Walking Man Research Articles

Zagubieni w drodze. „Idący człowiek” Alberto Giacomettiego i jego rekontekstualizacja Piotra Stepnowskiego jako metafory ludzkiej kondycji

The main idea of the article is Henry David Thoreau’s conviction that being lost on the way, losing one’s way and, consequently, coming to a stop enables one to truly explore the present location and to establish the destination one wishes to reach. This perspective allows to observe the situation of a modern man and pose questions related to their actions to date. The interpretative material through which these problems are realized are two contemporary sculptures, treated as metaphors of the human condition: Albert Giacometti’s Walking Man and Piotr Stepnowski’s Walking Man (a form of recontextualization of Giacometti’s sculpture).

The walking man approach to interpreting the receiver operating characteristic curve and area under the receiver operating characteristic curve

An accuracy study of a test that produces a wide range of results will often present a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve and report the area under the ROC curve (AUROC). The AUROC is a summary measure of how well the test discriminates between those with the condition or disease in question and those without it. A test that perfectly separates individuals with and without the condition has an AUROC of 1.0, and a test that doesn’t separate them at all has an AUROC of 0.5. The AUROC is also the probability that a random individual with the condition will have a more abnormal test result than a random individual without the condition. In this Key Concepts article, we present our “walking man” approach to understanding ROC curves and the AUROC.

The InVersiya Poetry Festival: The Creativity of Communication and Collective Authorship

This article analyses three projects created within the framework of the Chelyabinsk poetic laboratory festival InVersiya (photograph album Developer, calendar Dogs and Baobabs, and the film Walking Man) in the aspect of the features of modern media poetry in its regional refraction. Poetry festivals are characterised by a combination of experimentation and accessibility to the public, the subordination of individual poetic ideas to the general conceptual framework of the project, and quite often the dominance of creativity over artistry, performativity, and procedurality. The InVersiya festival is a part of the Ural poetic movement, which is quite developed today. The author concludes that the Ural authors are open to interaction with poets and artists from other cities and countries, overcoming the complex of “provinciality”, fitting into the all-Russian poetic context. The analysis of the projects the author refers to demonstrates the dominance of the communicative function of poetry and the importance of the pragmatics of the poetic text. The article examines specific methods of interaction between verbal and visual components, revealing strategies of collective authorship. According to the author, among the “Ural” poetic traditions proper, one can name the preservation of the dual addressing of works (elitist and mass), the implicit presence of the gender and environmental components of the figurative range, and a drive towards experiment.

Wheel dynamometer system for aircraft landing gear testing

The aim of this study was to design, develop and apply practically a wheel dynamometer for aircraft landing gear testing. The dynamometer system was designed to measure two force components acting along the longitudinal and vertical axes of the wheel as well as and three moments acting around the longitudinal, transversal and vertical axes. It consists of a sensor unit that is embedded in the wheel hub, a modified rim with a tyre as well as a data acquisition and transfer system that enables the measured signals to transfer wirelessly to a portable computer or another device (smartphone, tablet). The sensor unit was developed based on strain gage measurement technology. The prototype system was calibrated in a stationary test stand, then installed on a PZL 104 Wilga 35A for airfield tests. Primary test measurements were performed with the aircraft taxiing at “walking man” speed and proved system’s performance. Certification for ground and flight tests of airplanes has been considered for the presented dynamometer system.

The Phenomenon of Human Mind Slip in Rapid Writing Chinese Characters

The slip-over phenomenon is a very interesting feature in rapid writing Chinese characters, a unique psychological phenomenon in Chinese language. Most of the slip-over characters appear in set phrases. It is just like a walking man, when he is in a hurry he would sometimes run one or two steps. Since most Chinese characters contain radicals, slip-over phenomenon occurs quite frequently. In this paper the author lists four groups of slip-over characters and analyzes their psychological processes. The author holds that this study is useful, in some ways, in their use in computers.

