The architectures of media power: editing, the newsroom, and urban public space

This paper considers the relation of the newsroom and the city as a lens into the more general relation of production spaces and mediated publics. Leading theoretically from Lee and LiPuma’s (2002) notion of ‘cultures of circulation’, and drawing on an ethnography of the Toronto Star, the paper focuses on how media forms circulate and are enacted through particular practices and material settings. With its attention to the urban milieus and orientations of media organizations, this paper exhibits both affinities with but also differences to current interests in the urban architectures of media, which describe and theorize how media get ‘built into’ the urban experience more generally. In looking at editing practices situated in the newsroom, an emphasis is placed on the phenomenological appearance of media forms both as objects for material assembly as well as more abstracted subjects of reflexivity, anticipation and purposiveness. Although this is explored with detailed attention to the settings of the newsroom and the city, the paper seeks to also provide insight into the more general question of how publicness is material shaped and sited

Branch Rings, Thinned Rings, Tree Enveloping Rings

We develop the theory of ``branch algebras'', which are infinite-dimensional associative algebras that are isomorphic, up to taking subrings of finite codimension, to a matrix ring over themselves. The main examples come from groups acting on trees. In particular, for every field k we construct a k-algebra K which (1) is finitely generated and infinite-dimensional, but has only finite-dimensional quotients; (2) has a subalgebra of finite codimension, isomorphic to $M_2(K)$; (3) is prime; (4) has quadratic growth, and therefore Gelfand-Kirillov dimension 2; (5) is recursively presented; (6) satisfies no identity; (7) contains a transcendental, invertible element; (8) is semiprimitive if k has characteristic $\neq2$; (9) is graded if k has characteristic 2; (10) is primitive if k is a non-algebraic extension of GF(2); (11) is graded nil and Jacobson radical if k is an algebraic extension of GF(2).Comment: 35 pages; small changes wrt previous versio

Angry Men, Sad Women: Large Language Models Reflect Gendered Stereotypes in Emotion Attribution

Large language models (LLMs) reflect societal norms and biases, especially about gender. While societal biases and stereotypes have been extensively researched in various NLP applications, there is a surprising gap for emotion analysis. However, emotion and gender are closely linked in societal discourse. E.g., women are often thought of as more empathetic, while men’s anger is more socially accepted. To fill this gap, we present the first comprehensive study of gendered emotion attribution in five state-of-the-art LLMs (open- and closed-source). We investigate whether emotions are gendered, and whether these variations are based on societal stereotypes. We prompt the models to adopt a gendered persona and attribute emotions to an event like ‘When I had a serious argument with a dear person’. We then analyze the emotions generated by the models in relation to the gender-event pairs. We find that all models consistently exhibit gendered emotions, influenced by gender stereotypes. These findings are in line with established research in psychology and gender studies. Our study sheds light on the complex societal interplay between language, gender, and emotion. The reproduction of emotion stereotypes in LLMs allows us to use those models to study the topic in detail, but raises questions about the predictive use of those same LLMs for emotion applications

Rhythm in the speech of a person with right hemisphere damage: Applying the pairwise variability index

Although several aspects of prosody have been studied in speakers with right hemisphere damage (RHD), rhythm remains largely uninvestigated. This study compares the rhythm of an Australian English speaker with right hemisphere damage (due to a stroke, but with no concomitant dysarthria) to that of a neurologically unimpaired individual. The speakers' rhythm is compared using the pairwise variability index (PVI) which allows for an acoustic characterization of rhythm by comparing the duration of successive vocalic and intervocalic intervals. A sample of speech from a structured interview between a speech and language therapist and each participant was analysed. Previous research has shown that speakers with RHD may have difficulties with intonation production, and therefore it was hypothesized that there may also be rhythmic disturbance. Results show that the neurologically normal control uses a similar rhythm to that reported for British English (there are no previous studies available for Australian English), whilst the speaker with RHD produces speech with a less strongly stress-timed rhythm. This finding was statistically significant for the intervocalic intervals measured (t(8) = 4.7, p < .01), and suggests that some aspects of prosody may be right lateralized for this speaker. The findings are discussed in relation to previous findings of dysprosody in RHD populations, and in relation to syllable-timed speech of people with other neurological conditions

Effectiveness of a quality improvement collaborative in reducing time to surgery for patients requiring emergency cholecystectomy.

