Newspaper Portrayal of Sub-Saharan Immigrants in Morocco

Media consumers around the world are regularly confronted with media reports or depictions of migrants crossing the Mediterranean. In Morocco,  the situation of those migrants has grabbed media attention, especially in newspapers; hundreds of articles and reports have been written in newspapers, criticizing or denouncing the phenomenon. Although the currently available body research has tended to neglect the linguistic ways in which such media convey meaning along the side of their use of images, little attention has been paid to language-based media. The purpose of this article is to investigate how the media framed the arrival of Sub-Saharan immigrants to Morocco. The focus is mainly on newspaper headlines because they convey the main issue of the news story. The goal is to analyse the headlines of four widely read newspapers Almassae, Assabah, Akhbar Al Yaoum, and Alahdath before the migration reform of 2013. With this  in mind, the article applies content analysis methodology to examine how news media framed and portrayed the arrival of ‘African’ immigrants in news headlines

Newspaper Frames of Sub-Saharan Immigrants in Morocco

The purpose of this article is to understand how the media framed the arrival of Sub-Saharan immigrants to Morocco. Indeed, Media consumers around the world are regularly confronted with media reports or depictions of migrants crossing the Mediterranean. However, the situation of those migrants in Morocco has grabbed media attention, especially in newspapers; hundreds of articles and reports have been written in newspapers, criticizing or denouncing the phenomenon. Although the currently available body research has tended to neglect the linguistic ways in which such media convey meaning along the side of their use of images, little attention has been paid to language-based media. In this study, I will focus on newspaper headlines because they convey the main story of the news story. The goal is to analyse the headlines of four newspapers Almassae, Assabah, Akhbar Al Yaoum, and Alahdath before the migration reform of 2013. With these objectives in mind, the article applies content analysis methodology to examine how news media framed and portrayed the arrival of ‘African’ immigrants in news headlines

Newspaper Frames of Sub-Saharan Immigrants in Morocco

The purpose of this article is to understand how the media framed the arrival of Sub-Saharan immigrants to Morocco. Indeed, Media consumers around the world are regularly confronted with media reports or depictions of migrants crossing the Mediterranean. However, the situation of those migrants in Morocco has grabbed media attention, especially in newspapers; hundreds of articles and reports have been written in newspapers, criticizing or denouncing the phenomenon. Although the currently available body research has tended to neglect the linguistic ways in which such media convey meaning along the side of their use of images, little attention has been paid to language-based media. In this study, I will focus on newspaper headlines because they convey the main story of the news story. The goal is to analyse the headlines of four newspapers Almassae, Assabah, Akhbar Al Yaoum, and Alahdath before the migration reform of 2013. With these objectives in mind, the article applies content analysis methodology to examine how news media framed and portrayed the arrival of ‘African’ immigrants in news headlines

Sleep and stroke

Obstructive Sleep-Disordered Breathing (OSDB) is an under-recognized risk factor for stroke. OSDB is associatedwith traditional vascular risk factors such as hypertension, obesity, and diabetes, and can influence the risk for stroke through direct and indirect mechanisms. Untreated OSDB may also influence rehabilitation efforts and functional outcome following a stroke, as well as the risk for stroke recurrence. Stroke risk is greatly reduced if the OSDB is adequately treated. Conversely, OSDB may be exacerbated or caused by stroke. Increasing awareness and improving screening for OSDB is paramount in the primary and secondary prevention of stroke, and in improving stroke outcomes. The following reviewarticle is intended to highlight the current basics of epidemiology, clinical characteristics, pathophysiology, diagnosis, and treatment of OSDB in relation to stroke

Testing of Support Tools for Plagiarism Detection

There is a general belief that software must be able to easily do things that humans find difficult. Since finding sources for plagiarism in a text is not an easy task, there is a wide-spread expectation that it must be simple for software to determine if a text is plagiarized or not. Software cannot determine plagiarism, but it can work as a support tool for identifying some text similarity that may constitute plagiarism. But how well do the various systems work? This paper reports on a collaborative test of 15 web-based text-matching systems that can be used when plagiarism is suspected. It was conducted by researchers from seven countries using test material in eight different languages, evaluating the effectiveness of the systems on single-source and multi-source documents. A usability examination was also performed. The sobering results show that although some systems can indeed help identify some plagiarized content, they clearly do not find all plagiarism and at times also identify non-plagiarized material as problematic

The relation between metallicity, stellar mass and star formation in galaxies: an analysis of observational and model data

We study relations between stellar mass, star formation and gas-phase metallicity in a sample of 177,071 unique emission line galaxies from the SDSS-DR7, as well as in a sample of 43,767 star forming galaxies at z=0 from the cosmological semi-analytic model L-GALAXIES. We demonstrate that metallicity is dependent on star formation rate at fixed mass, but that the trend is opposite for low and for high mass galaxies. Low-mass galaxies that are actively forming stars are more metal-poor than quiescent low-mass galaxies. High-mass galaxies, on the other hand, have lower gas-phase metallicities if their star formation rates are small. Remarkably, the same trends are found for our sample of model galaxies. We find that massive model galaxies with low gas-phase metallicities have undergone a gas-rich merger in the past, inducing a starburst which exhausted their cold gas reservoirs and shut down star formation. This led to a gradual dilution in the gas-phase metallicities of these systems via accretion of gas. These model galaxies have lower-than-average gas-to-stellar mass ratios and higher-than-average central black hole masses. We confirm that massive galaxies with low gas-phase metallicities in our observational sample also have very massive black holes. We propose that accretion may therefore play a significant role in regulating the gas-phase metallicities of present-day massive galaxies.Comment: 18 pages, 18 figures, 2 tables. Submitted to MNRA

