In the African traditional perspectives, music is posited as a medium of communication, education, training, history, sports, proverbs, food, environment, discipline, philosophies, and fosters general societal ideologies. However, several studies failed to unravel these facts. Therefore, this paper focuses on traditional Efik and Igbo folk songs of Southern Nigeria to buttress the multipurpose use assertions with content and context analysis of the songs. This study was based on edutainment theory, which aims to create an environment where learning becomes an enjoyable experience rather than a chore. Content analysis method identifies patterns, themes, meanings, concepts, and significant roles of the traditional Efik and Igbo folk songs of Southern Nigeria, while the context analysis involves examination of the circumstances, conditions, and background factors that influence the songs in broader contexts. The study of Efik and Igbo folk songs calls for urgent attention, so that they will not go into extinction. The survival of indigenous music is a collective role of every indigenous scholar, the government, and educational institutions through research to properly document the roles of traditional Efik and Igbo folk songs of the People of Southern Nigeria.
Automated motion evaluation has become popular in exercise training and entertainment. In this study, an advanced automatic dance scoring algorithm is proposed. First, to avoid misjudgment from misalignment, space and time alignment are assessed. Then, instead of using the whole video frames as the input, we apply the joint information, including the relative locations, the moving velocities, the orientations, and the areas between the joint lines. To make the features more flexible and magnify the detail difference, we take the fractional powers on input features. The correlation coefficients are calculated for feature selection, and a nonlinear analysis is introduced to determine the angle difference. The least mean square error approximation is also applied to determine the linear combination coefficients of the features. The difference between the ground truth and the interpolated results from the regression line is minimized using the input features. The proposed algorithm accurately predicts dancing scores.
The complexity of itinerant and many-body nature in Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) wavefunctions has traditionally led to the use of coarse-grained order parameters for describing currents in superconductors (SC), rather than directly utilizing wavefunctions. In this work, we introduce a phase-based formula that enables the direct computation of currents from microscopic wavefunctions, accounting for correlation and particle number variations. Interestingly, the formulation draws parallels with insulators, suggesting a unified framework for understanding (intra-band) charge transport across two extremes of conductivity. A group velocity current $J_{band}{\propto}\frac{1}{\hbar}{\partial}_kE(k)$ is derived from Berry phase, independent of wave package dynamics, robust against correlation. Additionally, we identify a correlation-driven contribution, $J_{corr}$, which reveals that the pairing correlations ${\langle}c_kc_{-k}{\rangle}$ among dancing partners provide a current component beyond the velocity operator.
We address the problem of dynamic scene reconstruction from sparse-view videos. Prior work often requires dense multi-view captures with hundreds of calibrated cameras (e.g. Panoptic Studio). Such multi-view setups are prohibitively expensive to build and cannot capture diverse scenes in-the-wild. In contrast, we aim to reconstruct dynamic human behaviors, such as repairing a bike or dancing, from a small set of sparse-view cameras with complete scene coverage (e.g. four equidistant inward-facing static cameras). We find that dense multi-view reconstruction methods struggle to adapt to this sparse-view setup due to limited overlap between viewpoints. To address these limitations, we carefully align independent monocular reconstructions of each camera to produce time- and view-consistent dynamic scene reconstructions. Extensive experiments on PanopticStudio and Ego-Exo4D demonstrate that our method achieves higher quality reconstructions than prior art, particularly when rendering novel views. Code, data, and data-processing scripts are available on https://github.com/Z1hanW/MonoFusion.
William R. Meier, David E. Graf, Brenden R. Ortiz
et al.
Dancing tins pair up, But compressing the framework Thwarts the displacements. The density waves that develop in kagome metals ScV$_{6}$Sn$_{6}$ and LuNb$_{6}$Sn$_{6}$ at low temperature appear to arise from under-filled atomic columns within a V-Sn or Nb-Sn scaffolding. Compressing this network with applied pressure in ScV$_{6}$Sn$_{6}$ suppressed the structural transition temperature by constraining atomic rattling and inhibiting the shifts that define the structural modulation. We predicted that the density wave transition in LuNb$_{6}$Sn$_{6}$ at 68 K would be suppressed by pressure as well. In this brief study, we examine the pressure dependence of the density wave transition by measuring resistance vs temperature up to 2.26 GPa. We found the transition temperature is smoothly depressed and disappears around 1.9 GPa. This result not only addresses our prediction, but strengthens the rattling chains origin of structural instabilities in the HfFe$_{6}$Ge$_{6}$-type kagome metals.
