Class Concerns in a Heritage Setting: Viewers’ responses to Downton Abbey on IMDb

This article examines the TV series Downton Abbey (2010-15) from both a class and a reception perspective. Downton Abbey belongs to the heritage film genre with its claims to detailed historical accuracy, and is thereby separated from conventional costume drama and period TV series. ‘Official’ books on the series, written by Julian Fellowes’s niece and others, will be important references in the article. Downton Abbey comes close to presenting a conservative defense of the values and lifestyles of the aristocracy, but this vision of the elite and its values is challenged by some of the series’ (re)viewers. Non-professional reviews posted on the website International Movie Database include very critical opinions on class struggles and aristocratic privileges. Some respondents are satiric and forcefully oppose the values and interests of the propertied classes in the series; other reviewers in the same vein present analyses of power and class aspects in the series. These comments and criticisms are relevant to today’s class issues in Britain and elsewhere

Optimization of Time-Course Experiments for Kinetic Model Discrimination

Systems biology relies heavily on the construction of quantitative models of biochemical networks. These models must have predictive power to help unveiling the underlying molecular mechanisms of cellular physiology, but it is also paramount that they are consistent with the data resulting from key experiments. Often, it is possible to find several models that describe the data equally well, but provide significantly different quantitative predictions regarding particular variables of the network. In those cases, one is faced with a problem of model discrimination, the procedure of rejecting inappropriate models from a set of candidates in order to elect one as the best model to use for prediction

‘The Second What’: Science, Tragedy and Mental Abyss in Forensic Files

  ABSTRACTMillions of readers and viewers are fascinated by stories about crimes that have actually been committed. In later years there has been an excess of access to true crime novels, movies, TV series, podcasts and blogs, spanning a wide range of formats and subgenres. This article explores some episodes in the series Forensic Files (1996-) in order to explain connections between mind reading, the tragic and true crime. The tragic as concept and mindreading challenges are used to enlighten the role given to science in the series. Forensic Files is a homage to science and forensics, but other evident aspects of the retold crimes are disregarded. A crime has fundamental psychological and mental aspects which are far more difficult to grasp than the outer events and hard facts. The article problematizes the role of thoughts, feelings and intentions in extremely serious crimes as presented in Forensic Files. A significant blank in the process of understanding and judging the perpetrator is named ‘the second what’, a factor which demonstrates a connection between true crime cases and our ability to read minds