Coupling local to global star formation in spiral galaxies: the effect of differential rotation

Star formation is one of the key factors that shapes galaxies. This process is relatively well understood from both simulations and observations on a small ‘local’ scale of individual giant molecular clouds (GMCs) and also on a ‘global’ galaxy-wide scale (e.g. the Kennicutt–Schmidt law). However, there is still no understanding on how to connect global to local star formation scales and whether this connection is at all possible. Here, we analyse spatially resolved kinematics and the star formation rate (SFR) density ΣSFR for a combined sample of 17 nearby spiral galaxies obtained using our own optical observations in Hα for nine galaxies and neutral hydrogen radio observations combined with a multiwavelength spectral energy distribution analysis for eight galaxies from the THINGS project. We show that the azimuthally averaged normalized SFR density in spiral galaxies on a scale of a few hundred parsecs is proportional to the kinetic energy of GMC collisions due to differential rotation of the galactic disc. This energy is calculated from the rotation curve using the two Oort parameters A and B as log (ΣSFR/SFRtot)∝log [2A2 + 5B2]. The total kinetic energy of collision is defined by the shear velocity that is proportional to A and the spin energy of a cloud proportional to the vorticity B. Hence, shear does not act as a stabilizing factor for the cloud collapse thus reducing star formation but rather increases it by boosting the kinetic energy of collisions

Regulation of Star Formation Rates in Multiphase Galactic Disks: Numerical Tests of the Thermal/Dynamical Equilibrium Model

We use vertically-resolved numerical hydrodynamic simulations to study star formation and the interstellar medium (ISM) in galactic disks. We focus on outer disk regions where diffuse HI dominates, with gas surface densities Sigma_SFR=3-20 Msun/kpc^2/yr and star-plus-dark matter volume densities rho_sd=0.003-0.5 Msun/pc^3. Star formation occurs in very dense, cold, self-gravitating clouds. Turbulence, driven by momentum feedback from supernova events, destroys bound clouds and puffs up the disk vertically. Time-dependent radiative heating (FUV) offsets gas cooling. We use our simulations to test a new theory for self-regulated star formation. Consistent with this theory, the disks evolve to a state of vertical dynamical equilibrium and thermal equilibrium with both warm and cold phases. The range of star formation surface densities and midplane thermal pressures is Sigma_SFR ~ 0.0001 - 0.01 Msun/kpc^2/yr and P_th/k_B ~ 100 -10000 cm^-3 K. In agreement with observations, turbulent velocity dispersions are ~7 km/s and the ratio of the total (effective) to thermal pressure is P_tot/P_th~4-5, across this whole range. We show that Sigma_SFR is not well correlated with Sigma alone, but rather with Sigma*(rho_sd)^1/2, because the vertical gravity from stars and dark matter dominates in outer disks. We also find that Sigma_SFR has a strong, nearly linear correlation with P_tot, which itself is within ~13% of the dynamical-equilibrium estimate P_tot,DE. The quantitative relationships we find between Sigma_SFR and the turbulent and thermal pressures show that star formation is highly efficient for energy and momentum production, in contrast to the low efficiency of mass consumption. Star formation rates adjust until the ISM's energy and momentum losses are replenished by feedback within a dynamical time.Comment: 64 pages, 15 figures, accepted by the Ap

The Star Formation Efficiency in Nearby Galaxies: Measuring Where Gas Forms Stars Effectively

We measure the star formation efficiency (SFE), the star formation rate per unit gas, in 23 nearby galaxies and compare it to expectations from proposed star formation laws and thresholds. We use HI maps from THINGS and derive H2 maps from HERACLES and BIMA SONG CO. We estimate the star formation rate by combining GALEX FUV maps and SINGS 24 micron maps, infer stellar surface density profiles from SINGS 3.6 micron data, and use kinematics from THINGS. We measure the SFE as a function of: the free-fall and orbital timescales; midplane gas pressure; stability of the gas disk to collapse (including the effects of stars); the ability of perturbations to grow despite shear; and the ability of a cold phase to form. In spirals, the SFE of H2 alone is nearly constant at 5.25 +/- 2.5 x 10^(-10) yr^(-1) (equivalent to an H2 depletion time of 1.9x10^9 yr) as a function of all of these variables at our 800 pc resolution. Where the ISM is mostly HI, on the other hand, the SFE decreases with increasing radius in both spiral and dwarf galaxies, a decline reasonably described by an exponential with scale length 0.2-0.25 r_25. We interpret this decline as a strong dependence of GMC formation on environment. The ratio of H2 to HI appears to be a smooth function of radius, stellar surface density, and pressure spanning from the H2-dominated to HI-dominated ISM. The radial decline in SFE is too steep to be reproduced only by increases in the free-fall time or orbital time. Thresholds for large-scale instability suggest that our disks are stable or marginally stable and do not show a clear link to the declining SFE. We suggest that ISM physics below the scales that we observe - phase balance in the HI, H2 formation and destruction, and stellar feedback - governs the formation of GMCs from HI.Comment: Accepted for publication in the AJ special THINGS issue. For a high-resolution version visit: http://www.mpia.de/THINGS/Publications.htm