The paradox of culture in a globalized world

Much of the work in intercultural communication studies in the past decade, especially in the field of applied linguistics, has been devoted to ‘disinventing’ the notion of culture. The problem with the word ‘culture’ as it has been used in anthropology, sociology, and in everyday life, it has been pointed out, is that it is used as a noun, conceived of as something ‘solid,’ an essential set of traits or characteristics of certain people or groups, something people ‘have’ rather than something they ‘do’ (Scollon, Scollon, & Jones, 2012). Among the most famous statements of this position is Brain Street’s classic paper ‘Culture is a Verb’ (1993), in which he argues that culture should be treated as ‘a signifying process the active construction of meaning rather than the static and reified or nominalizing’ sense in which the word is often used in anthropology, some linguistics circles, and in everyday conversation.

Randomized control trials in an imperfect world

Randomized control trials (RCTs) have become increasingly important as an evidence-based method to evaluate interventions such as government programs and policy initiatives. Frequently, however, RCTs are characterized by ``imperfect compliance'' in that not all the subjects who are randomly assigned to take a treatment choose to do so. This could result in a failure to identify the treatment effect, or the impact of the treatment on the the population. However, useful information on treatment effectiveness can still be recovered by estimating ``bounds'' or a range of values in which treatment effectiveness can lie.

A moving observer in a three-dimensional world

For many tasks, such as retrieving a previously viewed object, an observer must form a representation of the world at one location and use it at another. A world-based 3D reconstruction of the scene built up from visual information would fulfil this requirement, something computer vision now achieves with great speed and accuracy. However, I argue that it is neither easy nor necessary for the brain to do this. I discuss biologically plausible alternatives, including the possibility of avoiding 3D coordinate frames such as ego-centric and world-based representations. For example, the distance, slant and local shape of surfaces dictate the propensity of visual features to move in the image with respect to one another as the observer’s perspective changes (through movement or binocular viewing). Such propensities can be stored without the need for 3D reference frames. The problem of representing a stable scene in the face of continual head and eye movements is an appropriate starting place for understanding the goal of 3D vision, more so, I argue, than the case of a static binocular observer.

The virtual world of exercises and deterrence

Miliary Exercises, Command Post Exercises and War Games serve to test procedures, but in some forms also serve to signal ability to defend against aggression, or to intimidate neighbours with the threat of aggression. Some indicators suggest that the solidarity of NATO and the EU is decreasing, and with it a plausible nuclear deterrence posture. This article discusses whether recent exercises and TV war games make matters better or worse.

Pasolini and Third World hunger: an approach to Cinema Novo through 'La ricotta'

Among the links between Pier Paolo Pasolini and Brazilian Cinema Novo, one of the most inspiring is the political approach to hunger and consumption. In this text, I analyse this topic to look at how some of the aesthetic ideas in Pasolini’s La ricotta (1963) can also be found in some of the most important films of Cinema Novo. In 'La ricotta' (1963), the irresistible need to eat of a subproletarian interacts and clashes with his responsibilities as an actor in a movie version of the Passion of Christ, so that the film creates a complex network of relations between film shooting, social differences, art, hunger, consumption, time and light, which turns the film set into a space for displaying political relations, differences, exploitation and revolution. The correspondences between these concepts and some aggression techniques of Cinema Novo are numerous and confirm the capacity of Pasolini’s film to project ideas on cinema and politics beyond its particular production context.

Elevation-dependent warming in mountain regions of the world

There is growing evidence that the rate of warming is amplified with elevation, such that high-mountain environments experience more rapid changes in temperature than environments at lower elevations. Elevation-dependent warming (EDW) can accelerate the rate of change in mountain ecosystems, cryospheric systems, hydrological regimes and biodiversity. Here we review important mechanisms that contribute towards EDW: snow albedo and surface-based feedbacks; water vapour changes and latent heat release; surface water vapour and radiative flux changes; surface heat loss and temperature change; and aerosols. All lead to enhanced warming with elevation (or at a critical elevation), and it is believed that combinations of these mechanisms may account for contrasting regional patterns of EDW. We discuss future needs to increase knowledge of mountain temperature trends and their controlling mechanisms through improved observations, satellite-based remote sensing and model simulations.