From Public Service to Public Interest and Beyond in British Broadcasting Regulation

This article will focus on the evolving rationale for broadcasting regulation and understandings of the national interest in the UK, deconstructing the ongoing reconfiguration of the terms ‘public service’ and ‘public interest’, as well as ‘public control’ and ‘public value’, within regulatory documents, to argue that there has been an increasing marginalisation and reconstruction of the notion of ‘public service’ in favour of an approach that privileges competition above all else.A partir de l’analyse des textes réglementaires, cet article explore l’évolution des logiques qui ont façonné le cadre régulateur qui a régi le secteur de l’audiovisuel britannique. L’intérêt sera ainsi d’identifier les manières dont le concept d’intérêt national a pu être appréhendé. Il s’agira également d’étudier la reconfiguration actuelle des concepts de « régulation publique » et de « valeur publique », afin de démontrer comment la notion de ‘service public’ a été sans cesse reconstruite avant d’être de plus en plus marginalisée, pour laisser la place à une approche qui par-dessus tout, privilégie la concurrence

Video introduction to issue 8

This video introduces the thematic contributions on ‘Neoliberalism in the Anglophone world’.La vidéo présente les contributions thématiques sur « Le néolibéralisme dans le monde »

Deep learning cardiac motion analysis for human survival prediction

Motion analysis is used in computer vision to understand the behaviour of moving objects in sequences of images. Optimising the interpretation of dynamic biological systems requires accurate and precise motion tracking as well as efficient representations of high-dimensional motion trajectories so that these can be used for prediction tasks. Here we use image sequences of the heart, acquired using cardiac magnetic resonance imaging, to create time-resolved three-dimensional segmentations using a fully convolutional network trained on anatomical shape priors. This dense motion model formed the input to a supervised denoising autoencoder (4Dsurvival), which is a hybrid network consisting of an autoencoder that learns a task-specific latent code representation trained on observed outcome data, yielding a latent representation optimised for survival prediction. To handle right-censored survival outcomes, our network used a Cox partial likelihood loss function. In a study of 302 patients the predictive accuracy (quantified by Harrell's C-index) was significantly higher (p < .0001) for our model C=0.73 (95$\%$ CI: 0.68 - 0.78) than the human benchmark of C=0.59 (95$\%$ CI: 0.53 - 0.65). This work demonstrates how a complex computer vision task using high-dimensional medical image data can efficiently predict human survival

Within and between-day variation and associations of symptoms in Long Covid: intensive longitudinal study

Background: People with Long Covid (Post Covid-19 Condition) describe multiple symptoms which vary between and within individuals over relatively short time intervals. We aimed to describe the real-time associations between different symptoms and between symptoms and physical activity at the individual patient level. Methods and findings: Intensive longitudinal study of 82 adults with self-reported Long Covid (median duration 12–18 months). Data collection involved a smartphone app with 5 daily entries over 14 days and continuous wearing of a wrist accelerometer. Data items included 7 symptoms (Visual Analog Scales) and perceived demands in the preceding period (Likert scales). Activity was measured using mean acceleration in the 3-hour periods preceding and following app data entry. Analysis used within-person correlations of symptoms pairs and both pooled and individual symptom networks derived from graphical vector autoregression. App data was suitable for analysis from 74 participants (90%) comprising 4022 entries representing 77.6% of possible entries. Symptoms varied substantially within individuals and were only weakly autocorrelated. The strongest between-subject symptom correlations were of fatigue with pain (partial coefficient 0.5) and cognitive difficulty with light-headedness (0.41). Pooled within-subject correlations showed fatigue correlated with cognitive difficulty (partial coefficient 0.2) pain (0.19) breathlessness (0.15) and light-headedness (0.12) but not anxiety. Cognitive difficulty was correlated with anxiety and light-headedness (partial coefficients 0.16 and 0.17). Individual participant correlation heatmaps and symptom networks showed no clear patterns indicative of distinct phenotypes. Symptoms, including fatigue, were inconsistently correlated with prior or subsequent physical activity: this may reflect adjustment of activity in response to symptoms. Delayed worsening of symptoms after the highest activity peak was observed in 7 participants. Conclusion: Symptoms of Long Covid vary within individuals over short time scales, with heterogenous patterns of symptom correlation. The findings are compatible with altered central symptom processing as an additional factor in Long Covid

