This dissertation examines how commercially successful military-themed video games produced after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks are crafted, marketed, and played with the goal of understanding the interlocking technological, cultural, and social practices that contribute to their interactive pleasures. The systematic inquiry into the production and experience of media pleasure carries with it vexing questions about how such affect is created and how it is situated within broader cultural fields. This interdisciplinary project accordingly utilizes multiple methods including close textual readings of seminal games, a critical discourse analysis of marketing materials, and an ethnography and focus group of a war gaming fan community to track how these sites of practice give post-9/11 military-themed gameplay its distinctive experiential character and cultural import. The case studies examined herein reveal that the affective dimensions of militarized gameplay are intimately linked to the political and cultural forces undergirding their production, marketing, and reception, and that the games industry mobilizes anxieties about terrorism to entice gamers into virtually striking back against foreign aggressors. / text

This dissertation investigated the effects of multimedia annotation on L2 vocabulary learning and reading comprehension. The overarching objective of this study was to compare the effects of text-picture annotation and audio-picture annotation on L2 vocabulary immediate recall and reading comprehension. This study also sought to examine the different effects under incidental and intentional learning conditions. The participants were 78 intermediate adult ESL learners from three universities in northwest U.S. The participants read an Internet-based English text. Twenty target words, annotated in either text-picture or audio-picture, were embedded in the reading text. The participants accessed the annotations by clicking on the highlighted target words. Two instruments were used for measuring vocabulary immediate recall: Vocabulary Knowledge Scale and Word Recognition Test. Two measurements were used to assess reading comprehension: Multiple-choice Reading Comprehension Questions and L1 Written Recall. In term of annotation types, the results indicated that the audio-picture annotation group did significantly better than the text-picture group in L2 vocabulary immediate recall. However, there was no significantly different effect between the two annotations on L2 reading comprehension. In terms of learning conditions, the intentional learning condition resulted in significantly better performance in L2 vocabulary immediate recall than the incidental learning condition. However, the incidental learning condition resulted in significantly better L2 reading comprehension than the intentional learning condition only in the Written Recall measure, but not in the multiple-choice Reading Comprehension Test. In terms of interaction between annotation type and learning condition, there was not interaction between annotation type and learning condition on L2 vocabulary immediate recall. The interaction between annotation type and learning condition on L2 reading comprehension was not significant in multiple-choice Reading Comprehension Text. However, the interaction was found to be significant in Written Recall: in the incidental learning condition, the difference between text-picture annotation and audio-picture annotation was not significant; in the intentional learning condition, participants in text-picture did significantly better than those in audio-picture on Written Recall.

