The sound of home? Some thoughts on how the radio voice anchors, contains and sometimes pierces

This article argues that while psychoanalytic theory has been valuably employed by television, film and cultural studies, there has been no comparable 'psychoanalytic turn' in radio studies. It suggests that the concept of 'containment', as developed variously by Wilfred Bion and Esther Bick, might go some way to explain the powerful role that the voice of the radio presenter can play in the regular listener's internal world, with the capacity both to 'hold' the listener together, and to transform overwhelming fears into more manageable feelings. It argues that the disembodied radio voice does this partly because it recalls the prenatal power of the maternal voice, and partly through the temporal order that regular radio voices impose on the internal and external world. Both Second World War British radio catchphrases and Roosevelt's Fireside Chats are discussed in relation to their containment function. The article also explores the radio as a transitional space, as defined by Donald Winnicott, through which it can constitute listeners into an 'imagined community'. It ends by reflecting on the impact of the angry voice of the 'shock-jock' which, it suggests, amplifies rather than contains overwhelming feelings

Re-creating lives: the possibilities and limits of creative nonfiction

Over the past 20 years creative nonfiction has emerged around the world as a genre highly popular with both publishers and readers. Some compelling examples have helped redefine how experience and actuality can be imaginatively narrated and have freed nonfiction writers from previous constraints. As a reader I relish these innovative texts; as a writer I have tried to make use of some of the new freedoms. Most of the controversy surrounding the genre has centred on accuracy and ethics in memoir: now that the boundary between fiction and nonfiction is no longer so heavily policed, how far can a writer go? Indeed, does anything now go? This paper explores outstanding recent examples of life writing but also disturbing instances; it also examines a variety of views among memoirists about the role of the imagined in life writing. While recognising that the notion of a unitary and stable self is a fiction, I take issue with what I see as postmodern legitimisation of assumed identities and argue that, when this is extended even to fake Holocaust memoirs, it risks fuelling Holocaust revisionism and denial

Herd behavior in consumer inflation expectations - Evidence from the French household survey

URL des Documents de travail : http://centredeconomiesorbonne.univ-paris1.fr/bandeau-haut/documents-de-travail/Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 2013.54 - ISSN : 1955-611XThis article investigates whether the formation of individual inflation expectations is biased towards a consensus and is thus subject to some kind of herding behavior. Basing on the traditional Carlson-Parkin approach to quantify qualitative survey expectations and its extension by Kaiser and Spitz (2002) in an ordered probit context, a method to gain individual level inflation expectations is proposed using a Markov chain Monte Carlo Hierarchical Bayesian estimation method. This method is applied to micro survey data about inflation expectations of households from the monthly French household survey "Enquête mensuelle de conjoncture auprès des ménages - ECAMME" (January 2004 to December 2012). Finally a non-parametric test for herding behavior (Bernardt et al., 2006) is conducted on the cohort-level expectation estimates, showing that the expectation formation is not subject to a bias towards the expectation consensus. In constrast, it exhibits a strong anti-herding tendency which is consistent with the findings of other studies (Rülke and Tillmann, 2011).Cet article étudie si la formation des anticipations individuelles d'inflation est biaisée vers un consensus et est donc soumise à une sorte de comportement grégaire. Se fondant sur l'extension de l'approche traditionnelle de Carlson-Parkin par Kaiser et Spitz (2002) dans le cadre d'un modèle probit ordonnée pour quantifier des enquêtes qualitatives, une méthode d'estimation bayésienne hiérarchique MCMC est proposée pour gagner les anticipations d'inflation au niveau individuel/ de la cohorte. Cette méthode est appliquée aux données micro sur les anticipations d'inflation des ménages de l'"Enquête Mensuelle de Conjoncture auprès des ménages - ECAMME" (Janvier 2004 - Décembre 2012). Enfin un test non paramétrique (Bernardt et al., 2006) pour identifier le comportement grégaire est effectué sur les estimations des anticipations au niveau de la cohorte, montrant que la formation des anticipations n'est pas sujette à un biais vers le consensus. En revanche, on constate une forte tendance anti-grégaire qui est cohérente avec des résultats d'autres études (Rülke et Tillmann, 2011)

The cost of convenience the extent of the reasonable expectation of privacy in the internet age

