Gaslighting is an insidious, pernicious form of bullying that is gaining notoriety in nursing academia anecdotally. Attempting to identify the behaviors associated with gaslighting are difficult ...because of the subtle nature with which gaslighting is performed by the perpetrator. Traditional tools/models used for identifying bullying and horizontal violence are not sensitive enough to pick up gaslighting behaviors. Perpetual lies and mistruths, vexatious or frivolous complaints, praise and positive reinforcement, the use of blame or mobbing, and coercion are some of the tactics a gaslighter will use to create confusion and chaos for the gaslightee. The psychological harm for the gaslightee can lead to self‐doubt, hypervigilance, depression, anxiety, addiction, and suicidal ideation as well as the physical symptoms associated with stress. Left with very few choices the gaslightee either adheres to the behavior or leaves. It is important to raise awareness and perhaps education and training of this form of bullying behavior because of the deleterious effects it has personally and professionally.
Human movement researchers are often restricted to laboratory environments and data capture techniques that are time and/or resource intensive. Markerless pose estimation algorithms show great ...potential to facilitate large scale movement studies 'in the wild', i.e., outside of the constraints imposed by marker-based motion capture. However, the accuracy of such algorithms has not yet been fully evaluated. We computed 3D joint centre locations using several pre-trained deep-learning based pose estimation methods (OpenPose, AlphaPose, DeepLabCut) and compared to marker-based motion capture. Participants performed walking, running and jumping activities while marker-based motion capture data and multi-camera high speed images (200 Hz) were captured. The pose estimation algorithms were applied to 2D image data and 3D joint centre locations were reconstructed. Pose estimation derived joint centres demonstrated systematic differences at the hip and knee (~ 30-50 mm), most likely due to mislabeling of ground truth data in the training datasets. Where systematic differences were lower, e.g., the ankle, differences of 1-15 mm were observed depending on the activity. Markerless motion capture represents a highly promising emerging technology that could free movement scientists from laboratory environments but 3D joint centre locations are not yet consistently comparable to marker-based motion capture.
The ability to accurately and non-invasively measure 3D mass centre positions and their derivatives can provide rich insight into the physical demands of sports training and competition. This study ...examines a method for non-invasively measuring mass centre velocities using markerless human pose estimation and Kalman smoothing. Marker (Qualysis) and markerless (OpenPose) motion capture data were captured synchronously for sprinting and skeleton push starts. Mass centre positions and velocities derived from raw markerless pose estimation data contained large errors for both sprinting and skeleton pushing (mean ± SD = 0.127 ± 0.943 and -0.197 ± 1.549 m·s
, respectively). Signal processing methods such as Kalman smoothing substantially reduced the mean error (±SD) in horizontal mass centre velocities (0.041 ± 0.257 m·s
) during sprinting but the precision remained poor. Applying pose estimation to activities which exhibit unusual body poses (e.g., skeleton pushing) appears to elicit more erroneous results due to poor performance of the pose estimation algorithm. Researchers and practitioners should apply these methods with caution to activities beyond sprinting as pose estimation algorithms may not generalise well to the activity of interest. Retraining the model using activity specific data to produce more specialised networks is therefore recommended.
This study examined if occluded joint locations, obtained from 2D markerless motion capture (single camera view), produced 2D joint angles with reduced agreement compared to visible joints, and if 2D ...frontal plane joint angles were usable for practical applications. Fifteen healthy participants performed over-ground walking whilst recorded by fifteen marker-based cameras and two machine vision cameras (frontal and sagittal plane). Repeated measures Bland-Altman analysis illustrated that markerless standard deviation of bias and limits of agreement for the occluded-side hip and knee joint angles in the sagittal plane were double that of the camera-side (visible) hip and knee. Camera-side sagittal plane knee and hip angles were near or within marker-based error values previously observed. While frontal plane limits of agreement accounted for 35–46% of total range of motion at the hip and knee, Bland-Altman bias and limits of agreement (-4.6–1.6 ± 3.7–4.2˚) were actually similar to previously reported marker-based error values. This was not true for the ankle, where the limits of agreement (± 12˚) were still too high for practical applications. Our results add to previous literature, highlighting shortcomings of current pose estimation algorithms and labelled datasets. As such, this paper finishes by reviewing methods for creating anatomically accurate markerless training data using marker-based motion capture data.
This study describes the development, evaluation and application of a computer vision and deep learning system capable of capturing sprinting and skeleton push start step characteristics and mass ...centre velocities (sled and athlete). Movement data were captured concurrently by a marker-based motion capture system and a custom markerless system. High levels of agreement were found between systems, particularly for spatial based variables (step length error 0.001 ± 0.012 m) while errors for temporal variables (ground contact time and flight time) were on average within ± 1.5 frames of the criterion measures. Comparisons of sprinting and pushing revealed decreased mass centre velocities as a result of pushing the sled but step characteristics were comparable to sprinting when aligned as a function of step velocity. There were large asymmetries between the inside and outside leg during pushing (e.g. 0.22 m mean step length asymmetry) which were not present during sprinting (0.01 m step length asymmetry). The observed asymmetries suggested that force production capabilities during ground contact were compromised for the outside leg. The computer vision based methods tested in this research provide a viable alternative to marker-based motion capture systems. Furthermore, they can be deployed into challenging, real world environments to non-invasively capture data where traditional approaches are infeasible.