The present research focuses on the Lithuanian modal verbs gauti ‘get’, tekti ‘be gotten’ and reik(ė)ti ‘need’. The purpose of the research is to analyse the verbs gauti ‘get’, tekti ‘be gotten’ and reik(ė)ti ‘need’ within the framework of grammaticalization and to identify what aspects of grammaticalization are relevant (if at all) to the verbs under study. The study also aims at exploring the factors that trigger the rise of modal meanings and at comparing the semantic properties of the verbs gauti ‘get’, tekti ‘be gotten’ and reik(ė)ti ‘need’ in contemporary Lithuanian and in Old Lithuanian writings (the 16th and 17th centuries). The data of the contemporary Lithuanian language has been compiled from the Corpus of the Contemporary Lithuanian Language, namely its Central newspapers and Fiction parts. The examples of Old Lithuanian have been extracted from three Old Lithuanian Writings: “Postilė” by J. Bretkūnas (1591), “Postilė” by M. Daukša (1599), and “Punktai Sakymų” by K. Sirvydas (1629; 1644). The corpus-based study has shown that the verbs under analysis satisfy the parameters of frequency and polifunctionality. However, they do not exhibit any morphological or morphosyntactic properties that set them apart from the other lexical verbs. In Old Lithuanian Writings the verb reik(ė)ti ‘need’ is used as a modal verb while the verbs gauti ‘get’ and tekti ‘be gotten’ are rarely used in their modal meanings. In contemporary Lithuanian, reik(ė)ti ‘need’ and tekti ‘be gotten’... [to full text] / Disertacijos tyrimo objektu pasirinkti trys lietuvių kalbos veiksmažodžiai, – gauti, tekti ir reik(ė)ti, – iki šiol sulaukę mažai lingvistų dėmesio. Tikslas – ištirti lietuvių kalbos modalinius veiksmažodžius gauti, tekti ir reik(ė)ti iš gramatinimo reiškinio perspektyvos, išsiaiškinti, kurie gramatinimo parametrai relevantiški (jei išvis relevantiški) nagrinėjamiems lietuvių kalbos veiksmažodžiams, išnagrinėti šių veiksmažodžių modalinės semantikos ypatumus, modalinės reikšmės susidarymą lemiančius veiksnius, pateikti nagrinėjamų veiksmažodžių semantinį aprašą ir palyginti jų vartosenos ypatumus senojo periodo (XVI-XVII a.) ir dabartinėje lietuvių kalboje. Dabartinės lietuvių kalbos medžiaga surinkta iš „Dabartinės lietuvių kalbos tekstyno“ grožinės literatūros ir publicistikos patekstynio. Senosios lietuvių kalbos pavyzdžiai surinkti iš trijų senųjų lietuvių kalbos raštų: J. Bretkūno „Postilės“ (1591), M. Daukšos „Postilės“ (1599), ir K. Sirvydo „Punktai sakymų“ (1629; 1644). Tyrimas parodė, kad analizuoti veiksmažodžiai tenkina dažnumo ir polifunkciškumo parametrus. Vis dėlto gauti, tekti ir reik(ė)ti neišsiskiria griežtu sisteminiu struktūrinių požymių rinkiniu, kuris apibrėžtų modalinį jų statusą. Senuosiuose lietuvių kalbos raštuose veiksmažodis reik(ė)ti funkcionuoja kaip modalinis veiksmažodis, o veiksmažodžiai gauti ir tekti retai vartojami modalinėmis reikšmėmis. Dabartinėje lietuvių kalboje reik(ė)ti ir tekti įsitvirtinę kaip modaliniai veiksmažodžiai, o gauti tėra... [toliau žr. visą tekstą]

Disertacijos tyrimo objektu pasirinkti trys lietuvių kalbos veiksmažodžiai, – gauti, tekti ir reik(ė)ti, – iki šiol sulaukę mažai lingvistų dėmesio. Tikslas – ištirti lietuvių kalbos modalinius veiksmažodžius gauti, tekti ir reik(ė)ti iš gramatinimo reiškinio perspektyvos, išsiaiškinti, kurie gramatinimo parametrai relevantiški (jei išvis relevantiški) nagrinėjamiems lietuvių kalbos veiksmažodžiams, išnagrinėti šių veiksmažodžių modalinės semantikos ypatumus, modalinės reikšmės susidarymą lemiančius veiksnius, pateikti nagrinėjamų veiksmažodžių semantinį aprašą ir palyginti jų vartosenos ypatumus senojo periodo (XVI-XVII a.) ir dabartinėje lietuvių kalboje. Dabartinės lietuvių kalbos medžiaga surinkta iš „Dabartinės lietuvių kalbos tekstyno“ grožinės literatūros ir publicistikos patekstynio. Senosios lietuvių kalbos pavyzdžiai surinkti iš trijų senųjų lietuvių kalbos raštų: J. Bretkūno „Postilės“ (1591), M. Daukšos „Postilės“ (1599), ir K. Sirvydo „Punktai sakymų“ (1629; 1644). Tyrimas parodė, kad analizuoti veiksmažodžiai tenkina dažnumo ir polifunkciškumo parametrus. Vis dėlto gauti, tekti ir reik(ė)ti neišsiskiria griežtu sisteminiu struktūrinių požymių rinkiniu, kuris apibrėžtų modalinį jų statusą. Senuosiuose lietuvių kalbos raštuose veiksmažodis reik(ė)ti funkcionuoja kaip modalinis veiksmažodis, o veiksmažodžiai gauti ir tekti retai vartojami modalinėmis reikšmėmis. Dabartinėje lietuvių kalboje reik(ė)ti ir tekti įsitvirtinę kaip modaliniai veiksmažodžiai, o gauti tėra... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / The present research focuses on the Lithuanian modal verbs gauti ‘get’, tekti ‘be gotten’ and reik(ė)ti ‘need’. The purpose of the research is to analyse the verbs gauti ‘get’, tekti ‘be gotten’ and reik(ė)ti ‘need’ within the framework of grammaticalization and to identify what aspects of grammaticalization are relevant (if at all) to the verbs under study. The study also aims at exploring the factors that trigger the rise of modal meanings and at comparing the semantic properties of the verbs gauti ‘get’, tekti ‘be gotten’ and reik(ė)ti ‘need’ in contemporary Lithuanian and in Old Lithuanian writings (the 16th and 17th centuries). The data of the contemporary Lithuanian language has been compiled from the Corpus of the Contemporary Lithuanian Language, namely its Central newspapers and Fiction parts. The examples of Old Lithuanian have been extracted from three Old Lithuanian Writings: “Postilė” by J. Bretkūnas (1591), “Postilė” by M. Daukša (1599), and “Punktai Sakymų” by K. Sirvydas (1629; 1644). The corpus-based study has shown that the verbs under analysis satisfy the parameters of frequency and polifunctionality. However, they do not exhibit any morphological or morphosyntactic properties that set them apart from the other lexical verbs. In Old Lithuanian Writings the verb reik(ė)ti ‘need’ is used as a modal verb while the verbs gauti ‘get’ and tekti ‘be gotten’ are rarely used in their modal meanings. In contemporary Lithuanian, reik(ė)ti ‘need’ and tekti ‘be gotten’... [to full text]

