Female Warriors in the MCU and Wuxia Films:A Comparative Study

This essay offers a comprehensive comparative analysis of female warriors in the Marvel Cinematic Universe(MCU)and Wuxia films.Both genres portray powerful and empowered female characters who defy societal expectations and embody resilience,effectively challenging gender norms and promoting female empowerment.However,despite their strength,many of these women warriors face certain narrative factors,such as the male gaze and a predetermined fate,which can restrict their agency and curtail their full potential.And it is within the realm of Wuxia films that the captivating element of cross-dressing among female warriors emerges,providing a nuanced exploration of identity and the constraints imposed by society.

Dopamine receptor D4 gene (DRD4) is associated with gazing toward humans in domestic dogs (<i>Canis familiaris</i>)

Dogs show high social communicative ability in interactions with humans. We investigated the association between dogs’ social communicative behavior and the polymorphisms of a gene related to a neurotransmitter. We used an “unsolvable task”, in which an experimenter put a food reward into a container and closed it firmly so that dogs could not remove the reward. Human-directed gazing, possibly to request help, is a characteristic behavioral trait of dogs in such situations. The association between owner-directed gazing behavior in the unsolvable task and polymorphisms of three regions (exon1, exon3, intron2) in the dopamine receptor D4 gene (DRD4) was analyzed. We found that the genotype of DRD4 intron2 was significantly associated with the dogs’ gazing behavior. Dogs carrying shorter allele (P) looked at their owner more frequently, for longer, and earlier than dogs carrying longer allele (Q). This result suggests that polymorphism in DRD4 intron2 may affect social communication and cognition in dogs.

MDNN:Predicting Student Engagement via Gaze Direction and Facial Expression in Collaborative Learning

Prediction of students’engagement in aCollaborative Learning setting is essential to improve the quality of learning.Collaborative learning is a strategy of learning through groups or teams.When cooperative learning behavior occurs,each student in the group should participate in teaching activities.Researchers showed that students who are actively involved in a class gain more.Gaze behavior and facial expression are important nonverbal indicators to reveal engagement in collaborative learning environments.Previous studies require the wearing of sensor devices or eye tracker devices,which have cost barriers and technical interference for daily teaching practice.In this paper,student engagement is automatically analyzed based on computer vision.We tackle the problem of engagement in collaborative learning using a multi-modal deep neural network(MDNN).We combined facial expression and gaze direction as two individual components of MDNN to predict engagement levels in collaborative learning environments.Our multi-modal solution was evaluated in a real collaborative environment.The results show that the model can accurately predict students’performance in the collaborative learning environment.

EM-Gaze:eye context correlation and metric learning for gaze estimation

In recent years,deep learning techniques have been used to estimate gaze-a significant task in computer vision and human-computer interaction.Previous studies have made significant achievements in predicting 2D or 3D gazes from monocular face images.This study presents a deep neural network for 2D gaze estimation on mobile devices.It achieves state-of-the-art 2D gaze point regression error,while significantly improving gaze classification error on quadrant divisions of the display.To this end,an efficient attention-based module that correlates and fuses the left and right eye contextual features is first proposed to improve gaze point regression performance.Subsequently,through a unified perspective for gaze estimation,metric learning for gaze classification on quadrant divisions is incorporated as additional supervision.Consequently,both gaze point regression and quadrant classification perfor-mances are improved.The experiments demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms existing gaze-estima-tion methods on the GazeCapture and MPIIFaceGaze datasets.

Women Under Gazes in The Great Gatsby

Much more than simple viewing, gaze, which is a kind of concentrated thorough long-term viewing, makes the gazer and the gazed establish a complicated power relationship. Frequently, women are in a position of being gazed at by others instead of taking the initiative to have a counter gaze. Consequently, they are confronted with abnormal self identity construction and alienation under the gazes of others and the self gaze brought by others’ gazes. This is fully revealed in the experiences of three representative female characters in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. This paper elaborates on their experiences and the relative consequences under gazes-deviation of femininity and other aspects, in the hope of providing a refreshing perspective for the study on this novel, gaze and gender issues.

