Aesthetics of Television Criticism: Mapping Critics' Reviews in an Era of Industry Transformation

Television critics play a central role in the interpretation of cultural forms, objects, and productions. In contrast to critics in elite art worlds, the role and status of television critics are less institutionalized and less well understood. One indicator of the degree and status of the institutionalization of critics' roles is the codification of evaluative criteria and critical practices. Our research examines whether critics in television draw upon a recognizable set of evaluation criteria, and if so, whether that repertoire of aesthetic concepts increasingly parallels criteria employed by critics in elite art worlds. Using multidimensional scaling to delineate television criticism over the last two decades, a period of considerable transformation in the industry, we find that television criticism attends to a core set of conventional criteria. These include appraisal of formal aesthetic elements, signaling increased attention to television as an art form, while retaining consideration of factors such as entertainment value that are of interest to audiences and business constituencies alike. © 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Burn depth determination by high-speed fiber-based polarization sensitive optical coherence tomography at 1.3 micrometers

Burn depth determination is a critical factor in the treatment of thermal injury. We have developed a technique, polarization sensitive optical coherence tomography (PS-OCT), to assess burn depth non-invasively. Thermal injury denatures collagen in human skin. PS-OCT is able to measure the resulting reduction in collagen birefringence using depth resolved changes in the polarization of light propagated and reflected from the sample. In a previous study, we used a free space PS-OCT system at 850 nm to image in vivo the skin of rats burned for various amounts of time. Using a high-speed system at 1.3 micrometers has the advantages of greater depth penetration and reduction of motion artifacts due to breathing and small movements of the animal. Stokes vectors were calculated for each point in the scans and the relative birefringence was determined using different incident polarization states. Birefringence was correlated with actual burn depth determined by histological analysis. Our results show a marked difference between normal tissue and even the slightest burn, and a consistent trend for various degrees of burns

Burn depth determination by high-speed fiber-based polarization sensitive optical coherence tomography at 1.3 micrometers

Burn depth determination is a critical factor in the treatment of thermal injury. We have developed a technique, polarization sensitive optical coherence tomography (PS-OCT), to assess burn depth non-invasively. Thermal injury denatures collagen in human skin. PS-OCT is able to measure the resulting reduction in collagen birefringence using depth resolved changes in the polarization of light propagated and reflected from the sample. In a previous study, we used a free space PS-OCT system at 850 nm to image in vivo the skin of rats burned for various amounts of time. Using a high-speed system at 1.3 micrometers has the advantages of greater depth penetration and reduction of motion artifacts due to breathing and small movements of the animal. Stokes vectors were calculated for each point in the scans and the relative birefringence was determined using different incident polarization states. Birefringence was correlated with actual burn depth determined by histological analysis. Our results show a marked difference between normal tissue and even the slightest burn, and a consistent trend for various degrees of burns