The thesis will conclude by identifying issues that courts and legislatures will have to address in the coming years to adequately deliver justice in a dynamic society that is prone to powerful technological change.; Though the Internet and social media are fairly recent developments, the legal principles and issues embodied in them are well-represented in the Constitution. Take, for example, the freedom of expression enumerated in the First Amendment. Though traditionally in print, pamphlets, and film, recent developments in technology such as Facebook and blogs have become the new standard forms of communication. Like the physical mediums that arose before them, issues arise of what limits, if any, should be placed on the speech. Given the guise of anonymity, people on the Internet have less accountability in the comments they make, which has led to things ranging from passionate political speech to what is known as cyber-bullying, which is online harassment that has led people to suicide. This thesis, however, will primarily focus on the Fourth Amendment\u27s reasonable expectation of privacy. Because the information involved with the Internet and social media is digital, it is more difficult to identify when privacy has been breached. With a paper envelope, for example, one can tell if the seal was broken and the contents were potentially disclosed to an unwanted party. Electronically, however, no such seal exists to notify the sender or recipient of a communication. Furthermore, the Government has found itself under stricter scrutiny for searches with these new developments in technology; the lack of physical intrusion poses difficult questions for courts that must decide how far a reasonable expectation of privacy goes in the social media age. The thesis will also address how private companies obtain and use individuals\u27 information through the services they provide and the issues that arise from them. Private companies have fewer restrictions than the Government, and both perspectives are important to keep in mind when trying to understand the policy implications rapid technological growth has brought about

