An authentic constructionist approach to students’ visualisation of the law

This study discusses student perspectives on visualisation used as a constructionist technique for learning the law in an authentic context. Student constructions of storyboards, comics, films and animation are explored as an authentic method for personalised learning of legal professional conduct and ethics. Undergraduate law students (n = 112) were asked to select a visual format for exploration of an ethical issue of their choice. The results of this study showed most students engaged with this highly creative visual task responding very positively to the exercise as a learning activity. This study discusses why students chose different forms of visualisation, what approach they took to developing their visualisation, the amount of effort devoted to visualisation versus legal elements of their artefacts and observations on the positive and negative aspects of their approach and how the technique could be improved.

A video abstract is also available at https://doi.org/10.1080/03069400.2018.1496313     

El Templete and Cuban Neoclassicism: A Multivalent Signifier as Site of Memory

In this article I explore the production and reception of El Templete, a nineteenth‐century memorial erected to commemorate the founding of Havana. This symbolically rich monument participates in the aesthetic traditions of architecture, sculpture and painting, and is a paradigmatic example of the multivalence of public, monumental art in the late colonial classicism of Latin America and the Caribbean. Rather than representing strictly an aesthetic discourse of Spanish colonial power, El Templete underwent a process of local assimilation, whereby classical forms and academic aesthetics were adapted to the self‐representation of a heterogeneous colonial city.     

The overweight female body in Malaysian slimming advertisements: problem and solution

This study analyses image and text to investigate the way slimming advertising exploits women’s fear of being overweight to the extent that they feel obliged to do something about their own bodies. We show how Malaysian slimming advertisements construct certain types of female body which reinforce cultural stereotypes, namely the overweight body that exceeds culturally acceptable limits of desirable body size, and the desirable and attainable slim body with no excess fat. Three sample advertisements were selected from a Malaysian English newspaper and analysed using Jewitt and Oyama’s framework to identify the way images and text are used to give specific meanings relating to the female body. The images were examined in terms of representational, interactional and compositional meanings, and the analysis provides evidence of how the extremely overweight female body is pathologised, making it the focus of critical scrutiny. The advertisements use body images to illustrate the problem of being very overweight and the desirability of being slim, and the consumption of slimming services as a quick and easy solution to the problem.     

A framework for the multimodal analysis of online news galleries: What makes a “good” picture gallery?

The development of digital technology in recent years has led to a revolution in news production and dissemination. In terms of production, we have witnessed a fundamental shift towards visual story-telling. Images dominate the verbal story space and have the potential to become the story themselves. Beyond this, they are also creating unique spaces for themselves (e.g. the online news gallery), with new multimodal genres posing challenges for practitioners and analysts alike. The potential effects of such fundamental shifts on the professional news story-telling practices of the legacy news media provide a rich research opportunity for understanding both how and whether news organisations fulfil their mandate of making sense of the plethora of information that is now available. In this paper, we concern ourselves with one particular innovation in visual news reporting – the online news gallery, or picture gallery in journalism terms. We report on a qualitative analysis of 35 galleries from 12 English-language newspapers with online presence from Europe, North America, Australia and Asia, and interrogate the choices made by institutions in composing this particular type of multimodal “text”, as it is situated in a professional, news story-telling context. In doing so, we explore how a systemic-functional semiotic approach to multimodal news discourse may help us to access the meaning potential of this emerging genre as a vehicle for multimodal digital news reporting, present a framework for the multimodal analysis of online news galleries and consider its implications for the education of media practitioners.     

视觉诱发电位在客观视力检测中的应用

目的 旨在探讨受检者视觉诱发电位的检查结果与其主观视力的相互关系。方去 对253眼按对照组与实验组分组,分别将其视觉诱发电位的最佳刺激视角和阈刺激视角与主观视力进行统计学分析研究。结果 视觉诱发电位的最佳刺激视角和阈刺激视角与主观视力水平存在显著相关。结论 可以借助视觉诱发电位检查来推算受检者相应的视力水平,提高眼损伤司法鉴定的准确性。     

大脑功能一侧化研究的新进展

80年代初,大脑两半球功能活动一侧化现象的基本发现引起了人们对心理活动机制的许多推测。近期的研究对这一问题有了一些新的认识：分离后的左右脑可能不存在“双重意识“;左右脑半球有可能都介入视觉空间信息的加工;正常人左右脑半球的机能优势活动存在复杂的时间－空间动态－侧化关系。     

扫描图像视觉诱发电位视力检查系统的研制及评价

目的研制一套扫描图像视觉诱发电位（sweep pattern visual evoked potential，SPVEP）视力检查系统，为客观视力检测提供依据。方法在国产视觉电生理仪的基础上，进行相应的硬件改造，并编制完成了具备假随机检测功能的控制程序。分别选取正常屈光眼10眼、屈光不正眼10眼、病变眼48眼、假性屈光不正眼10眼共78眼，测试每一眼的视力表视力，然后采用本研究设计的SPVEP记录程序检测其SPVEP视力，用统计学方法分析两种视力检查结果的差异。结果线性回归分析表明78眼的SPVEP视力与视力表视力之间总体上存在良好的相关性（r^2=0．946）。结论运用本SPVEP视力检查程序可以评估受检眼的客观视力。     

Multilingual signage: a multimodal approach to discourses of consumption in a South African township

The paper explores how global commercial discourses and the politics of aspiration in post-apartheid South Africa may be seen as contributing to the restructuring of spaces of multilingualism and the refiguring of indexical values of English and South African languages. The analysis takes its point of departure in how late-modern lifestyles, identities, aspirations and imaginations are represented across local and transnational commercial signage in the Western Cape township of Khayelitsha, focusing in particular on how different languages are multimodally constituted and differentially represented in two different sub-genres of commercial billboards. We suggest that new late-modern multimodal representations of identity, and the way multilingual resources are configured into new repertoires and genres of subjectivity, may be one important factor in how social transformation is mediated in changing perceptions and practices of language, while simultaneously and paradoxically reinforcing traditional conceptions of cultural authenticity and self-representation.     

"最好矫正日常生活视力"在司法鉴定中的意义

目前我国法医学鉴定实践中有关视力障碍的评价主要是以WHO防盲研究小组于1973年制定的疾病分级标准为依据,所考察的是"最好矫正视力".有时最好矫正视力与日常生活中实际使用的视力可能不一致.WHO于2003年新制定的盲及视力损害分类标准,提出用"日常生活视力"取代"最好矫正视力".在司法鉴定实践中由于伤者的夸大或伪装,"...     

On using gait in forensic biometrics

Given the continuing advances in gait biometrics, it appears prudent to investigate the translation of these techniques for forensic use. We address the question as to the confidence that might be given between any two such measurements. We use the locations of ankle, knee, and hip to derive a measure of the match between walking subjects in image sequences. The Instantaneous Posture Match algorithm, using Harr templates, kinematics, and anthropomorphic knowledge is used to determine their location. This is demonstrated using real CCTV recorded at Gatwick International Airport, laboratory images from the multiview CASIA-B data set, and an example of real scene of crime video. To access the measurement confidence, we study the mean intra- and inter-match scores as a function of database size. These measures converge to constant and separate values, indicating that the match measure derived from individual comparisons is considerably smaller than the average match measure from a population.