Search Engine Optimisation in UK news production

This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Journalism Practice, 5(4), 462 - 477, 2011, copyright Taylor & Francis, available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/17512786.2010.551020.This paper represents an exploratory study into an emerging culture in UK online newsrooms—the practice of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), which assesses its impact on news production. Comprising a short-term participant observational case study at a national online news publisher, and a series of semi-structured, in-depth interviews with SEO professionals at three further UK media organisations, the author sets out to establish how SEO is operationalised in the newsroom, and what consequences these practices have for online news production. SEO practice is found to be varied and application is not universal. Not all UK news organisations are making the most of SEO even though some publishers take a highly sophisticated approach. Efforts are constrained by time, resources and management support, as well as off-page technical issues. SEO policy is found, in some cases, to inform editorial policy, but there is resistance to the principal of SEO driving decision-making. Several themes are established which call for further research

On the Newtonian Limit in Gravity Models with Inverse Powers of R

I reconsider the problem of the Newtonian limit in nonlinear gravity models in the light of recently proposed models with inverse powers of the Ricci scalar. Expansion around a maximally symmetric local background with positive curvature scalar R_0 gives the correct Newtonian limit on length scales << R_0^{-1/2} if the gravitational Lagrangian f(R) satisfies |f(R_0)f''(R_0)|<< 1. I propose two models with f''(R_0)=0.Comment: 8 page

Studies on the non-specific esterases of Saccharomyces cerevisiae : a thesis in partial fulfillment [sic.] of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Microbiology at Massey University

Twenty wine-making and three laboratory strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae were examined for non-specific esterases by Polyacrylamide Gel Electrophoresis. All wine-making strains contained the fast alleles of the Est 1 and Est 2 loci, confirming there is a selective advantage for the Est 1f and Est 2f genes in these strains. Only one wine-making strain carried the Est 3 and Est 4 genes, which was a much lower frequency than that published. The three laboratory strains all contained the Est 1f and Est 2s genes. A new non-specific esterase band, labelled Est 5, was identified by using a modified staining technique, which was apparently of low molecular weight as it travelled with the tracking dye front. Fast and slow alleles of Est 1 and Est 2 were determined to be charge allozymes. Est 2 proteins were considered to be polymeric, probably dimeric, and the Est 1 proteins to undergo post-translational modification. Difficulty in resolving the Est 4 band was overcome by adding Triton X-100 to cell suspensions before disruption, indicating this esterase protein may be particulate bound. Molecular weights were determined by Ferguson Plots to be 51,000 ± 10,000 daltons (Est 2), 60.000 ± 12,000 daltons (Est 3), 73,000 ± 15,000 daltons (Est l), and 113,000 ± 23,000 daltons (Est 4). No isolates of S. cerevisiae for comparison of allele frequencies could be made from mature locally-grown grapes, indicating that this species is rare in the New Zealand environment, which is in accordance with published studies. No "inducible" non-specific esterases were found in strains examined at different stages in the life cycle, or by growth in different media. The level of esterase activity in cells increased throughout aerobic growth in liquid media, but was quickly lost during fermentation. Esterase activity during sporulation also decreased. A non-specific esterase mutant was induced by ethyl methane-sulfonate and detected by the hydrolysis of α-naphthyl acetate incorporated into solid medium. This mutant lost expression of both Est If and Est 2s , as did subsequent mutants produced by hybridisation. Segregation of esterase-deficient to esterase-proficient spores after hybridisation, showed that two unlinked loci were involved in esterase suppression, both genes being unlinked to ade 1, Est 1 and mating type locus MAT. It is hypothesised these genes are a suppressor (SUP) and a mutated regulator (Reg Est− ). Gas Liquid Chromatography was used to quantitatively determine volatile ester concentrations produced during fermentation. Selected wine-making strains and diploid strains produced by micromanipulation and having different non-specific esterase compositions were fermented to the limit of their ethanol tolerance in Reisling Sylvaner grape juice and Complete Defined Medium. Ethyl acetate, ethyl propanoate, ethyl hexanoate, ethyl octanoate, ethyl decanoate, ethyl dodecanoate, 2-phenethyl acetate, n-hexyl acetate and iso-pentyl acetate were all quantitated. A maximum error of ±30% was determined for differences in ester concentration between two fermentations using the same strain. Correction for differences in fermentation ability by different strains was attempted, and the resulting ester concentrations compared qualitatively. Results indicate that differences in volatile ester concentrations between strains are not due to the esterase composition. The non-specific esterases probably have little if any influence on wine bouquet as the majority of ester production is late in fermentation when esterase activity has ceased

Half-Differentials and Fermion Propagators

From a geometric point of view, massless spinors in $3+1$ dimensions are composed of primary fields of weights $(\frac{1}{2},0)$ and $(0,\frac{1}{2})$, where the weights are defined with respect to diffeomorphisms of a sphere in momentum space. The Weyl equation thus appears as a consequence of the transformation behavior of local sections of half--canonical bundles under a change of charts. As a consequence, it is possible to impose covariant constraints on spinors of negative (positive) helicity in terms of (anti--)holomorphy conditions. Furthermore, the identification with half--differentials is employed to determine possible extensions of fermion propagators compatible with Lorentz covariance. This paper includes in particular the full derivation of the primary correlators needed in order to determine the fermion correlators.Comment: 22 pages, Latex, IASSNS-HEP-94/8

Marquette University 2009 Commencement Address

ABOUT THE TALK: Dick Enberg presented the Commencement address to Marquette University\u27s graduating Class of 2009 on May 17, 2009. He spoke to an audience of more than 2000 graduating students, their family and friends, and members of the Marquette community. The event took place at the Bradley Center in Milwaukee. ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Dick Enberg is an award-winning sports journalist who has covered nearly every major sporting event since his debut on NBC in 1975. Enberg is the only person to win an Emmy as a sportscaster, writer and producer, having received 14 Emmys, including a Lifetime Achievement Emmy. He was inducted into the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Hall of Fame in 1995 Enberg began his broadcast career while a student at Indiana University, doing play by play for football and basketball games while earning his master’s and doctoral degrees in health sciences

Lessons Learned in a Math Excel Workshop: The Importance of Maintaining High Cognitive Demands

Uri Treisman\u27s Emerging Scholars Workshop model has been implemented on many college campuses over the last twenty years. The Treisman model is based on groups of students meeting regularly in a social atmosphere to work collaboratively in solving challenging mathematics problems related to their introductory coursework. Emerging Scholars Programs (or Math Excel as it is called in many settings, including ours) have been particularly successful in increasing the academic success and participation of underrepresented groups in mathematics. The primary responsibilities of a workshop leader include the design of a session’s worksheet, as well as the facilitation of students\u27 problem solving efforts during the workshop session itself. In this paper, we discuss a mathematical tasks framework proposed by researchers in the Quantitative Understanding: Amplifying Student Achievement and Reasoning (QUASAR) project that may be especially helpful to workshop leaders in making a successful implementation of Math Excel. This framework emphasizes the notion of the cognitive demand of a mathematical task. The level of cognitive demand is not a static attribute and may well change as students undertake a task in a classroom setting. QUASAR researchers noted how the initially high demands of a task may not be maintained in the classroom, and how teachers\u27 actions may lower the demands and consequently limit learning opportunities for students. Although the QUASAR project involved middle school mathematics instruction, we believe that this mathematical tasks framework can provide valuable lessons for Math Excel workshop leaders, and it suggests how critically important both the choice of problem tasks and the workshop leaders’ facilitation of student work can be. In this paper, we review the mathematical tasks framework and illustrate its application to scenarios actually encountered in our Math Excel workshops