Gaze and Oppositional Gaze in Mr. Tang’s Girls

The gaze is a means of power that can flow through family relationships.It has intense regulatory overtones.In her short story Mr.Tang’s Girls,Malaysian-Chinese Anglophone diasporic writer Shirley Geok-lin Lim shows the conflict between Eastern and Western cultures and the resistance of women under the oppression of patriarchy through the portrayal of the father,Ah Kong,and the eldest daughter,Kim Li.Based on Foucault’s discipline gaze and Hooks’oppositional gaze,this article analyzes the power operation in the story from the following three aspects:the male gaze,discipline and self-discipline,and the oppositional gaze.Kim Li’s subjective image of breaking free from male ownership control has been presented.It suggests the difficulties encountered by female groups in their rebellion against the male gaze and their pursuit of freedom and emancipation.It also reflects the tragedy of awakening women’s destinies under the dual oppression of patriarchy and the East-Westen cultural conflict.

Accurate and Robust Eye Center Localization via Fully Convolutional Networks

Eye center localization is one of the most crucial and basic requirements for some human-computer interaction applications such as eye gaze estimation and eye tracking. There is a large body of works on this topic in recent years, but the accuracy still needs to be improved due to challenges in appearance such as the high variability of shapes, lighting conditions, viewing angles and possible occlusions. To address these problems and limitations, we propose a novel approach in this paper for the eye center localization with a fully convolutional network(FCN),which is an end-to-end and pixels-to-pixels network and can locate the eye center accurately. The key idea is to apply the FCN from the object semantic segmentation task to the eye center localization task since the problem of eye center localization can be regarded as a special semantic segmentation problem. We adapt contemporary FCN into a shallow structure with a large kernel convolutional block and transfer their performance from semantic segmentation to the eye center localization task by fine-tuning.Extensive experiments show that the proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art methods in both accuracy and reliability of eye center localization. The proposed method has achieved a large performance improvement on the most challenging database and it thus provides a promising solution to some challenging applications.

The influence of physiobiomechanical parameters,technical aspects of shooting,and psychophysiological factors on biathlon performance:A review

The biathlon, an Olympic sporting discipline that combines cross-country skiing with rifle marksmanship, entails considerable physiological demands, as well as fine motor control while shooting after intense exercise and under mental pressure. Although much of our knowledge about cross-country skiing is probably also applicable to the biathlon, carrying the rifle and shooting under stress make this discipline somewhat unique. The present review summarizes and examines the scientific literature related to biathlon performance, with a focus on physiological and biomechanical factors and shooting technique, as well as psychophysiological aspects of shooting performance. We conclude with suggestions for future research designed to extend our knowledge about the biathlon, which is presently quite limited.2018 Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Shanghai University of Sport. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license. （http：//creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/）.

An Active Stereo Vision System Based on Neural Pathways of Human Binocular Motor System

An active stereo vision system based on a model of neural pathways of human binocular motor system is proposed. With this model, it is guaranteed that the two cameras of the active stereo vision system can keep their lines of sight fixed on the same target object during smooth pursuit. This feature is very important for active stereo vision systems, since not only 3D reconstruction needs the two cameras have an overlapping field of vision, but also it can facilitate the 3D reconstruction algorithm. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method, some software simulations are done to demonstrate the same target tracking characteristic in a virtual environment apt to mistracking easily. Here, mistracking means two eyes track two different objects separately. Then the proposed method is implemented in our active stereo vision system to perform real tracking task in a laboratory scene where several persons walk self-determining. Before the proposed model is implemented in the system, mistracking occurred frequently. After it is enabled, mistracking never occurred. The result shows that the vision system based on neural pathways of human binocular motor system can reliably avoid mistracking.

Isomorphic 2D/3D Objects and Saccadic Characteristics in Mental Rotation

Mental rotation(MR)is an important aspect of cognitive processing in gaming since transformation andmanipulation of visuospatial information are necessary in order to execute a gaming task.This study provides insights on saccadic characteristics in gaming task performance that involves 2D and 3D isomorphic objects with varying angular disparity.Healthy participants(N=60)performedMR gaming task.Each participantwas tested individually in an acoustic treated lab environment.Gaze behavior data of all participants were recorded during task execution and analyzed to find the changes in spatiotemporal characteristics of saccades associated with the variation in angular disparity and dimensionality.There were four groups with unique combination of angular disparity and dimensionality,each with fifteen participants randomly assigned.Results indicate that the spatial characteristics of the object affect the temporal aspect of saccade(duration),whereas the spatial aspect of the saccade(amplitude)is influenced by the objects’dimension.A longer saccade duration indicates a prolonged suppression of spatial information processing during the MR tasks with objects at convex range angular disparities.Therefore,the MR tasks with convex angular disparity become more complex to process compared to the tasks with reflex angular disparity.MR process is faster and more accurate with 3D objects compared to the 2D objects.There is an interaction between angular disparity and dimensionality in terms of mental demand,such that theMR processing with 2Dobjects in reflex angular disparitywasmoremental demanding than that of convex angular disparity;however,this trend was absent in case of 3Dobjects.Hence,during the MR task,the longer saccade duration implies that the taskswith convex angular disparities become comparativelymore challenging.Also,the lower saccadic amplitude for 2D objects indicates difficulties in processing due to deficient visual features.The findings could help in framing the computer-based game(or videogame)concerningMRabilities for training or rehabilitation purposes.

