Television aesthetics, media and cultural studies and the contested realm of the social

This article seeks to intervene in the ‘television aesthetics’ versus ‘media and cultural studies’ debate. It argues that aesthetic evaluation does not necessarily rely upon bad textual others or result in canon construction. It engages with Bourdieu in order to demonstrate that his account of cultural capital and distinction is more nuanced than is suggested by its uptake by scholars who want to use it to argue against evaluative activity. Finally, it argues that television aesthetics cannot be divorced from ‘media and cultural studies’ to the extent that some of its practitioners appear to want

(G)hosting television: Ghostwatch and its medium

This article’s subject is Ghostwatch (BBC, 1992), a drama broadcast on Halloween night of 1992 which adopted the rhetoric of live non-fiction programming, and attracted controversy and ultimately censure from the Broadcasting Standards Council. In what follows, we argue that Ghostwatch must be understood as a televisually-specific artwork and artefact. We discuss the programme’s ludic relationship with some key features of television during what Ellis (2000) has termed its era of ‘availability’, principally liveness, mass simultaneous viewing, and the flow of the television super-text. We trace the programme’s television-specific historicity whilst acknowledging its allusions and debts to other media (most notably film and radio). We explore the sophisticated ways in which Ghostwatch’s visual grammar and vocabulary and deployment of ‘broadcast talk’ (Scannell 1991) variously ape, comment upon and subvert the rhetoric of factual programming, and the ends to which these strategies are put. We hope that these arguments collectively demonstrate the aesthetic and historical significance of Ghostwatch and identify its relationship to its medium and that medium’s history. We offer the programme as an historically-reflexive artefact, and as an exemplary instance of the work of art in television’s age of broadcasting, liveness and co-presence

A subpopulation of monocytes in normal human blood has significant magnetic susceptibility : quantification and potential implications

The presence of iron in circulating monocytes is well known as they play essential roles in iron recycling. Also, the storage of this metal as well as its incorrect uptake and/or release are important data to diagnose different pathologies. It has been demonstrated that iron storage in human blood cells can be measured through their magnetic behavior with high accuracy; however, the magnetic characteristics of monocytes have not been reported so far to the best of our knowledge. Therefore, in this work, we report, for the first time, the physical and magnetic properties of human monocytes, along with plasma platelets, oxyhemoglobin red blood cells (oxyHb‐RBCs), and methemoglobin red blood cells (metHb‐RBCs). The different cell populations were separated by Ficoll‐density gradient centrifugation, followed by a flow sorting step to isolate monocytes from peripheral blood mononuclear cells. The different fractions were analyzed by Coulter Counter (for determining the size distribution and concentration) and the sorted monocytes were qualitatively analyzed on ImageStream, a state‐of‐the‐art imaging cytometer. The analysis of the Coulter Counter and ImageStream data suggests that although there exists contamination in the monocyte fraction, the integrity of the sorted monocytes appears to be intact and the concentration was high enough to precisely measure their magnetic velocity by Cell Tracking Velocimetry. Surprisingly, monocytes reported the highest magnetic mobility from the four fractions under analysis, with an average magnetic velocity 7.8 times higher than MetHb‐RBCs, which is the only type of cells with positive magnetic velocities. This value is equivalent to a susceptibility 2.5 times higher than the value reported by fresh MetHb‐RBCs. It should be noted that this is the first study that reports that a subpopulation of human monocytes is much more magnetic than MetHb‐RBCs, opening the door to the possible isolation of human monocytes by label‐free magnetic techniques. Further, it is suggested that these magnetic monocytes could “contaminate” positively selected, immunomagnetically labeled blood cells (i.e., during a process using magnetically conjugated antibodies targeting cells, such as CD34 positive cells). Conversely, these magnetic monocytes could be inadvertently removed from a desired blood population when one is using a negative magnetic isolation technique to target cells for removal.The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (1R01HL131720-01A1) and DARPA (BAA07-21).https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/155249302020-05-01hj2019BiochemistryGeneticsMicrobiology and Plant PathologyPlant Production and Soil Scienc

Notes towards a formal and social poetics of television drama

This article seeks to build a bridge between approaches to television drama that explore form and style, and those that explore realism and representation. It proposes questions which can be applied to any television drama, and reveal meaningful distinctions. The argument is developed through comparative analysis of Sally Wainwright’s Happy Valley (2014-) and long-running British soap opera Coronation Street (1960-)

Classical Hollywood cinema: Point of view and communication

© James Zborowski 2016. All rights reserved. This book offers a new approach to filmic point of view by combining close analyses informed by the tools of narratology and philosophy with concepts derived from communication studies. Each chapter stages a conversation between two masterpieces of classical Hollywood cinema and one critical concept that can enrich our understanding of them: Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958) and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (Frank Capra, 1936) are interpreted in relation to point of view; Anatomy of a Murder (Otto Preminger, 1959) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford, 1962) are considered with reference to the concept of distance; and Letter from an Unknown Woman (Max Ophuls, 1948) and Only Angels Have Wings (Howard Hawks, 1939) are explored through the lens of communication. Each encounter reveals new, exciting and mutually illuminating ways of appreciating not only these case studies, but also the critical concepts at stake