1,225 research outputs found
Building bridges, filling gaps : toward an integrative interdisciplinary and mixed method approach for future audience research in relation to the mediation of distant suffering
Based on extensive literature research and 11 expert interviews with academics familiar with the field of audience studies and mediation of distant suffering, this article provides a metadiscussion of the different paradigms and methodologies that can be used for further empirical audience research. It is argued that the âmiddle-wayâ paradigms such as critical realism, grounded theory, and pragmatism can productively serve as the basis for a common epistemic language in interdisciplinary research. A mixed-methods approach may serve well for a broad and holistic study of the audience. It is further argued that future empirical research of media users in relation to distant suffering could benefit from an interdisciplinary, mixed-methods approach
Close, but not close enough? Audienceâs reactions to domesticated distant suffering in international news coverage
The interest in audience responses to mediated distant suffering has been growing in the last decade. Earlier research about the mediation of distant suffering was often morally or theoretically based, or textually informed and recent empirical research has often focused on how the theories and textâbased studies resonate with empirical research of the audience. Earlier textâbased research has found that journalists domesticate news about distant events to bring such events closer by and thus make them more relevant and appealing. Four types to domesticate news about distant suffering were found; emotional domestication, aidâdriven domestication, familiarizing the unfamiliar, and âwhat are the stakesâ. These domestication strategies aim to establish a link between the distant event and the national or local context of the viewer to bring distant events closer to home and to invite the audience to care. Knowledge about the actual audienceâs reactions towards domesticated news is lacking. Therefore, central to this study is whether, and how domestication strategies on the production side of the news, are recognized and if these, or other domesticating strategies are employed by the audience to be caring and morally engaged towards the distant victims. In order to study this we conducted ten focus groups (N=51) in January and February 2016, where we showed a news item about the earthquake in Nepal which happened nine months before. The empirical analysis is informed by concepts from the fields of moral and social psychology. For one, according to social psychological traditions, differentiation is made between peopleâs cognitive (rational) and affective (emotional) reactions towards their social environment. In addition, and more specifically, we used the concepts empathy and sympathy, defined in the field of moralâ and social psychology to structurally analyze peopleâs reaction towards the mediated distant suffering. We also used the social psychologically informed concept of âdenialâ to study peopleâs less caring reactions towards the mediated suffering. Based on the empirical results, we propose a twoâflow model of domestication, consisting of firstâlevel domestication on the production side by journalists, and secondâlevel domestication where the audience themselves uses strategies of domestication to make sense of distant suffering. In addition, not all domestication strategies were equally, or equally successfully employed by the audience for a better understanding ofâ or moral engagement towards, the suffering
Characterization of the ALPIDE chip with Helium-4 ions for Proton Computed Tomography
Particle therapy has become an appealing therapeutic option for patients with various tumor types. The physical properties of charged particles allow for an improved dose distribution conformality compared to conventional photon-based radiotherapy. This advantage translates into a reduction of unwanted side effects from radiation treatment and in the long run will improve the patientâs quality of life. A team at the University of Bergen is developing a proton Computed Tomography (pCT) scanner prototype. This technology will primarily work as a supplement to particle therapy as it aims to enhance the accuracy of the pre-calculated dose plans applied during treatment. The pCT system is a Digital Tracking Calorimeter (DTC) consisting of multiple layers of the ALPIDE CMOS Monolithic Active Pixel Sensor with the aim of tracking protons and measure its energy. This thesis studies the ALPIDE chip towards its medical applications in the future DTC. It will describe the clusters created on the chip by helium ions and alpha particles with a focus on the parameters that affect the pixel size of the clusters. Results from an analysis of a helium microbeam indicate that the size of a cluster correlates with the position of the incoming particle on the pixel and hence, the interior location of the energy deposition. These clusters varied in size from 5 to 35 pixels when the beam scanned the chip in ”m steps. Moreover, an experiment conducted during this project shows that the size of the clusters is dependent on the temperature of the chip and that the average size of the cluster gets larger with increasing temperature. In the end, the results obtained from an ALPIDE telescope irradiated with high energetic helium beams is described. This experiment shows that the clusters used in tracking increases in size at higher Linear Energy Transfer (LET) of the particles.Masteroppgave i fysikkMAMN-PHYSPHYS39
Who cares for the suffering other? A survey-based study into reactions toward images of distant suffering
A growing number of scholars have empirically engaged with audience reactions toward mediated distant suffering, albeit mainly on a small, qualitative scale. By conducting quantitative research, this study contributes to the knowledge about people's reactions toward distant suffering on a greater scale, representative of a Western audience. Following a critical realist approach, a survey was developed and several independent constructs were found by doing an exploratory factor analysis which represents people's engagement with distant suffering. We also found four clusters based on a k-means cluster analysis that portrays typical ways of responding to distant suffering. These clusters have been controlled for people's background, indicators of age, gender, education and people's donation behavior, media use, and news interests
Electronic Structure of the YH3 Phase from Angle-Resolved Photoemission Spectroscopy
Yttrium can be loaded with hydrogen up to high concentrations causing
dramatic structural and electronic changes of the host lattice. We report on
angle-resolved photoemission experiments of the Y trihydride phase. Most
importantly, we find the absence of metal d-bands at the Fermi level and a set
of flat, H-induced bands located at much higher binding energy than predicted,
indicating an increased electron affinity at H sites
Upper and Lower Bounds on the Smoothed Complexity of the Simplex Method
The simplex method for linear programming is known to be highly efficient in
practice, and understanding its performance from a theoretical perspective is
an active research topic. The framework of smoothed analysis, first introduced
by Spielman and Teng (JACM '04) for this purpose, defines the smoothed
complexity of solving a linear program with variables and constraints
as the expected running time when Gaussian noise of variance is
added to the LP data. We prove that the smoothed complexity of the simplex
method is , improving the dependence on
compared to the previous bound of .
We accomplish this through a new analysis of the \emph{shadow bound}, key to
earlier analyses as well. Illustrating the power of our new method, we use our
method to prove a nearly tight upper bound on the smoothed complexity of
two-dimensional polygons.
We also establish the first non-trivial lower bound on the smoothed
complexity of the simplex method, proving that the \emph{shadow vertex simplex
method} requires at least pivot steps with high probability. A key
part of our analysis is a new variation on the extended formulation for the
regular -gon. We end with a numerical experiment that suggests this
analysis could be further improved.Comment: 41 pages, 5 figure
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