Citizen participation in news

The process of producing news has changed significantly due to the advent of the Web, which has enabled the increasing involvement of citizens in news production. This trend has been given many names, including participatory journalism, produsage, and crowd-sourced journalism, but these terms are ambiguous and have been applied inconsistently, making comparison of news systems difficult. In particular, it is problematic to distinguish the levels of citizen involvement, and therefore the extent to which news production has genuinely been opened up. In this paper we perform an analysis of 32 online news systems, comparing them in terms of how much power they give to citizens at each stage of the news production process. Our analysis reveals a diverse landscape of news systems and shows that they defy simplistic categorisation, but it also provides the means to compare different approaches in a systematic and meaningful way. We combine this with four case studies of individual stories to explore the ways that news stories can move and evolve across this landscape. Our conclusions are that online news systems are complex and interdependent, and that most do not involve citizens to the extent that the terms used to describe them imply

Design of an electro-optical sampling experiment at the AWA facility

The free space electro-optical (EO) sampling technique is a powerful tool for analyzing the longitudinal charge density of an ultrashort e-beam. In this paper, we present (1) experimental results for a laser-based mock-up of the EO experiment [1] and (2) a design for a beam-based, single-shot, EO sampling experiment using the e-beam from the Argonne Wakefield Accelerator (AWA) RF photoinjector. For the mock-up, a tabletop terahertz experiment is conducted in the AWA laser room. The mock-up uses an IR beam incident on <110> ZnTe crystal to produce a THz pulse via optical rectification. Detection is based on the cross correlation between the THz field and the probe IR laser field in a second <110> ZnTe crystal

Global Reorganization of Replication Domains During Embryonic Stem Cell Differentiation

DNA replication in mammals is regulated via the coordinate firing of clusters of replicons that duplicate megabase-sized chromosome segments at specific times during S-phase. Cytogenetic studies show that these “replicon clusters” coalesce as subchromosomal units that persist through multiple cell generations, but the molecular boundaries of such units have remained elusive. Moreover, the extent to which changes in replication timing occur during differentiation and their relationship to transcription changes has not been rigorously investigated. We have constructed high-resolution replication-timing profiles in mouse embryonic stem cells (mESCs) before and after differentiation to neural precursor cells. We demonstrate that chromosomes can be segmented into multimegabase domains of coordinate replication, which we call “replication domains,” separated by transition regions whose replication kinetics are consistent with large originless segments. The molecular boundaries of replication domains are remarkably well conserved between distantly related ESC lines and induced pluripotent stem cells. Unexpectedly, ESC differentiation was accompanied by the consolidation of smaller differentially replicating domains into larger coordinately replicated units whose replication time was more aligned to isochore GC content and the density of LINE-1 transposable elements, but not gene density. Replication-timing changes were coordinated with transcription changes for weak promoters more than strong promoters, and were accompanied by rearrangements in subnuclear position. We conclude that replication profiles are cell-type specific, and changes in these profiles reveal chromosome segments that undergo large changes in organization during differentiation. Moreover, smaller replication domains and a higher density of timing transition regions that interrupt isochore replication timing define a novel characteristic of the pluripotent state

Detecting fiction

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Kansas, English, 2007.This thesis is an essayistic exploration of detective fiction, looking into why I like certain writers (or not) and trying to detect whether there is more artistic merit in their writing than simply proficient plotting and energetic action. The first essay is a general inquiry, looking at various authors and why I either like or dislike them; the second considers three classical noir-type mystery writers (Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Ross Macdonald); and the third examines a characteristic that many hard-boiled detectives display, namely, that each has been damaged in some way, either socially or psychologically. The thrust of these essays is not simply to display my taste but to discern as well whether and what kinds of literary merit is to be found in the detective writers I consider