8,856 research outputs found
Structuring Knowledge of Subcultural Folk Devils through News Coverage: Social Cognition, Semiotics, and Political Economy
"The folk devil concept has been well used in subcultural studies, yet its importance might be better
served by distinguishing among multiple conceptual frames through which it is articulated. In this
article, I clarify how folk devils are made possible through the interaction of three concepts used by
sociologists to study everyday life. The fi rst is the process of social cognition, where producers and
consumers of news construct and propagate a shared defi nition of who subcultural youths are and why
they should be the object of fear. The second are the semiotic structures of genre and narrative, which
narrow the interpretive process of producers and receivers alike and sustain discourses that limit how
subcultural youths can be understood in the news. The third has to do with political economy, where
the ideological features of mass mediated news-making keep the news industry in relative control
of meaning making. Social cognition, semiotics, and the political economy dialectically produce the
phenomenon of the subcultural folk devil and support its objective eff ects. I review several studies
of market and state-controlled media societies and note that, in both types, the objective eff ects on
youths are similar and signifi cant. In studying how subcultural youths are framed in the media output
of transitional states and societies, the conceptual value of social cognition, semiotics, and political
economy should be recognised." (author's abstract
Optical BVRI Photometry of Common Proper Motion F/G/K+M Wide Separation Binaries
We present optical (BVRI) photometric measurements of a sample of 76 common
proper motion wide separation main sequence binary pairs. The pairs are
composed of a F-, G-, or K-type primary star and an M-type secondary. The
sample is selected from the revised NLTT catalog and the LSPM catalog. The
photometry is generally precise to 0.03 mag in all bands. We separate our
sample into two groups, dwarf candidates and subdwarf candidates, using the
reduced proper motion (RPM) diagram constructed with our improved photometry.
The M subdwarf candidates in general have larger colors than the M dwarf
candidates at a given color. This is consistent with an average
metallicity difference between the two groups, as predicted by the
PHOENIX/BT-Settl models. The improved photometry will be used as input into a
technique to determine the metallicities of the M-type stars.Comment: 26 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in A
ANALYSIS OF MARKETING MARGINS IN THE U.S. LAMB INDUSTRY
Factors affecting marketing margins were identified and assessed using a relative price spread technique. Margins were disaggregated into slaughter-to-wholesale and wholesale-to-retail for a more complete understanding. Marketing costs, concentration, demand, and price were used to explain variations within these margins. Results showed that packer concentration had a significant effect on margins. Forces of supply and demand (as represented by production and market price) and changes in marketing costs also explained the variation in margins. A higher degree of price transmission from slaughter-to-wholesale level was observed in comparison to the wholesale-to-retail level.Marketing,
Impact of stout-link smearing in lattice fermion actions
The impact of stout-link smearing in lattice fermion actions is examined
through the consideration of the mass and renormalization functions of the
overlap quark propagator over a variety of smeared configurations. Up to six
sweeps of stout-link smearing are investigated. For heavy quark masses, the
quark propagator is strongly affected by the smearing procedure. For moderate
masses, the effect appears to be negligible. A small effect is seen for light
quark masses, where dynamical mass generation is suppressed through the
smearing procedure.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, presented at the XXVII International Symposium on
Lattice Field Theory - LAT2009, July 26-31 2009, Peking University, Beijing,
Chin
Stout-link smearing in lattice fermion actions
The properties of the momentum space quark propagator in Landau gauge are
studied for the overlap quark action in quenched lattice QCD. Numerical
calculations are performed over four ensembles of gauge configurations, where
three are smeared using either 1, 3, or 6 sweeps of stout-link smearing. We
calculate the non-perturbative wave function renormalization function
and the non-perturbative mass function for a variety of bare quark
masses. We find that the wave-function renormalization function is slightly
sensitive to the number of stout-link smearing sweeps. For the mass function we
find the effect of the stout-link smearing algorithm to be small for moderate
to light bare quark masses. For a heavy bare quark mass we find a strong
dependence on the number of smearing sweeps.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure
An Economic Comparison of Composted Manure and Commercial Nitrogen with Imperfect Information
The economic feasibility of fertilizing irrigated grain sorghum with compos ted manure is evaluated using net return budgeting and production function analysis. Although the use of compost is technically feasible, the economic analysis indicates that compost does not comprise a large percentage of the nitrogen source in the profit-maximizing combination with commercial fertilizer.Composted manure, commercial nitrogen, net returns budgeting, production function analysis, irrigated grain sorghum, Crop Production/Industries,
Identification of structure in condensed matter with the topological cluster classification
We describe the topological cluster classification (TCC) algorithm. The TCC
detects local structures with bond topologies similar to isolated clusters
which minimise the potential energy for a number of monatomic and binary simple
liquids with particles. We detail a modified Voronoi bond detection
method that optimizes the cluster detection. The method to identify each
cluster is outlined, and a test example of Lennard-Jones liquid and crystal
phases is considered and critically examined.Comment: 28 pages, 28 figure
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