ConGen—A Simulator-Agnostic Visual Language for Definition and Generation of Connectivity in Large and Multiscale Neural Networks

An open challenge on the road to unraveling the brain's multilevel organization is establishing techniques to research connectivity and dynamics at different scales in time and space, as well as the links between them. This work focuses on the design of a framework that facilitates the generation of multiscale connectivity in large neural networks using a symbolic visual language capable of representing the model at different structural levels—ConGen. This symbolic language allows researchers to create and visually analyze the generated networks independently of the simulator to be used, since the visual model is translated into a simulator-independent language. The simplicity of the front end visual representation, together with the simulator independence provided by the back end translation, combine into a framework to enhance collaboration among scientists with expertise at different scales of abstraction and from different fields. On the basis of two use cases, we introduce the features and possibilities of our proposed visual language and associated workflow. We demonstrate that ConGen enables the creation, editing, and visualization of multiscale biological neural networks and provides a whole workflow to produce simulation scripts from the visual representation of the model.

Innovative poster designs: A shift toward visual representation of data

Disclaimer In an effort to expedite the publication of articles, AJHP is posting manuscripts online as soon as possible after acceptance. Accepted manuscripts have been peer-reviewed and copyedited, but are posted online before technical formatting and author proofing. These manuscripts are not the final version of record and will be replaced with the final article (formatted per AJHP style and proofed by the authors) at a later time.

Open Challenges and Research Roadmap: Visual Representations aiding Organizational Leadership in Decision Making for New Product Development at the Early Innovation Stage

Innovation is a cornerstone for an organization’s survival and success in the global competitive landscape in the VUCA world. The New Product Development (NPD) process is a crucial part of the portfolio and Innovation Management (IM) process. The leadership of an organization has a disproportionate impact on the outcome of innovation activities. Their involvement in IM and NPD is critical for success, considering they make strategic decisions to allocate resources for business growth. The leadership team demands a holistic picture of ideas before making decisions at early stages. The leadership challenge in decision making is that they have a limited time to make decisions by understanding many related aspects and insights quickly. The visual approaches have been vital in management practices to understand the situation and aid in decision-making by supporting cognitive processes. The fundamental problem in using visual representation is hidden expectations of leadership teams to represent needed elements to aid in strategic decision-making by leadership at the early stage of innovation. Also, the configuration of elements and interplay is another issue. The core challenge lies in understanding the effectiveness of currently used visual representations and then improving them by identifying needed elements and their configuration and placement in the visual representation. The paper takes literature review, expert interviews, and brainstorming approaches to distill the challenges to the concrete research questions and objectives. Providing solutions to the open research questions and challenges can significantly enhance the quality and speed of innovation-related decision-making.

Open Challenges and Research Roadmap: Visual Representations aiding Organizational Leadership in Decision Making for New Product Development at the Early Innovation Stage

Innovation is a cornerstone for an organization’s survival and success in the global competitive landscape in the VUCA world. The New Product Development (NPD) process is a crucial part of the portfolio and Innovation Management (IM) process. The leadership of an organization has a disproportionate impact on the outcome of innovation activities. Their involvement in IM and NPD is critical for success, considering they make strategic decisions to allocate resources for business growth. The leadership team demands a holistic picture of ideas before making decisions at early stages. The leadership challenge in decision making is that they have a limited time to make decisions by understanding many related aspects and insights quickly. The visual approaches have been vital in management practices to understand the situation and aid in decision-making by supporting cognitive processes. The fundamental problem in using visual representation is hidden expectations of leadership teams to represent needed elements to aid in strategic decision-making by leadership at the early stage of innovation. Also, the configuration of elements and interplay is another issue. The core challenge lies in understanding the effectiveness of currently used visual representations and then improving them by identifying needed elements and their configuration and placement in the visual representation. The paper takes literature review, expert interviews, and brainstorming approaches to distill the challenges to the concrete research questions and objectives. Providing solutions to the open research questions and challenges can significantly enhance the quality and speed of innovation-related decision-making.

How Do We Look?

In How Do We Look? Fatimah Tobing Rony draws on transnational images of Indonesian women as a way to theorize what she calls visual biopolitics—the ways visual representation determines which lives are made to matter more than others. Rony outlines the mechanisms of visual biopolitics by examining Paul Gauguin’s 1893 portrait of Annah la Javanaise—a trafficked thirteen-year-old girl found wandering the streets of Paris—as well as US ethnographic and documentary films. In each instance, the figure of the Indonesian woman is inextricably tied to discourses of primitivism, savagery, colonialism, exoticism, and genocide. Rony also focuses on acts of resistance to visual biopolitics in film, writing, and photography. These works, such as Rachmi Diyah Larasati’s The Dance that Makes You Vanish, Vincent Monnikendam’s Mother Dao (1995), and the collaborative films of Nia Dinata, challenge the naturalized methods of seeing that justify exploitation, dehumanization, and early death of people of color. By theorizing the mechanisms of visual biopolitics, Rony elucidates both its violence and its vulnerability.