Sherly Parackal, Sumera Saeed Akhtar, Sivamanoj Yadav
et al.
There is an urgent need to develop sustainable and impactful interventions to mitigate the high risk of diet-related non-communicable diseases (diet-NCDs) in South Asians living in high-income countries. The current study using a co-design methodology aimed to identify community-led intervention components (solutions) to address barriers and enablers of disease-promoting dietary and physical activity behaviours in New Zealand South Asians. Data were collected from South Asian immigrants aged 25–59 years via three focus group discussions (n = 21) and 10 telephone or face-to-face interviews between 2018 and 2019. The thematic analysis resulted in identifying 22 barrier and enabler codes and 12 solution codes which were summarised under five themes. The key solutions (intervention components) to mitigate the identified target behaviours were providing recipes for using local vegetables in South Asian cuisine, information on the nutritional quality of frozen vegetables and canned lentils, simple home gardening techniques, the saturated fat content of dairy foods, interpreting nutrition labels, optimal portion sizes of foods, and framing low-fat messages positively. Similarly, group-based activities with peer support such as walking, cultural dancing and community sports like cricket, football, and tennis were the identified solutions to increase physical activity levels. The identified solutions for health promoting dietary habits and physical activity levels could be part of any targeted multicomponent health promoting programme to reduce the risk of diet-NCDs in South Asian immigrants.
Choreography creation is a multimodal endeavor, demanding cognitive abilities to develop creative ideas and technical expertise to convert choreographic ideas into physical dance movements. Previous endeavors have sought to reduce the complexities in the choreography creation process in both dimensions. Among them, non-AI-based systems have focused on reinforcing cognitive activities by helping analyze and understand dance movements and augmenting physical capabilities by enhancing body expressivity. On the other hand, AI-based methods have helped the creation of novel choreographic materials with generative AI algorithms. The choreography creation process is constrained by time and requires a rich set of resources to stimulate novel ideas, but the need for iterative prototyping and reduced physical dependence have not been adequately addressed by prior research. Recognizing these challenges and the research gap, we present an innovative AI-based choreography-support system. Our goal is to facilitate rapid ideation by utilizing a generative AI model that can produce diverse and novel dance sequences. The system is designed to support iterative digital dance prototyping through an interactive web-based user interface that enables the editing and modification of generated motion. We evaluated our system by inviting six choreographers to analyze its limitations and benefits and present the evaluation results along with potential directions for future work.
Jonathan Heins, Lennart Schäpermeier, Pascal Kerschke
et al.
Solving the Traveling Salesperson Problem (TSP) remains a persistent challenge, despite its fundamental role in numerous generalized applications in modern contexts. Heuristic solvers address the demand for finding high-quality solutions efficiently. Among these solvers, the Lin-Kernighan-Helsgaun (LKH) heuristic stands out, as it complements the performance of genetic algorithms across a diverse range of problem instances. However, frequent timeouts on challenging instances hinder the practical applicability of the solver. Within this work, we investigate a previously overlooked factor contributing to many timeouts: The use of a fixed candidate set based on a tree structure. Our investigations reveal that candidate sets based on Hamiltonian circuits contain more optimal edges. We thus propose to integrate this promising initialization strategy, in the form of POPMUSIC, within an efficient restart version of LKH. As confirmed by our experimental studies, this refined TSP heuristic is much more efficient - causing fewer timeouts and improving the performance (in terms of penalized average runtime) by an order of magnitude - and thereby challenges the state of the art in TSP solving.
Creating realistic pose-guided image-to-video character animations while preserving facial identity remains challenging, especially in complex and dynamic scenarios such as dancing, where precise identity consistency is crucial. Existing methods frequently encounter difficulties maintaining facial coherence due to misalignments between facial landmarks extracted from driving videos that provide head pose and expression cues and the facial geometry of the reference images. To address this limitation, we introduce the Facial Landmarks Transformation (FLT) method, which leverages a 3D Morphable Model to address this limitation. FLT converts 2D landmarks into a 3D face model, adjusts the 3D face model to align with the reference identity, and then transforms them back into 2D landmarks to guide the image-to-video generation process. This approach ensures accurate alignment with the reference facial geometry, enhancing the consistency between generated videos and reference images. Experimental results demonstrate that FLT effectively preserves facial identity, significantly improving pose-guided character animation models.
