The pragmatics of computer-mediated communication between South African and Mexican drug traffickers

South Africa and Mexico are ripe with drug trafficking. The gangs and syndicates running the drug businesses in these two countries collaborate occasionally. Communication between these international drug business partners takes place on social media. Their main language of communication is English, mixed with some limited use of Spanish and Afrikaans. The key purpose of the interactions between the South African and Mexican parties is the organisation of their business activities. This study aims at examining how the drug traffickers position each other and themselves regarding their common business interest and how their relationship evolves throughout their interactions. Moreover, it is of interest to look at how these people make use of different social media and their affordances. For this a qualitative analysis of the interaction between two drug traffickers (one South African and one Mexican) on Facebook, Threema and PlayStation 4 was performed. Computer-mediated communication between these two main informants was studied at various stages of their relationship. Results show that at first the interaction between the South African and Mexican drug traffickers consists of interpersonal negotiations of power. The high risk of the drug business and gang/syndicate membership paired with intercultural frictions causes the two interlocutors to be extremely cautious and at the same time to mark their position. As their relationship develops and they gain trust in each other a shift to interpersonal negotiations of solidarity takes place. In these discursive practices diverse linguistic strategies are employed for creating relational effects and for positioning the other and the self. The discursive activities of the interactants are also identity practices. Thus, the two drug traffickers construct identities through these social practices, positioning and their interpersonal relationship.

SUSYFLAVOR v2: A Computational tool for FCNC and CP-violating processes in the MSSM

We present SUSY_FLAVOR version 2 — a Fortran 77 program that calculates low-energy flavor observables in the general R-parity conserving MSSM. For a set of MSSM parameters as input, the code gives predictions for: 1. Electric dipole moments of the leptons and the neutron. 2. Anomalous magnetic moments (i.e. g − 2) of the leptons. 3. Radiative lepton decays (μ → eγ and τ → μγ , eγ ). 4. Rare Kaon decays (K0 L → π0 ¯νν and K+ → π+ ¯νν). 5. Leptonic B decays (Bs,d → l+l−, B → τ ν and B → Dτ ν). 6. Radiative B decays (B → ¯ Xsγ ). 7. ΔF = 2 processes ( ¯ K0–K0, ¯D–D, ¯Bd–Bd and ¯Bs–Bs mixing). Comparing to SUSY_FLAVOR v1, where the matching conditions were calculated strictly at one-loop level, SUSY_FLAVOR v2 performs the resummation of all chirally enhanced corrections, i.e. takes into account the enhanced effects from tan β and/or large trilinear soft mixing terms to all orders in perturbation theory. Also, in SUSY_FLAVOR v2 new routines calculation of B → (D)τ ν, g − 2, radiative lepton decays and Br(l → l′γ ) were added. All calculations are done using exact diagonalization of the sfermion mass matrices. The program can be obtained from http://www.fuw.edu.pl/susy_flavor.

Orientación espacial en las redes sociales en línea Facebook y Tuenti

El objetivo de investigación es cómo los usuarios de Facebook y Tuenti de la ciudad de Málaga utilizan los deícticos espaciales aquí, ahí y allí en dichas redes sociales en línea. En el centro de atención no está cómo o qué es el espacio sino cómo los hablantes interpretan el espacio mediante la lengua, en otras palabras, es la percepción del espacio lo que nos interesa. La Computer-mediated Communication (CMC) ‘comunicación mediada por ordenadores’ es un campo relativamente nuevo. Uno de los fenómenos más interesantes dentro de la comunicación mediada por ordenadores son las redes sociales en línea, que en pocos años se han convertido en un medio de comunicación muy difundido y en expansión continua. No sorprende por eso que la lengua y la comunicación misma se vean afectadas. La condición virtual es importante para comprender los nuevos medios electrónicos de comunicación. Se considera el espacio virtual como una realidad virtual, llena de imágenes, algunas de las cuales no existen sino en un formato electrónico, y otras son representaciones simbólicas del mundo físico, es decir, es un universo paralelo creado y sostenido por las líneas de comunicación y redes de ordenadores que se enlazan por medio de la infraestructura que da Internet. El espacio virtual es básicamente un espacio-sistema relacional. Su realidad se construye a través de la interacción y del intercambio de información; es espacio y es medio. Este carácter emergente del espacio virtual hace esencial vincularlo con aquello que determina su surgimiento: con la comunicación. El espacio virtual surge en y por la comunicación, de ahí su doble naturaleza de espacio y medio. Teniendo en cuenta lo anteriormente dicho, lo que nos interesa analizar es cómo funcionan los deícticos espaciales, en tanto rasgos orientativos de la lengua relativos al lugar del acto de habla. El estudio que presentamos se basa en un corpus elaborado a partir de enunciados de informantes en Facebook y Tuenti. Se ha efectuado un análisis cuantitativo mediante la herramienta AntConc y también un análisis cualitativo. A partir del corpus y su análisis se muestra que los deícticos pueden hacer referencia tanto al espacio real como al virtual, es decir, operan en varios niveles. Su percepción y la interrelación del espacio virtual y real son elementos esenciales que condicionan la orientación espacial en Facebook y Tuenti.