Lizards are considered vulnerable to climate change because many operate near their thermal maxima. Exposure to higher temperatures could reduce activity of these animals by forcing them to shelter ...in thermal refugia for prolonged periods to avoid exceeding lethal limits. While rising temperatures should reduce activity in tropical species, the situation is less clear for temperate-zone species where activity can be constrained by both low and high temperatures. Here, we measure the effects of natural variation in environmental temperatures on activity in a temperate grassland lizard and show that it is operating near its upper thermal limit in summer even when sheltering in thermal refuges. As air temperatures increased above 32 °C, lizard activity declined markedly as individuals sought refuge in cool microhabitats while still incurring substantial metabolic costs. We estimate that warming over the last two decades has required these lizards to increase their energy intake up to 40% to offset metabolic losses caused by rising temperatures. Our results show that recent increases in temperature are sufficient to exceed the thermal and metabolic limits of temperate-zone grassland lizards. Extended periods of high temperatures could place natural populations of ectotherms under significantly increased environmental stress and contribute to population declines and extinction.
With reference to features of layout and decoration, Evans interprets Guy of Warwick as a composite work, not separate works as some scholars suggest. Examining Sir Isumbras as a homiletic romance, ...and Sir Degaré and Sir Orfeo as Middle English lays, he shows how different versions of these romances, in their varied composite manuscript contexts, necessitate different readings of the "same" works and of their subgenres. Evans considers the manuscript structure of groups of works with different authorship and establishes six models of composite literary structure for Middle English literature.
Understanding the influence of landscape change on animal populations is critical to inform biodiversity conservation efforts. A particularly important goal is to understand how urban density affects ...the persistence of animal populations through time, and how these impacts can be mediated by habitat provision; but data on this question are limited for some taxa. Here, we use data from a citizen science monitoring program to investigate the effect of urbanization on patterns of frog species richness and occurrence over 13 years. Sites surrounded by a high proportion of bare ground (a proxy for urbanization) had consistently lower frog occurrence, but we found no evidence that declines were restricted to urban areas. Instead, several frog species showed declines in rural wetlands with low-quality habitat. Our analysis shows that urban wetlands had low but stable species richness; but also that population trajectories are strongly influenced by vegetation provision in both the riparian zone and the wider landscape. Future increases in the extent of urban environments in our study area are likely to negatively impact populations of several frog species. However, existing urban areas are unlikely to lose further frog species in the medium term. We recommend that landscape planning and management focus on the conservation and restoration of rural wetlands to arrest current declines, and the revegetation of urban wetlands to facilitate the re-expansion of urban-sensitive species.
In a notebook entry (Coleridge, CN V 5778 qtd in Harding 221-22) concerning "the detection of spurious passages or books" of the bible, Coleridge provides helpful definitions for faith and belief in ...relation to different human faculties, concepts central to my discussion. ...comes the appeal to faith as an act of the will: where the contents accord "with your preestablished convictions, you will of course recognize as the Revealed Word"; and the influence of the Spirit "on your own Being" will find spiritual affinities with "the recorded workings of the Word and the Spirit in the minds, lives, and hearts of spiritual Men" ( 1150).1 The sublime because the supra-sensual boundary that Coleridge aims to move in his implied reader, the "serious, well-disposed Deist," is in the direction of more orthodox belief and more practical faith. In Biographia Literaria, he uses the same metaphor for poetic writing when there is a need to prepare for "striking" language: the author must "so . . . raise the lower and neutral tints, that what in a different style would be the commanding colors, are here used as the means of that gentle degradation requisite in order to produce the effect of the whole" (II 122-23). In spite of the formal defects or deficiencies of AR, this boundary may move in readers at any point in AR to bring about a change in their beliefs and their faith.
► Complete video surveillance system for efficient and robust detection of abandoned objects. ► Novel situational awareness and threat detection method based on automatic understanding of social ...groups and ownership. ► Performance evaluation across representative data demonstrating extension beyond state of the art.
This paper presents a video surveillance framework that robustly and efficiently detects abandoned objects in surveillance scenes. The framework is based on a novel threat assessment algorithm which combines the concept of ownership with automatic understanding of social relations in order to infer abandonment of objects. Implementation is achieved through development of a logic-based inference engine based on Prolog. Threat detection performance is conducted by testing against a range of datasets describing realistic situations and demonstrates a reduction in the number of false alarms generated. The proposed system represents the approach employed in the EU SUBITO project (Surveillance of Unattended Baggage and the Identification and Tracking of the Owner).