The advent of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) technologies has been changing the research landscape and potentially has significant implications for Digital Humanities (DH), a field inherently intertwined with technologies. This article investigates how DH scholars adopt and critically evaluate GenAI technologies for research. Drawing on 76 responses collected from an international survey study and 15 semi-structured interviews with DH scholars, we explored the rationale for adopting GenAI tools in research, identified the specific practices of using GenAI tools, and analyzed scholars' collective perceptions regarding the benefits, risks, and challenges. The results reveal that DH research communities hold divided opinions and differing imaginations towards the role of GenAI in DH scholarship. While scholars acknowledge the benefits of GenAI in enhancing research efficiency and enabling reskilling, many remain concerned about its potential to disrupt their intellectual identities. Situated within the history of DH and viewed through the lens of Actor-Network Theory, our findings suggest that the adoption of GenAI is gradually changing the field, though this transformation remains contested, shaped by ongoing negotiations among multiple human and non-human actors. Our study is one of the first empirical analyses on this topic and has the potential to serve as a building block for future inquiries into the impact of GenAI on DH scholarship.
Keiichi Ihara, Kyzyl Monteiro, Mehrad Faridan
et al.
This paper introduces Video2MR, a mixed reality system that automatically generates 3D sports and exercise instructions from 2D videos. Mixed reality instructions have great potential for physical training, but existing works require substantial time and cost to create these 3D experiences. Video2MR overcomes this limitation by transforming arbitrary instructional videos available online into MR 3D avatars with AI-enabled motion capture (DeepMotion). Then, it automatically enhances the avatar motion through the following augmentation techniques: 1) contrasting and highlighting differences between the user and avatar postures, 2) visualizing key trajectories and movements of specific body parts, 3) manipulation of time and speed using body motion, and 4) spatially repositioning avatars for different perspectives. Developed on Hololens 2 and Azure Kinect, we showcase various use cases, including yoga, dancing, soccer, tennis, and other physical exercises. The study results confirm that Video2MR provides more engaging and playful learning experiences, compared to existing 2D video instructions.
Alberto Pérez-Portela, Adrián Paramés-González, Iván Prieto-Lage
et al.
Time-motion analysis has been used to quantify the external load of competition and as a strategy to prevent injuries. The objectives of this study were to determine the external load of competition in breaking, using time-motion analysis, and to establish a battle model to help determine training load and prevent injuries. Using observational methodology, we analysed all the battles of 56 b-boys and 56 b-girls who participated in the Red Bull BC One from 2018 to 2021 (n = 112). To obtain the results we used different analysis techniques. The significance level established was ρ ≤ 0.05. The results show that the time and sequence values have increased in recent years. The total battle time reaches 195 s for bboys and 170 s for bgirls. Men show greater strength and explosiveness, with higher values in total time and sequentiality, using more powermove. Women have higher split time values, showing greater endurance in the movements and using more footwork. The first two rounds have the longest duration for both sexes and the most used categories are also the most injurious in this discipline. Women use less powermove than men and have a lower injury rate. With these results, breaking professionals will be able to elaborate adequate training for their athletes. We conclude that there are significant differences between sexes when it comes to dancing, diminishing as the tournament progresses. We propose a model of temporal and sequential structure individualised by sex. The most damaging elements of breaking (powermove and footwork) should be taken into account when analysing the results and preparing the athletes.
El objetivo de este artículo es describir y clasificar los modelos de investigación en la danza que se encuentran enmarcados en literatura científica escrita en lengua inglesa. Este binomio, danza e investigación, en el panorama hispanoparlante es reciente si lo comparamos con aquellos de más tradición anglosajona. Hemos considerado 7 modelos de aproximación a la danza: “Performance Studies”,“Dance Studies”, “Choreographic Practices”, “Performance Research”, “Dance Medicine”, “Dance Therapy” y un “Modelo Abierto” que integra otras áreas de conocimiento que examinan el hecho dancístico. El modelo “Dance Studies” permite la actualización del estado de la danza en el mundo académico; a pesar de ello, sigue percibiéndose un “techo de cristal” a nivel científico. Solo cuando la danza se asocia a un paradigma de salud, como sucede en los modelos de “Dance Medicine”, “Dance Therapy” o incluso, el “Modelo Abierto” es cuando la danza como Arte puede aparecer en la plataforma Web of Science con factor de impacto. Este factor forma parte de una aspiración generalizada de los investigadores a lograr en el panorama científico y que se encuentra, además en continuo cambio.
