The Scottish media and politics

This chapter will explore the performance of the Scottish media in post-devolution political life, before turning its attention to the specific coverage of the 2007 election.

Same songs, different wrapping : the rise of the compilation album

The commercial success of compilation albums has increased in markets both in North America and in Europe. The albums can be considered as a manifestation of a significant change within the music industry—among both producers and consumers of popular music. Based on sales figures and a number of interviews with senior decision‐makers in multinational music companies, we discuss some of the major drivers behind the development, and thereby give an important contribution to the existing body of knowledge on music industry dynamics.

Twelve : the best Of IMP's 100 Songs Project 2011

12 Original recordings curated by leading national industry figures. It’s a 12 track album full of remixed, rerecorded and rejigged tracks from the project that were shortlisted by our friends at MGM Distribution, Music Sales, and EMI Music Australia. The TWELVE album is already receiving critical acclaim from Australia's music industry.

Eleven : best of 100 Songs Project 2012

Eleven original recordings curated by leading industry figures. This is a compilation album from QUT's 2012 100 Songs project. It's called Eleven: Best of 100 Songs Project 2012 and was released in May 2013. It’s an 11 track album with a bonus track, full of remixed, rerecorded and rejigged tracks from the project that were shortlisted by our friends at MGM Distribution, Mushroom Music, Island Records and Music Sales Australia. The Eleven album is already receiving critical acclaim from Australia's music industry.

100 Songs Project 2012

The Independent Music Project is centred around the development and creation of new music, and includes research into copyright, business models of the future, new technologies, and new audiences. The music industry is undergoing the most radical changes it has faced in almost a century. New digital technologies have made the production, distribution, and promotion of recorded music accessible to anyone with a personal computer. People can now make high-quality digital copies of music and distribute them globally within minutes. Even bastions of the established industries, such as EMI and Columbia, are struggling to make sense of the new industry terrain. The whole employment picture has changed just as radically for people who wish to make a living from music. In Australia, many of the avenues that provided employment for musicians have either disappeared or dramatically shrunk. The advertising industry no longer provides the level of employment it used to prior to the Federal deregulation of the industry in 1992. In many places, new legislative pressures on inner-city and suburban venues have diminished the number of performance spaces that musicians can work in. Just as quickly, new sectors have opened to professional musicians: computer games, ringtones, sound-enabled toys and web advertising all present new opportunities to the enterprising musician. The opportunity to distribute music internationally without being signed to a major label is very attractive to many aspiring and established professionals. No doubt the music industry will face many more challenges as technologies continue to change, as global communication gets easier and faster, and as the challenges to copyright proliferate and change. These challenges cannot be successfully met on a single front. They require research and expertise from all sectors being affected, and this is why the independent music project (IMP) exists.

100 Songs Project 2011

The Independent Music Project is centred around the development and creation of new music, and includes research into copyright, business models of the future, new technologies, and new audiences. The music industry is undergoing the most radical changes it has faced in almost a century. New digital technologies have made the production, distribution, and promotion of recorded music accessible to anyone with a personal computer. People can now make high-quality digital copies of music and distribute them globally within minutes. Even bastions of the established industries, such as EMI and Columbia, are struggling to make sense of the new industry terrain. The whole employment picture has changed just as radically for people who wish to make a living from music. In Australia, many of the avenues that provided employment for musicians have either disappeared or dramatically shrunk. The advertising industry no longer provides the level of employment it used to prior to the Federal deregulation of the industry in 1992. In many places, new legislative pressures on inner-city and suburban venues have diminished the number of performance spaces that musicians can work in. Just as quickly, new sectors have opened to professional musicians: computer games, ringtones, sound-enabled toys and web advertising all present new opportunities to the enterprising musician. The opportunity to distribute music internationally without being signed to a major label is very attractive to many aspiring and established professionals. No doubt the music industry will face many more challenges as technologies continue to change, as global communication gets easier and faster, and as the challenges to copyright proliferate and change. These challenges cannot be successfully met on a single front. They require research and expertise from all sectors being affected, and this is why the independent music project (IMP) exists.

