Youth impact on the public sphere in Press and Twitter: The dissolution of the Spanish Youth Council / El impacto de los jóvenes en la esfera pública: La disolución del Consejo de la Juventud de España en la prensa y en Twitter

This paper aims to contribute to the study of the difficulties that young people face in accessing the public sphere as political actors. It looks at the Press coverage and the Twitter activity surrounding the restructuring process and the subsequent dissolution of the Spanish Youth Council (Consejo de la Juventud de España - CJE). A content analysis was carried out on the news published in 22 newspapers between 2012 and 2014, as well as on the use of Twitter within the framework of the “Salvemos el CJE” campaign during the same period of time. The main objective of the analysis has been to see the prominence of this issue on both the media and citizens’ agendas. In most newspapers, the measures taken by the government vis-á-vis the CJE were treated as punctual news of peripheral importance. The online campaign, mainly orchestrated by youth grassroots movements, raised the controversy on the biased nature and the political consequences of this plan. The core of the campaign addressed the representation of young people in public institutions. The results of the study suggest that the increased potential for visibility offered by social media is not always maximized and does not necessarily alter the prominence of an issue in the public sphere

Falling on deaf ears? An analysis of youth political claims in the European mainstream press

There is a growing body of work on the ability of young people and minorities to have their voices heard in the public sphere, particularly with advances in information and communication technologies (ICTs) and the emancipatory expectations that ensued. Are all young people, in all their diversity, equally likely to have their political claims relayed by the mainstream press? Is the growing prevalence of social media communication reflected in mainstream media agenda setting? Does it contribute to political equality in terms of representation in the mainstream press? This article answers these questions through a large-scale political claims analysis in 45 newspapers across 9 European countries. It comes to confirm the theoretical underpinnings laid out by scholars like Herman and Chomsky with their analysis of media agenda setting and power relations, or Chantal Mouffe and her notion of agonistic pluralism and the need to address unequal access to the public sphere. Overall, our findings suggest that young people in general, but even more so disadvantaged youth socio-economic groups still seem highly misrepresented in mainstream newspapers, and that the increasing prevalence of social media communication does not seem reflected in mainstream media agenda setting

Exploring the mediality of live and studio composition: The case of computer music, and its implications in “Ambivalence of Density”

This dissertation attempts to apply the communications theory concept of “mediality,” as described by Jonathan Sterne, to the context of music composition for different mediums, namely the media of the live performance and the studio work (the recording, the concrete work). Mediality denotes the complex “web of practice and reference” between different media—how we interact with and perceive media, and how this affects the content of the medium. The mediality of live and studio composition is posited as cross-referential, non-hierarchical and non-dichotomous—a relationship of “dependence and imbrication” rather than antagonistic binaries. I investigate the mediality of live and studio composition in three ways: historically, through the discourses surrounding gramophony in the early twentieth century and rock aesthetic in the late twentieth century; technologically, by describing how the computer evokes mediatic cultures and practices through software, and how this is informed by sociocultural discourse; and creatively, through my own suite of live and studio compositions entitled “Ambivalence of Density,” with discussions about the processes involved and how I’ve attempted to underscore mediatic discourse in the works. I conclude by suggesting that a broader understanding of the mediality of music (and sound in general) could make the dialogue surrounding new musical media (especially Internetbased media) more articulate and relevant

Fake It ‘Til You Make It: The Virtual Orchestra in New Electronic Music

This paper describes a variety of audio technologies under the neologism “the virtual orchestra,” their relationship with neoliberal capitalism, and four electronic music works that utilise these technologies to highlight this relationship. The virtual orchestra comprises digital technologies that emulate orchestral performances, ranging from the ersatz sounds of General MIDI in the 1990s (often used in computer game soundtracks), to orchestral sample libraries, which can be virtually indiscernible from a well-recorded orchestral performance. It is suggested that the virtual orchestra emerged as part of a cultural movement that privileges individualism and control, and that this has precedence in the structure and hierarchies of the symphony orchestra. The four works discussed—by Lana Del Rey, Oneohtrix Point Never, Elysia Crampton, and Steven Warwick—utilise virtual orchestras in unconventional and ambivalent ways that refer to the lived experiences and effects of this condition

The grain of the digital audio workstation

This thesis explores the material conditions and practices of the digital audio workstation (DAW), treating them as a subject of musical composition. The DAW is a software application currently ubiquitous in facilitating the creation of recorded and electronic music. Despite its prominence, few have articulated its unique possibilities for compositional practice, or historically contextualised the emergence of such practices. To clarify the locus of inquiry, a theoretical framework termed the grain of the DAW is developed. Derived primarily from Roland Barthes’ notion of the grain (1977), it is understood as the sonic effects in a recorded musical work that infer the unique material conditions and practices associated with a sonic medium. It is argued that compositional techniques can foreground or conceal this grain, the latter of which is more common in many musical traditions. Employing practice-led research strategies and methods derived from experimental electronic music, compositional techniques that foreground the grain of the DAW are investigated, culminating in an album entitled Thru, the creative component of this thesis. Composition in this mode involves negotiating between sound design, arrangement, mixing, critical listening, data organisation, and managing conceptual burden (Duignan, 2008). It also involves situating the DAW as a socially constructed technology (Sterne, 2012; Pinch & Bijker, 2012), promoting individualised musical practice and mobilising several metaphors that articulate this condition

