertainty quantification and optimisation tools have been added. Prior uncertainties due to uncertainties in nuclear data or manufacturing tolerances can be estimated using the sampling method or using the sensitivity options in the physics codes combined with appropriate covariance matrices. To aid the user in the choice of appropriate validation experiments, the MONK categorisation scheme and/or a similarity index can be used. An interactive viewer has been developed which allows the user to search through, and browse details of, over 2,000 MONK validation experiments that have been analysed from the ICSBEP and IRPhE validation sets. A Bayesian updating approach is used to assimilate the measured data with the calculated results. It is shown how this process can be used to reduce bias in calculated results and reduce the calculated uncertainty on those results. This process is illustrated by application to a PWR fuel assembly.

Visual Culture-Based Workshop: Visual Diaries

Images have become popular via advertisements, video games, fine arts, television, series, movies and other types of images. These images that we see around us our for whole life comprise a great proportion of visual culture. With a visual culture-based workshop, the students would acquire skills to make sense of and interpret what they see with artistic and aesthetic concerns in the workshop studies. In this respect, the students created visual diaries, in which they could reflect/question the experiences they acquire about their daily lives, and with which they could express themselves. The study adopted an art-based qualitative research approach. The study had been conducted in the fall and spring semesters of 2016-2017 academic year in the art drawing workshop course. The participants of the study were comprised of 7 students. The data of this study were collected using semi-structured interviews, document review (on visual diaries) and the art works of the student1s. The data of the study were analyzed using descriptive analysis. When the findings of the study are considered, it is seen that questionings about daily life, course notes, visual and textual interpretations, sense-making processes, and expression styles (sketch, drawing etc.) about their artistic work were included in students’ visual diary experiences in the workshop course. They visually reflected many things they notice around themselves and supported this with texts.

Kwiekulik and the Political Economy of the Potboiler

This article presents the phenomenon of artistic potboiler work – craft-like objects commissioned from artists by the socialist state in the 1970s People’s Republic of Poland. The case study is the KwieKulik duo (Przemysław Kwiek and Zofia Kulik), artists working in the field of processual and ephemeral art. The analysis focuses on KwieKulik’s attempts to cope with and criticise the potboiler artistic economy that was for them the only legal way to earn money. They used to send official letters of complaint to state authorities, criticising Państwowe Przedsiębiorstwo Pracownie Sztuk Plastycznych (State Enterprise of Visual Art Workshops), which was the monopolist institution that commissioned works and decorations for various social and political rituals. KwieKulik managed to turn the political and economic necessity of producing potboiler works into a way of critical exposure of the conditions of the artistic production under socialism. They also reflected on possible ways of financing experiemental art.

Using participatory visual research to explore resilience with girls and young women in rural South Africa

abstractSexual violence is deeply embedded in historical and structural inequalities and is driven by unequal gender power relations. These unequal power relations give rise to gendered norms and practices that inform the social ecologies in which women and girls negotiate their lives. South Africa has one of the highest rates of sexual assault in the world. Research suggests that girls and women from resource-poor rural communities are particularly susceptible to sexual violence due to the dominance of gendered cultural practices and belief systems in these contexts. Our research is part of a six-year, international and interdisciplinary partnership which seeks to explore how participatory visual methods can be used to advance knowledge-production, policy-making and communication in relation to sexual violence against indigenous girls and young women in Canada and South Africa. The data presented in this article are drawn from a series of participatory visual workshops with girls and young women in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Through a thematic analysis of girl-authored cellphilms and digital stories, and with reference to the seven qualitative aspects related to resilience (Ungar et al., 2007), we explore two questions: (1) How do gendered power dynamics affect resilience in relation to sexual violence in their lives? (2) What is the relationship between resilience and the gendered nature of adversity in this setting? We conclude by suggesting how our work with the girls might support, build and leverage gender-specific resources, which could facilitate resilience in this environment.

