Resources for Media Literacy: Mediating the Research on Children and Media

Mucho se ha investigado sobre la educación en medios, su importancia y objetivos. Más allá de las directivas, resoluciones o recomendaciones, la investigación en esta área ha permitido profundizar y solidificar sus fundamentos, al tiempo que ha facilitado el reconocimiento de sus puntos más débiles u omisiones. Uno de los puntos críticos destacados por la formación y por el trabajo de investigación que se ha desarrollado en la Universidad de Miño (Portugal) durante los últimos 20 años, es la inexistencia de recursos y materiales que puedan utilizarse para la promoción de la educación en los medios de comunicación en diferentes contextos. De esta forma, independientemente de los recursos y materiales, se genera la importancia de la transferencia de conocimientos a la práctica, la trascendencia de la mediación del conocimiento producido a su público. Esta preocupación fue la base principal del proyecto titulado «Recursos para la alfabetización mediática» llevado a cabo en el Centro de Estudios de Comunicación y Sociedad y financiado por Evens Foundation (Bélgica). Este trabajo presenta sucintamente los procesos de creación y los resultados generados por estos recursos, centrados en tres medios: televisión, videojuegos e Internet y redes sociales.Much has been said and written about media education, its relevance and goals. Beyond directives, resolutions or recommendations, research in this area has deepened the foundations of media education but has also emphasized its weak points or faults. One of these critical points noted in the training and research work developed at the University of Minho, Portugal, in the last 20 years is the non-existence of resources and materials that could be used to promote media education in different contexts. But this is not just about the availability of materials, it concerns the importance of putting knowledge into practice and of mediating the knowledge produced with the appropriate audience. This concern was the basis of the ‘Media Education in Booklets’ project carried out by the Society and Communication Research Centre and funded by the Evens Foundation, Belgium. This paper presents the resources produced by this project in the form of three booklets: the first deals with the mediation of TV at school and at home; the second describes videogames, ways of playing, benefits, dangers, creativity and interculturality; the third is about the Internet and social networks, and the new forms of relationships and communication that these allow

Disrespecting the Minimum Wage: How States Limit the Opportunity for Restaurant Workers to Support Themselves

This paper examines the inequality in the restaurant industry in America. It focuses specifically on the tipped minimum wages in different states compared to the real minimum wage and looks into the gender and racial inequality present in restaurants. The first section analyzes the history of tipping and what it has become in the United States. The paper then moves to describe different struggles that tipped workers in the restaurant industry have to face. The paper also discusses different arguments to raising the tipped minimum wage and compares states with a tipped minimum wage and states without a tipped minimum wage. The paper looks at a Massachusetts state law specifically to analyze how the state is trying to protect tipped workers but is actually contributing to inequality among workers and the ethnic and gender minority cycle in tipped work. The final section describes different movements restaurant workers have started and the battles they have won as well as restaurant owners who have decided to join in the restaurant reform movement. The paper concludes with suggestions for consumers to help the fight and explains why the livelihood of tipped workers in the restaurant industry should and does matter to all American customers. This paper examines the inequality in the restaurant industry in America. It focuses specifically on the tipped minimum wages in different states compared to the real minimum wage and looks into the gender and racial inequality present in restaurants. The first section analyzes the history of tipping and what it has become in the United States. The paper then moves to describe different struggles that tipped workers in the restaurant industry have to face. The paper also discusses different arguments to raising the tipped minimum wage and compares states with a tipped minimum wage and states without a tipped minimum wage. The paper looks at a Massachusetts state law specifically to analyze how the state is trying to protect tipped workers but is actually contributing to inequality among workers and the ethnic and gender minority cycle in tipped work. The final section describes different movements restaurant workers have started and the battles they have won as well as restaurant owners who have decided to join in the restaurant reform movement. The paper concludes with suggestions for consumers to help the fight and explains why the livelihood of tipped workers in the restaurant industry should and does matter to all American customers

Price dynamics and shake-outs in electronic markets

This paper presents a model that explains the recent evolution of e-commerce, where over time, prices can increase if no exit occurs, or decrease, if exit occurs. In the model there is uncertainty about the firms' costs, because the technology is new, and consumers face a switching cost, because it is easier to observe the current price of a previous supplier, than the price of other firms

Microscopic approach for intersubband-based thermophotovoltaic structures in the terahertz and mid-infrared

This paper describes microscopic calculations of photocurrent generation spectra due to intersubband transitions in semiconductor heterostructures that can extract energy from photons in the THz and Mid Infrared Ranges. As expected in the mid infrared the interconduction conduction band transitions dominate the photocurrent. However, the numerical results presented here show that in the far infrared there is a range in which valence-band-based transitions dominate the photocurrent and these can be sustained under perpendicular incidence. This would lead to devices that do not need prisms and couplers in contrast with conduction-band based intersubband absorbers. Examples for different quantum well structures and different thermal source temperatures are compared and contrasted numerically. It is further demonstrated that many body effects, so far ignored in simulations of materials for photovoltaic and thermophotovoltaic applications, are shown to be of relevance for both conduction (TM Mode) and valence-band based (TE Mode) configurations

Factorization of simple modules for certain pointed Hopf algebras

We study the representations of two types of pointed Hopf algebras: restricted two-parameter quantum groups, and the Drinfel'd doubles of rank one pointed Hopf algebras of nilpotent type. We study, in particular, under what conditions a simple module can be factored as the tensor product of a one dimensional module with a module that is naturally a module for the quotient by central group-like elements.Comment: 24 page

Who am I?

I am in an ordered state of my limited perception, which will be in another state for there is no past, there is no present and there is no future, these exists in the limits of my perception

The Rationale for Mergers & Acquisitions in the U.S. Wireless Industry

The mergers between AT&T and Cingular, Sprint and Nextel, and Verizon and Alltel telecommunication companies have become the most fascinating transactions in the wireless industry. This paper provides a detailed summary of the two companies in each merger as separate entities before the merger, the actions they took while completing the merger, and the new look and strategies they put into place after the merger. The thesis provides a thorough view of how AT&T, Sprint Nextel, and Verizon successfully completed their merger plans and how they gained nationwide consumer satisfaction. The reader will examine the problems within the companies such as the case with the Sprint/Nextel merger. The paper briefly shows the intense competition between Verizon Wireless and Cingular/AT&T. The overall question to this thesis is: Which of these companies completed the ideal merger? The thesis analyzes the mergers in chronological order of the merger deals starting from the AT&T Inc. to Verizon Wireless

Lorentzian LQG vertex amplitude

We generalize a model recently proposed for Euclidean quantum gravity to the case of Lorentzian signature. The main features of the Euclidean model are preserved in the Lorentzian one. In particular, the boundary Hilbert space matches the one of SU(2) loop quantum gravity. As in the Euclidean case, the model can be obtained from the Lorentzian Barrett-Crane model from a flipping of the Poisson structure, or alternatively, by adding a topological term to the action and taking the small Barbero-Immirzi parameter limit.Comment: 9 pages; typos corrected and footnote adde