Power, culture and the production of heritage

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A new navigation paradigm for virtual reality: the guided visit through a virtual world

The three main navigation paradigms for virtual worlds, i.e., free navigation, automatic tours, and multiuser navigation show important limitations when dealing with guided visits that involve interactive cooperation among several users in 3D virtual worlds over the Internet. In this paper, we present our research into this issue and some important results. We propose a new navigation paradigm denominated guided visit through a virtual world, where the capacity of a user guiding several remote users through the virtual world is enriched with the capacity to dynamically interchange the role of guiding between the connected users. The user that acts as a guide moves freely through the virtual world, and his/her movements are reproduced by the browsers of the other guided users. We also present the architecture and the system we developed that implements this paradigm, as well as its integration in a working realworld application that demonstrates its use

The information sources of the first Spanish Newspapers (1618-1635): the construction of information credibility

Este trabajo analiza las fuentes de información utilizadas en un corpus numeroso de avisos recogidos en periódicos españoles impresos entre 1618 y 1635. El objetivo de partida es determinar cómo se construye, en términos tanto históricos como retóricos, la credibilidad informativa. Analizaremos la construcción retórica de la credibilidad en el texto mismo de los avisos, concretamente en las fuentes de información que estos declaran u ocultan; para comprobar si existe una intención deliberada de encubrir las fuentes de información, estudiaremos la frecuencia con que aparece la atribución on deep background. La aproximación metodológica que orienta este estudio es la que sostiene el Historical News Discourse, que aplica las conclusiones y métodos de análisis del Análisis Crítico del Discurso a los periódicos del pasado, y contextualiza y explica sus resultados en relación a los planteamientos de la Historia del Periodismo y de la Comunicación (Conboy, Brownlees, Broersma y otros). Defendemos en este trabajo que el análisis del discurso de los primeros impresos informativos resulta fundamental para conocer cómo se consolida en España la profesión periodística, gracias a una nueva forma de auctoritas basada en la competencia discursiva. El gacetero o periodista aparece como una nueva modalidad de escritor, cuya credibilidad y reputación dependen de su capacidad para acceder, organizar y declarar –de acuerdo a patrones retóricos reconocibles para sus lectores– las fuentes de información a las que tiene acceso.This paper analyses the information sources used in a large corpus of news items published in Spanish printed newspapers between 1618 and 1635. The initial aim is to determine how information credibility was constructed in both historical and rhetorical terms. To this end, the rhetorical construction of credibility in the news stories are analysed by focusing on the information sources that these reveal or conceal. And in order to determine whether or not these sources were deliberately concealed, the frequency with which ‘on deep background’ attribution appears is examined. The methodological approach on which this study is based is Historical News Discourse, which applies the conclusions and methods of critical discourse analysis to newspapers of the past, in addition to contextualising and explaining the results in terms of journalism history and communication approaches (Conboy, Brownlees and Broersma, among others). In this work, we contend that the discourse analysis of the first printed newspapers is essential for gaining further insights into how the journalistic profession consolidated its position in Spain thanks to a new form of auctoritas based on discourse competence. The gazetteer or journalist emerged as a new kind of writer, whose credibility and reputation depended on his ability to access, organise and reveal –according to rhetorical patterns recognisable to readers– the information sources available to him

Group-wise 3D registration based templates to study the evolution of ant worker neuroanatomy

The evolutionary success of ants and other social insects is considered to be intrinsically linked to division of labor and emergent collective intelligence. The role of the brains of individual ants in generating these processes, however, is poorly understood. One genus of ant of special interest is Pheidole, which includes more than a thousand species, most of which are dimorphic, i.e. their colonies contain two subcastes of workers: minors and majors. Using confocal imaging and manual annotations, it has been demonstrated that minor and major workers of different ages of three species of Pheidole have distinct patterns of brain size and subregion scaling. However, these studies require laborious effort to quantify brain region volumes and are subject to potential bias. To address these issues, we propose a group-wise 3D registration approach to build for the first time bias-free brain atlases of intra- and inter-subcaste individuals and automatize the segmentation of new individuals.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, preprint for conference (not reviewed

Tunneling mechanism of light transmission through metallic films

A mechanism of light transmission through metallic films is proposed, assisted by tunnelling between resonating buried dielectric inclusions. This is illustrated by arrays of Si spheres embedded in Ag. Strong transmission peaks are observed near the Mie resonances of the spheres. The interaction among various planes of spheres and interference effects between these resonances and the surface plasmons of Ag lead to mixing and splitting of the resonances. Transmission is proved to be limited only by absorption. For small spheres, the effective dielectric constant can be tuned to values close to unity and a method is proposed to turn the resulting materials invisible.Comment: 4 papges, 5 figure

Capital controls: myth and reality, a portfolio balance approach to capital controls

The literature on capital controls has (at least) four very serious apples-to-oranges problems: (i) There is no unified theoretical framework to analyze the macroeconomic consequences of controls; (ii) there is significant heterogeneity across countries and time in the control measures implemented; (iii) there are multiple definitions of what constitutes a "success" and (iv) the empirical studies lack a common methodology--furthermore these are significantly "overweighted" by a couple of country cases (Chile and Malaysia). In this paper, we attempt to address some of these shortcomings by: being very explicit about what measures are construed as capital controls. Also, given that success is measured so differently across studies, we sought to "standardize" the results of over 30 empirical studies we summarize in this paper. The standardization was done by constructing two indices of capital controls: Capital Controls Effectiveness Index (CCE Index), and Weighted Capital Control Effectiveness Index (WCCE Index). The difference between them lies in that the WCCE controls for the differentiated degree of methodological rigor applied to draw conclusions in each of the considered papers. Inasmuch as possible, we bring to bear the experiences of less well known episodes than those of Chile and Malaysia. Then, using a portfolio balance approach we model the effects of imposing short-term capital controls. We find that there should exist country-specific characteristics for capital controls to be effective. From these simple perspective, this rationalizes why some capital controls were effective and some were not. We also show that the equivalence in effects of price- vs. quantity-capital control are conditional on the level of short-term capital flows.

Networks of People in Specialty Production: Family Firms in the Iron and Steel Wire Industries in Spain (1870-2000)

Capital intensive industries in specialized niches of production have constituted solid ground for family firms in Spain, as evidenced by the experience of the iron and steel wire industries between 1870 and 2000. The embeddedness of these firms in their local and regional environments have allowed the creation of networks that, together with favourable institutional conditions, significantly explain the dominance of family entrepreneurship in iron and steel wire manufacturing in Spain, until the end of the 20th century. Dominance of family firms at the regional level has not been an obstacle for innovation in wire manufacturing in Spain, which has taken place even when institutional conditions blocked innovation and traditional networking. Therefore, economic theories about the difficulties dynastic family firms may have to perform appropriately in science-based industries must be questioned.family firms, spanish economic history, steel wire industries