Science

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Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
  • (2022) Ayshan, Han
    Thesis
    Video game trailers are an effective promotional form of intermediation that enables audiences to navigate and engage with old and new media. Although video game trailers function as advertisements designed to sell a game, they are also stories that provoke social media commentary and debate. Trailers aim to draw the viewer in, convey sound and imagery, and evoke an involuntary reaction of excitement and awe. In this thesis, I will be using the games Fallout 4, Watch Dogs 2, and Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate. In the case studies, I investigate how viewers make sense of the promotional and storytelling aspects of video game trailers. I examine how video game trailers have the potential to arouse emotions and interest before viewers even play the game. Trailers provide an insight into the basic gameplay, not only into the gameplay but also into the story and the characters (protagonists and antagonists). They show audiences the video game theme genre and provide the viewer with a visual and auditory tool to entice possession. This project explores these themes, showing how video game trailers have an inherited cinematic quality but also how trailers actually spend little time presenting actual gameplay. There is a clear connection with movie trailers, teasing the events that will take place in the game and asking the player what will happen next. In this study, I used the methods of narrative analysis and textual analysis to analyse comments from YouTube, Facebook, and a survey of video gamers. The textual analysis of the trailers raises questions of representation and authenticity. In this research, I identified an incongruity between the representation of the core features of a game and the promotion of those features in the trailer. The narrative analysis of the trailers focused on storytelling and emplotment in the trailers. A key theme that has emerged from the analysis is that superheroes engage in vigilantism, a justifiable form of self-administered violence. Gamers may feel at ease with the violence used to correct perceived injustices. There is potential for gamers to consider the moral grey area of vigilante violence and romanticised vigilantism. With their enhanced ability to simulate complex interactive narratives for actual and simulated authenticity, video games offer a sophisticated engagement with players that contributes significantly to their widespread and universal support. The role of culturally created characters in the experience of playing a video game helps stimulate philosophical research. I explore whether normative audience expectations can speed up the development of cultural expectations about the relationship between the player and the narrative of the game and its audience. In this context, I examine case study video game trailers and ask what it means to revise our understanding of the relationship between power, law, and morality while playing the game. I examine and critique how the narrative, and thus the mechanics of a specific game, shapes our understanding of connection, power, law, or morality; I contend that prestige reflects normative privilege and law.

  • (2022) Aung, Htein Linn
    Thesis
    With widespread access to combination anti-retroviral therapy (cART) and HIV suppression, life expectancy among people living with HIV (PLHIV) is increasing more than ever. According to UNAIDS, there were 8.1 million older PLHIV (i.e., 50 years of age and over) in 2020 globally. Although HIV-associated dementia has become rare in the cART era, mild neurocognitive impairments remain prevalent among PLHIV (~30% in virally suppressed). With aging, there is an increasing concern that HIV may precipitate neurocognitive abnormal aging because HIV is associated with increased markers of aging (e.g., immunosenescence and hyper-coagulopathy) and multiple age and HIV-related comorbidities (e.g., cardiovascular diseases). Importantly, these comorbidities occur at an earlier age and at a higher rate among PLHIV compared to age-matched HIV-negative persons. Earlier, more severe and more rapidly progressing neurocognitive impairment would have major public health consequences for the millions of PLHIV and the healthcare system. The overarching aim of this PhD thesis is to determine whether having chronic stable HIV infection and suppressive ART is associated with abnormal cognitive aging including premature cognitive aging (HIV and age synergistically/addictively lead to much lower cognitive performance at a younger age compared to controls), accentuated cognitive aging (HIV and age synergistically/addictively lead to much greater prevalence and severity of neurocognitive impairment), and/or accelerated cognitive aging (HIV and age synergistically/ addictively lead to much more rapid progression of neurocognitive impairment). To address these questions, we used a range of scientific methodologies including a systematic review, and several types of advanced statistical analyses using national and international longitudinal cohort data. First, to contextualise the potential public health consequences of cognitive aging in PLHIV, we conducted a narrative review of the burden of established dementia risk factors among PLHIV. We identified that the burden of several major dementia risk factors is much greater among PLHIV than in the general population. Second, we conducted the first-ever systematic review evaluating the current evidence for premature, accentuated and accelerated cognitive aging among PLHIV. We determined moderate evidence for premature cognitive aging and strong evidence for accelerated cognitive aging, while accentuated cognitive aging had not been optimally assessed. Lastly, addressing the previous literature major limitations (low sample size, cross-sectional study design, low proportion of older PLHIV, and inadequate controls/norms), we quantified the profiles of cognitive aging in four longitudinal studies of PLHIV. We demonstrated robust trends for premature cognitive aging among PLHIV compared to age-matched HIV-negative persons. We also demonstrated that older PLHIV had a higher risk for both neurocognitive impairment and neurocognitive decline compared to younger PLHIV, while controlling for normative age effect. These results are indicative of both accentuated and accelerated aging, although our research identified the need for longer-term studies using very large sample size to assess these trends especially in PLHIV older than 70+. Based on these findings, we discussed implications for clinical practice and future research directions.