The aim of this study is to investigate how the modal auxiliaries will and shall and the semi-modal BE going to are used to express futurity by individuals whose first language is Swedish. The study is corpus based, and the corpora used in this study consist of Swedish newspapers in English (SWENC) and material from blogs which are written in English by Swedes (BESC). These are compared with the press sub-corpora in F-LOB (the Freiburg-LOB Corpus of British English) and Frown (the Freiburg-Brown corpus of American English), which represent British and American varieties of English. The method is quantitative and the results are mainly presented in frequencies. The results show that all of the modals are used in SWENC and BESC. The core modal will is the most frequently used modal in all of the corpora and sub-corpora. The semi-modal BE going to is most frequently used in BESC and the second core modal shall is most frequent in SWENC. However, qualitative examination of shall revealed that the writers in SWENC use the modal differently from how it is used in F-LOB Press. This study shows evidence of variation in use of the modals which express futurity. The fact that the semi-modal BE going to exists in the Swedish material indicates that the process of grammaticalization continues in the Swedish form of English.

Evarcha culicivora, a species of jumping spider (Araneae: Salticidae from the Lake Victoria region of East Africa, has unusual prey-choice behaviour. It preferred prey is blood-carrying mosquitoes. It also has unusually complex mate-choice behaviour, with mutual mate choice being pronounced. This thesis is a study of E. culicivora’s prey-choice behaviour and mate-choice behaviour, as well as a study of processes underlying selective attention in this unusual species. E. culicivora uses olfaction in unique and often surprising ways. This includes identifying potential mates by odour alone, as well as choosing the odour of potential mates that have recently fed on blood-carrying mosquitoes. The odour of potential mates also primes both sexes for escalating conflict with potential rivals, as well as priming selective attention to the masked odour of specifically potential mates. Besides all this, the odour of blood-carrying mosquitoes primes E. culicivora to selectively attend to the masked odour of specifically this prey. Moreover, the appearance of blood-carrying mosquitoes and of potential mates primes E. culicivora to selectively attend to specifically the appearance of cryptic blood-carrying mosquitoes and cryptic potential mates, respectively. Vision and olfaction can even work together, with olfactory and visual cues from blood-carrying mosquitoes priming E. culicivora to selectively attend to the appearance and odour, respectively, of blood-carrying mosquitoes. Furthermore, E. culicivora has a poorly-understood relationship with two plant species, Lantana camara and Ricinus communis, and E. culicivora can identify these two plant species by odour alone. These plants may be relevant to this salticid as a nectar source by which it supplements its insect diet, but these plants may also be as sites at which E. culicivora males and females find potential mates, with E. culicivora’s interactions on these plants being especially exaggerated and complex.