Voicing the Voiceless

Cinema always represented the society, and any visual representation about ‘not so commonly discussed' topics becomes crucial as they are the image blocks for the future generation. The power of cinema is high among Tamil audience, which is evident from the emergence of two great political leaders who are byproducts of it. It is essential to understand how sexual minorities are represented in a culture-specific society. In India, representation of the third gender was insensitive, and Tamil cinema is no exception. These representations cannot be ignored as ‘just in screen' as screen represents reality. Nevertheless, few fair images are making a significant impact on the audience about transgender. Studying representations about sexual minorities in Tamil cinema is important in today's context, where young minds are exposed to digital platforms. This chapter explains the description of the transgender community in Tamil cinema and analyses its impact on society.

Nie tylko o Buce. Egzemplifikacje i ewolucje motywu lęku w książkach o Muminkach Tove Jansson

The article discusses the motif of fear in nine illustrated books about the Moomins by Tove Jansson. Methodologically, the study is a qualitative analysis from the perspective of the double address, the psychological differentiation between the concepts of fear and anxiety, and the iconotextual reading. Although Moomin Valley has been traditionally perceived as a literary arcadia, the plot of the books is surprisingly often interwoven with disasters and dangers, including a volcanic eruption, a freezing winter, a comet, floods, and frequent storms. Jansson employed these motifs — evoking fear triggered by substantive causes — in the contents addressed to inexperienced recipients. She did it intentionally and was convinced that children enjoy fear as long as the story ends happily. In this context a particularly sophisticated character is the Groke, which is usually considered as the most terrifying monster in the series. She appears in four volumes — Finn Family Moomintroll (1948), The Exploits of Moominpappa (1950), Moominland Midwinter (1957), Moomin pappa at Sea (1965) — and the analysis proves that her characterization signifi cantly evolves. Her nuanced nature is from the beginning available to more experienced readers, since it is included in the visual representation, disputing the verbal. Furthermore, the Groke appears to be a hybrid character, as she evokes both fear relating to a specific object and anxiety stemming from an unknown threat — in fact, there are no rational reasons for fearing her.

The Origin and Formation of the National Symbols of Catalonia within the Framework of the Renaixença and their Visual Representation in the 19th Century

The article presents the study of national symbols of Catalonia: their emergence and visual representation in the art of the 19th century. National symbolic system of Catalonia date back to the Renaixença movement in literature that initiated the formation of the Catalan language and literature. The scope and purpose of the article included an investigation of the works of the most prominent representatives of the Catalan national renaissance in order to identify the origins of the symbols they deploy. Consideration of symbols serves the purpose of defining the way national aspects get their visual representation. The method of historical typology was used to systematize the sources. Memoirs and publications in the press were analyzed with the textual method, and visual materials – with stylistic and iconic methods. Detailed research of the works of Renaixença has shown that Catalan cultural code initially emerged in poetry. In the second half of the 19th century, the symbols acquired visuality in fine art, namely paintings and visual design of the front pages of Catalan newspapers and magazines. The article provides a detailed account of selected examples of such visuals. At that time, Catalan intellectuals created works devoted to the history of Catalan-speaking lands, seeking to find roots that would picture the ancient nature of their motherland. They searched the archives and looked into medieval literature and folklore to prove the continuity of prosperous medieval Catalonia, part of the Kingdom of Aragon, and nineteenth-century Catalonia. Thinking over national history gave birth to national identity. At the same time history acquired a visual dimension. Churches, monasteries, memorable dates, leaders and thinkers that bore distinct national identity were visualized. Medieval plots penetrated art that tapped into heroic deeds of the past for inspiration. The spread of visual images helped bridge the gap between past and present. The newly acquired continuity of tradition strengthened the national narrative. The process enabled the national unity of the Catalan people with the central idea of an imaginary community of a nation-state.

The visualization of a graph semantics of imperative languages

This work aims to present the software support for teaching in the field of formal semantics of imperative programming languages. The main part focuses on a software tool that provides a visual representation of the individual steps of the calculation in categorical semantics, which can also be referred to as graph semantics. The use of software tools in teaching to visually represent computational steps considerably facilitates understanding by students and can also serve as a good basis for supporting distance learning. Our program works in the standard form: after reading the correct user input, a visual representation of the meaning of the program is generated in the form of a category of states, which is displayed as an oriented graph. For better extensibility, the program is implemented as a web application.