Eye Gaze Detection Based on Computational Visual Perception and Facial Landmarks

The pandemic situation in 2020 brought about a‘digitized new normal’and created various issues within the current education systems.One of the issues is the monitoring of students during online examination situations.A system to determine the student’s eye gazes during an examination can help to eradicate malpractices.In this work,we track the users’eye gazes by incorporating twelve facial landmarks around both eyes in conjunction with computer vision and the HAAR classifier.We aim to implement eye gaze detection by considering facial landmarks with two different Convolutional Neural Network(CNN)models,namely the AlexNet model and the VGG16 model.The proposed system outperforms the traditional eye gaze detection system which only uses computer vision and the HAAR classifier in several evaluation metric scores.The proposed system is accurate without the need for complex hardware.Therefore,it can be implemented in educational institutes for the fair conduct of examinations,as well as in other instances where eye gaze detection is required.

Gaze Estimation via a Differential Eyes’Appearances Network with a Reference Grid

A person’s eye gaze can effectively express that person’s intentions.Thus,gaze estimation is an important approach in intelligent manufacturing to analyze a person’s intentions.Many gaze estimation methods regress the direction of the gaze by analyzing images of the eyes,also known as eye patches.However,it is very difficult to construct a person-independent model that can estimate an accurate gaze direction for every person due to individual differences.In this paper,we hypothesize that the difference in the appearance of each of a person’s eyes is related to the difference in the corresponding gaze directions.Based on this hypothesis,a differential eyes’appearances network(DEANet)is trained on public datasets to predict the gaze differences of pairwise eye patches belonging to the same individual.Our proposed DEANet is based on a Siamese neural network(SNNet)framework which has two identical branches.A multi-stream architecture is fed into each branch of the SNNet.Both branches of the DEANet that share the same weights extract the features of the patches;then the features are concatenated to obtain the difference of the gaze directions.Once the differential gaze model is trained,a new person’s gaze direction can be estimated when a few calibrated eye patches for that person are provided.Because personspecific calibrated eye patches are involved in the testing stage,the estimation accuracy is improved.Furthermore,the problem of requiring a large amount of data when training a person-specific model is effectively avoided.A reference grid strategy is also proposed in order to select a few references as some of the DEANet’s inputs directly based on the estimation values,further thereby improving the estimation accuracy.Experiments on public datasets show that our proposed approach outperforms the state-of-theart methods.

Calculate Target Position of Object in 3-Dimensional Area Based on the Perceived Locations Using EOG Signals

EOG is a biosignal which occurs during eye activities such as eye movement and blink. EOG has a linear relationship with gaze distance. Detection object position in 3-dimensional area using gaze motion was proposed in this research. To calculate the distance of gaze motion in pixel unit, affine transform method was developed. The homogeneous matrix from five geometry processes: transformation-1, rotation, transformation-2, shear, and dilatation was determined. To give tracking ability in 3-dimensional area, two cameras were attached each in front of and top side of object. The cameras were accessed by voluntary blink. The EOG characteristic of blink eye was determined based on the absolute ratio between positive peak and negative peak which was greater than 1. Every blink toggled the active camera. The position of object was given by the perceived locations from the two cameras. Every movement in pixel coordinate was converted into centimeter unit. Then, the perceived location was used to calculate to the base coordinate. The result shows that the blink method successfully accessed the camera. Both of the cameras could show the location of object from their side. Calculating the gaze distance using affine transform also gave a satisfied result. Using this method controlling a machine in 3-dimensional area by EOG could be developed.

