Cultural Diversity in the News Media: A Democratic or a Commercial Need?

This paper distinguishes between laissez-faire and interventionist models used to justify and implement cultural diversity initiatives in the news media. The laissez-faire model is characteristic of U.S journalism. However, due to the convergence of media systems and the widespread adoption of diversity management, the laissez-fair model may also become the prevalent model throughout other Western democracies, in Europe and elsewhere. The paper argues that the problem with the laissez-fair approach to cultural diversity in the media is that it relies on commercial instea

Critical multiculturalism and deliberative democracy: Opening spaces for more inclusive communication

The discredit of multiculturalism in contemporary discussions about cultural diversity and democracy is problematic since allegations of multiculturalism’s failure and undemocratic consequences are used to justify a (re)turn to assimilation throughout Western societies. Rejecting assimilationism as either desirable or inevitable, this article challenges the alleged incompatibility between multiculturalism and democracy. It makes the case for a (re)conceptualisation of both multiculturalism and democracy in ways that can provide the foundations for inclusive communication. To this end, the article endorse

Journalism, Poverty, and the Marketing of Misery: News From Chile's “Largest Ghetto"

__Abstract__ Research on the news coverage of poverty has largely overlooked the agency of the actors involved. This study addressed this gap by combining ethnographic fieldwork in a poor neighborhood with an analysis of television news about the neighborhood and interviews with the journalists who produced this news. The analysis shows a relationship between journalists and poor people significantly more complex than the relationship described in previous research: Journalists and poor people marketed the neighborhood's misery collaboratively. They shaped news in ways that could be stigmatizing, but that served their converging interests. By acknowledging that structure and agency presuppose each other, this paper contributes to a more nuanced understanding of journalism, as well as to efforts to address poverty's symbolic injustice

Human-activity-centered measurement system:challenges from laboratory to the real environment in assistive gait wearable robotics

Assistive gait wearable robots (AGWR) have shown a great advancement in developing intelligent devices to assist human in their activities of daily living (ADLs). The rapid technological advancement in sensory technology, actuators, materials and computational intelligence has sped up this development process towards more practical and smart AGWR. However, most assistive gait wearable robots are still confined to be controlled, assessed indoor and within laboratory environments, limiting any potential to provide a real assistance and rehabilitation required to humans in the real environments. The gait assessment parameters play an important role not only in evaluating the patient progress and assistive device performance but also in controlling smart self-adaptable AGWR in real-time. The self-adaptable wearable robots must interactively conform to the changing environments and between users to provide optimal functionality and comfort. This paper discusses the performance parameters, such as comfortability, safety, adaptability, and energy consumption, which are required for the development of an intelligent AGWR for outdoor environments. The challenges to measuring the parameters using current systems for data collection and analysis using vision capture and wearable sensors are presented and discussed

First Law, Counterterms and Kerr-AdS_5 Black Holes

We apply the counterterm subtraction technique to calculate the action and other quantities for the Kerr--AdS black hole in five dimensions using two boundary metrics; the Einstein universe and rotating Einstein universe with arbitrary angular velocity. In both cases, the resulting thermodynamic quantities satisfy the first law of thermodynamics. We point out that the reason for the violation of the first law in previous calculations is that the rotating Einstein universe, used as a boundary metric, was rotating with an angular velocity that depends on the black hole rotation parameter. Using a new coordinate system with a boundary metric that has an arbitrary angular velocity, one can show that the resulting physical quantities satisfy the first law.Comment: 19 pages, 1 figur

Scale without Conformal Invariance at Three Loops

We carry out a three-loop computation that establishes the existence of scale without conformal invariance in dimensional regularization with the MS scheme in d=4-epsilon spacetime dimensions. We also comment on the effects of scheme changes in theories with many couplings, as well as in theories that live on non-conformal scale-invariant renormalization group trajectories. Stability properties of such trajectories are analyzed, revealing both attractive and repulsive directions in a specific example. We explain how our results are in accord with those of Jack & Osborn on a c-theorem in d=4 (and d=4-epsilon) dimensions. Finally, we point out that limit cycles with turning points are unlike limit cycles with continuous scale invariance.Comment: 21 pages, 3 figures, Erratum adde

