Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), a generative modelling technique most commonly used for image generation, have recently been applied to the task of fine art generation. Wasserstein GANs and GANHack techniques have not been applied in GANs that generate fine art, despite their showing improved GAN results in other applications. This thesis investigates whether Wasserstein GANs and GANHack extensions to DCGANs can improve the quality of DCGAN-based fine art generation. There is also no accepted method of evaluating or comparing GANs for fine art generation. DCGAN's, Wasserstein GANs' and GANHack techniques' outputs on a modest computational budget were quantitatively and qualitatively compared to see which techniques showed improvement over DCGAN. A method for evaluating computer-generated fine art, HEART, is proposed to cover both the qualities of good human-created fine art and the shortcomings of computer-created fine art, and to include the cognitive and emotional impact as well as the visual appearance. Prominent GAN quantitative evaluation techniques were used to compare sample images these GANs produced on the MNIST, CIFAR-10 and Imagenet-1K image data sets. These results were compared with sample images these GANs produced on the above data sets, as well as on art data sets. A pilot study of HEART was performed with 20 users. Wasserstein GANs achieved higher visual quality outputs than the baseline DCGAN, as did the use of GANHacks, on all the fine art data sets and are thus recommended for use in future work on GAN-based fine art generation. The study also demonstrated that HEART can be used for the evaluation and comparison of art GANs, providing comprehensive, objective quality assessments which can be substantiated in terms of emotional and cognitive impact as well as visual appearance.

see document / Master of Engineering

There has been a dramatic increase in the digitization of content consumers create and accumulate on their devices or social media platforms. People either create and store content on digital devices or cloud storage services or post content on social media platforms that provide network affordances. Given the sheer volume of user-generated digital content on devices and social media platforms, it is imperative to examine how consumers value it. Across eleven studies, I show that user-generated content on social media is valued less than similar user-generated content stored on digital devices or in the cloud. I propose a goal-theoretic framework to explain this difference in value. Consumers value user-generated content less as its creation and use are motivated more by a sharing goal and less by a memory preservation goal. However, consumers do value their user-generated content on social media when it is perceived to preserve meaningful memories. Lastly, I empirically demonstrate how enhancing the value of social media user-generated content has implications for platform loyalty, revenue model, and digital legacy regulation on these platforms. / 2024-05-16T00:00:00Z

Since the discovery of stress-generated potentials (SGPs) in bone by Fukada and Yasuda in 1957, researchers have tried to understand their origin and function in the maintenance of bone. There have been a variety of methods attempting to quantify these SGPs in both wet and dry bone. In this study, I prepared both dry and wet beams of cortical bovine bone and subjected them to mechanical deformation in cantilever bending. Mechanical testing was performed to explore how the magnitude of the SGPs was affected by hydration levels, strain, and pressure gradients associated with various load magnitudes and deformation rates. Signals that were collected from the dry bone samples were attributed to motion artifact resulting from the movement of the materials testing machine and load cell. The SGPs from wet bone, on the other hand, consistently produced exponentially decaying signals following deformation that were maintained throughout held deformation and produced an SGP of opposite magnitude upon release of deformation. The exponentially decaying SGP signal produced after application of a step load to wet bone samples was determined to fit a two-term exponential equation (V(t) = Aet/τ1 + Cet/τ2). The first term, made up of the A-coefficient and τ1, was found to be dependent on deformation rate whereas the second term, containing the C-coefficient and τ2, was dependent on load magnitude. The sum of the two coefficients determine the maximum voltage the SGP can reach. Additionally, samples were left to air dry for one hour and tested intermittently throughout that time period. SGP signals diminished significantly over the hour, therefore, it has been concluded that the majority of the SGP signal is due to streaming potentials caused by ionic fluid movement within the bone upon deformation. / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc) / Mechanical deformation of bone produces electrical signals known as stress-generated potentials (SGPs). In this study, I mechanically tested wet beams of bone to assess how the SGPs were affected by hydration levels, load magnitudes, and deformation rates. Dry bone samples did not produce any acceptable SGP signals. The SGPs from wet bone, however, produced repeatable signals that decayed following deformation. With a step load input, the decaying SGP signal fit a two-term exponential equation (V(t) = Aet/τ1 + Cet/τ2). The first term, made up of the A-coefficient and τ1, was found to be dependent on deformation rate whereas the second term, containing the C-coefficient and τ2, was dependent on load magnitude. The two coefficients, the A and C-coefficient, together determine the maximum voltage the SGP can reach. The result of this work showed that SGPs in bone are dependent on tissue hydration and vary with load magnitude and deformation rate.

