The role of external broadcasting in a closed political system

This article investigates the role and impact of external broadcasting (radio and television) on a closed political system, through the example of the two post-war German states: the West German Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the East German German Democratic Republic (GDR). The aim is to debunk myths about the influence of external broadcasting on the events that led to German reunification in 1990. The study follows a historical approach and discusses what role external media played during the years of a divided Germany. The findings are based on several historical sources, research reports from the 1950s and 1960s and over 100 biographical interviews with former residents of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The article analyses the impact of external broadcasting on citizens and the political elite in times of crisis as well as during everyday life

Costs and Benefits of Stem Cell Research and Treatment: Media Presentation and Audience Understanding in Hungary

This study examined the press coverage and audience understanding of the costs and benefits of stem cell research/treatment in Hungary. A content analysis of five newspapers and a focus group study was conducted. The way participants talked about the costs and benefits in many aspects echoed the dominant framing of the issue in the press (medical benefits = main benefit, high expense of treatment = dominant negative aspect). Even though participants applied analogical reasoning to formulate some risks that were missing from the reporting on stem cells, many gaps of the media coverage were echoed in gaps in lay discussions

Framing alleged Islamist plots: a case study of British press coverage since 9/11

In the decade post 9/11 , the UK terrorist threat was associated with a series of high profile counter terrorism operations, linked to specific plots. These terrorism related episodes received significant media attention and, as a consequence, were a visible sign of the contemporary terrorist threat. This paper seeks to identify the dominant frames rendered in news media reporting on these episodes. Through a longitudinal study of UK press coverage, the analysis reveals that two prominent frames were present, an inevitability and preparedness frame, with alleged plots serving to underline the risk posed by contemporary terrorism,and a belonging and responsibility frame, which cast later episodes as belonging to the Muslim communities disrupted by polic

Rationalizing CFTs and Anyonic Imprints on Higgs Branches

We continue our program of mapping data of 4D N=2 superconformal field theories (SCFTs) onto observables of 2D chiral rational conformal field theories (RCFTs) by revisiting an infinite set of strongly coupled Argyres-Douglas (AD) SCFTs and their associated logarithmic 2D chiral algebras. First, we turn on discrete flavor fugacities (for continuous flavor symmetries) in a known correspondence between certain unrefined characters of these logarithmic theories and unrefined characters of a set of unitary 2D chiral RCFTs. Motivated by this discussion, we then study 4D Higgs branch renormalization group flows (i.e., flows activated by vevs for which only su(2)R ⊂ su(2)R × u(1)R is spontaneously broken) emanating from our AD theories from the point of view of the unitary 2D theories and find some surprises. In particular, we argue that certain universal pieces of the topological data underlying the 2D chiral algebra representations associated with the 4D infrared (IR) theory can be computed, via Galois conjugation, in the topological quantum field theory (TQFT) underlying the unitary ultraviolet (UV) chiral RCFT. The mapping of this topological data from UV to IR agrees with the fact that, in our theories, the moduli spaces we study consist of free hypermultiplets at generic points if and only if the UV TQFT is a theory of abelian anyons

Neurogenic mechanisms in bladder and bowel ageing

The prevalence of both urinary and faecal incontinence, and also chronic constipation, increases with ageing and these conditions have a major impact on the quality of life of the elderly. Management of bladder and bowel dysfunction in the elderly is currently far from ideal and also carries a significant financial burden. Understanding how these changes occur is thus a major priority in biogerontology. The functions of the bladder and terminal bowel are regulated by complex neuronal networks. In particular neurons of the spinal cord and peripheral ganglia play a key role in regulating micturition and defaecation reflexes as well as promoting continence. In this review we discuss the evidence for ageing-induced neuronal dysfunction that might predispose to neurogenic forms of incontinence in the elderly