A system for time-encoded non-linear spectroscopy and microscopy

Raman scattering can be applied to biological imaging to identify molecules in a sample without the need for adding labels. Raman microscopy can be used to visualize functional areas at the cellular level by means of a molecular contrast and is thus a highly desired imaging tool to identify diseases in biomedical imaging. The underlying Raman scattering effect is an optical inelastic scattering effect, where energy is transferred to molecular excitations. Molecules can be identified by monitoring this energy loss of the pump light, which corresponds to a vibrational or rotational energy of the scattering molecule. With Raman scattering, the molecules can be identified by their specific vibrational energies and even quantified due to the signal height. This technique has been known for almost a century and finds vast applications from biology to medicine and from chemistry to homeland security. A problem is the weak effect, where usually only one in a billion photons are scattered. Non-linear enhancement techniques can improve the signal by many orders of magnitude. This can be especially important for fast biomedical imaging of highly scattering media and for high resolution spectroscopy, surpassing the resolution of usual spectrometers. In this thesis a new system for stimulated Raman spectroscopy (SRS) and hyperspectral Raman microscopy with a rapidly wavelength swept laser is presented. A time-encoded (TICO) technique was developed that enables direct encoding of the Raman transition energy in time and direct detection of the intensity change on the Stokes laser by employing fast analogue-to-digital converter (ADC) cards (1.8 Gigasamples/s). Therefore, a homebuilt pump laser was developed based on a fiber-based master oscillator power amplifier (MOPA) at 1064 nm and extended by a Raman shifter that can shift the output wavelength to 1122 nm or 1186 nm. This is achieved by seeding the Raman amplification in the fiber with a narrowband 1122 nm laser diode. Surprisingly, this also leads to narrowband (0.4 cm-1) cascaded Raman shifts at 1186 nm and 1257 nm, which is in contrast to the usually broadband spontaneous Raman transition in fused silica. The underlying effect was examined and therefore concluded that it is most probably due to a combined four-wave-mixing and cascaded Raman scattering mechanism. Experimentally, the narrowband cascaded Raman line was used to record a high-resolution TICO-Raman spectrum of benzene. As Raman Stokes laser, a rapidly wavelength swept Fourier domain mode-locked (FDML) laser was employed which provides many advantages for SRS. The most important advantages of this fiber based laser are that it enables coverage of the whole range of relevant Raman energies from 250 cm-1 up to 3150 cm-1, while being a continuous wave (CW) laser, which at the same time allows high resolution (0.5 cm-1) spectroscopy. Further, it enables a new dual stage balanced detection which permits shot noise limited SRS measurements and, due to the well-defined wavelength sweep, the TICO-Raman technique directly provides high-quality Raman spectra with accurate Raman transition energy calibration. This setup was used for different applications, including Raman spectroscopy and non-linear microscopy. As results, broadband Raman spectra are presented and compared to a state-of-the-art spontaneous Raman spectrum. Furthermore, several spectroscopic features are explored. For first imaging results, samples were raster scanned with a translational stage and at each pixel a TICO-Raman spectrum acquired. This led to a hyperspectral Raman image which was transformed into a color-coded image with molecular contrast. Biological imaging of a plant stem is presented. The setup further allowed performing multi-photon absorption imaging by two-photon excited fluorescence (TPEF). In summary, this thesis presents the design, development and preliminary testing of a new and promising platform for spectroscopy and non-linear imaging. This setup holds the capability of biological multi-modal imaging, including modalities like optical coherence tomography (OCT), absorption spectroscopy, SRS, TPEF, second harmonic generation (SHG), third-harmonic generation (THG) and fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIM). Amongst the most promising characteristics of this setup is the fiber-based design, paving the way for an endoscopic imaging setup. Already now, this makes it a robust, alignment-free, reliable and easy-to-use system.Ramanstreuung kann in der biomedizinischen Bildgebung dazu eingesetzt werden, Moleküle in einer Probe zu identifizieren, ohne dass die Probe vorher aufbereitet werden muss. Raman Mikroskopie kann funktionelle Bereiche sichtbar machen, indem es einen molekularen Kontrast auf Größenordnungen der Zellen bereitstellt und wird damit hochinteressant für die Krankheitserkennung in biomedizinischer Bildgebung. Der zugrundeliegende Raman Streuprozess ist ein optisch-inelastischer Streuungsmechanismus der die Detektion von Molekülschwingungen ermöglicht. Dabei wird das gestreute Licht detektiert und die Energiedifferenz zum Anregungslicht entspricht der molekularen Schwingungsenergie. Durch diese molekülspezifischen Schwingungsenergien ist es möglich, die Moleküle zu identifizieren und weiterhin durch die Signalhöhe zu quantifizieren. Diese Technik ist seit nunmehr beinahe einem Jahrhundert bekannt und findet breite Anwendung in Gebieten wie der Biologie, Chemie und der Medizin. Das Problem der Ramanstreuung ist die geringe Signalstärke des Effekts, wobei normalerweise nur eines von einer Milliarde Photonen gestreut wird. Es ist jedoch möglich, diesen Effekt durch nichtlineare Techniken um einige Größenordnungen zu verstärken. Dies wird besonders relevant beim Einsatz in der biomedizinischen Bildgebung von hochstreuendem Gewebe und bei hochauflösender Spektroskopie, wo gewöhnliche, gitterbasierte Spektrometer an ihre Grenzen stoßen. In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird ein neues System zur stimulierten Ramanstreuung (SRS) und hyperspektralen Ramanmikroskopie mittels eines schnell wellenlängenabstimmbaren Lasers vorgestellt. Hierfür wurde eine neue, zeitkodierte (TICO) Technik entwickelt, die es ermöglicht, die abgefragte Raman-Schwingungsenergie in der Zeit zu kodieren und weiter die durch SRS auftretende Leistungssteigerung direkt in der Zeitdomäne aufzunehmen, indem sehr schnelle Analog-zu-Digital-Wandler (ADC) mit 1.8 Gigasamples/s eingesetzt werden. Der hierfür entwickelte Pumplaser ist ein faserbasierter Masteroszillator Leistungsverstärker (MOPA) mit integriertem Ramanwandler, der einen Betrieb bei 1064 nm, 1122 nm oder 1186 nm ermöglicht. Diese Mehrwellenlängenfähigkeit basiert auf dem Ramaneffekt in der Glasfaser, der durch ein Keimlicht einer 1122 nm Laserdiode stimuliert wird. Überraschenderweise wurde dadurch ebenfalls ein schmalbandiger Betrieb (0,4 cm-1) der kaskadierten Ramanbanden bei 1186 nm und 1257 nm beobachtet, was zunächst der erwarteten breitbandigen Ramanbande von Glas widerspricht. Diese Ergebnisse wurden untersucht und es wird ein Modell vorgeschlagen, wonach der gefundene Effekt auf einer Kombination von Vier-Wellen-Mischen und kaskadierter Ramanstreuung beruht. Das schmalbandige kaskadierte Ramanlicht bei 1186 nm wurde im Experiment für hochauflösende Ramanspektroskopie von Benzol benutzt. Als Raman Stokeslaser wurde ein schnell wellenlängenabstimmbarer Fourierdomänen modengekoppelter (FDML) Laser benutzt, der einige Vorteile kombiniert. Als wichtigste Vorteile dieses faserbasierten Lasers sind die breite Abdeckung relevanter Ramanenergien, die sich von möglichen 250 cm-1 bis 3150 cm-1 erstreckt, die gleichzeitig hohe spektrale Auflösung (0.5 cm-1), und der für biologische Bildgebung interessante Dauerstrich-Betrieb (CW) zu nennen. Weiterhin wurde eine neue, zweistufig balanzierte Detektion entwickelt, die SRS Messungen an der Schrotrauschgrenze ermöglichen. Die wohldefinierte Wellenlängen-zu-Zeit Beziehung dieses Lasers wurde darüber hinaus dafür benutzt, den TICO-Raman Spektren direkt Ramanenergien zuzuweisen. Dadurch wurden hochqualitative Ramanspektren mit akkurater Wellenzahlinformation möglich. Das entwickelte System wurde für Anwendungen in der Raman Spektroskopie und nicht-linearen Bildgebung eingesetzt. Als Ergebnisse werden breitbandig abgetastete Ramanspektren präsentiert, die mit spontanen Raman Spektren verglichen werden. Weitere, neue spektrale Anwendungen wurden untersucht und erste Mikroskopiebilder erzeugt. Hierfür wurde die Probe mittels eines Verschiebetisches verfahren und an jedem Pixel ein TICO-Raman Spektrum aufgenommen. Die so erzeugten hyperspektralen Raman Mikroskopiebilder wurden in farbig kodierte Bilder mit molekularem Kontrast umgewandelt. Es wird eine TICO-Raman Mikroskopieaufnahme von einem Pflanzenschnitt präsentiert. Das System erlaubt es ferner, durch den Einsatz des hochintensiven Pumplasers Bilder mit Mehrphotonenabsorption zu messen, indem zweiphotonenangeregte Fluoreszenzbildgebung (TPEF) angewandt wird. Zusammenfassend wird in dieser Arbeit die Entwicklung eines neuen Systems der Spektroskopie und nichtlinearen Bildgebung beschrieben und erste Messergebnisse präsentiert. Mit diesem System wird es möglich sein, viele verschiedene Bildgebungsverfahren zu verbinden. Darunter unter anderem Bildgebungsverfahren wie die optische Kohärenztomographie (OCT), Absorptionsspektroskopie, SRS, TPEF, Frequenzverdopplung (SHG) und Frequenzverdreifachung (THG) und Fluoreszenzlebenszeitmikroskopie (FLIM). Der wohl vielversprechendste Vorteil dieses Systems liegt in dem faserbasierten Design, welches es ermöglichen kann dieses System zukünftig zur endoskopischen Bildgebung einzusetzen. Bereits jetzt ergibt dieser faserbasierte Aufbau ein sehr robustes System, das verlässlich, justagefrei und einfach zu bedienen ist

