Tillting for Windmills: Climate Change, Websites, and Ecocritical Pedagogy

Key words: digital media, multimedia technology, climate change, cyber ecocriticism, pedagogy Ecocriticism in general has concentrated on literary texts and has relegated other types of texts, particularly digital and interactive texts which are those which arguably have the greatest influence and readership in the 21st century. Thus, the need for ecocritical study of digital media, which would combine the investigation of the rhetorical and narrative features both of websites as a totality and of their specific content, as well as reception and reader response analyses. Using the experience of a graduate course, the multiple benefits of this approach illustrates how the ecocritique of digital media can achieve numerous objectives in a variety of pedagogical situations and provide a way to integrate environmental issues into skill dominant courses.    Palabras clave: medios audiovisuales y digitales, tecnología multimedia, cambio climático, ecocritica cibernética, pedagogía  La ecocrítica en general se ha centrado en textos literarios y ha relegado otros tipos de textos, en particular textos digitales e interactivos que podría decirse que son los de mayor influencia y mayor número de lectores del siglo XXI.  Por ello es necesario el estudio ecocrítico de los medios de comunicación digitales, que combinaría la investigación de las características retóricas y narrativas de tanto las páginas web en su totalidad como de su contenido específico, así como de los análisis de la recepción y de la respuesta del lector. Usando la experiencia de un curso de postgrado, los múltiples beneficios de este enfoque ilustran cómo la ecocrítica de los medios de comunicación digitales pueden conseguir numerosos objetivos en una variedad de situaciones pedagógicas y proporcionar una manera de integrar los temas medioambientales en cursos predominantemente centrados en la adquisición de destrezas

The High and Low Fantasies of Feminist (Re)Mythopoeia

Discusses elements of myth and fantasy in the works of five contemporary women poets. Notes the use of mythopoeia in a feminist context is used for “revisionist mythmaking.

International Communication, Ethnography, and the Challenge of Globalization

This article articulates media ethnography with international communication theory in the context of globalization. It explores the history and regional trajectories of media ethnography, as well as anthropology’s epistemological and political issues of representation that have become relevant to media studies. The authors argue that rethinking the limits and potential of media ethnography to address cultural consumption also necessarily involves considering how ethnography can serve to engender a vision of international communication theory grounded in the practices of everyday life. This reformulation is crucial at a time when some media scholars celebrate difference via microassessments of postcolonial locales and the plurality of cultures without attempting to consider global structural concerns. In fact, the authors argue, if media ethnographies are rigorously developed, they can offer international communication theory the material to bridge the gap between meaning and structure without losing site of the complexity, context, and power imbalances inherent in processes of globalization

Shifting Geertz: Toward a Theory of Translocalism in Global Communication Studies

Though the anthropologist Clifford Geertz has been tremendously influential across the humanities and social sciences, his impact on media and communication scholarship remains unclear. Geertzian theory, this article argues, can rejuvenate global communication studies by providing a foundation to build a theory of translocalism. The article first highlights the theoretical affinities between Geertz’s interpretive anthropology and communication studies. The following sections explicate Geertz’s perspectives on the local and on meaning. Then, we explore how Geertz’s notion of the local can serve as a context for a new understanding of power in global communication studies. In light of this, the article then turns to an analysis of the notion of translocalism as it transpires in Geertz’s work. The final section elaborates the implications of translocalism for global communication studies through a discussion of global television formats and foreign news correspondents

Advances in Wound Healing: A Review of Current Wound Healing Products

Successful wound care involves optimizing patient local and systemic conditions in conjunction with an ideal wound healing environment. Many different products have been developed to influence this wound environment to provide a pathogen-free, protected, and moist area for healing to occur. Newer products are currently being used to replace or augment various substrates in the wound healing cascade. This review of the current state of the art in wound-healing products looks at the latest applications of silver in microbial prophylaxis and treatment, including issues involving resistance and side effects, the latest uses of negative pressure wound devices, advanced dressings and skin substitutes, biologic wound products including growth factor applications, and hyperbaric oxygen as an adjunct in wound healing. With the abundance of available products, the goal is to find the most appropriate modality or combination of modalities to optimize healing

Carbohydrate Availability Assay for Determining Lignocellulosic Biomass Quality

Current methods for characterization of lignocellulosic biomass feedstocks for biological conversion are dominated by compositional analysis and digestibility/ fermentation tests; however, both these groups of laboratory methods have their respective advantages and disadvantages. The purpose of this paper is to develop a wet-chemistry assay for determination of lignocellulosic biomass quality that combines both compositional analysis and fermentation methods. This assay also should not require expensive or highly specialized laboratory equipment and should be able to be adapted for high throughput applications, such as near infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS

Hybrid Wing Body Model Identification Using Forced-Oscillation Water Tunnel Data

Static and dynamic testing of the NASA 0.7 percent scale Hybrid Wing Body (HWB) configuration was conducted in the Rolling Hills Research Corporation water tunnel to investigate aerodynamic behavior over a large range of angle-of-attack and to develop models that can predict aircraft response in nonlinear unsteady flight regimes. This paper reports primarily on the longitudinal axis results. Flow visualization tests were also performed. These tests provide additional static data and new dynamic data that complement tests conducted at NASA Langley 14- by 22-Foot Subsonic Tunnel. HWB was developed to support the NASA Environmentally Responsible Aviation Project goals of lower noise, emissions, and fuel burn. This study also supports the NASA Aviation Safety Program efforts to model and control advanced transport configurations in loss-of-control conditions