This research examines how cross-modal and within-modal matching differ. Three broad classes of difference are considered, that crossmodal matching requires (a) "translation" between modality-specific stores or (b) "transformation" of information when different information is available through each modality or (c) transformation, whatever the information available through each modality, owing to differences in encoding strategy. Visual-kinaesthetic matching of the end-point of lever movements has been investigated. It is argued that adult cross-modal performance depends on information and strategy, not directly on modality. Results with children have been less clear, experiments were therefore undertaken, with subjects aged 6-9 years. The hypothesis was that childrens' performance also would be determined by available information, and strategy. With information differences eliminated, modality conditions did not differ in within-subject variability, with up to 20 second unfilled retention intervals. With visual information enhanced by background cues and emphasis of the body midline, visual matching was superior to kinaesthetic, and within-modal was superior to cross-modal matching. These differences disappeared with practice, together with coding relative to the midline in the cross-modal conditions. Midline-relative coding was the norm with the midline emphasised, and without background cues. With or without variability differences, VV did not differ from KK in bias, but KV resulted in greater overshooting, VK greater undershooting. The most likely explanation is resistance to movement when perception is kinaesthetic, causing overestimation of distance moved. Consideration of the information normally available to subjects, generated the hypothesis that temporal and spatial parameters should interact more with kinaesthetic than with visual perception. This was supported, since movement velocity biased only kinaesthetic judgements. It is concluded that matching performance depends on the information encoded and used as the basis of matching, which depends on strategy; strategy depends on information (a) available during stimulus presentation, (b) normally available in each modality, (c) which it is anticipated will be available during response.

This research investigates the music-theatre phenomenon for the purpose of: clarifying how that differs from more traditional forms of musical theatre, i.e., Opera and Broadway musical; discussing its aesthetic bases; explicating its modes of operation in relation to both music and theatre. The writing is structured in three main parts. The first concern of the discussion is to clarify the connection between music and performance. To that end, Part One starts by reflecting on the nature of music and how its perception has been changed by modern technology, throwing live performance into question. The notions of physicality, embodiment, and gesture are then invoked in order to re-position music firmly within the performing arts. Part Two then delves into music-theatre touching on issues of terminology, artistic scope, positioning, production, funding, structures, institutions. Part Three, finally, offers some conclusions and recommendations. The Thesis is then followed by a commentary to the portfolio of compositions accompanying this research. The musical scores and audio-visual material relative to the works therein discussed are included on 1 separately bound volume.

The use of complementary non-invasive imaging modalities has been proposed to track disease progression, particularly cancer, while simultaneously evaluating therapeutic efficacy. A major obstacle is a limited ability to compare parameters obtained from different modalities, especially those from exogenous contrast agents or tracers. We hypothesize that combining Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and Ultrasound (US) will improve characterization of the tumour microenvironment. In this study, we describe a co-registration apparatus that facilitates the acquisition of a priori co-registered MR and US images in vivo. This apparatus was validated using phantom data and it was found that the US slices can be selected to an accuracy of +/- 100µm translationally and +/- 2 degrees rotationally. Additionally, it was shown that MRI and US may provide complimentary information about the tumour microenvironment, but more work needs to be done to assess repeatability of dynamic contrast enhanced MRI and US.

In order to leverage the use of various modalities such as audio-visual-touch in instilling learning behaviour, we present an intuitive approach of annotation based hapto-audio-visual interaction with the traditional digital learning materials such as eBooks. By integrating the traditional home entertainment system and respective media in the user's reading experience combined with haptic interfaces, we examine whether such augmentation of modalities influence the user's reading experience in terms of attention, entertainment and retention. The proposed Haptic E-Book (HE-Book) system leverages the haptic jacket, haptic arm band as well as haptic sofa interfaces to receive haptic emotive signals wirelessly in the form of patterned vibrations of the actuators and expresses the learning material by incorporating audio-video based augmentation in order to pave ways for intimate reading experience in the popular eBook platform. We have designed and developed desktop, mobile/tablet based HE-Book system as well as a semi-automated annotation authoring tool. Our system also supports multimedia based diverse quiz augmentations, which can help in learning tracking. We have conducted quantitative and qualitative tests using the developed prototype systems. We have adopted the indirect objective based performance analysis methodology, which is commonly used for multimedia based learning investigation. The user study shows that, there is a positive tendency of accepting multimodal interactions including haptics with traditional eBook reading experience. Though our limited number of laboratory tests reveal, that haptics can be an influencing media in eBook reading experience, but it requires large scale real life tests to provide a concluding remarks.