Knowledge About Video Scaler

A graduate of Mount Holyoke College in 1966, Davenport made documentary films in New York and Maine before becoming a lecturer at M.I.T's Film Section directed by cinema verite pioneer Richard Leacock in 1977.

In 1985, Davenport along with Richard Leacock facilitated the transition of M.I.T.s Film/Video Section into the Weisner Building as part of the new MIT Media Lab. With the retirement of Leacock in 1987, Davenport joined the faculty and founded the Interactive cinema group. At the time she wrote: "Interactive cinema reflects the longing of cinema to become something new, something more complex, something more intimate, as if in conversation with an audience."

In these years before the web, the challenge was to envision a computational form that was scalable and that bound compelling content with human interaction. Davenport writes: "As cinema frees itself from the constraints of the inherently linear celluloid base, a new meta-cinema explodes the myth of the heroic by projecting itself into our everyday environments. The creation and sharing of cinema can happen anywhere, any time. As an improvisational learning partner, meta-cinema invites us to articulate new hypotheses, to sensorially augment our dialogs, to share multi-point of view stories, and to engage in sociable interchange between all people."

In 2008, Davenport retired from the MIT Media Lab in order to transition Tidmarsh Farms, a 610 acre cranberry farm into restoration and conservation. From 2010-2016, she collaborated with over 22 partners on the Tidmarsh Farms Restoration Project, the largest freshwater, wetland restoration in Massachusetts. In 2011, she founded Living Observatory, a non-profit learning collaborative of scientists, engineers, artists and restoration specialists; the mission of Living Observatory is to tell the long term story of the wetland restoration of cranberry farmland, to advance science and the enhance public understanding of fresh water wetlands.

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In 1979 Williams won his first British National Hill Climb Championships setting a new course record that still stands to this day. A rival, Andy Hitchens, who remembers it well, said: "Williams looked like he'd been on starvation rations for months he was built like a sparrow. Some people assume that there was a howling tailwind that day, but there wasn't. It was sunny, but cool. In 1980 Williams joined the Manchester Wheelers' Club and was expected to win International honours during the next two or three seasons. Later that year he won his first stage in the Sealink International finishing four minutes clear. However Williams was left disappointed in the National Hill Climb Championships that year beaten into second place by Malcolm Elliott by only one fifth of a second after being knocked off his bike whilst warming up and receiving a broken nose and severe bruising. At the age of 21 Williams competed for Great Britain in the individual road race at the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games. He was sponsored by Harry Hall Cycles. Williams finished 47th, alongside Stephen Roche. At the end of the 1980 season Williams publicly declared his intention of living and racing in France for the 1981 racing calendar with a view to turning professional therefore joining the French club ACBB (Athletic Club de Boulogne Billencourt), Europe's most successful sports club.

In 1982 Williams completed a unique double, of the British Road Race Championship and Hill Climb Championship becoming the first person ever to do so in the same season. Williams competed in the individual road race at the 1982 Commonwealth Games in Brisbane.

In 1986 he joined Raleigh riding with Paul Sherwen, Mark Bell, Paul Watson and Jon Clay. Williams retired at the end of the 1987 season. He was famed for his hill climbing ability and considered by many to be one of the most exciting riders, he scaled the heights throughout his career, but also plumbed the depths.

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Vikings of Middle England (also known as Trsli) is a Viking re-enactment and living history group based in Leicester, UK. They portray the people who lived, travelled to and invaded Britain in the Viking-Age. Trsli's aim is to entertain and educate an audience using a mix of drama, pageant, special effects, historical context, demonstration and audience participation. Trsli are one of the few groups to display Icelandic Horses in a Viking-Age presentation, with horses and riders from Oakfield Icelandic Horses joining them at events. As well as arena-displays, Vikings of Middle England erect a Living History encampment where members demonstrate Viking-age crafts such as blacksmithing or where the audience can have a go at certain activities such as coin-striking. The organisation once owned a scale replica Longship called Ratatosk.

Vikings of Middle England perform at events throughout the UK, including at places of historical interest such as Rockingham Castle, carnivals, festivals and local events, and also at other visitor attractions such as Conkers. Vikings of Middle England also provide displays and resources for education, at schools and for seminars. The organisation has lent expertise and kit to researchers for books, websites, TV and film productions, and conferences while also publishing articles on their website suitable for UK Key Stage 2 pupils.

Vikings of Middle England's membership is mostly based in the city of Leicester. However, some members hail from the surrounding East Midlands and further afield. A number of other Viking re-enactment groups have been started by former members.

