1,297 research outputs found
The glocalised telenovela as a space for possible identifications for diaspora girls in Northern Belgium: an audience cum content analysis of Sara
Because research on glocalised telenovelas in Western Europe is absent in literature and telenovelas seem highly popular among diaspora girls from Moroccan descents living in Northern Belgium, this paper studies the embedded themes and identification possibilities of telenovelas and explores its thematic interest and meanings for diaspora girls. By means of an audience cum content analysis on the case study Sara, text and audience are combined. Sara is predominantly a âCinderella storyâ with a clear âloveâ and âclass and social mobilityâ discourse where emotional identification is triggered through different parameters. Belgian girls from Moroccan descent mainly watch the Sara for reasons of entertainment and escapism. They negotiate between lived and telenovela-created experiences and consequently formulate aspirations and dreams for future partners, gender roles, careers and (family) life
New class of quantum error-correcting codes for a bosonic mode
We construct a new class of quantum error-correcting codes for a bosonic mode
which are advantageous for applications in quantum memories, communication, and
scalable computation. These 'binomial quantum codes' are formed from a finite
superposition of Fock states weighted with binomial coefficients. The binomial
codes can exactly correct errors that are polynomial up to a specific degree in
bosonic creation and annihilation operators, including amplitude damping and
displacement noise as well as boson addition and dephasing errors. For
realistic continuous-time dissipative evolution, the codes can perform
approximate quantum error correction to any given order in the timestep between
error detection measurements. We present an explicit approximate quantum error
recovery operation based on projective measurements and unitary operations. The
binomial codes are tailored for detecting boson loss and gain errors by means
of measurements of the generalized number parity. We discuss optimization of
the binomial codes and demonstrate that by relaxing the parity structure, codes
with even lower unrecoverable error rates can be achieved. The binomial codes
are related to existing two-mode bosonic codes but offer the advantage of
requiring only a single bosonic mode to correct amplitude damping as well as
the ability to correct other errors. Our codes are similar in spirit to 'cat
codes' based on superpositions of the coherent states, but offer several
advantages such as smaller mean number, exact rather than approximate
orthonormality of the code words, and an explicit unitary operation for
repumping energy into the bosonic mode. The binomial quantum codes are
realizable with current superconducting circuit technology and they should
prove useful in other quantum technologies, including bosonic quantum memories,
photonic quantum communication, and optical-to-microwave up- and
down-conversion.Comment: Published versio
Deconstructive humour: subverting Mexican and Chicano stereotypes in âUn DĂa Sin Mexicanosâ
a long time, US cinema developed unshakeable stereotypes of Mexican âothernessâ, with characters of Mexican cultural and ethnic heritage stigmatised as criminals or as sensual objects of desire. Filmmakers in Mexico, meanwhile, treated Mexican Americans as misfits who belonged nowhere, or ignored them and their complex experience completely. The emergence of a distinct âChicano cinemaâ in the 1960s allowed for the development of a more powerful set of images of Mexican Americans, exploiting the very tool of communication that had been used against them, and for the circulation of a more productive and reflective dialogue around the questions of identity, agency and resistance that arise.
This article focuses on the use of humour as a subversive tool to deconstruct certain myths and stereotypes of Mexican and, to a certain extent, Mexican American (or, Chicano) identity in Sergio Arauâs popular debut feature, Un DĂa Sin Mexicanos (2004). The âMexicansâ referred to in the filmâs title and used in much of its dialogue stand metonymically for all Hispanic immigrants, whether recently arrived, or born in the US and of Hispanic descent, including Chicanos. Its narrative was inspired by the introduction of controversial anti-immigration legislation in California in 1994, and the Californian State is here made representative of anywhere in the US where there is a Mexican or Chicano population. This essay situates the film within the context of a growing Chicano population in the US and a high level of immigration from Mexico itself. It asks to what extent the feature version, which takes the form of satire, offers a critique of the Mexican immigrant experience, and of discrimination more broadly against Hispanic minorities. In so doing, it explores the ways in which the politics of resistance that are so often aligned with these experiences are inscribed in its narrative form
Patterns of Involvement in Television Fiction: A Comparative Analysis
This article analyses discussions of an episode of Dallas by focus groups of different ethnic origins in Israel and the United States. It identifies four rhetorical mechanisms by which viewers may \u27involve\u27 themselves in or \u27distance\u27 themselves from the story: referential v. critical framings; real v .play keyings; collective\u27 or universal v. personal referents; and normative v. value-free evaluations. Use of these mechanisms varied across the groups, and when the cultures were arrayed along a multidimensional involvement scale overseas viewers appeared to be more involved in the programme than Americans. Possible roles for involvement in the process of viewer susceptibility to programme messages are then discussed
Thinking about seeing: Perceptual sources of knowledge are encoded in the theory of mind brain regions of sighted and blind adults
Blind people's inferences about how other people see provide a window into fundamental questions about the human capacity to think about one another's thoughts. By working with blind individuals, we can ask both what kinds of representations people form about others' minds, and how much these representations depend on the observer having had similar mental states themselves. Thinking about others' mental states depends on a specific group of brain regions, including the right temporo-parietal junction (RTPJ). We investigated the representations of others' mental states in these brain regions, using multivoxel pattern analyses (MVPA). We found that, first, in the RTPJ of sighted adults, the pattern of neural response distinguished the source of the mental state (did the protagonist see or hear something?) but not the valence (did the protagonist feel good or bad?). Second, these neural representations were preserved in congenitally blind adults. These results suggest that the temporo-parietal junction contains explicit, abstract representations of features of others' mental states, including the perceptual source. The persistence of these representations in congenitally blind adults, who have no first-person experience with sight, provides evidence that these representations emerge even in the absence of relevant first-person perceptual experiences.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Award 0645960)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Award 095518)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grant 1R01 MH096914-01A1
Information Loss Associated with Imperfect Observation and Mismatched Decoding
We consider two types of causes leading to information loss when neural activities are passed and processed in the brain. One is responses of upstream neurons to stimuli being imperfectly observed by downstream neurons. The other is upstream neurons non-optimally decoding stimuli information contained in the activities of the downstream neurons. To investigate the importance of neural correlation in information processing in the brain, we specifically consider two situations. One is when neural responses are not simultaneously observed, i.e., neural correlation data is lost. This situation means that stimuli information is decoded without any specific assumption about neural correlations. The other is when stimuli information is decoded by a wrong statistical model where neural responses are assumed to be independent even when they are not. We provide the information geometric interpretation of these two types of information loss and clarify their relationship. We then concretely evaluate these types of information loss in some simple examples. Finally, we discuss use of these evaluations of information loss to elucidate the importance of correlation in neural information processing
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