The literature on conceptual blending and metaphor-making has illustrations galore of how these mechanisms may support the creation and grounding of new concepts (or whole domains) in terms of a complex, integrated network of older ones. In spite of this, as of yet there is no general computational account of blending and metaphor-making that has proven powerful enough as to cover all the examp...

The main reason for introducing smooth structures was to enable us to define smooth functions on manifolds and smooth maps between manifolds. In this chapter we carry out that project. We begin by defining smooth real-valued and vector-valued functions, and then generalize this to smooth maps between manifolds. We then focus our attention for a while on the special case of diffeomorphisms, whic...

This paper concentrates on the propagation of waves in a layer of binary mixture of elastic solids subjected to stress free boundaries. Secular equations for the layer corresponding to symmetric and antisymmetric wave modes are derived in completely separate terms. The amplitudes of displacement components and specific loss for both symmetric and antisymmetric modes are obtained. The effect of ...

This paper proposes new field functions that have adjustable inner radius and outer radius of influence. Incorporating the proposed field functions with soft object modeling, soft blending, Ricci’s super-ellipsoid blends, Perlin’s set operations, and R-functions, etc. can have blending range controls by adjusting the inner and the outer radii of influence of given field functions. As a result, ...

We present here the “labiophone”, a virtual system for audio-visual speech communication. A clone of the speaker is animated at distance by articulatory movements extracted from the speaker’s image and captured thanks to a video-camera centered on the speaker’s face. The clone consists of a mesh driven by a few articulatory parameters and clothed by blended textures. The characteristics of the ...

This study addresses conceptual blending theory, originated by J. Fauconnier and M. Turner. The author raises some criticism of the theory’s underpinnings and methodology. Particularly, he points at the lack of cultural-historical analysis and the neglect of experimental data as the shortcomings of the theory as stated. It is shown in the paper that the view on blending as an important tool to ...

We discuss the connection between free-jazz music and service-oriented computing, and advance a method for formal, algebraic analysis of improvised performances; we aim for a better understanding of both the creative process of music improvising and the complexity of service-oriented systems. We formalize free-jazz performances as complex dynamic systems of services, building on the idea that a...

This paper proposes a new approach to style, arising from our work on computational media using structural blending, which enriches the conceptual blending of cognitive linguistics with structure building operations in order to encompass syntax and narrative as well as metaphor. We have implemented both conceptual and structural blending, and conducted initial experiments with poetry, including...

During the past decade, many corporations world-wide have embraced hybrid training programmes to derive benefits of the conventional face-to-face (F2F) learning environment coupled with those of online learning environment for their employees. A majority of researches on hybrid learning focus upon blending of existing F2F programmes of brick ‘n’ mortar institutions with online component. This p...

Blended learning is growing in popularity, but there is conflicting empirical evidence in relation to how it affects students’ exam marks and final grades. This paper compares a blended learning approach to the traditional delivery of an accounting subject to engineering students. Data was collected from two cohorts of students over two semesters and analysed to determine whether the students w...