Nick Foot of Oakfield Icelandics rides during a Vikings of Middle England battle display at Rockingham Castle, 2018

Vikings of Middle England re-enactors using blood special effects during a performance

Vikings of Middle England re-enactor weaves cloth on a warp-weighted loom

Vikings of Middle England perform a shield wall demonstration.

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He is critical of string theory on the grounds that it lacks testable predictions and is promoted with public money despite its failures so far, and has authored both scientific papers and popular polemics on this topic. His writings claim that excessive media attention and funding of this one particular mainstream endeavour, which he considers speculative, risks undermining public faith in the freedom of scientific research. His moderated weblog on string theory and other topics is titled "Not Even Wrong", a derogatory term for scientifically useless arguments coined by Wolfgang Pauli.

For the last eighteen years particle theory has been dominated by a single approach to the unification of the Standard Model interactions and quantum gravity. This line of thought has hardened into a new orthodoxy that postulates an unknown fundamental supersymmetric theory involving strings and other degrees of freedom with characteristic scale around the Planck length. It is a striking fact that there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever for this complex and unattractive conjectural theory. There is not even a serious proposal for what the dynamics of the fundamental 'M-theory' is supposed to be or any reason at all to believe that its dynamics would produce a vacuum state with the desired properties. The sole argument generally given to justify this picture of the world is that perturbative string theories have a massless spin two mode and thus could provide an explanation of gravity, if one ever managed to find an underlying theory for which perturbative string theory is the perturbative expansion."The String Wars"A discussion in 2006 took place between University of California, Santa Barbara physicists at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics and science journalist George Johnson regarding the controversy caused by Lee Smolin and Woit's books. The meeting was titled "The String Wars".

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Croydon Community Against Trafficking (CCAT) originated in 2004 when a group of local residents were confronted with research that had been released by The Poppy Project (funded by the UK government). The report detailed the scale of prostitution and exploitation across London and the connections to the issue of trafficking. The group set about their own research in an effort to either disprove or reinforce this research or find a different situation altogether. Their focus became, and remains today, the issue of Human Trafficking - specifically, women in Croydon who are forced, against their will, to work in brothels.

The CCAT exists as a coalition of concerned citizens, faith and community groups who aim to stop the injustice of human trafficking for sexual exploitation within the London Borough of Croydon - one of the biggest 'ports' for human trafficking in the UK. 'We want that to stop and we want the people enslaved by this trade in human life to be brought to justice.'

In addition to raising awareness within the London Borough of Croydon and its surrounds, CCAT has also influenced policies nationally and locally. Key amongst these are contributing the U.K.'s ratification of the Treaty of Europe Convention on Human Trafficking (through their involvement with the Stop The Traffik Coalition), the U.K. government's tough new measures to reduced demand for trafficked women , and the withdraw of adult adverts from newspapers such as Newsquest . They have also helped to prioritise this issue for the local police and local council in the borough of Croydon. Most recently the work of The CCAT has been written up as a resource tool for communities to take action against trafficking. This resource called ACT is available on the Stop the Traffik website.

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The gallery is located in downtown Cairos bustling car mechanics district. It curates over twelve annual exhibitions in the 650-square-meter Factory and the First Floor gallery of its main building. The exhibitions feature the work of young emerging artists alongside those who are internationally recognized. Many local artists with early shows at the Townhouse have gone on to exhibit worldwide.

The Townhouse has initiated numerous large-scale events, beginning with the citywide Nitaq Festival in 1999. PhotoCairo, the first festival in Egypt exclusively dedicated to photography and video art, was launched in 2002.

Since its inception, the Townhouse has strived to make the arts accessible to different groups of society, whilst using them as a powerful medium for integration and understanding. The gallery's Outreach Program offers a number of arts workshops for adults and children, with participants coming from all over Cairo, including those with special needs and from marginalized communities.

The gallery collaborates with institutions and arts professionals both regionally and internationally to create exhibitions, share resources, and facilitate artist exchanges.

Each year, several international artists hold residencies at the Townhouse, working in studios on the gallery premises and pursuing independent projects in the city. Visiting artists often lead workshops during their stay. In 2009, the Townhouse launched the Rooftop Studio Project, a local residency program for Egyptian artists in need of affordable workspaces. The gallery is currently expanding its residency opportunities to curators and writers with the aim of providing opportunities for interdisciplinary practices to emerge and be independently sustained.

Located on the second floor of Townhouse's main building, the library holds books, journals, and other publications related to the arts. Sections are dedicated to Egyptian art history, monographs on Egyptian artists, and catalogues of exhibitions featuring the work of artists from the Middle East. The library is also a resource for artists researching grants and scholarships as well as educators who want to learn more about child development, refugee issues, and other topics.