Mental hoop diaries: emotional memories of a college basketball game in rival fans.

The rivalry between the men's basketball teams of Duke University and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (UNC) is one of the most storied traditions in college sports. A subculture of students at each university form social bonds with fellow fans, develop expertise in college basketball rules, team statistics, and individual players, and self-identify as a member of a fan group. The present study capitalized on the high personal investment of these fans and the strong affective tenor of a Duke-UNC basketball game to examine the neural correlates of emotional memory retrieval for a complex sporting event. Male fans watched a competitive, archived game in a social setting. During a subsequent functional magnetic resonance imaging session, participants viewed video clips depicting individual plays of the game that ended with the ball being released toward the basket. For each play, participants recalled whether or not the shot went into the basket. Hemodynamic signal changes time locked to correct memory decisions were analyzed as a function of emotional intensity and valence, according to the fan's perspective. Results showed intensity-modulated retrieval activity in midline cortical structures, sensorimotor cortex, the striatum, and the medial temporal lobe, including the amygdala. Positively valent memories specifically recruited processing in dorsal frontoparietal regions, and additional activity in the insula and medial temporal lobe for positively valent shots recalled with high confidence. This novel paradigm reveals how brain regions implicated in emotion, memory retrieval, visuomotor imagery, and social cognition contribute to the recollection of specific plays in the mind of a sports fan.

MUSICAL IMPROVISATION AND THE CREATIVE PROCESS

Musical improvisation combines technical proficiency and musical intuition. Due to its interactive nature, improvisation provides an avenue of communication among all art forms. This dissertation project explores the collaborative aspects of improvisation involving a musician, visual artist, a small group of dancers, and videographer. Video footage from two separate recording sessions provided hours of visual materials which were studied and edited. The first session was a live performance recorded in front of a studio audience. The second session was a two-day collaboration between musician and dancers in a studio space. The process of editing and compiling images with audio-an important element in this project-presented many unforeseeable challenges and lessons. This recorded dissertation is comprised of seven music videos that demonstrate my ability as an artist in collaboration with visual artist-professor Richard Klank, dancers David Yates, Jamie Garcia, Raha Behnam, Rachel Wolfe and Adrian Galvin, and video artist Nguyen Nguyen. Each video represents an individual creative process involving musical performance, studio lighting, sound recording, and video editing.

Long-duration animal tracking in difficult lighting conditions.

High-throughput analysis of animal behavior requires software to analyze videos. Such software typically depends on the experiments' being performed in good lighting conditions, but this ideal is difficult or impossible to achieve for certain classes of experiments. Here, we describe techniques that allow long-duration positional tracking in difficult lighting conditions with strong shadows or recurring "on"/"off" changes in lighting. The latter condition will likely become increasingly common, e.g., for Drosophila due to the advent of red-shifted channel rhodopsins. The techniques enabled tracking with good accuracy in three types of experiments with difficult lighting conditions in our lab. Our technique handling shadows relies on single-animal tracking and on shadows' and flies' being accurately distinguishable by distance to the center of the arena (or a similar geometric rule); the other techniques should be broadly applicable. We implemented the techniques as extensions of the widely-used tracking software Ctrax; however, they are relatively simple, not specific to Drosophila, and could be added to other trackers as well.

Effects of Web-Based Self-Reporting: College Students’ Self-Efficacy Regarding Fruit and Vegetable Intake

This study evaluated the effect of an online diet-tracking tool on college students’ self-efficacy regarding fruit and vegetable intake. A convenience sample of students completed online self-efficacy surveys before and after a six-week intervention in which they tracked dietary intake with an online tool. Group one (n=22 fall, n=43 spring) accessed a tracking tool without nutrition tips; group two (n=20 fall, n=33 spring) accessed the tool and weekly nutrition tips. The control group (n=36 fall, n=60 spring) had access to neither. Each semester there were significant changes in self-efficacy from pre- to post-test for men and for women when experimental groups were combined (p<0.05 for all); however, these changes were inconsistent. Qualitative data showed that participants responded well to the simplicity of the tool, the immediacy of feedback, and the customized database containing foods available on campus. Future models should improve user engagement by increasing convenience, potentially by automation.

Evaluating the Feasibility of Implementing a Green Roof Retrofit on Pitched Residential Roofs

Green roofs are one solution to stormwater runoff which is a major environmental problem. However, the majority of green roofs are primarily implemented on flat roofed commercial buildings and not residential homes with sloped roofs. Team SO GREEN designed a light-weight green roof system retrofit for residential homes. Between June and November 2014, green roof performance data was collected and compared between the designed sloped roofs and a non-sloped control. The sloped design performed well and one test slope was improved with a recirculating irrigation system. An economic analysis was made and a focus group determined preliminary consumer interest, aesthetic preferences, and barriers. This study enriches the body of knowledge regarding bringing green roof systems to the residential home market.

A comprehensive life cycle water analysis framework for residential buildings

Most studies on the environmental performance of buildings focus on energy demand and associated greenhouse gas emissions. They often neglect to consider the range of other resource demands and environmental impacts associated with buildings, including water. Studies that assess water use in buildings typically consider only operational water, which excludes the embodied water in building materials or the water associated with the mobility of building occupants. A new framework is presented that quantifies water requirements at the building scale (i.e. the embodied and operational water of the building as well as its maintenance and refurbishment) and at the city scale (i.e. the embodied water of nearby infrastructures such as roads, gas distribution and others) and the transport-related indirect water use of building occupants. A case study house located in Melbourne, Australia, is analysed using the new framework. The results show that each of the embodied, operational and transport requirements is nearly equally important. By integrating these three water requirements, the developed framework provides architects, building designers, planners and decision-makers with a powerful means to understand and effectively reduce the overall water use and associated environmental impacts of residential buildings.

Computer Museum, School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, University of Greenwich

Computer equipment, once viewed as leading edge, is quickly condemned as obsolete and banished to basement store rooms or rubbish bins. The magpie instincts of some of the academics and technicians at the University of Greenwich, London, preserved some such relics in cluttered offices and garages to the dismay of colleagues and partners. When the University moved into its new campus in the historic buildings of the Old Royal Naval College in the center of Greenwich, corridor space in King William Court provided an opportunity to display some of this equipment so that students could see these objects and gain a more vivid appreciation of their subject's history.

[Organiser of Stirling's Red Buildings Conference for the Twentieth Century Society]

The aim of the conference is to review the three 'Red Buildings' with experts who have studied their history and their performance, and to discuss their future. Work is due to take place on the Leicester and Oxford buildings in the relatively near future, and technical knowledge can be shared in a context of understanding the design intention. Also to celebrate Stirling and Gowan's careers from a broader perspective and to assert the value of looking after these special buildings as assets for the future. The speakers in the afternoon session are people who knew the two architects well, and in some cases worked for them. [From University of Leicester]