Whither Public Service Media Governance: Looking Back, Looking Ahead

What are the current challenges of governing Public Service Media (PSM)? How do they point to current crossroads of media and communication governance? And how do they inform the future prospects of global communications governance? These are the main questions that this contribution addresses. Starting from the historical justification of PSB/PSM back in the 1920s, the chapter examines how PSM and its governance have transformed in response to technological advances, societal pressures, political ideology and market liberalisation. In doing so, it builds on the recent work on media governance of the Council of Europe and the European Broadcasting Union. It then assesses PSM in different contexts, what it might mean for countries with established liberal democracies, post-communist countries with short or weak democratic traditions, and countries with no history of or political hostility towards public service media. The chapter maintains that despite the growing challenges, PSM is not an outdated concept. It notes that political and economic power is increasingly concentrated and acts to close information and communications spaces through the deliberate instrumentalisation of governance arrangements for narrow vested interests. It argues that the case for PSM and the associated values of independence, universality, quality, diversity, and free access at the point of consumption as preconditions for active citizenship, the realisation of human rights and the functioning of democracy, remains valid and powerful. It concludes that PSM governance needs to be modernised and addressed alongside the governance of other media and online platforms

Positional Health Assessment of Collaborative Robots Based on Long Short-Term Memory Auto-Encoder (LSTMAE) Network

Calibration is a vital part of ensuring the safety and smooth operation of any industrial robot and this is particularly essential for collaborative robots as any issue pertaining to safety can adversely impact the human operator. Towards this aim, Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) has been widely implemented in the context of collaborative robots to ensure safe and efficient working environments. In this research, as a subset of PHM research, a novel positional health assessment approach based on a Long Short-Term Memory auto-encoder network (LSTMAE) is proposed. An experimental test setup is utilised, wherein the collaborative robot is subject to variations of coordinate system positional error. The operational 3-axis position time-series data of the collaborative robot is collected with the aid of an industrial data acquisition platform utilising influxDB. The experiments show that, with the aid of this approach, manufacturers can assess the positional health of their collaborative robot systems

Analysis of Receptor-Type Protein Tyrosine Phosphatase Extracellular Regions with Insights from AlphaFold

The receptor-type protein tyrosine phosphatases (RPTPs) are involved in a wide variety of physiological functions which are mediated via their diverse extracellular regions. They play key roles in cell–cell contacts, bind various ligands and are regulated by dimerization and other processes. Depending on the subgroup, they have been described as everything from ‘rigid rods’ to ‘floppy tentacles’. Here, we review current experimental structural knowledge on the extracellular region of RPTPs and draw on AlphaFold structural predictions to provide further insights into structure and function of these cellular signalling molecules, which are often mutated in disease and are recognised as drug targets. In agreement with experimental data, AlphaFold predicted structures for extracellular regions of R1, and R2B subgroup RPTPs have an extended conformation, whereas R2B RPTPs are twisted, reflecting their high flexibility. For the R3 PTPs, AlphaFold predicts that members of this subgroup adopt an extended conformation while others are twisted, and that certain members, such as CD148, have one or more large, disordered loop regions in place of fibronectin type 3 domains suggested by sequence analysis

Mindset and entrepreneurial learning in social entrepreneurship: ListenField - a driving force of sustainable solutions and impact for farmers

ListenField has posited its core values and mission statements not only to its business partners, clients and funders but also its beneficiaries - the farmers. This chapter illustrates the distinctive characteristics of the entrepreneurial mindset in social entrepreneurship, in which entrepreneurial learning is evident, and where self-efficacy and stakeholder engagement reinforce the success of ListenField. It sheds light on the regenerative innovations in the agriculture sector that are inherently impact-driven, collaborative, resilient and self-sustaining. It is a call for a new way forward to co-create values across people, planet and business, thus encouraging a more sustainable agenda for an enterprise

Preprint: Binding of PUFA stabilizes a conductive state of the selectivity filter in IKs channels