Towards BCI-actuated smart wheelchair system

BackgroundElectroencephalogram-based brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) represent novel human machine interactive technology that allows people to communicate and interact with the external world without relying on their peripheral muscles and nervous system. Among BCI systems, brain-actuated wheelchairs are promising systems for the rehabilitation of severely motor disabled individuals who are unable to control a wheelchair by conventional interfaces. Previous related studies realized the easy use of brain-actuated wheelchairs that enable people to navigate the wheelchair through simple commands; however, these systems rely on offline calibration of the environment. Other systems do not rely on any prior knowledge; however, the control of the system is time consuming. In this paper, we have proposed an improved mobile platform structure equipped with an omnidirectional wheelchair, a lightweight robotic arm, a target recognition module and an auto-control module. Based on the you only look once (YOLO) algorithm, our system can, in real time, recognize and locate the targets in the environment, and the users confirm one target through a P300-based BCI. An expert system plans a proper solution for a specific target; for example, the planned solution for a door is opening the door and then passing through it, and the auto-control system then jointly controls the wheelchair and robotic arm to complete the operation. During the task execution, the target is also tracked by using an image tracking technique. Thus, we have formed an easy-to-use system that can provide accurate services to satisfy user requirements, and this system can accommodate different environments.ResultsTo validate and evaluate our system, an experiment simulating the daily application was performed. The tasks included the user driving the system closer to a walking man and having a conversation with him; going to another room through a door; and picking up a bottle of water on the desk and drinking water. Three patients (cerebral infarction; spinal injury; and stroke) and four healthy subjects participated in the test and all completed the tasks.ConclusionThis article presents a brain-actuated smart wheelchair system. The system is intelligent in that it provides efficient and considerate services for users. To test the system, three patients and four healthy subjects were recruited to participate in a test. The results demonstrate that the system works smartly and efficiently; with this system, users only need to issue small commands to get considerate services. This system is of significance for accelerating the application of BCIs in the practical environment, especially for patients who will use a BCI for rehabilitation applications.

Determining Confusion for Traditional and Experimental Pedestrian Signals in Rural and Suburban Areas in the United States

Walking is a mode of travel used by billions of people daily. Facilities that promote walking such as crosswalks often involve sharing space with conflicting vehicular traffic. These areas are not immune to receiving pedestrians that either do not obey or do not understand today’s pedestrian signals, which are used to communicate periods of safe crossing. Therefore, improving comprehension would subsequently improve safety and crash rates. The Traditional Pedestrian Signal in the United States displays an illuminated man and a hand to indicate a cautionary-crossing period, a transition period, and a crossing-prohibited period. This signal type was evaluated and compared to a relatively new Experimental Pedestrian Signal. The Experimental Pedestrian Signal presented in this paper utilized the figure of a walking man changing only by the colors green, yellow, and red. Both signals were analyzed to identify the phases that best communicated the intended action. Video files depicting a Traditional and Experimental Signal were administered with a questionnaire to test the comprehension of rural and suburban participants. The results indicated that the Experimental Pedestrian Signal was not better understood than the current Traditional Signal, although a vast majority of participants preferred the Experimental Signal. The lowest comprehension occurred during the transition phase for both pedestrian signal types. The results also suggest that the interpretation of the yellow color varies by location and may invoke mixed responses if incorporated in pedestrian signals. A more appropriate solution may be to combine both symbolic and color cues into future pedestrian signals.

‘A walking Man from the far North’ – art, craft and the emergence of consciousness: A speculative tale

Abstract How can cross-disciplinary speculative narratives give us insights and open new paths of research? Borrowing from a number of disciplines, from Anthropology to Psychology or Art history, I will draw a hypothetical blueprint of processes that possibly led to the creation of the Ainu people’s patterns, an indigenous tribe from north Japan. From some particular key points I will narrate a speculative tale giving us possible insights about those specific patterns, as well as about the questions encapsulated in the split representation in the art of Asia and America, questions that were raised by various anthropologists, from Franz Boas to Claude Levi-Strauss. I will demonstrate that those pattern-making habits were inherent to human being as a species until very recently. What kind of unconscious purpose or meaning they could have had and what it could mean in terms of the evolution of consciousness.

Long distance walking man after a combination of percutaneous mitral annuloplasty and coronary revascularization

Long distance walking man after a combination of percutaneous mitral annuloplasty and coronary revascularization

The neural development of the biological motion processing system does not rely on early visual input

Naturally occurring sensory deprivation in humans provides a unique opportunity to identify sensitive phases for the development of neuro-cognitive functions. Patients who had experienced a transient period of congenital visual deprivation due to bilateral dense cataracts (congenital cataract, cc) have shown, after visual re-afferentation, deficits in a number of higher visual functions including global motion and face processing. By contrast, biological motion (BM) perception seemed to be spared. The present study investigated the neural correlates of BM processing in a sample of 12 congenital cataract-reversal individuals who had underwent visual restoration surgery at the age of a few months up to several years. The individual threshold for extracting BM from noise was assessed in a behavioral task while event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded in response to point-light displays of a walking man and of a scrambled version of the same stimuli. The threshold of the cc group at detecting BM did not differ from that of a group of matched controls (mc). In both groups, the N1 was modulated by BM. These largely unimpaired neural responses to BM stimuli together with a lack of behavioral group differences suggest that, in contrast to the neural systems for faces the neural systems for BM processing specialize independent of early visual input.

