The attitudinal work of news journalism images – a search for visual and verbal analogues

This paper is concerned with the potential of journalistic still images (photographs, pictorial layouts, artwork and political cartooning) to position readers/viewers to take a positive or negative view of the people, events and situations which are the subject matter of news journalism coverage. Referencing prior work by Economou (2009) and Swain (2012), it offers an account of the mechanisms, the particular visual qualities and compositional arrangements, by which such attitudinal effects are achieved. Its primary concern is exploring the grounds by which the mechanisms through which journalistic images activate positive or negative attitudes might be treated as analogous to related verbal expressions of attitude. In developing this discussion, it references and revisits the account of the language of evaluation developed within the Appraisal literature (Martin and White 2005). It proposes that in order to identify analogues to verbal expressions which, on the one hand, explicitly assert attitudinal assessments and which, on the other hand, activate attitudinal positions through implication and association, it is useful to attend to the following issues: (1) the salience or detectability of the author’s subjective presence in the text as the communicative agent who puts an attitudinal meaning into play; (2) the stability of the attitudinal associations of a given expression across multiple contexts of use; (3) the role of the reader in supplying attitudinal interpretations or inferences; (4) the terms under which relations of author-reader solidarity are negotiated or put at risk but the expression currently under consideration

Attitudinal Meanings, Translational Commensurability and Linguistic Relativity

The paper explores how insights developed within the Appraisal framework (Martin and White) into attitudinal meanings can contribute to some key, long-standing debates within translation studies and contrastive linguistics. It proposes that taxonomies developed within Appraisal for categorising diff erent types of positive and negative assessment provide a useful reference point for exploring how principled accounts of translational commensurability and incommensurability might be developed. Specifi cally, some methodologies are discussed for developing comparative maps of the systems of attitudinal valeur which operate in diff erent languages. Some implications for Appraisal theory itself resulting from the exploration of these cross-linguistic comparison issues are discussed. It is proposed that the taxonomies already formulated within the Appraisal literature to deal with attitudinal meaning may need to be extended in delicacy, if they are to be maximally useful in dealing with such issues.Este ensayo expone de qué manera puede el sistema de la Valoración (Martin and White) contribuir a los estudios de traducción y de lingüística contrastiva. Las taxonomías desarrolladas dentro de la Valoración en la categorización de los diferentes tipos de valor positivo o negativo ofrecen un punto de referencia importante para el estudio de los principios de la traducción. Se discuten de manera específi ca algunas metodologías para desarrollar mapas comparativos de los sistemas de valor actitudinal que operan en lenguas diferentes, con las consiguiente implicaciones para la teoría de la Valoración. Se sugiere además que las taxonomías ya establecidas dentro del sistema de la Valoración en el área de los signifi cados actitudinales deben de modifi carse para poder ser aplicadas con efi cacia en la comparación interlingüístic

Cosmological parameters from SDSS and WMAP

We measure cosmological parameters using the three-dimensional power spectrum P(k) from over 200,000 galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) in combination with WMAP and other data. Our results are consistent with a ``vanilla'' flat adiabatic Lambda-CDM model without tilt (n=1), running tilt, tensor modes or massive neutrinos. Adding SDSS information more than halves the WMAP-only error bars on some parameters, tightening 1 sigma constraints on the Hubble parameter from h~0.74+0.18-0.07 to h~0.70+0.04-0.03, on the matter density from Omega_m~0.25+/-0.10 to Omega_m~0.30+/-0.04 (1 sigma) and on neutrino masses from <11 eV to <0.6 eV (95%). SDSS helps even more when dropping prior assumptions about curvature, neutrinos, tensor modes and the equation of state. Our results are in substantial agreement with the joint analysis of WMAP and the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey, which is an impressive consistency check with independent redshift survey data and analysis techniques. In this paper, we place particular emphasis on clarifying the physical origin of the constraints, i.e., what we do and do not know when using different data sets and prior assumptions. For instance, dropping the assumption that space is perfectly flat, the WMAP-only constraint on the measured age of the Universe tightens from t0~16.3+2.3-1.8 Gyr to t0~14.1+1.0-0.9 Gyr by adding SDSS and SN Ia data. Including tensors, running tilt, neutrino mass and equation of state in the list of free parameters, many constraints are still quite weak, but future cosmological measurements from SDSS and other sources should allow these to be substantially tightened.Comment: Minor revisions to match accepted PRD version. SDSS data and ppt figures available at http://www.hep.upenn.edu/~max/sdsspars.htm

Detectable clonal mosaicism and its relationship to aging and cancer

In an analysis of 31,717 cancer cases and 26,136 cancer-free controls from 13 genome-wide association studies, we observed large chromosomal abnormalities in a subset of clones in DNA obtained from blood or buccal samples. We observed mosaic abnormalities, either aneuploidy or copy-neutral loss of heterozygosity, of >2 Mb in size in autosomes of 517 individuals (0.89%), with abnormal cell proportions of between 7% and 95%. In cancer-free individuals, frequency increased with age, from 0.23% under 50 years to 1.91% between 75 and 79 years (P = 4.8 × 10(-8)). Mosaic abnormalities were more frequent in individuals with solid tumors (0.97% versus 0.74% in cancer-free individuals; odds ratio (OR) = 1.25; P = 0.016), with stronger association with cases who had DNA collected before diagnosis or treatment (OR = 1.45; P = 0.0005). Detectable mosaicism was also more common in individuals for whom DNA was collected at least 1 year before diagnosis with leukemia compared to cancer-free individuals (OR = 35.4; P = 3.8 × 10(-11)). These findings underscore the time-dependent nature of somatic events in the etiology of cancer and potentially other late-onset diseases

Female chromosome X mosaicism is age-related and preferentially affects the inactivated X chromosome

To investigate large structural clonal mosaicism of chromosome X, we analysed the SNP microarray intensity data of 38,303 women from cancer genome-wide association studies (20,878 cases and 17,425 controls) and detected 124 mosaic X events42Mb in 97 (0.25%) women. Here we show rates for X-chromosome mosaicism are four times higher than mean autosomal rates; X mosaic events more often include the entire chromosome and participants with X events more likely harbour autosomal mosaic events. X mosaicism frequency increases with age (0.11% in 50-year olds; 0.45% in 75-year olds), as reported for Y and autosomes. Methylation array analyses of 33 women with X mosaicism indicate events preferentially involve the inactive X chromosome. Our results provide further evidence that the sex chromosomes undergo mosaic events more frequently than autosomes, which could have implications for understanding the underlying mechanisms of mosaic events and their possible contribution to risk for chronic diseases