Transformative Images, Temporality and Infra-structures of Feeling: An Interview with Rebecca Coleman

In this follow-up interview to her keynote lecture at the MeCCSA-PGN 2015 Conference in Coventry, Rebecca Coleman discusses the affective relations between bodies, images and environments. Coleman offers an overview of her work on images and the body, as well as her interest in theorising the present and the future, and explains her engagement with feminism, new materialism and Deleuze, in particular. To understand how bodies ‘become’, she argues for the need to understand both process, transformation and change, and what stays, sticks or gets stopped

Quantum spiral bandwidth of entangled two-photon states

We put forward the concept of quantum spiral bandwidth of the spatial mode function of the two-photon entangled state in spontaneous parametric downconversion. We obtain the bandwidth using the eigenstates of the orbital angular momentum of the biphoton states, and reveal its dependence with the length of the down converting crystal and waist of the pump beam. The connection between the quantum spiral bandwidth and the entropy of entanglement of the quantum state is discussed.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure

Argumentation in school science : Breaking the tradition of authoritative exposition through a pedagogy that promotes discussion and reasoning

The value of argumentation in science education has become internationally recognised and has been the subject of many research studies in recent years. Successful introduction of argumentation activities in learning contexts involves extending teaching goals beyond the understanding of facts and concepts, to include an emphasis on cognitive and metacognitive processes, epistemic criteria and reasoning. The authors focus on the difficulties inherent in shifting a tradition of teaching from one dominated by authoritative exposition to one that is more dialogic, involving small-group discussion based on tasks that stimulate argumentation. The paper builds on previous research on enhancing the quality of argument in school science, to focus on how argumentation activities have been designed, with appropriate strategies, resources and modelling, for pedagogical purposes. The paper analyses design frameworks, their contexts and lesson plans, to evaluate their potential for enhancing reasoning through foregrounding the processes of argumentation. Examples of classroom dialogue where teachers adopt the frameworks/plans are analysed to show how argumentation processes are scaffolded. The analysis shows that several layers of interpretation are needed and these layers need to be aligned for successful implementation. The analysis serves to highlight the potential and limitations of the design frameworks

Applying laboratory thermal desorption data in an interstellar context: sublimation of methanol thin films

Methods by which experimental measurements of thermal desorption can be applied in astrophysical environments have been developed, using the sublimation of solid methanol as an example. The temperature programmed desorption of methanol from graphitic, amorphous silica and polycrystalline gold substrates was compared, with the kinetic parameters of desorption extracted by either a leading edge analysis or by fitting using a stochastic integration method. At low coverages, the desorption shows a substrate-dependent fractional order. However, at higher coverages methanol desorption is zeroth order with kinetic parameters independent of substrate. Using a kinetic model based on the stochastic integration analyses, desorption under astrophysically relevant conditions can be simulated. We find that the chemical and morphological nature of the substrate has relatively little impact on the desorption temperature of solid methanol, and that the substrate independent zeroth-order kinetics can provide a satisfactory model for desorption in astrophysical environments. Uncertainties in the heating rate and the distribution of grain sizes will have the largest influence on the range of desorption temperature. These conclusions are likely to be generally applicable to all species in dust grain ice mantles

The Hope and Adaptation Scale (HAS): establishing face and content validity

Purpose: To develop and test the face and content validity of a scale that assesses an individual’s adaptation and expression of hope to a life changing events, disease or trauma. Method: The Hope and Adaptation Scale was developed and tested across three stages. Stage 1 involved the use of a review of literature to conceptually map the tool. Stage 2 required exploratory investigations of the questionnaire by members of an expert panel. Stage 3 assessed the construct validity of the resulting scale. Results: Through the processes of Stage 1 and 2, the tool was developed and reduced to a 3-item scale that assessed a spectrum of hope-related responses and a spectrum of adaptation-related responses. Stage 3 identified fifteen independent health care professionals who assessed the scale. The content validity index of the resultant scale was 0.6 that was above the required level to be acceptable. The hope spectrum responses scored the highest content validity ratio (0.73). Discussion: The proposed scale appears to have face and content validity for application to a various number of events, disease or trauma experiences. Further testing of the scale is required for application in specific population groups