Using MCBEND for neutron or gamma-ray deterministic calculations

MCBEND 11 is the latest version of the general radiation transport Monte Carlo code from AMEC Foster Wheeler’s ANSWERS® Software Service. MCBEND is well established in the UK shielding community for radiation shielding and dosimetry assessments. MCBEND supports a number of acceleration techniques, for example the use of an importance map in conjunction with Splitting/Russian Roulette. MCBEND has a well established automated tool to generate this importance map, commonly referred to as the MAGIC module using a diffusion adjoint solution. This method is fully integrated with the MCBEND geometry and material specification, and can easily be run as part of a normal MCBEND calculation. An often overlooked feature of MCBEND is the ability to use this method for forward scoping calculations, which can be run as a very quick deterministic method. Additionally, the development of the Visual Workshop environment for results display provides new capabilities for the use of the forward calculation as a productivity tool. In this paper, we illustrate the use of the combination of the old and new in order to provide an enhanced analysis capability. We also explore the use of more advanced deterministic methods for scoping calculations used in conjunction with MCBEND, with a view to providing a suite of methods to accompany the main Monte Carlo solver.

Beyond engagement in working with children in eight Nairobi slums to address safety, security, and housing: Digital tools for policy and community dialogue

ABSTRACTThis article studies the ways in which researchers working in the area of health and social research and using participatory visual methods might extend the reach of participant-generated creations such as photos and drawings to engage community leaders and policy-makers. Framed as going ‘beyond engagement’, the article explores the idea of the production of researcher-led digital dialogue tools, focusing on one example, based on a series of visual arts-based workshops with children from eight slums in Nairobi addressing issues of safety, security, and well-being in relation to housing. The authors conclude that there is a need for researchers to embark upon the use of visual tools to expand the life and use of visual productions, and in particular to ensure meaningful participation of communities in social change.

Cross-border art and queer incursion: On working with queer youth from southern Africa

abstractWhile southern Africa is defined by deep rifts of homophobia and transphobia, queer youth navigate this environment in innovative and creative ways. In this Profile I will explore, through the use of a participatory visual workshop, dubbed Art for Activism, the experiences of queer youth in this region. The Profile will explore the possibilities which this workshop offers to queer youth, the challenges experienced by queer youth and the strategies they use to deal with these challenges. I argue that creative approaches, like the Art for Activism workshop, allows for dislocation to be a successful strategy to engage queer youth.

Embodying limb absence in the negotiation of sexual intimacy

Some people with physical disabilities experience difficulties in forming and maintaining intimate and sexual relationships ( Taleporos and McCabe, 2001 ). Individuals with physical impairments may variously be seen as inferior, ‘not up to scratch’ and can be less valued than those thought to embody the cultural ideal of ‘normality’ ( Edwards and Imrie, 2003 ). The loss of an anatomical part such as an arm or a leg can therefore set up a complex series of perceptual, emotional and psychological responses that can limit or prevent individuals from fully experiencing the kinds of intimate relationships that many of their ‘non-disabled’ counterparts can more freely enjoy ( Oliver, 1990 ). Drawing on a series of semi-structured interviews and a group visual workshop with five men and two women with varying acquired and congenital limb absences, this study explores the variety of ways in which sexual relationships and intimacies are negotiated and managed. Certain participants reported a great deal of anxiety regarding their perceptions of sexual attractiveness, and experienced feelings of loss of desirability as a sexual partner. Others reported engaging in an ‘active management of visual information’ about the body, through methods of concealment and exposure. Compensatory strategies were also reported as a way to effectively maintain existing intimate relationships. Finally, hyper-masculine or hyper-feminine enactments of sexuality were described within a range of social and intimate contexts as a means to ‘normalise’ the disabled body. The findings of this study provide a richer and more contextualised understanding of the highly complex adjustment process faced by individuals with limb absence, who actively engage in sexual and intimate relationships.

Visual Workshop 2: a model viewer, editor and results display package for the ANSWERS shielding and criticality codes

The goal of Visual Workshop is to be an 'Integrated Development Environment' for preparing, modifying, checking, running and analysing results from the shielding codes MCBEND and RANKERN, the criticality code MONK, and the reactor physics/criticality code WIMS. The functionality is being introduced in stages and this paper announces the release of version 2. The key features of Visual Workshop version 1 included: interactive 2D and 3D ray trace display of the model using the same routines as the analysis code, wire frame display of the model, built in editing, running and diagnostic capabilities and a simple results display. The main additional capabilities of version 2 are: Results display using 2D cell plots, 2D contour plots and 3D iso-surface plots overlaid on the model geometry; and display of event type and location and particle tracks overlaid on the model geometry.

Release of MCBEND 11

*MCB END 11 is the latest version of the general radiation transport Monte Carlo code from AMEC’s ANSWERS Software Service. MCBEND is well-established in the UK shielding community for radiation shielding and dosimetry assessments. The geometry visualisation software Visual Workshop 2A provides new event location and contoured results display for MCBEND11. Many important developments have been made available to users in this latest release of MCBEND, some of which are described in this paper. The geometry has been enhanced to import CAD generated input models in a tetrahedral mesh representation and five complex Hole geometries have been added. MCBEND11 has a new continuous energy collision processing package with associated nuclear data libraries, known as BINGO, and now supports one step coupled calculations. Enhancements have been made to the variance reduction capabilities include multiple importance maps and the ability to define a series of First Flight interfaces. The scoring capabilities have been enhanced by the provision of the Unified Tally module which allows scoring to be carried out in scoring bodies, which may be subdivided, and are independent of the geometry model. The Unified Tally module includes the capability to score fluxes and responses by material. An updated Response Function library and provision of a detector covariance library, both based on IRDF2002 data, are included with MCBEND11. New Random Number features provide support for Grid Processing calculations.

Book Review: Eric Margolis and Luc Pauwels, The Sage Handbook of Visual Research Methods

When invited to review The SAGE Handbook of Visual Research Methods for Qualitative Research, I was delighted as the visual has been central to my research (Mannay, 2010), and at the time, I was preparing a visual workshop for the Spring School on Advanced Methodologies for Communication Studies at the Catholic University of Lisbon. Naturally, I wanted to revise and refine my knowledge in preparation, and as this edited collection promised to ‘capture the state of the art in visual research’, I was confident that here, I would be able to re-engage with contemporary theory and practice. The handbook is divided into seven thematic sections; the first, ‘Framing the Field of Visual Research’ begins with ‘An integrated conceptual framework for visual social research’ by, co-editor, Luc Pauwels. Pauwels laments the ways in which visual methods are reinvented, renamed and relabelled, and argues that such practices are ahistorical and detrimental to advancing more mature methodologies. This is followed by an overview of the origin and nature of visual artefacts usefully categorised as ‘found materials as a data source’, ‘researcher-initiated production of visual data and meanings’ and ‘secondary research uses and respondent generated material’. Pauwels offers a frame for grouping, sorting and reflecting on visual approaches, which I found valuable for both situating my own practices and for teaching.

‘Beneath the Veil There is a Woman … Like all other Women’: Women and Transformative Learning in the Visual Arts in a Cross-Cultural Context

This paper contextualizes and analyzes a study of an ongoing series of visual arts workshops for women, commissioned from the Centre for Continuing Studies, Edinburgh College of Art, by clients in Dubai. The focus of workshops was on women from the Gulf taking ‘leadership’ courses in Dundee, but they were also vehicles for Gulf women to engage in visual arts education in a cross-cultural context which offered them novel lifelong learning pedagogical strategies. The study's primary question was how visual art practice could offer non-art specialist women from the Gulf new routes to achieve transformative learning and renegotiate a broad range of cultural expectations. Findings showed that exploring their creativity helped the women to enhance their confidence through a changed sense of self; navigate cross-cultural contexts; and locate devices for remapping personal boundaries. These findings also suggest the potential for arts education to open up new possibilities for women to work in museums and galleries in the Gulf where ‘culture’ is a increasingly significant economic driver.