the Ashes and the Portal is an immersive stereoscopic animated short capturing the burned library after a fire disaster at Mzuzu University, Malawi, Africa, and it also witnesses the new design of the library from Virginia Tech architecture students. This animated short recreates the burned library and presents the new library design with photo-real image sequences which can immersively bring the audiences onto the site. The Ashes and the Portal utilizes the Cyclorama system, which is a 32 feet diameter and 16 feet tall cylindrical screen with four projectors that can display visual content. The surrounding panels with rendered footage could provide an immersive experience within this semi-public space. This is a collaboration project between the School of Visual Arts and the School of Architecture + Design, also with technical support from the Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology. This project explores the potential use of Cyclorama system as a platform for CG works, especially for stereoscopic animation. / Master of Fine Arts / The Ashes and The Portal is a computer generated animation tells a story about burned library at Mzuzu University, Malawi, Africa and a new library design from Virginia Tech architecture students. Audience is required to wear a pair of 3D goggles to view the animation inside a giant curved screen which is surrounding the viewer. The photo-real footage of burned library and new library design can visually bring audiences onto the site and provide an immersive experience. This project is a collaboration project between the School of Visual Arts and the School of Architecture + Design, also with technical support from the Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology. This is an educational project that explores the potential use of the Cyclorama system as a platform for computer generated media works, especially for stereoscopic animation.

The ongoinging demographic change will increase the demands on health care with an increase of old people suffering from long-term conditions in need of care. One way of meeting this increasing demand is to combine the use of modern technology and the involvement of patients by letting patients monitor their health themselves.  The use of patient-generated health data (PGHD) can benefit both patients and the health care and is an area that is being studied internationally. In this thesis work, two parts of the area of using PGHD in health care have been studied. First eleven professionals from the field of health care (both medical professionals, strategists and project leaders) were interviewed regarding their opinions on PGHD. They were generally positive to the phenomena and mentioned several types of measurements they found to be suited for PGHD. Among these measurement types were blood pressure, weight, blood glucose, electrocardiogram (ECG), peak expiratory flow (PEF), blood oxygen saturation and a variety of blood tests. The professionals found the greatest benets of PGHD to be the increased freedom and quality of life it offers to patients and the increased engagement to their own care it may lead to. The greatest concerns were related to technology problems and the patients using the measurement devices incorrectly. The second part of the work investigated how measurements of weight, blood pressure and ECG would be transferred from the device used by the patient to the electronic health record (EHR) in a standardized way. For the transfer being standardized, the study followed the Continua design guidelines (CDG), which are based on international standards and aim to achieve plug-and-play interoperability among health care devices and systems. This part of the study was carried out by studying the CDG documents as well as the standards to which they refer. The measurement data from the three device types were all described to be handled as numeric values, but in different formats. The weight is a single value, the blood pressure is a compound of values: systolic, diastolic and mean arterial pressure, and the ECG is an array of values. All measurement data is contained in a specic message together with additional data such as device type, device manufacturer, a reference ID and the date and time of the measurement. The data message is transferred from the measurement device to an application hosting device (AHD) with either a touch area network interface (using Near-Field Communications), personal area network interface (using USB or Bluetooth communication) or local area network interface (using ZigBee communication). From the AHD the data transfer chain continues until the data reaches the EHR.