In cardiomyocytes, the KCNQ1/KCNE1 channel complex mediates the slow delayed-rectifier current (IKs), pivotal during the repolarization phase of the ventricular action potential. Mutations in IKs cause Long QT Syndrome (LQTS), a syndrome with a prolonged QT interval on the ECG, which increases the risk of ventricular arrhythmia and sudden cardiac death. One potential therapeutical intervention for LQTS is based on targeting IKs channels to restore channel function and/or the physiological QT interval. Polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) are potent activators of KCNQ1 channels and activate IKs channels by binding to two different sites, one in the voltage sensor domain (VSD) – which shifts the voltage dependence to more negative voltages– and the other in the pore domain (PD) – which increases the maximal conductance of the channels (Gmax). However, the mechanism by which PUFAs increase the Gmax of the IKs channels is still poorly understood. In addition, it is unclear why IKs channels have a very small single channel conductance and a low open probability or whether PUFAs affect any of these properties of IKs channels. Our results suggest that the selectivity filter in KCNQ1 is normally unstable, explaining the low open probability, and that the PUFA-induced increase in Gmax is caused by a stabilization of the selectivity filter in an open-conductive state

Contesting Everyday (Food) Heritage in London’s Chinatown

Research on London’s Chinatown as a lived and meaningful space often focuses only on self-identified Chinese people or their activities, which risks overlooking non-Chinese actors and the interactions between people and things in the social production of Chinatown. Informed by the notion of ‘everyday heritage’ (Mosler, 2019), this chapter investigates London’s Chinatown as a ‘lived everyday heritage space’ for London’s residents beyond the simplistic dichotomies of ‘Chinese’ and ‘non-Chinese’, ‘sameness’ and ‘difference’, ‘authenticity’ and ‘inauthenticity’. Through ethnographically researching how food business operators and visitors from diverse backgrounds use and symbolically experience London’s Chinatown, this chapter shows that Chinatown is associated with diverse experiences, contested meanings, and conflicting views that cannot be contained within the imagined ethnic and cultural confines. Londoners actively create everyday heritage and authenticate their lived experiences through ongoing sensory, bodily, and emotional interactions with the material surface of Chinatown. These authentic lived experiences may be in concordance with, in opposition to, or without reference to the branded or popularised identity ascribed to the place, which emphasises fixed ethnic and cultural differences. This chapter argues that viewing London’s Chinatown as a ‘lived everyday heritage space’ reveals the anti-essentialist, decentred, plural and multi-layered narratives about Chinatown, which make it possible to acknowledge the cultural complexities of this contested central London neighbourhood

The Applicability of Apartheid to Situations of Occupation: At the Crossroads between International Humanitarian Law, International Criminal Law, and International Human Rights Law, forthcoming in (2024) 24 Anuario Mexicano de Derecho Internacional

The article deals with the applicability of apartheid in occupied territory. Rather than assessing whether in specific situation of an occupation an occupying power has established an apartheid regime, the article discusses whether there is anything in the law of occupation or in the international regulation of apartheid that makes them mutually exclusive. On the basis of international human rights law, international criminal law, and international humanitarian law considerations, it is argued that apartheid can be applied to occupied territory following the ordinary rules for the application of international human rights law and international criminal law in occupied territory. Accordingly, international law does not bar the application of apartheid in occupied territory, but rather, the law of occupation and apartheid coincide to strengthen the protection of civilians in occupied territories

PCA, arithmetic, and murmurations

We outline how murmurations were first observed in the context of data scientific exploration. Specifically, we highlight the relationship between murmurations and PCA. Subsequently, we apply PCA to datasets of real quadratic fields, and speculate on an emergent perspective on arithmetic suggested by these experiments

Secularism, Decoloniality and the Veil: Kutlug Ataman and Cigdem Aydemir on Hair and Veiling

This article looks at the selected works by two artists, Kutlug Ataman and Cigdem Aydemir, whose works are tackling hair, with a particular commentary on veiled Muslim women in secular spaces. The article argues that the current discussions on the topic, as well as the artistic responses, are often shaped by the narrative that logic of coloniality produced, but rarely attempt to delink from this narrative to change the terms of the conversation – which is a decolonial praxis. The discussion contextualizes the works by unpacking the Turkish case, on which both artists com- ment, discussing the positioning of Muslim women in Western(ized) public spaces and the resulting dehumanizing hypervisibility. I argue that while Ataman makes an important intervention on the topic with, Aydemir goes further, rejecting dehumanizing clas- sifications and delinking from the existing narrative