Music-driven group choreography poses a considerable challenge but holds significant potential for a wide range of industrial applications. The ability to generate synchronized and visually appealing group dance motions that are aligned with music opens up opportunities in many fields such as entertainment, advertising, and virtual performances. However, most of the recent works are not able to generate high-fidelity long-term motions, or fail to enable controllable experience. In this work, we aim to address the demand for high-quality and customizable group dance generation by effectively governing the consistency and diversity of group choreographies. In particular, we utilize a diffusion-based generative approach to enable the synthesis of flexible number of dancers and long-term group dances, while ensuring coherence to the input music. Ultimately, we introduce a Group Contrastive Diffusion (GCD) strategy to enhance the connection between dancers and their group, presenting the ability to control the consistency or diversity level of the synthesized group animation via the classifier-guidance sampling technique. Through intensive experiments and evaluation, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach in producing visually captivating and consistent group dance motions. The experimental results show the capability of our method to achieve the desired levels of consistency and diversity, while maintaining the overall quality of the generated group choreography. The source code can be found at https://aioz-ai.github.io/GCD
We present a method for reproducing complex multi-character interactions for physically simulated humanoid characters using deep reinforcement learning. Our method learns control policies for characters that imitate not only individual motions, but also the interactions between characters, while maintaining balance and matching the complexity of reference data. Our approach uses a novel reward formulation based on an interaction graph that measures distances between pairs of interaction landmarks. This reward encourages control policies to efficiently imitate the character's motion while preserving the spatial relationships of the interactions in the reference motion. We evaluate our method on a variety of activities, from simple interactions such as a high-five greeting to more complex interactions such as gymnastic exercises, Salsa dancing, and box carrying and throwing. This approach can be used to ``clean-up'' existing motion capture data to produce physically plausible interactions or to retarget motion to new characters with different sizes, kinematics or morphologies while maintaining the interactions in the original data.
Andrew Litteken, Lennart Maximilian Seifert, Jason D. Chadwick
et al.
Superconducting quantum devices are a leading technology for quantum computation, but they suffer from several challenges. Gate errors, coherence errors and a lack of connectivity all contribute to low fidelity results. In particular, connectivity restrictions enforce a gate set that requires three-qubit gates to be decomposed into one- or two-qubit gates. This substantially increases the number of two-qubit gates that need to be executed. However, many quantum devices have access to higher energy levels. We can expand the qubit abstraction of $|0\rangle$ and $|1\rangle$ to a ququart which has access to the $|2\rangle$ and $|3\rangle$ state, but with shorter coherence times. This allows for two qubits to be encoded in one ququart, enabling increased virtual connectivity between physical units from two adjacent qubits to four fully connected qubits. This connectivity scheme allows us to more efficiently execute three-qubit gates natively between two physical devices. We present direct-to-pulse implementations of several three-qubit gates, synthesized via optimal control, for compilation of three-qubit gates onto a superconducting-based architecture with access to four-level devices with the first experimental demonstration of four-level ququart gates designed through optimal control. We demonstrate strategies that temporarily use higher level states to perform Toffoli gates and always use higher level states to improve fidelities for quantum circuits. We find that these methods improve expected fidelities with increases of 2x across circuit sizes using intermediate encoding, and increases of 3x for fully-encoded ququart compilation.
This article presents findings from first-person accounts of shifting choreographic practice into mixed-reality environments. Dancing in/Dancing with the Digital, a transdisciplinary practice-based project exploring embodiment and movement in XR. In the research and design phases of the project, all authors kept reflective practice journals, which form the data for this auto-ethnographic and phenomenologically-driven reflexive practice analysis. We further support these perspectives by user-testing with professional dancers and the engineering students who developed the XR configurations. Through a kaleidoscope of perspectives, including dance, psychology, somatic practices, digital technologies, and design approaches, we explore embodied awareness and practice in existing and novel XR design. Themes discussed include elements of disorientation in digital environments and touch as a grounding point, the prospect of multimodal creative stimuli, complications of representation in digital spaces, and the digital-as-site for choreography.