Background:Acute gallstone disease is a high-volume emergency general surgery presentation with wide variations in the quality of care provided across the UK. This controlled cohort evaluation assessed whether participation in a quality improvement collaborative approach reduced time to surgery for patients with acute gallstone disease to fewer than 8 days from presentation, in line with national guidance. Methods:Patients admitted to hospital with acute biliary conditions in England and Wales between 1 April 2014 and 31 December 2017 were identified from Hospital Episode Statistics data. Time series of quarterly activity were produced for the Cholecystectomy Quality Improvement Collaborative (Chole-QuIC) and all other acute National Health Service hospitals (control group). A negative binomial regression model was used to compare the proportion of patients having surgery within 8 days in the baseline and intervention periods. Results:Of 13 sites invited to join Chole-QuIC, 12 participated throughout the collaborative, which ran from October 2016 to January 2018. Of 7944 admissions, 1160 patients had a cholecystectomy within 8 days of admission, a significant improvement (P < 0·050) from baseline performance. This represented a relative change of 1·56 (95 per cent c.i. 1·38 to 1·75), compared with 1·08 for the control group. At the individual site level, eight of the 12 Chole-QuIC sites showed a significant improvement (P < 0·050), with four sites increasing their 8-day surgery rate to over 20 per cent of all emergency admissions, well above the mean of 15·3 per cent for control hospitals. Conclusion:A surgeon-led quality improvement collaborative approach improved care for patients requiring emergency cholecystectomy

Mechanisms and in vivo functions of contact inhibition of locomotion

Contact inhibition of locomotion (CIL) is a process whereby a cell ceases motility or changes its trajectory upon collision with another cell. CIL was initially characterized more than half a century ago and became a widely studied model system to understand how cells migrate and dynamically interact. Although CIL fell from interest for several decades, the scientific community has recently rediscovered this process. We are now beginning to understand the precise steps of this complex behaviour and to elucidate its regulatory components, including receptors, polarity proteins and cytoskeletal elements. Furthermore, this process is no longer just in vitro phenomenology; we now know from several different in vivo models that CIL is essential for embryogenesis and in governing behaviours such as cell dispersion, boundary formation and collective cell migration. In addition, changes in CIL responses have been associated with other physiological processes, such as cancer cell dissemination during metastasis

The independent group looks at London's west end

In the early 1950s, British culture was dominated by welfare-state visions of urban reconstruction. These projections of a stable civic society were premised on a particular way of looking at and reading the metropolitan environment. At odds with this project, the Independent Group's discussions and collaborative work developed an alternative urban semiology, which found the city to be already rich in visual resources for fashioning a more profound form of social democracy. Soon, this critical engagement would develop in different directions, represented here by Lawrence Alloway's commentary on Piccadilly Circus in his essay 'City Notes' and the London footage inserted by John McHale into his film for the Smithsons' Berlin Hauptstadt project (both 1959). By the end of the 1950s, members of the erstwhile Independent Group had produced two contrasting critical accounts of how the metropolitan centre should be looked at, which challenged the strictures of post-war reconstruction in distinct and conflicting ways. © The Author(s), 2013

Using Geometry to Evaluate Strategic Road Proposals in Orbital-Radial Cities

This paper uses geometry to evaluate major road proposals in cities with road networks consisting of orbital and radial routes. The type of geometry used is a development of the Karlsruhe or Moscow metric after the cities where it was identified, although the results have wider applicability. The paper begins with a detailed consideration of the relationship between route speeds, junction access and service areas. New urban patterns are presented using optimal space filling techniques in which the aim is to maximise drive-time coverage with the minimum number of junctions. The method is then refined to allow for effects such as congestion and interstitial access. The results are then used in a case study to evaluate a well-known strategic road plan for London first proposed in the 1940s. There follows a general discussion about the policy and planning implications for London and further possible developments of the techniques presented

Political hashtag publics and counter-visuality: a case study of #fertilityday in Italy

In 2016 the Italian health ministry launched the ‘Fertility Day’ campaign, aimed at tackling Italy’s low birth rate. Under the accusation of delivering sexist and racist messages, the campaign became a trending topic on Twitter, and a protest was launched to be held during Fertility Day. By applying a combination of digital methods and visual content analysis to the #fertilityday Twitter stream, this paper contributes to existing research on the deliberative strength of political hashtag publics, with a particular focus on their power structures, communication patterns and visual content use. Findings on gatekeeping dynamics downsize optimistic views on the democratising potential of Twitter’s socio-technical infrastructure as they point to the emergence of online satirical media and ‘tweetstars’ – along with mainstream news media– as main producers of spreadable content, with ordinary users only surfacing when traditional media elites and new satirical actors lack or lose interest in the debate. Results confirm that political hashtag publics follow acute event communication patterns, with users highly engaged in retweeting and referencing external material and visual content playing a key role in these gatewatching practices. The transient counter-visuality – or critical stance – of tweets with user-manipulated images, however, also suggests that the deliberative potential of these publics is not easily sustainable over time

RadSTraM: Radiological Source Tracking and Monitoring, Phase II Final Report

This report focuses on the technical information gained from the Radiological Source Tracking and Monitoring (RadSTraM) Phase II investigation and its implications. The intent of the RadSTraM project was to determine the feasibility of tracking radioactive materials in commerce, particularly International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Category 3 and 4 materials. Specifically, Phase II of the project addressed tracking radiological medical isotopes in commerce. These categories of materials are susceptible to loss or theft but the problem is not being addressed by other agencies