Figures stripped to bones, just signs and symbols - solitude, discomfort, incommunicability.

Figures stripped to bones, just signs and symbols - solitude, discomfort, incommunicability.

Numbers and Tempo: 1630-1800

After discussing the role of technology in achieving modern performance standards, this article examines sources that have been cited in support of extremely rapid tempos for the time frame 1630-1800. It summarizes recent findings about the French time devices in which a new source ‒ the Paris dancing master Raoul Auger Feuillet’s reasonable pendulum tempo numbers for dance forms ‒ provides the most accurate information to date for tempo around 1700. Continuing then with other sources cited for rapid tempos, the present article discusses the conflicting statements in Marin Mersenne’s Harmonie universelle and his inaccurate pendulum measurements. It considers the tempo implications of the various time signatures, as supplied, for example, by Jean Rousseau and Jacques Hotteterre, together with Saint-Lambert’s idiomatic use of “une fois plus vite” to indicate the signatures’ tempo relationships. The latter’s “walking man” analogy was not a guide for tempo, but a means to convey beat equality; i.e., sound rhythm. Johann Joachim Quantz’s pulsebeat of 80, unworkable in the tempo sense applied today, was intended to teach fast-to-slow gradations of tempo to musicians who lacked any form of time-measuring device. In response, Daniel Gottlob Türk and Johann George Tromlitz cited the many variables that affect tempo. Without the modern technology that makes extreme tempos possible, tempo in earlier centuries had to have been commensurate with the prevailing conditions.

The Effects of Neuromuscular Electrical Stimulation on Cardiopulmonary Function in Healthy Adults

ObjectiveTo evaluate the effect of neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) on cardiopulmonary function in healthy adults.MethodThirty-six healthy adults without a cardiac problem were enrolled. All patients were randomly assigned to either a control (17 subjects, mean age 29.41) or an electrical stimulation group (19 subjects, mean age 29.26). The electrical stimulation group received NMES on both sides of quadriceps muscle using a Walking Man II® in a sitting position for 30 minutes over 2 weeks. Maximum oxygen consumption (VO2max), metabolic equivalent (MET), resting, maximal heart rate (RHR, MHR), resting, maximal blood pressure (RBP, MBP), and maximal rate pressure product (MRPP), exercise tolerance test (ETT) duration were determined using an exercise tolerance test and a 6 minute walk test (6MWT) before and after treatment.ResultsThe electrical stimulation group showed a significant increase in VO2max (p=0.03), 6MWT (p<0.01), MHR (p<0.04), MsBP (p<0.03), ETT duration (p<0.01) and a significant decrease in RsBP (p<0.02) as compared with the control group after two weeks. NMES induced changes improved only in RsBP (p<0.049) and ETT duration (p<0.01). The effects of NMES training were stronger in females.ConclusionWe suggest that NMES is an additional therapeutic option for cardiopulmonary exercise in disabled patients with severe refractory heart failure or acute AMI.

DVD Reviews

DVD Reviews

3D human model and joint parameter estimation from monocular image

In this paper we present a novel class of human model described by convolution surface attached to articulated kinematics skeletons. The human pose can be estimated from silhouette in monocular images. The contribution of this paper consists of three points: First, human model of convolution surface is presented and its shape is deformable when changing polynomial parameters and radius parameters. Second, convolution surface and curve correspondence theorem is presented to give a map between 3D pose and 2D contour. Third, we model the human silhouette with convolution curve in order to estimate joint parameters from monocular images and we also give an effective constraint function. Evaluation of this approach is performed on some video frames about a walking man. The experiment result shows that our method works well without self-occlusion.

Third Men: The Logic of the Sophisms at Arist. SE 22, 178b36–170a10

This article aims at elucidating the logic of Arist. SE 22, 178b36–179a10 and, in particular, of the sophism labelled "Third Man" discussed in it. I suggest that neither the sophistic Walking Man argument, proposed by ancient commentators, nor the Aristotelian Third Man of the Πeρίιδeων, suggested by modern interpreters, can be identified with the fallacious argument Aristotle presents and solves in the passage. I propose an alternative reconstruction of the Third Man sophism and argue that an explanation of the lines regarding the identity of Coriscus and Coriscus the musician (178b39–179a3) is indispensable for its correct understanding, since they hint at another sophism in some important aspects analogous. Finally, I show that two contradictions concerning eκΘeσις spotted by scholars in the passage are only apparent and can be dissolved once the assumption that the anti-Platonic Third Man argument is at stake here is discarded, and once the passage is read in the light of its agonistic context.