Introduction: Institutionalized children are at risk in terms of their integration into society, as the lack of educational and financial resources hinders the development of their cognitive and non-cognitive skills. Sports activities contribute to the development of interests and influence the general education of the children, which can be stimulated through music and dance - the most representative artistic field that allows the psychomotor development of children. Objective: The aim of this study is to ascertain the differences between the institutionalized children and the dancers who come from families in terms of their interests and values. Materials and Methods: Fifty-five children aged 11-12 participated in the study, including 30 children in foster care who do not participate in organized extracurricular physical activities and 25 performance dancers who come from organized families. Results: The interest in the various activities in which children are asked to participate is more obvious in dancers, particularly from an artistic and social point of view, and children in foster care are preoccupied with free time and social relations, with authority being the least valued. Conclusions: The influence of dance on children’s development can be noticed in the results of the psychological tests assessing their interests and values, which suggest that dancers are more interested in extracurricular activities compared to children in foster care centers and they are more concerned about their future employment situation.
Article history: Received 2022 July 23; Revised 2022 August 29; Accepted 2022 August 29; Available online 2022 November 20; Available print 2022 December 20.
REZUMAT. Studiu comparativ privind interesele și valorile copiilor instituționalizați și ale copiilor dansatori care provin din familii. Introducere: Copiii instituționalizați reprezintă o categorie cu factor de risc din punct de vedere al integrării în societate, lipsa resurselor educaționale și financiare împiedicând dezvoltarea abilităților cognitive și noncognitive ale acestora. Activitățile sportive contribuie la formarea intereselor și influențează educația generală a copiilor, care poate fi stimulată prin intermediul muzicii și dansului - acesta fiind cel mai reprezentativ domeniu artistic ce permite dezvoltarea psihomotrică a copiilor. Obiectiv: Scopul acestui studiu este de a stabili diferențele dintre copiii instituționalizați și dansatorii proveniți din familii, din punct de vedere al intereselor și valorilor acestora. Materiale și Metode: La studiu au participat 55 de copii cu vârsta cuprinsă între 11-12 ani, incluzând 30 de copii din centre de plasament care nu participă la activități fizice extrașcolare organizate și 25 de dansatori de performanță, proveniți din familii organizate. Rezultate: Interesul pentru diversele activități la care sunt solicitați copiii este mai bine evidențiat la dansatori, în special din punct de vedere artistic și social, iar copiii din centrele de plasament sunt preocupați de timp liber și de relațiile sociale, cel mai puțin apreciind autoritatea. Concluzii: Influența dansului asupra dezvoltării copiilor poate fi observată în urma rezultatelor testelor psihologice de evaluare a intereselor și valorilor, care sugerează faptul că dansatorii sunt mai interesați de alte activități desfășurate în afara orelor de școală comparativ cu copiii din centre, și sunt mai preocupați de viitoarea situație profesională.
Cuvinte cheie: Dans, interese, valori, copii instituționalizați.
Olha Podrihalo, Guo Xiaohong, Leonid Podrigalo
et al.
Purpose: analysis of the activity of dance sport athletes using professiographic techniques to optimize the training and growth of sportsmanship.
Material & Methods: the method of developing a professiogram was used according to the accepted methodology, methods for assessing the severity and intensity of work were used.
Results: the severity and intensity of sports activities in dancing were assessed. The main professional requirements are identified, which include: the need to maintain a pose in dance, high technicality in performing elements, mandatory artistry, a sense of rhythm and performing movements in accordance with music, high noise immunity, high physical preparedness with an advantage in coordination, strength qualities and endurance, high functionality of cardiorespiratory systems.
Conclusions: the analysis of sports activities in sports dances made it possible to substantiate and develop a professional model of this sport. It has been established that sports dances belong to the 3rd category of labor in terms of severity and the 4th category in terms of intensity in accordance with the official physiological and hygienic criteria. The main professional requirements that determine the success of professional activity are highlighted. A set of methods necessary for the study and assessment of the state of the most important organs and systems that ensure the implementation of sports tasks is substantiated. These methods can be used in monitoring the functional state of athletes to develop a forecast for the growth of sportsmanship.