Next-to-Minimal SOFTSUSY

We describe an extension to the SOFTSUSY program that provides for the calculation of the sparticle spectrum in the Next-to-Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (NMSSM), where a chiral superfield that is a singlet of the Standard Model gauge group is added to the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) fields. Often, a Z3 symmetry is imposed upon the model. SOFTSUSY can calculate the spectrum in this case as well as the case where general Z3 violating (denoted as ) terms are added to the soft supersymmetry breaking terms and the superpotential. The user provides a theoretical boundary condition for the couplings and mass terms of the singlet. Radiative electroweak symmetry breaking data along with electroweak and CKM matrix data are used as weak-scale boundary conditions. The renormalisation group equations are solved numerically between the weak scale and a high energy scale using a nested iterative algorithm. This paper serves as a manual to the NMSSM mode of the program, detailing the approximations and conventions used.

“Facebook Style”: The Use of Emoticons and Graphic Signs by Users in the Cape Flats

Over the last few years Facebook has become a widespread and continuously expanding medium of communication in Africa and worldwide. Being a new medium of social interaction, Facebook produces its own communication style. It is a style conditioned by the medium and the community of users. My focus of analysis is how Facebook users from the city of Cape Town create this style by means of emoticons and other graphic signs in order to reflect the reality of living in Cape Town’s underprivileged areas. This study is based on a theoretical framework which combines sociolinguistics with Computer-Mediated-Communication to study the emergence of a style peculiar of the online social networks. In a corpus of Coloured Facebook users from the Cape Flats, I have analysed the emergence of emoticons and other graphic signs related to Capetonian gang culture and then tracked the spread of these features to the extensive use by users not related to gangs. It can be deduced that in this process the analysed features amplify their meaning and are employed in a much broader context as their original use. Due to the development and spread of these features we can consider the peculiar electronic communication of Facebook as a style constrained by the electronic medium and its users. It is a style which serves the users to create social meaning and to express their linguistic identities.

From the initial interest in ‘Why do people often communicate in very "strange" ways on Social Media?’ to a research project on CMC

This presentation is about the inside story of the PhD project El malagueño real, mental y virtual. Configuración de los significados sociales de una variedad urbana in Hispanic Linguistics. That is, the production and perception of the Spanish spoken in the city of Malaga and used on the social network sites Facebook and Tuenti by users from Malaga is analysed. Actually, the southern Spanish variety in question is quite distinct from the national standard in terms of its phonetic features, its prestige, and the attitudes to it. Thus, the project started with the initial interest in «Why do people often communicate in very “strange” ways on social media» which then slightly changed to the final research interest in «What do the different non-standard variants mean in virtual (and real) malagueño?». This long – sometimes hazardous, yet mostly fun – process is exposed in more detail by looking at the research questions, the methods and results. Lastly, the presentation concludes with some lessons learnt and an outlook on possibilities and necessities for further investigation.

Mutagenesis and computer modeling studies of a GPCR conserved residue W5.43(194) in ligand recognition and signal transduction for CB2 receptor

W5.43(194), a conserved tryptophan residue among G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) and cannabinoid receptors (CB), was examined in the present report for its significance in CB2 receptor ligand binding and adenylyl cyclase (AC) activity. Computer modeling postulates that this site in CB2 may be involved in the affinity of WIN55212-2 and SR144528 through aromatic contacts. In the present study, we reported that a CB2 receptor mutant, W5.43(194)Y, which had a tyrosine (Y) substitution for tryptophan (W), retained the binding affinity for CB agonist CP55940, but reduced binding affinity for CB2 agonist WIN55212-2 and inverse agonist SR144528 by 8-fold and 5-fold, respectively; the CB2 W5.43(194)F and W5.43(194)A mutations significantly affect the binding activities of CP55940, WIN55212-2 and SR144528. Furthermore, we found that agonist-mediated inhibition of the forskolin-induced cAMP production was dramatically diminished in the CB2 mutant W5.43(194)Y, whereas W5.43(194)F and W5.43(194)A mutants resulted in complete elimination of downstream signaling, suggesting that W5.43(194) was essential for the full activation of CB2. These results indicate that both aromatic interaction and hydrogen bonding are involved in ligand binding for the residue W5.43(194), and the mutations of this tryptophan site may affect the conformation of the ligand binding pocket and therefore control the active conformation of the wild type CB2 receptor. W5.43(194)Y/F/A mutations also displayed noticeable enhancement of the constitutive activation probably attributed to the receptor conformational changes resulted from the mutations.