Theorizing media production: the poverty of political economy

This article argues that the Political Economy of Communication (PEC) has generally failed to develop theories of media production. Such theory as exists has been heavily influenced by accounts of mass production and flexible specialization in Hollywood. Hollywood film production has been viewed as paradigmatic of media production in general, in the same way as Ford was for manufacturing, and these theories continue to influence accounts of production across media and cultural industries. The article tests the mass production/flexible specialization paradigm against both the evidence of the Hollywood case and Ford’s mass production system. An alternative paradigm, the theory of craft media production, is also examined. The article then attempts to show how applying organization theory and media economics can provide a more convincing explanation of media production and of the Hollywood case. Finally, the article briefly attempts to show how we might develop rich theoretical explanations of media production by exploring the relationships between economic, organizational and media-specific cultural elements

Grid computing and biomolecular simulation.

Biomolecular computer simulations are now widely used not only in an academic setting to understand the fundamental role of molecular dynamics on biological function, but also in the industrial context to assist in drug design. In this paper, two applications of Grid computing to this area will be outlined. The first, involving the coupling of distributed computing resources to dedicated Beowulf clusters, is targeted at simulating protein conformational change using the Replica Exchange methodology. In the second, the rationale and design of a database of biomolecular simulation trajectories is described. Both applications illustrate the increasingly important role modern computational methods are playing in the life sciences

Introduction to a Culturally Sensitive Measure of Well-Being: Combining Life Satisfaction and Interdependent Happiness Across 49 Different Cultures

How can one conclude that well-being is higher in country A than country B, when well-being is being measured according to the way people in country A think about well-being? We address this issue by proposing a new culturally sensitive method to comparing societal levels of well-being. We support our reasoning with data on life satisfaction and interdependent happiness focusing on individual and family, collected mostly from students, across forty-nine countries. We demonstrate that the relative idealization of the two types of well-being varies across cultural contexts and are associated with culturally different models of selfhood. Furthermore, we show that rankings of societal well-being based on life satisfaction tend to underestimate the contribution from interdependent happiness. We introduce a new culturally sensitive method for calculating societal well-being, and examine its construct validity by testing for associations with the experience of emotions and with individualism-collectivism. This new culturally sensitive approach represents a slight, yet important improvement in measuring well-being

Context, cognition and communication in language

Questions pertaining to the unique structure and organisation of language have a long history in the field of linguistics. In recent years, researchers have explored cultural evolutionary explanations, showing how language structure emerges from weak biases amplified over repeated patterns of learning and use. One outstanding issue in these frameworks is accounting for the role of context. In particular, many linguistic phenomena are said to to be context-dependent; interpretation does not take place in a void, and requires enrichment from the current state of the conversation, the physical situation, and common knowledge about the world. Modelling the relationship between language structure and context is therefore crucial for developing a cultural evolutionary approach to language. One approach is to use statistical analyses to investigate large-scale, cross-cultural datasets. However, due to the inherent limitations of statistical analyses, especially with regards to the inadequacy of these methods to test hypotheses about causal relationships, I argue that experiments are better suited to address questions pertaining to language structure and context. From here, I present a series of artificial language experiments, with the central aim being to test how manipulations to context influence the structure and organisation of language. Experiment 1 builds upon previous work in iterated learning and communication games through demonstrating that the emergence of optimal communication systems is contingent on the contexts in which languages are learned and used. The results show that language systems gradually evolve to only encode information that is informative for conveying the intended meaning of the speaker - resulting in markedly different systems of communication. Whereas Experiment 1 focused on how context influences the emergence of structure, Experiments 2 and 3 investigate under what circumstances do manipulations to context result in the loss of structure. While the results are inconclusive across these two experiments, there is tentative evidence that manipulations to context can disrupt structure, but only when interacting with other factors. Lastly, Experiment 4 investigates whether the degree of signal autonomy (the capacity for a signal to be interpreted without recourse to contextual information) is shaped by manipulations to contextual predictability: the extent to which a speaker can estimate and exploit contextual information a hearer uses in interpreting an utterance. When the context is predictable, speakers organise languages to be less autonomous (more context-dependent) through combining linguistic signals with contextual information to reduce effort in production and minimise uncertainty in comprehension. By decreasing contextual predictability, speakers increasingly rely on strategies that promote more autonomous signals, as these signals depend less on contextual information to discriminate between possible meanings. Overall, these experiments provide proof-of-concept for investigating the relationship between language structure and context, showing that the organisational principles underpinning language are the result of competing pressures from context, cognition, and communication

Microclimate variables of the ambient environment deliver the actual estimates of the extrinsic incubation period of Plasmodium vivax and Plasmodium falciparum : A study from a malaria-endemic urban setting, Chennai in India

