Emotional Campaigning in Politics: Being Moved and Anger in Political Ads Motivate to Support Candidate and Party

Political advertising to recruit the support of voters is an inherent part of politics. Today, ads are distributed via television and online, including social media. This type of advertisement attempts to recruit support by presenting convincing arguments and evoking various emotions about the candidate, opponents, and policy proposals. We discuss recent arguments and evidence that a specific social emotion, namely the concept kama muta, plays a role in political advertisements. In vernacular language, kama muta is typically labeled as being moved or touched. We compare kama muta and anger theoretically and discuss how they can influence voters’ willingness to support a candidate. We then, for the first time, compare kama muta and anger empirically in the same study. Specifically, we showed American participants short political ads during the 2018 United States midterm election campaigns. All participants saw both kama muta- and anger-evoking ads from both Democratic or Republican candidates. In total, everybody watched eight ads. We assessed participants’ degree of being moved and angered by the videos and their motivation for three types of political support: ideational, financial, and personal. The emotional impact of an ad depended on its perceived source: Participants felt especially angry after watching the anger-evoking ads and especially moved by moving ads if they identified with the political party that had produced the video. Both emotions mediated were associated with increased intentions to provide support. Importantly, if one of the two emotions was evoked, its effect on political support was enhanced if participants identified with the party that had produced the ad. We discuss limitations of the method and implications of the results for future research and practice.

An Electrical Stimulation Method to Control Deep Muscle Contraction using Surface Electrodes

Conventional EMS technology cannot stimulate deep muscles to induce muscle contraction using surface electrodes. Several treatments use electrical stimulation for various neurological conditions, including stroke and spinal cord injury. One such treatment is functional electrical stimulation (FES), a form of rehabilitation in which electrical muscle stimulation (EMS) is provided while the muscles are being moved. Here, we show whether two interfering electrical stimulation pulses could stimulate the deep muscles of the forearm to control muscle contraction. The results showed that the strongest torques were generated across the subjects when the reference frequency was mid-frequency (4,000 Hz) and the beat frequencies were low (20 Hz, 40 Hz, 80 Hz, 160 Hz and 320 Hz). This study is the first counterexample to demonstrate that it is possible to control muscle contraction in the deep muscles of the forearm using surface electrodes, which was previously thought to be impossible.

Spatial Seemingly Unrelated Regression Models for Freight Trip Generation by Vehicle Type: Application to the Chennai Metropolitan Area in India

During the last two decades, there has been substantial interest in developing freight trip generation (FTG) models. Most studies consider only truck trips or convert all freight trips into equivalent truck trips. Freight in several large cities is increasingly being moved by smaller vehicles. This calls for modeling FTG by vehicle type. The present research identifies and compares establishment characteristics affecting FTG by different vehicle types. In this context, spatial correlations among nearby establishments and the error-term correlations between independent models by vehicle type become relevant. Based on the Lagrange-Multiplier (LM) tests, we develop non-spatial seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) models for freight trip production (FTP) and spatial SUR models with a spatial lag in the dependent variable to account for both spatial and error-term correlations for freight trip attraction (FTA). The results show that establishment type and size affect FTG by different vehicle types.

On the Divergence Mechanisms Analysis of a Vibrating Blade subjected to Repetitive Rubs with an Abradable Coating

Aeronautical compressor fans currently operate with minimal blade-casing clearance. This therefore makes the occurrence of rub events very likely. Under specific circumstances, the blade undergoes excessive amplification of contact-induced oscillations, called hereafter divergence, which can be critical for the structural integrity of the engine. This paper proposes an investigation of the mechanisms responsible for the blade divergence. Experiments are conducted on a fully instrumented laboratory set-up, consisting of a single flat blade being moved towards a rotating cylinder to initiate interactions, while monitoring the vibrations and the evolution of wear on the abradable coating. Two synchronization mechanisms have been identified as facilitating the divergence: (i) the inherent set-up synchronization between the vibration modes related to the horizontal and vertical motion of the blade; (ii) the preferential blade-coating interactions in the vicinity of periodically distributed irregularities of the abradable coating which act as a source of excitation of the vibrations.

