Shirt Futures

Anne McCloy curated an exhibition of work by students from the Central Saint Martins BA Fashion Course at The Shirt Factory Project gallery as part of Derry~Londonderry City of Culture 2013. “The inspiration for bringing this project to Derry was provided by the late Inez McCormack after hearing her speak in January 2012 about the history of the shirt industry in the city, the importance of the role of women in the economic and social fabric of the city and how she felt that contribution was now enormously overlooked and largely forgotten. City of Culture and The Shirt Factory Project by Rita Du!y gave us the framework to deliver the idea. Though the shirt industry in Derry is all but gone, the shirt as a garment lives on and we run a project every year at CSM which challenges the students to reconsider the perceived definition of the shirt through exploring their use of silhouette, proportion, fabric and colour. The only design parameters in place are that they use certain shirt features and finishes, such as collars, cuffs and plackets. How and where they use these is open to interpretation and the result must be a successfully resolved garment. We have selected the best shirt outcomes from across Womenswear, Menswear, Print and Marketing and from a truly international base with students represented from America, China, Ecuador, South Korea, Malaysia, Serbia and the UK. We hope it inspires and provokes thought and a recognition and development of skill, creativity and talent.” Anne McCloy - Curator, Associate Lecturer, Central Saint Martins. “This exhibition represents a celebration of Derry’s history of shirt making and the continuing importance of the shirt in contemporary dress through the work of young designers. Central Saint Martins BA Fashion is very proud to be involved.” Willie Walters - Programme Director of Fashion at Central Saint Martins

Enhanced associations with actions of the artist influence gaze behaviour

The aesthetic experience of the perceiver of art has been suggested to relate to the art-making process of the artist. The artist’s gestures during the creation process have been stated to influence the perceiver’s art-viewing experience. However, limited studies explore the art-viewing experience in relation to the creative process of the artist. We introduced eye-tracking measures to further establish how congruent actions with the artist influence perceiver’s gaze behaviour. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that simultaneous congruent and incongruent actions do not influence gaze behaviour. However, brushstroke paintings were found to be more pleasing than pointillism paintings. In Experiment 3, participants were trained to associate painting actions with hand primes to enhance visuomotor and visuovisual associations with the artist’s actions. A greater amount of time was spent fixating brushstroke paintings when presented with a congruent prime compared with an incongruent prime, and fewer fixations were made to these styles of paintings when presented with an incongruent prime. The results suggest that explicit links that allow perceivers to resonate with the artist’s actions lead to greater exploration of preferred artwork styles

The parallel programming of landing position in saccadic eye movement sequences

Saccadic eye movements occur in sequences, gathering new information about the visual environment to support successful task completion. Here we examine the control of these saccadic sequences and specifically the extent to which the spatial aspects of the saccadic responses are programmed in parallel. We asked participants to saccade to a series of visual targets and, while they shifted their gaze around the display, we displaced select targets. We found that saccade landing position was deviated towards the previous location of the target suggesting that partial parallel programming of target location information was occurring. The saccade landing position was also affected by the new target location which demonstrates that the saccade landing position was also partially updated following the shift. This pattern was present even for targets that were the subject of the next fixation. Having a greater preview about the sequence path influenced saccade accuracy with saccades being less affected by relocations when there is less preview information. The results demonstrate that landing positions from a saccade sequence are programmed in parallel and combined with more immediate visual signals

Water utilization, evapotranspiration and soil moisture monitoring in the south east region of south Australia

There are no author-identified significant results in this report

Counterfactual thinking in everyday life situations: Temporal order effects and social norms.

Razonamiento contrafáctico en situaciones de la vida diaria: Efectos de
 orden temporales y normas sociales. El razonamiento contrafáctico es la
 comparación de una situación fáctica con una alternativa simulada. Cuando
 las personas imaginan cómo las cosas podrían haber sido diferentes, tienden
 a deshacer mentalmente el último suceso de una secuencia de
 acontecimientos independientes previos a un resultado. Se presentan dos
 experimentos que examinan este fenómeno que ha sido denominado el
 efecto de orden temporal. El primer experimento, con 132 participantes,
 examinó el efecto de variar el número de eventos de la vida diaria en el
 efecto de orden temporal. Los resultados muestran que en situaciones
 cotidianas, es necesario un número suficiente de sucesos para que efecto se
 produzca. El segundo experimento, con 177 participantes, examinó una
 posible relación entre el efecto de orden temporal con un efecto diferente: la
 tendencia a cambiar eventos controlables que son excepcionales respecto a
 las normas interpersonales de conducta. Los resultados muestran que la
 posición en una secuencia temporal de sucesos independientes afecta a la
 facilidad para cambiar esos eventos excepcionales. Los resultados se
 discuten en términos de normas sociales

Less-is-more effects without the recognition heuristic

Inferences consistent with “recognition-based” decision-making may be drawn for various reasons other than recognition alone. We demonstrate that, for 2-alternative forced-choice decision tasks, less-is-more effects (reduced performance with additional learning) are not restricted to recognition-based inference but can also be seen in circumstances where inference is knowledge-based but item knowledge is limited. One reason why such effects may not be observed more widely is the dependence of the effect on specific values for the validity of recognition and knowledge cues. We show that both recognition and knowledge validity may vary as a function of the number of items recognized. The implications of these findings for the special nature of recognition information, and for the investigation of recognition-based inference, are discusse

Development of stochastic models of window state changes in educational buildings

How people would like to interact with surrounding environment will subsequently influence indoor thermal conditions and further impact building energy performance. In order to understand occupants' adaptive behaviours in terms of environmental control utilization from the point of view of quantification, an investigation on windows operation was carried out in non-air-conditioned educational buildings in the UK during summer time considering the effects of occupant type (active and passive) and the time of a day. Outdoor air temperature was a better predictor or window operation than indoor air temperature. Window operation was found to be time-evolving event. The purpose or criteria of adjusting window states were different at different occupancy stages. Active occupants were more willing to change windows states in response to outdoor air temperature variations. Sub-models predicting transition probabilities of window state for different occupant type and occupancy stages were developed. The results derived from this field study are helpful with improving building simulation accuracy by integrating sub-models into simulation software and further providing guideline on building energy reduction without sacrificing indoor thermal comfort

Does more detailed information mean better performance? An experiment in information explicitness

Purpose – Investors are now able to analyse more noise-free news to inform their trading decisions than ever before. Their expectation that more information means better performance is not supported by previous psychological experiments which argue that too much information actually impairs performance. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the degree of information explicitness improves stock market performance. Design/methodology/approach – An experiment is conducted in a computer laboratory to examine a trading simulation manipulated from a real market-shock. Participants’ performance efficiency and effectiveness are measured separately. Findings – The results indicate that the explicitness of information neither improves nor impairs participants’ performance effectiveness from the perspectives of returns, share and cash positions, and trading volumes. However, participants’ performance efficiency is significantly affected by information explicitness. Originality/value – The novel approach and findings of this research add to the knowledge of the impact of information explicitness on the quality of decision making in a financial market environment

The day surgery experience from a service users perspective

Although health policy would suggest that day surgery is the best service for patients undergoing a surgical procedure, it is important to consider the patient and whether this type of service is what they want. This information can be generated through a service evaluation with the results used to inform local decision-making, changes to care delivery and improvements in patient care. This article describes the results of a service evaluation performed in a single-site day surgery unit. </jats:p