Going Underground

Going Underground

Furrowing All the Brows: Interpretation and the Transcendent in Toni Morrison's Paradise

Whether motto on Oven is Beware Furrow of His Be Furrow of His or even Are Furrow of His Brow or Her Brow, God's brow is not only one that is furrowed in Toni Morrison's seventh novel, Paradise. The brows of many of characters are furrowed in anger, frustration, or perplexity: in particular, nine Ruby men who attack Convent; Ruby's three ministers, who quarrel over meaning of God's love; Patricia Best, who tries unsuccessfully understand social discriminations in Ruby; Consolata, who for much of is tired of living; and Mavis and Gigi, who squabble over everything. Readers' brows also are likely be furrowed as they try absorb complexities and nuances of this novel. A persistent theme in early reviews of is its difficulty: Louis Menand finds that the writing is more demanding and takes more chances than in Song of Solomon or Beloved (78); Carol Shields calls it long, complex, fluent novel and great sprawl of a narrative (16); and for Richard Eder to read Toni Morrison is advance upon an Olympic wrestling master. We draw confidently near, only be hurled onto our backs and set in opposite direction (2). (1) Morrison's own brow was also apparently furrowed while she wrote novel, for she describes having work very hard create three-dimensional characters without indicating their race (Rose). In a sense, there is nothing new about this: All participants in Morrison's novels-characters, readers, presumably Morrison, and Morrison's narrator in Jazz-engage in serious work that usually furrows their brows. Readers are familiar with Morrison's tendency delve beyond what into more problematic how and why, with her nonlinear, polyvocal, multi-stranded narratives; and with such challenging techniques as jump-cutting radically from one scene and/or perspective another and dropping unexplained tidbits that leave readers suspended, waiting for more information. But in Paradise Morrison ups ante. From its opening sentence, They shoot white girl first, readers are confronted with questions whose answers are usually delayed and sometimes never revealed: Who are they? Do they kill or only wound girl? Which girl is white? Who else do they shoot, wound, or kill? Why are they shooting these women? Although readers eventually learn identities and motives of shooters, they ar e never told which of Convent women is white or whether any of them besides Consolata is killed, just as they are left wonder about many other details, such as who is related whom in Ruby, what motto on communal oven says, or who mysterious men are who occasionally appear (the walking man, Dovey's Friend, and cowboy figure who talks with Consolata). Just as Morrison moves beyond what why and how, so should readers. The question is not what ambiguities arise in text, nor is it how such ambiguities can be resolved. The issue centers on effects Morrison creates through such an ambiguous and knotty text. The general effect is require readers work hard, so that they, like characters and author, become truly part of fictional enterprise. Whereas Morrison's previous novels have invited readers participate, have, in Morrison's words, left holes and spaces so reader can come into [them] (Tate 25), in Paradise reader is forced work hard simply enter into text. Morrison takes a great risk here, since readers may not be willing make such a commitment, may walk away rather than study and re-study novel. She acknowledges this risk when she admits that this may not be her most affecting or enjoyable (Rose), but her comments suggest that her emphasis is on readers' participation rather than their enjoyme nt. For example, she left unidentified races of Convent women because knowing about a person's race is least amount of information an individual has when confronting another, and therefore readers will have move beyond that conventional, but Morrison less significant, piece of information and will thereby have to be as creative as possible in responding racial codes (OnlineHost). …

Things are Queer

The first photograph of Duane Michals's series Things Are Queer (fig. 1) depicts a simple bourgeois bathroom. Picture 2 introduces a pair of enormous hairy legs. As the series continues, the camera moves back, revealing that it is not the legs that are unusually big, but the toilet, sink, and bathtub that are small. The camera retreats again, and we become aware of an enormous thumb on a page. It turns out that what we have really been seeing is someone looking at a picture in a book of a man standing in a tiny bathroom. As if in a film, the camera keeps panning back. The man reading the book is in a dark corridor. In the penultimate photograph we find that this walking and looking man is merely a blowup of an image that is in the mirror in the bathroom. With the final image in the series we have come back full circle to the original toilet, sink, and bathtub.

特集 画像処理―アルゴリズムとシステム ブロック特徴を用いた歩行人物の抽出と追跡

The paper describes an image-processing method to extract and track walking men from a series of frame images taken by an overhead video camera. First, each frame of image is divided into blocks of 4-by-4 pixels. Each block is then examined to determine whether it is part of a moving object or not. Four 8-by-8 pixels windows are set on the block under consideration to calculate the standard deviations of pixel values in each window. When these values of more than two windows vary according to the time change, the current block is regarded as a part of a walking man. Next, movement, appearance, dissappearance, connection and division of an object are automatically recognized from a series of frames. This method also can track a specified man. Algorithms of this method and experimental results are shown.