  • (2022) Sunstrum, Frederique
    Thesis
    Understanding product semantics and affective perceptions of product consumers undoubtedly offer significant value for industrial designers and their design practice. Deconstructing affective perceptions is a methodologically challenging task as it is implicit and subjective and is influenced by an individual’s aesthetic experience. Accordingly, how products are perceived differs among individuals or consumers, particularly in the distinct experiences that contribute to constructing an individual’s sense of perception of self or self-concept. Furthermore, research has shown that individuals are implicitly drawn to products that reaffirm and communicate their self-concept. If an individual’s preferences for products can reflect or enhance their self-concept, this suggests that understanding the underlying perceptual processes between the self-concept and product semantics can productively inform industrial design research. The thesis research develops and adapts methods from the disciplines of psychology, marketing, and industrial design to investigate these underlying perceptual processes of the self-concept and its relationships to product semantics. The thesis research investigates the underlying processes through a study on kettles that discloses the variances in sensory and cognitive evaluation and judgements through the process of aesthetic experience. The thesis further investigates the cognitive influences of the self-concept to reveal the mental models associated with the visual aesthetics of product form and how this influences aesthetic responses through product personality congruence. The thesis argues that the self-concept is a multidimensional construct reflected, in particular, through an individual’s (1) gender identity, (2) personality, (3) aesthetic sensitivity, and (4) interest, taste, and goals, that plays a vital role in the aesthetic experience of products. The thesis’s findings indicate that these individual components of the self-concept are essential in that they interplay in how the symbolic meaning of product semantics is visually perceived. The outcome of this thesis assists in, primarily, revealing the underlying stages of visual aesthetic processing to understand how product semantics is perceived through an individual’s self-concept.

  • (2022) Ayat, Hooman
    Thesis
    Climate change is expected to change the intensity and frequency of heavy storms. Thus, understanding different characteristics of this phenomena (i.e., intensity, size, speed, direction, etc.) is vital for the effective climate adaptation. Many extreme storms have small areas and short lifetimes (sub-daily/hourly) and can have destructive impacts, especially over urban areas. Therefore, it is vital to understand the nature of changes in these extremes to reduce the risk of their destructive impacts on cities. The overarching goal of this thesis is to quantify various storm characteristics, including their changes, using radar and satellite observations. Using an object-based technique, I compare the Integrated Multi-Satellite Retrievals for Global Precipitation Measurement (IMERG) and ground radar based Multi-Radar Multi-Sensor Quantitative Precipitation Estimates (MRMS) over the United States and show that the object-based storm properties are not sensitive to the observational platforms. However, there are differences that are statistically significant. Secondly, I investigate the error sources associated with different types of contributing data in the IMERG during the hurricane days occurred in 2016-2018 with MRMS as the reference. The results show that IMERG have better agreement with MRMS during the passive microwave (PMW) observations compared to rainfall estimates come from the combination of the interpolation techniques and infrared observations (morph/IR). Also, the quality of morph/IR estimates deteriorates with the longer absence of PMW observations. Thirdly, I establish an object-based climatology of rain systems using radar data near Sydney, Australia. The results show that rain systems in different seasons have distinct object-based characteristics, and these differences are dependent on their source of origins and also their positions over land and ocean. Using a two-step clustering algorithm, I have found five system types over Sydney peaking in different seasons. While overall rainfall statistics don't show any link to climate modes, links do appear for some system types using a multivariate approach. Finally, I show that there is a robust increasing trend of 20% per decade in sub-hourly extreme rainfall in the Sydney region over 20 years, despite no evidence of trends on hourly or daily scales. I am able to obtain this new result via a novel analysis of long-term radar data, including cross-checking between neighboring radars.