Acoustic backscattering measurement from sandy seafloor at 6–24 kHz in the South Yellow Sea

The acoustic bottom backscattering strength was measured at the frequency range of 6–24 kHz on a typical sandy bottom in the South Yellow Sea by using omnidirectional sources and omnidirectional receiving hydrophones. In the experiment, by avoiding disturbances due to scattering off the sea surface and satisfying the far-field condition, we obtained values of acoustic bottom backscattering strength ranging from –41.1 to –24.4 dB within a grazing angle range of 18°–80°. In the effective range of grazing angles, the acoustic scattering strength generally increases with an increase in the grazing angles, but trends of the variation were distinct in different ranges of frequency, which reflect different scattering mechanisms. The frequency dependence of bottom backscattering strength is generally characterized by a positive correlation in the entire frequency range of 6–24 kHz at the grazing angles of 20°, 40° and 60° with the linear regression slopes of 0.222 9 dB/kHz, 0.513 0 dB/kHz and 0.174 6 dB/kHz, respectively. At the largest grazing angle of 80°, the acoustic backscattering strength exhibits no evident frequency dependence.

Temporal continuity of visual attention for future gaze prediction in immersive virtual reality

Background Eye tracking te chnology is receiving increased attention in the field of virtual reality.Specifically,future gaze prediction is crucial in pre-computation for many applications such as gaze-contingent rendering,advertisement placement,and content-based design.To explore future gaze prediction,it is necessary to analyze the temporal continuity of visual attention in immersive virtual reality.Methods In this paper,the concept of temporal continuity of visual attention is presented.Subsequently,an autocorrelation function method is proposed to evaluate the temporal continuity.Thereafter,the temporal continuity is analyzed in both free-viewing and task-oriented conditions.Results Specifically,in free-viewing conditions,the analysis of a free-viewing gaze dataset indicates that the temporal continuity performs well only within a short time interval.A task-oriented game scene condition was created and conducted to collect users'gaze data.An analysis of the collected gaze data finds the temporal continuity has a similar performance with that of the free-viewing conditions.Temporal continuity can be applied to future gaze prediction and if it is good,users'current gaze positions can be directly utilized to predict their gaze positions in the future.Conclusions The current gaze's future prediction performances are further evaluated in both free-viewing and task-oriented conditions and discover that the current gaze can be efficiently applied to the task of short-term future gaze prediction.The task of long-term gaze prediction still remains to be explored.

Components and sequential changes in event-related potential induced by gaze orientation processing under a reflective attention cue paradigm

Gaze orientation induces activation of relevant brain regions, presents differences in specificity and time course, and is exhibited in patients with brain injury. However, the components of activated event-related potential remain controversial. Previous studies of behavior and cognitive neuroscience related to gaze orientation investigated conscious attention of visual orientation. The present study explored gaze orientation processing-induced event-related potential components and changes with time using reflective orientation of visual attention under a reflective attention cue paradigm. Visual attention processing of gaze orientation was recorded using event-related potential and electroencephalographic recording. Results demonstrated that the reflective attention cue task evoked early directing attention negativity and anterior directing attention negativity, but did not trigger late directing attention positivity. These results suggest that reflective attention occurs over a short time of visual stimulus presentation. During the early stage of attention processing, early directing attention negativity and anterior directing attention negativity were detected, but late directing attention positivity did not occur. These results confirmed reflectivity and time-course superiority of gaze orientation attention processing.

Pilot Test for the Relationship between Drivers’ Hazard Perception Ability and Cognitive Traits of Empathizing-Systemizing

The previous research (Danno & Taniguchi, 2015) showed that near-miss incident experience was basically reduced by the Empathy Quotient (EQ) and was disturbed by the Systemizing Quotient (SQ) when the Empathy Quotient was low, based on the Empathizing and Systemizing (E-S) model using a web survey [1]. It means that drivers whose EQ was low and SQ was high had more near-miss incident experience. It suggested that drivers who have a stronger Empathizing function may have stronger hazard perception ability although the Systemizing function may weaken hazard perception ability when Empathizing is weak. And, then, it was revealed that the D score (standard SQ (T) score minus standard EQ (T) score) had a significant effect on the near-miss incident experience. Those results implied that a D score, which is used to classify “E-S types”, should have a relationship with near-miss incident experience, i.e. , hazard perception ability. The EQ and SQ scores were supposed to relate to the cognitive ability to estimate other road users’ mental situations and predict their behavior or to recognize stable laws in traffic situations. The aim of this research was to investigate the relationship between a driver’s visual attention ability (gaze movement) and hazard (near-miss incident) perception ability of different EQ and SQ scores. Drivers’ Real-time Useful Field of View (rUFOV) [2] was measured under normal and hasty driving conditions in a driving simulator which had six scenarios of traffic situation. The result from seven participants who had different EQ and SQ scores showed that a driver’s visual attention ability (gaze movement) corresponds to their scores. This pilot test research revealed a possibility that the individual difference in cognitive trait with E-S model could be a promising tool to understand the mechanism of hazard perception since a D score is used to classify “E-S types”.