Background: Environmental factors such as temperature, relative humidity and their daily variation influence a range of mosquito life history traits and hence, malaria transmission. The standard way of characterizing environmental factors with meteorological station data need not be the actual microclimates experienced by mosquitoes within local transmission settings. Methods: A year-long study was conducted in Chennai, India to characterize local temperature and relative humidity (RH). Data loggers (Hobos) were placed in a range of probable indoor and outdoor resting sites of Anopheles stephensi. Recordings were taken hourly to estimate mean temperature and RH, together with daily temperature range (DTR) and daily relative humidity range. The temperature data were used to explore the predicted variation in extrinsic incubation period (EIP) of Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax between microhabitats and across the year. Results: Mean daily temperatures within the indoor settings were significantly warmer than those recorded outdoors. DTR in indoor environments was observed to be modest and ranged from 2 to 6 °C. Differences in EIP between microhabitats were most notable during the hottest summer months of April-June, with parasite development predicted to be impaired for tiled houses and overhead tanks. Overall, the prevailing warm and stable conditions suggest rapid parasite development rate regardless of where mosquitoes might rest. Taking account of seasonal and local environmental variation, the predicted EIP of P. falciparum varied from a minimum of 9.1 days to a maximum of 15.3 days, while the EIP of P. vivax varied from 8.0 to 24.3 days. Conclusions: This study provides a detailed picture of the actual microclimates experienced by mosquitoes in an urban slum malaria setting. The data indicate differences between microhabitats that could impact mosquito and parasite life history traits. The predicted effects for EIP are often relatively subtle, but variation between minimum and maximum EIPs can play a role in disease transmission, depending on the time of year and where mosquitoes rest. Appropriate characterization of the local microclimate conditions would be the key to fully understand the effects of environment on local transmission ecology

Cowpea: a legume crop for a challenging environment

Running title: Cowpea for a challenging environmentCowpea is a grain legume native from Africa and is a primary source of protein for millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa and other parts of the developing world. The main important characteristics of this crop include a good protein quality with a high nutritional value, its nitrogen-fixing ability, and an ability to be more drought- and heat-tolerant than most of its legume relatives. In a research perspective, studies of cowpea are relatively scarce, despite its relevance to agriculture in the developing world and its resilience to stress. The present review provides an overview of different aspects of cowpea, with a special emphasis on the molecular markers for assessing genetic diversity, as well as on biochemical and transcriptomic data with respect to evaluating cowpea drought stress tolerance. The integration of both datasets will be useful for the improvement of cowpea because research on drought stress tolerance is of major interest for this crop in a challenging environment. © 2017 Society of Chemical Industry.This work is supported by European Investment Funds by FEDER/COMPETE/POCI—Operacional Competitiveness and Internacionalization Programme, under Project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-006958 and National Funds by FCT—Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, under the project UID/AGR/04033/2013.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The two phases of the Cambrian Explosion

Abstract The dynamics of how metazoan phyla appeared and evolved – known as the Cambrian Explosion – remains elusive. We present a quantitative analysis of the temporal distribution (based on occurrence data of fossil species sampled in each time interval) of lophotrochozoan skeletal species (n = 430) from the terminal Ediacaran to Cambrian Stage 5 (~545 – ~505 Million years ago (Ma)) of the Siberian Platform, Russia. We use morphological traits to distinguish between stem and crown groups. Possible skeletal stem group lophophorates, brachiopods, and molluscs (n = 354) appear in the terminal Ediacaran (~542 Ma) and diversify during the early Cambrian Terreneuvian and again in Stage 2, but were devastated during the early Cambrian Stage 4 Sinsk extinction event (~513 Ma) never to recover previous diversity. Inferred crown group brachiopod and mollusc species (n = 76) do not appear until the Fortunian, ~537 Ma, radiate in the early Cambrian Stage 3 (~522 Ma), and with minimal loss of diversity at the Sinsk Event, continued to diversify into the Ordovician. The Sinsk Event also removed other probable stem groups, such as archaeocyath sponges. Notably, this diversification starts before, and extends across the Ediacaran/Cambrian boundary and the Basal Cambrian Carbon Isotope Excursion (BACE) interval (~541 to ~540 Ma), ascribed to a possible global perturbation of the carbon cycle. We therefore propose two phases of the Cambrian Explosion separated by the Sinsk extinction event, the first dominated by stem groups of phyla from the late Ediacaran, ~542 Ma, to early Cambrian stage 4, ~513 Ma, and the second marked by radiating bilaterian crown group species of phyla from ~513 Ma and extending to the Ordovician Radiation