The possibilities of a line: Marking the glissando in music

The glissando as it is deployed in Western art music notation carries with it a number of challenges to the hegemony of traditional harmony, rhythm, and notation. The glissando embodies the smooth line, unlike the striated pitch-time space of traditional Western music, which aligns the glissando to many philosophical concepts, as well as mathematical, scientific, and architectural disciplines. Select works by Iannis Xenakis, James Tenney and Giacinto Scelsi are discussed for their development of glissandi as integral formal components, especially around the glissando’s tendency to encourage stasis. Compositional attempts to combine the nature of glissandi with drone in the author’s own work are described, providing an examination of examples of the way glissandi and related concepts can be notated formally, rather than decoratively, in musical works

Machine Learning Approach to Forecast Global Solar Radiation Time Series

The integration of Renewable Energy (RE) into Power Systems brings new challenges to the Smart Grids (SG) technologies. The generation output from renewable sources generally depends on the atmospheric conditions. This fact causes intermittences on the power output from renewable source, and hence the power quality of the grid is directly affected by atmospheric phenomena. The increasing advances on technologies for energy storage open a track to the Energy Management (EM). Therefore, the power output from a renewable source can be stored or dispatched in a particular time-instant in order to meet the demand. Scheduling Demand Respond (DR) action on the grid, can optimize the dispatch by reducing over generated energy wastage. The difficulty now is to ensure the availability of energy to supply into the grid by forecasting the Global Solar Radiation (GSR) on a localization where a Photovoltaic (PV) system is connected. This thesis tries to address the issue using Machine Learning (ML) techniques. This eases the generation scheduling task. The work developed on this thesis is focused on exploring ML techniques to hourly forecast GSR and optimize the dispatch of energy on a SG. The experiments present results for different configuration of Deep Learning and Gaussian Processes for GSR time-series regression, aiming to discuss the advantages of using hybrid methods on the context of SG

Analyzing the recent dynamics of wildland fires in Quercus suber L. woodlands in Sardinia (Italy), Corsica (France) and Catalonia (Spain)

Wildland fires represent a major threat to Quercus suber L. ecosystems, which provide relevant socioeconomic and ecological services in the Mediterranean Basin. In this work, we analyzed recent wildland fire dynamics in cork oak woodlands along the fire-prone areas of Sardinia (Italy), Corsica (France) and Catalonia (Spain). We first characterized geographic extent and main characteristics of cork oak woodlands in these regions and analyzed how environmental (climate and elevation) and socioeconomic factors (population and land uses) vary in the areas covered by Quercus suber L. We then evaluated how wildfires affected cork oak stands and, by logistic regression analysis, to what extent wildfires in cork oak areas were related to the above set of environmental and anthropic explanatory variables. Results revealed specific variations across study areas in cork oak characteristics as well as in environmental and social factors. We highlighted the spatial and temporal patterns of wildfires on cork oak woodlands, in terms of extent, seasonality, frequency and main driving factors. In the period 2003–2015, the percentage of cork oak woodlands burned ranged from 3.42% in Corsica to 11.30% in Sardinia. A few large and severe wildfires accounted for most of the area burned in cork oak woodlands. The most significant predictive variable that explained the spatial variation in wildland fire ignitions inside or nearby cork oaks was summer precipitation, while the weight of other factors varied depending on the region. This study provides evidence on recent fire dynamics in cork oak woodlands and gives valuable information and insights for the implementation of forest management and planning strategies in the Mediterranean area.This work was supported by the Sardinia Region under the project “Multifunzionalità delle foreste a quercia da sughero in Sardegna” (Multifunctionality of cork oak forests in Sardinia) funded within L.R. n. 7/2007 “Promozione della ricerca scientifica e della innovazione tecnologica in Sardegna,/Tender no. 2″, and by the “Proterina-2” Project funded by the Italia Francia-Marittimo Programme

Work exchange, geometric magnetization, and fluctuation-dissipation relations in a quantum dot under adiabatic magnetoelectric driving

We study the adiabatic dynamics of the charge, spin, and energy of a quantum dot with a Coulomb interaction under two-parameter driving, associated to time-dependent gate voltage and magnetic field. The quantum dot is coupled to a single reservoir at temperature T=0 and the dynamical Onsager matrix is fully symmetric, hence, the net energy dynamics is fully dissipative. However, in the presence of many-body interactions, other interesting mechanisms take place, like the net exchange of work between the two types of forces and the nonequilibrium accumulation of charge with different spin orientations. The latter has a geometric nature. The dissipation takes place in the form of an instantaneous Joule law with the universal resistance R0=h/2e2. We show the relation between this Joule law and instantaneous fluctuation-dissipation relations. The latter lead to generalized Korringa-Shiba relations, valid in the Fermi-liquid regime.Fil: Terren Alonso, Pablo Gaston. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de San Martín. Escuela de Ciencia y Tecnología; ArgentinaFil: Romero, Javier. Universidad Nacional de San Martín. Escuela de Ciencia y Tecnología; ArgentinaFil: Arrachea, Liliana del Carmen. Universidad Nacional de San Martín. Escuela de Ciencia y Tecnología; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin