Untold stories of Syrian women surviving war

Issue title: Sympathetic stereotypes: the Syrian Uprising in western media and scholarshipIn "I must save my life and not risk my family’s safety!”: Untold Stories of Syrian Women Surviving War, Alhayek provides several case studies of Syrian women whose lives were irreversibly changed as a result of the events that unfolded after March 2011. The stories of these women vividly illustrate how difficult it is to come up with a neat and easily accessible profile for the suffering of Syrian women. Yet, this is precisely what Western media, albeit sympathetic, has attempted to achieve. Stories on child brides being sold to wealthy old men from the Gulf, though on the surface highlighting the suffering that Syrian women have undergone, are shown by Alhayek to have grossly misrepresented not only Syrian women, who are in fact as complex and multi-faceted as their Western counterparts, but also Syrian families for being willing to take part in such arrangements in the first place. Through interviews with six Syrian women, Alhayek brings home the idea that our understanding of the Syrian Uprising must be based on stories that are collected from below rather than on stereotypes imposed from above. The case studies defy any simplified narrative that one may wish to impose on them. In one case study, for example, the army is directly responsible for killing civilians, while in the other the army is shown to have been very respectful of women, especially in the early phase of the Uprising.Publisher PD

Unimodal and cross-modal prediction is enhanced in musicians

Musical training involves exposure to complex auditory and visual stimuli, memorization of elaborate sequences, and extensive motor rehearsal. It has been hypothesized that such multifaceted training may be associated with differences in basic cognitive functions, such as prediction, potentially translating to a facilitation in expert musicians. Moreover, such differences might generalize to non-auditory stimuli. This study was designed to test both hypotheses. We implemented a cross-modal attentional cueing task with auditory and visual stimuli, where a target was preceded by compatible or incompatible cues in mainly compatible (80% compatible, predictable) or random blocks (50% compatible, unpredictable). This allowed for the testing of prediction skills in musicians and controls. Musicians showed increased sensitivity to the statistical structure of the block, expressed as advantage for compatible trials (disadvantage for incompatible trials), but only in the mainly compatible (predictable) blocks. Controls did not show this pattern. The effect held within modalities (auditory, visual), across modalities, and when controlling for short-term memory capacity. These results reveal a striking enhancement in cross-modal prediction in musicians in a very basic cognitive task

Establishing and Evaluating Nurses\u27 Knowledge and Perceptions of the Effectiveness of an Inpatient STEMI Protocol

Problem and Purpose: Clinically, there was no established protocol for the management and transfer of in-patient ST-Segment Elevation Myocardial Infarction (STEMI) patients at a community hospital without Percutaneous Coronary Intervention (PCI) capabilities. The purpose of this study was to increase staff knowledge and explore the perceived benefits for improved care of in-patient STEMIs after implementation of a protocol and management algorithm. Sample: A convenience sample of nurses participating in non-mandatory live educational sessions reviewing the in-patient STEMI protocol and algorithm were recruited. Methods: Nurses were consented via cover letter and asked to complete a short demographic questionnaire, pretest, posttest, and perception survey. After the pretest and demographic was collected, the 10-minute educational session commenced. After the educational session, the posttest and perception survey were collected. Results: A total of 49 nurses completed all activities. Varying specialties were included from day (47.1%) and night (52.9%) shifts with 84.3% female participants and 15.7% male. The pretest (76.2+14.47) mean was significantly lower than the mean of the post-test (82.6+10.58) (p=.003). The nurses indicated that they perceive the in-patient STEMI algorithm: is clear and easy to follow (96.2%), helps them manage in-patient STEMIs more accurately (96%), and improves and standardizes management of in-patient STEMIs (96.1%). Conclusions and implications for practice/research: This study indicates the in-patient STEMI protocol and algorithm assists the nurses to better care for their patients. Periodic education to increase staff knowledge will reinforce the importance of using the protocol and algorithm to guide the care and transfer of these critical patients

Watching television while forcibly displaced: Syrian refugees as participant audiences

In this article, I explore how Syrian refugees and internally displaced people are using social media to reshape interpretations of their own status through their engagement with quality TV texts that tackle the refugee crisis. I focus on the discourse surrounding the Syrian Television Drama series Ghadan Naltaqi (GN) [We’ll Meet Tomorrow] which is particularly interesting because of the dialogue that has developed between the forcibly displaced segment of its audience and the writer/creator of the show, Iyad Abou Chamat. Methodologically, this research is based on 26 semi-structured interviews conducted in Arabic language: one interview with Chamat, and 25 interviews with members of his audience who friended Chamat on Facebook after GN aired. I demonstrate that Facebook serves as an outlet for interactivity between displaced drama producers and audiences in a way that imitates the dynamics of live theater. While such interactivity is facilitated by technology, the emergence of this interactive relationship is owned to the desires for (re- )connection of both drama creators and audiences stemming from the alienation of war, violence and displacement. The particularity of the Syrian war-related topic in GN and its applicability to both the creator of the series as well as to audiences’ lived experiences evoked a significant level of online participation with Chamat. I use the term ‘participant audiences’ to describe the interactive, emotional responses of displaced audiences and their online engagement with TV content that address the disconnections they experience because of conflict and displacement while offering them possibilities for coping with violence, marginalization, and suffering. I show how the entertainment interventions of drama creators help displaced people both to mitigate the traumatic effects of a highly polarizing conflict, and to find a healing space from violent and alienating dominant media discourses

Emotional Realism, Affective Labor, and Politics in the Arab Fandom of Game of Thrones

This article examines the Game of Thrones (GoT) fan phenomena in the Arab world. Although I contextualize GoT as a commodity within HBO’s global ambitions to attract a global audience, I study GoT Arab fans as an organized interpretive online community. I examine the Arabic fan Facebook page “Game of Thrones‒Official Arabic Page” (GoTOAP), which has over 240,000 followers, as a case study of cultural production and consumption by fans. Based on interviews with members of the administration staff of the GoT-OAP Facebook page, as well as textual analysis of the page’s posts, I ask: How is fan culture around GoT produced in the Arab world? How are the boundaries between being fans, media producers, and consumers negotiated? Are there connections between the themes of GoT and the current unrest across the Arab region? If so, how are they articulated? Through emotional realism and hybridity, I show that Arab fans find ways to negotiate their fandom of GoT with their local context and lived experiences

The impact of cognitive load on operatic singers' timing performance

In the present paper, we report the results of an empirical study on the effects of cognitive load on operatic singing. The main aim of the study was to investigate to what extent a working memory task affected the timing of operatic singers' performance. Thereby, we focused on singers' tendency to speed up, or slow down their performance of musical phrases and pauses. Twelve professional operatic singers were asked to perform an operatic aria three times; once without an additional working memory task, once with a concurrent working memory task (counting shapes on a computer screen), and once with a relatively more difficult working memory task (more shapes to be counted appearing one after another). The results show that, in general, singers speeded up their performance under heightened cognitive load. Interestingly, this effect was more pronounced in pauses-more in particular longer pauses-compared to musical phrases. We discuss the role of sensorimotor control and feedback processes in musical timing to explain these findings

Digital games to improve english basic vocabulary skills to students of eighth grade at unidad educativa La Libertad, La Libertad, Santa Elena province, 2015-2016.

At the moment of starting learning English as a second/foreign language, it is essential that learners gradually improve in the four main English language skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing. However, for achieving the complete domain of these skills, learners need to acquire as much vocabulary as possible because without vocabulary learners will never be able to listen, speak, read nor write in English. Therefore, it is fundamental to mention that vocabulary is the basis in the English language acquisition. As it was established, vocabulary is really needed for the entire English langaue acquisition and this research attempts to improve the vocabulary instruction of students of eighth grade at unidad educativa La Libertad through the application of digital as a dynamic and technological proposal. Nowadays, technology is being more used in classrooms in order to enhance the teaching and learning process. Moreover, this investigation followed the qualitative and quantitative methods because the researcher applied different techniques and instruments, such as interviews to English language teaching experts, observation sessions, questionnaires, observation guide in order to collect information, then analyze it and finally summarized it in this paper. This investigation is also quantitative because the researcher applied surveys to eighth grade students and English teachers in order to collect useful information from the direct beneficiaries and then present results in statistical graphics and charts. Finally, it was demonstrated that the application of digital games improved the English vocabulary instruction and students had the opportunity to practice and increase their vocabulary knowledge in a technological and motivational way