The present study examines typical features of internet language found in user-generated comments collected from commenting groups from four online magazines aimed at different readerships: (1) adult women (Working Mother and Mothering), (2) adult men (Esquire), (3) young women (Seventeen) and (4) young men (Gameinformer). Approximately 5,000 words from each commenting group were collected, creating a 21,087 word corpus which was analyzed with regard to typographic (emoticons, nonstandard typography of and, personal pronouns you and I) and orthographic features (abbreviations, acronyms) as well as syntactic and stylistic features resembling spoken language (contracted forms, ellipsis of subject and/or verb and commenting tone). The results show that adult men wrote the longest comments, followed by adult women, young men and young women in descending order. Furthermore, as for the typical features regarding typography and orthography, it was found that among the four commenting groups, adult men and adult women used them very sparsely, young men used them occasionally and young women used the features most frequently. The analysis of tone showed that adult men mostly used an aggressive or neutral tone, while adult women, young women and young men mostly used a friendly or neutral tone. Young women used an aggressive tone more often than adult women and young men. Moreover, regarding the syntactic and stylistic features, results revealed that the young men were the most frequent users of ellipsis of subject and/or verb, followed by adult women, young women and adult men. Contracted forms were used extensively in the potential places of contractions, regardless of commenting group. Since young men used the ellipsis of subject and/or verb most frequently of all commenting groups and also used the contracted forms in all potential places of contractions, the conclusion is that the young men used a style that is closer to spoken English than the three other commenting groups. / Den här studien undersöker språkdrag som är typiska för språk på internet. Det material som har undersöks har hämtats från användarkommentarer i nättidningar som är riktade till fyra olika läsargrupper: (1) kvinnor (Working Mother, Mothering), (2) män (Esquire), (3) unga kvinnor (Seventeen) och (4) unga män (Gameinformer). Cirka 5 000 ord hämtades från kommentarsfälten för varje tidning, vilket resulterade i en korpus som omfattade 21 087 ord totalt. Korpusen analyserades med hänsyn till typografiska språkdrag (smileys, ickestandardiserad stavning av personliga pronomen I och you samt and) och ortografiska språkdrag (förkortningar, akronymer) samt syntaktiska och stilistiska språkdrag som påminner om talspråk (sammandragningar, ellips av subjekt och/eller predikatsverb, tonläge). Resultaten visade att män skrev de längsta kommentarerna, följda av kvinnor, unga män och unga kvinnor i fallande ordning. Vad gäller typiska typografiska och ortografiska språkdrag visar resultatet att de återfanns mycket sparsamt i kvinnornas och männens data, att de återfanns då och då i de unga männens data och att de unga kvinnorna var de som använde dessa språkdrag mest frekvent. Analys av tonläge i användarkommentarerna visade att män oftast använde en aggressiv eller neutral ton, medan kvinnor, unga kvinnor och unga män oftast använde en vänskaplig eller neutral ton. Unga kvinnor använde en aggressiv ton oftare än kvinnor och unga män. Utöver detta visade resultatet att ellips av subjekt och/eller predikatsverb var mest frekvent i de unga männens användarkommentarer, följt av kvinnornas, de unga kvinnornas och männens. Sammandragna former användes näst intill undantagslöst i hela korpusen. Eftersom pojkarna uppvisade mest frekvent användning av ellips av subjekt och/eller predikatsverb samt använde sammandragna former i full utsträckning, kan slutsatsen dras att de unga männens syntax är mer påverkad av engelskt talspråk än syntaxen hos de tre andra kommenterande grupperna.

This study explores how consumer’s attitudes towards consumer-generated advertising (CGA) have changed over time. The study measures consumer attitude changes of the winning contributions from Doritos Crash the Super bowl between the years 2007-2014 on YouTube. The study conducted in total 995 comments that was analysed with Leximancer Software, a research tool for making content analysis to determining the presence of words or concepts in collections of textual documents. Findings didn’t show a distinct change of consumer’s attitudes towards CGA over time. The study gave extended knowledge about consumers attitudes towards CGA and what factors that contribute to positive attitudes towards CGA. Were three main factors was notice, first, the fact that they managed to do an ad on a very low budget seemed to impress other consumers. Second, consumers had a tendency to defend CGA when the ad was criticized. Third, the fact that a company did not make the ad was impressive for many of the viewers.

This study examines information disclosure of Facebook users in America and Kenya. The main aim of this study is to find out the specific type of personal and demographic information that individuals disclose on their profiles. The literature review details the nature of social networking sites highlighting studies that have been carried out in the past on these sites. Self-disclosure is also discussed as described in the social penetration theory. An overview of the practice of public relations profession in Kenya is also given. The research study employs the content analysis methodology, with a total of 500 Facebook profiles being analyzed. Results of this study indicate that users disclose a lot of information on their Facebook profiles such as the use of a self-portrait as the main identifying mark on their profiles, their dates of birth, personal information such as religious and political views and education and work information. There are also major gender differences in information disclosure. There are also differences in information disclosure on Facebook between American users and Kenyan users. / Department of Journalism

Zugl.: Köln, Business School, Bachelorarbeit, 2007