Nomadic Norwegian Architecture: An Historical and Contemporary Study of Prefabricated Norwegian Whaling Settlements in the Southern Hemisphere

<p>The early 1900’s saw a Norwegian Whaler’s base formed on Stewart Island where they shipped prefabricated buildings from Norway to create a settlement. The majority of these kitset buildings are still standing and apparently have had little modification from their original form. These buildings have no documentation of their materials, suitability of site or analysis of their current condition in this foreign environment. Initial research found one book by J.P.C Watt from the 1980’s which researches the Ross Sea whalers with little focus on the architecture or design. The book documents the movements of the buildings from their original service as a whaling station in the early 1900’s. This is an interesting ensemble of nomadic buildings, foreign to New Zealand, being moved around consistently and yet still remaining in the country today. Through the investigation of materiality, tectonics and individual building elements the research demonstrates how the buildings reacted to their nomadic inhabitants and also how the materials allowed for a sense of personal belonging to occur. This research aims to explore the materiality of Norwegian portable architecture and the material’s present conditions. It establishes that the nomadic/temporal nature of the Norwegian kitset buildings were not adapted to fit the New Zealand context and documents these buildings for future reference. The first step is literature research and design exploration of Norwegian kitset materials, tectonics and components. In the second step, analysis of case studies is conducted. Findings have been judged upon functionality, and therefore the design is a result of the site context and research.</p>

Nomadic Norwegian Architecture: An Historical and Contemporary Study of Prefabricated Norwegian Whaling Settlements in the Southern Hemisphere

<p>The early 1900’s saw a Norwegian Whaler’s base formed on Stewart Island where they shipped prefabricated buildings from Norway to create a settlement. The majority of these kitset buildings are still standing and apparently have had little modification from their original form. These buildings have no documentation of their materials, suitability of site or analysis of their current condition in this foreign environment. Initial research found one book by J.P.C Watt from the 1980’s which researches the Ross Sea whalers with little focus on the architecture or design. The book documents the movements of the buildings from their original service as a whaling station in the early 1900’s. This is an interesting ensemble of nomadic buildings, foreign to New Zealand, being moved around consistently and yet still remaining in the country today. Through the investigation of materiality, tectonics and individual building elements the research demonstrates how the buildings reacted to their nomadic inhabitants and also how the materials allowed for a sense of personal belonging to occur. This research aims to explore the materiality of Norwegian portable architecture and the material’s present conditions. It establishes that the nomadic/temporal nature of the Norwegian kitset buildings were not adapted to fit the New Zealand context and documents these buildings for future reference. The first step is literature research and design exploration of Norwegian kitset materials, tectonics and components. In the second step, analysis of case studies is conducted. Findings have been judged upon functionality, and therefore the design is a result of the site context and research.</p>

“A Hand of Ivory”: Moving Objects in Psellos’ Oration for his Daughter Styliane. A Case-Study

This paper takes its cue from the recent interest in materiality and “things” in the field of Byzantine studies, to explore the role of objects in evoking being moved. First, it advances a new model to explain the relationship between being moved and affordances. Second, it focuses on a specific case study, that is Michael Psellos’ funeral oration for his daughter Styliane (1054), who died of smallpox at the age of 9 years old. The paper sheds light on how affective affordances of an object contribute to the evocation of being moved in literary texts, working within and affecting narrative patterns. While building on the experience of ethical and spiritual principles clearly recognizable by the audience, such affordances point toward the activation of broader core values.

Being Moved: Motion and Emotion in Classical Antiquity and Today

Efforts to identify in the expression “being moved” a new emotion have found a hospitable environment in the recent turn to the body in emotion and cognitive studies, exemplified herein affect theory, with a particular focus on the effects of music. Although classical Greek and Latin had comparable expressions, however, they did not single out a specific emotion. Given that music played an important role in ancient educational theories, and was imagined as having arousing powerful reactions, this might seem a curious absence. The reason, at least in part, maybe the strong cognitive conception of emotions characteristic of classical theories. But this should not discourage the search for emotions that are not included in the ancient canons.

Being Moved by Nature in the Anthropocene: On the Limits of the Ecological Sublime

According to recent accounts, we experience the emotion of “being moved” when a situation brings into play our core values. What are the core values evoked by nonhuman landscapes, however, particularly as the distinction between man-made and natural environments becomes increasingly blurry in the so-called Anthropocene? That is the central question tackled by this article. I start by rethinking the sublime as an affect that, since Romanticism, has shaped Western attitudes toward nature. I argue that today's climate crisis calls for an expansion of our affective engagement with the nonhuman: the sublime can be part of our emotional repertoire, but only if it is complicated by feelings that point to constitutive human–nonhuman entanglement.