Dirigentas de campamento y actividad mediática: Más allá de internet

__RESUMEN__ El debate en torno al carácter activo de las audiencias contemporáneas tiende a centrarse en las nuevas tecnologías de comunicación y en las posibilidades de producción de contenido que ellas ofrecen. Este artículo propone, en cambio, atender al carácter político de ciertas actividades mediáticas y a factores no-tecnológicos. Específicamente, identificamos la llamada cultura promocional como un impulso importante para influir —y no directamente producir— los contenidos en los medios. Ilustramos este enfoque a través de un caso de estudio sobre la relación entre dirigentas de campamentos y los medios de comunicación en Chile. Estas mujeres interactúan con los medios tradicionales, no digitales, motivadas por la necesidad de reivindicar su imagen y promocionar sus demandas. Argumentamos que el estudio de las actividades de las audiencias en una sociedad neoliberal como la chilena debe considerar que las estrategias promocionales no son el privilegio de ciertos grupos sociales, sino que están presentes de un modo cada vez más generalizado en la sociedad. __ABSTRACT__ Discussions about the active character of contemporary audiences tend to be centered on new communication technologies and on the possibilities of content production offered by these technologies. This article, in contrast, proposes that we pay attention to the political character of certain media activities and to non-technological factors that influence the changing relation between audiences and media. Specifically, we focus on promotional culture as an important drive for activities aimed at influencing—and not directly producing—media content. This approach is illustrated through a case study about the relationship between female slum community leaders and the media in Chile. These women interact largely with traditional rather than digital media, motivated by the need to challenge the image of them proposed by those media, and promote their demands. We argue that the study of audience participation in a neoliberal society like Chile must recognize promotional strategies as not exclusive of certain social groups, but as increasingly widespread throughout society

Photodesorption of CO ice

At the high densities and low temperatures found in star forming regions, all molecules other than H2 should stick on dust grains on timescales shorter than the cloud lifetimes. Yet these clouds are detected in the millimeter lines of gaseous CO. At these temperatures, thermal desorption is negligible and hence a non-thermal desorption mechanism is necessary to maintain molecules in the gas phase. Here, the first laboratory study of the photodesorption of pure CO ice under ultra high vacuum is presented, which gives a desorption rate of 3E-3 CO molecules per UV (7-10.5 eV) photon at 15 K. This rate is factors of 1E2-1E5 larger than previously estimated and is comparable to estimates of other non-thermal desorption rates. The experiments constrains the mechanism to a single photon desorption process of ice surface molecules. The measured efficiency of this process shows that the role of CO photodesorption in preventing total removal of molecules in the gas has been underestimated.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, accepted by ApJ

By-Product Alcohol: Fusel Oil as an Alternative Fuel in Spark Ignition Engine

Fusel oil is a by-product obtained through the fermentation of some agricultural products. The fusel oil properties are closer to other alternative combustible types and the limited number of studies on the use of fusel oil as an alcohol derivative in SI engines constitutes to the base of this study. This paper experimentally examined the impacts of a by-product of alcohol, which is fusel oil by blending it with gasoline, on engine performance, combustion characteristics, and emissions in a 4-cylinder SI engine. The test was achieved at different engine speeds and a 60 % throttle valve (load). As results, brake power, BTE, and BSFC of F10 are higher at all engine speeds. Maximum engine BTE was 33.9%, at the lowest BSFC with F10. Moreover, it is worth seeing that the F10 under rich air-fuel ratio has less variation of COVIMEP compared to the F20 and gasoline. F10 represents shorter combustion duration, thereby, the engine power increased. NOx emission for F10 at 4500 rpm was lower than gasoline. The highest value of HC emission is obtained with F10 compared to gasoline and F20 with an average increase of 11% over the engine speed range. CO and CO2 emissions increased when using fusel oil blends

Prediction of gait events in walking activities with a Bayesian perception system

In this paper, a robust probabilistic formulation for prediction of gait events from human walking activities using wearable sensors is presented. This approach combines the output from a Bayesian perception system with observations from actions and decisions made over time. The perception system makes decisions about the current gait events, while observations from decisions and actions allow to predict the most probable gait event during walking activities. Furthermore, our proposed method is capable to evaluate the accuracy of its predictions, which permits to obtain a better performance and trade-off between accuracy and speed. In our work, we use data from wearable inertial measurement sensors attached to the thigh, shank and foot of human participants. The proposed perception system is validated with multiple experiments for recognition and prediction of gait events using angular velocity data from three walking activities; level-ground, ramp ascent and ramp descent. The results show that our method is fast, accurate and capable to evaluate and adapt its own performance. Overall, our Bayesian perception system demonstrates to be a suitable high-level method for the development of reliable and intelligent assistive and rehabilitation robots