Age Related Changes in Attentional Bias Triggered by Gaze Cues

We investigated if attentional bias directed to the right increased with age. We assessed the characteristics of the following types of eye-gaze by using the Posner cueing paradigm. Younger (n =16) and older (n = 20) adults participated in this study. First of all, a face which looked straight ahead was presented at the center of screen, followed by a gaze cue that looked left or right. Immediately after this informative cue, a target stimulus (“*”) appeared to the left or right of the face. The stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA) between the cue and the target was selected from 300, 700, and 1100 ms. Participants were required to judge whether the target appeared to the left or the right of the gaze cue as quickly and accurately as possible. Results showed that older adults indicate a larger positive gaze-cueing effect when the eye-gaze shifted rightward, whereas this effect was not observed for a leftward shift. Moreover, a negative gaze-cueing effect (inhibition of return) was observed when the SOA was longer only for the leftward eye-gaze shift of older adults. These modulations of the cueing effect did not appear in younger adults. These findings demonstrate that the rightward attentional bias in older adults is more robust than the leftward bias.

The Effects of Vestibular Rehabilitation after Bilateral Superior Semicircular Canal Dehiscence: A Case Report

Background and Purpose: Despite the strong body of evidence for vestibular rehabilitation, research is lacking for effective clinical management of patients with superior semicircular canal dehiscence (SSCD) and endolymphatic hydrops (EH). The purpose of this case report is to describe the effects of physical therapy in the treatment of a patient diagnosed with bilateral SSCD. Case Description: The patient was a 56-year-old woman with a long-standing otologic history involving bilateral SSCD and EH. The patient’s body structure and function impairments include constant headaches, dizziness with head rotation and eye movements, sensitivity to sounds and lights, and instability during gait. Her activity limitations include lower extremity dressing, driving, and playing her flute. Her participation restrictions include taking part in social gatherings, going to church, driving longer than 30 minutes, playing with her dogs, and teaching flute lessons. Interventions: Specific interventions included vestibular habituation and adaptation exercises, balance and gait training, and patient education. Physical therapy services were provided for approximately 11 weeks with a frequency of two times per week. Outcomes: After eleven weeks of physical therapy, the patient made improvements on the Lower Extremity Functional Scale (43/80 to 52/80), the Dynamic Gait Index (19/24 to 24/24), the Dizziness Handicap Inventory (86/100 to 68/100), and the Sharpened Romberg (2 seconds to >30 seconds). The patient improved in all her activity limitations and participation restrictions. She was able to play her flute for 20-minute intervals, play with her dogs, partake in social gatherings, and drive for 5 hours without symptoms. The patient had plans to pursue surgical intervention within the next year. Discussion: For a patient with a complex otologic history and a current diagnosis of bilateral SSCD, vestibular rehabilitation was an effective management option. The information from this case can be used to guide the effective treatment of similar patients diagnosed with vestibular dysfunction.

Looking good and judging gazes: The relationship between body ideals, body satisfaction and body practices among Norwegian men and women

This article compares how people with normal bodies and bodies that deviate from dominant media-depicted body ideals, live with and accept their bodies. Media images of ideal bodies encompass judging gazes. These gazes affect and discipline people and may make it challenging for them to accept their bodies. The data material is part of the interdisciplinary Nordic project called “Beauty comes from within: looking good as a challenge in health promotion”. Based on 20 interviews with Norwegian men and women, of whom 10 have particular appearance-related problems, the article discusses the relationship between the media-depicted body ideals, descriptions by informants of what a good-looking body is, body satisfaction and body practices. The article shows resonance between how people describe good-looking bodies and satisfaction or not with own bodies. Women express more dissatisfaction with their bodies than men, but the article shows that many have strategies for trying to accept their bodies as they are. The comparative perspective highlight that the people having deviant bodies, more than those with normal bodies, balance the idea of “being myself” with the idea of “doing the best out of my (bodily) situation”. Most interestingly, they show that it is harder to accept handicaps that are changeable, like overweight, than harelips, deformed legs and skin injuries. As such, overweight becomes a double burden.