Listen! The human voice as a neglected psycho-social research topic and resource

There is an excellent fit between the speaking voice and the psychosocial approach, in that the voice connects inner and outer worlds while simultaneously challenging such a division. It remains, however, relatively neglected, both as a psychosocial research resource and as a topic for the psychosocial researcher. This article argues that, while researchers are developing increasingly sophisticated ways of harnessing visual research methods, the oral dimension remains marginalised, with voice almost invariably collapsed into speech. Despite the methodological challenges created by using the voice as a psychosocial research tool, attention to the paralinguistic has the potential to enrich research and deepen our psychosocial understanding of human behaviour

Beyond the consulting room: Winnicott the broadcaster

Chapter based on research in the BBC Written Archives on the psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott's BBC broadcasts in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960

Speaking sex to power? The female voice as a dangerous instrument

This paper charts some of the taboos and prejudices surrounding the female voice and asks why it is so often the site of anxiety. It suggests that women's voices are commonly identified with the pre-verbal and the body; that in most cultures they connote sexual power and treachery and hence need to be policed. It also argues that the association of the female voice with the maternal voice plays a key role in heightening the anxiety produced by the speaking woman. After examining a number of responses to this problematised female voice - historical, cultural and individual - it ends by considering some ways in which contemporary female speakers and performers are challenging the norms and conventions that have characterised female vocality