Reinforcing guardianship regimes through assisted decision-making : a Scottish perspective

Guardianship laws which provide legal mechanisms for decision-making on behalf of adults with limited or impaired capacity to make decisions have become a feature of most Western jurisdictions. In the UK, the Adults with Incapacity (Scotland) Act 2000 and the English and Welsh Mental Capacity Act 2005 have established a comprehensive framework for authorising medical, financial and welfare decisions to be taken on behalf of adults who are unable to take any or all such decisions themselves. One feature of guardianship regimes has been their tendency to evolve over time. Legal reforms have been instigated by the changes in philosophical views about how society should engage with adults with a decision-making impairment and also modern views about the role human rights play in guardianships regimes. The latest ideas in guardianship regimes around the Western world centre on the possibility of legal recognition of the concept of assisted decision-making...

Scottish Football Association or Sweet Fanny Adams

Tämä pro gradu -tutkielma käsittelee kielisidonnaisen huumorin kääntämistä. Ennen itse kääntämisen käsittelyä täytyy kuitenkin määritellä mitä tarkoitetaan käsitteellä kielisidonnainen huumori . Aluksi käsitellään huumoria ja sen ominaisuuksia sekä huumorin ja kulttuuristen, fysiologisten ja sosiaalisten tekijöiden suhdetta. Huumori syntyy kun tietyt odotukset rikotaan, eli toimitaan joidenkin normien vastaisesti. Huumorin eräitä perusperiaatteita ovat ristiriitaisuus ja yhteensopimattomuus. Kielisidonnaisessa huumorissa ristiriitaisuus ja yhteensopimattomuus on havaittavissa kielen tasolla: kieltä käytetään tuottamaan moniselitteinen tai -mielinen koominen ilmaus. Sanaleikki, jossa käytetään yhtä sanaa jolla on yksi tai useampi merkitys, on tyypillinen esimerkki kielisidonnaisesta huumorista. Mutta kielisidonnainen huumori ei rajoitu pelkästään tämänkaltaisiin sanaleikkeihin (engl. pun), vaan kattaa käsitteenä laajemman valikoiman erilaisia kielisidonnaisen huumorin muotoja, esimerkiksi monimerkityksiset nimet, idiomaattisilla ilmauksilla tuotettu huumori, akrostikonit, kirjoituksen konventioita rikkomalla tuotettu huumori jne. Kielisidonnainen huumori on tutkielmassa luokiteltu ja määritelty omaksi huumorin alalajikseen. Kielisidonnaisen huumorin kielellinen monimerkityksisyys tekee sen kääntämisestä vaikeampaa kuin sellaisen tekstin, jossa kielen tasolla ei ilmene monimerkityksisyyttä. Tästä syystä kielisidonnainen huumori tarvitsee erilaisen käännösstrategian kuin esimerkiksi tieteellinen teksti. Seuraavaksi käydään aluksi läpi joitakin käännösteorian keskeisiä käsitteitä ja niiden suhdetta ja vaikutuksia kielisidonnaisen huumorin kääntämiseen. Sitten kuvataan kielisidonnaisen huumorin käännösprosessi, joka jakautuu kolmeen osaan: tunnistaminen, analyysi ja kääntäminen. Näiden kolmen pohjalta laaditaan kuuden eri käännösstrategian ryhmä. Kuusi eri päästrategiaa ovat käännössidonnaisen huumorikategorian säilyttäminen, kirjaimellinen käännös, muun tyylikeinon käyttäminen, kompensaatio, poisjättö ja toimitukselliset keinot. Strategiat käydään läpi deskriptiivisesti ja niiden käyttöä valaistaan esimerkkien avulla. Osa päästrategioista jakautuu alastrategioihin, jotka kuvaavat tarkemmin, minkälaisin keinoin lähtökielen kielisidonnainen käännösongelma voidaan siirtää kohdekieleen. Strategiat pyritään kuvaamaan siten, että ne voisivat olla avuksi käännettäessä minkä tahansa kieliparin välillä. Vaikka kuvatut käännösstrategiat käydään läpi deskriptiivisesti, on pyrkii tutkielma myös olemaan avuksi käytännön tilanteissa kielisidonnaista huumoria käännettäessä. Tätä varten on tutkielman lopussa annettu kuvaus yhden kielisidonnaisen huumoriongelman kääntämisprosessista. Yhdistämällä teoria käytäntöön kuvataan käännösprosessiesimerkissä yhden kielisidonnaisen huumoriongelman analyysi-ja kääntämisvaiheet. Tuloksena on viisi erilaista versiota samasta lähtötekstin käännösongelmasta. Tutkielma siis ensinnäkin määrittelee, mitä ja minkälaista on kielisidonnainen huumori sekä luokittelee sen. Toisekseen tutkielma kuvaa sen käännösprosessin ja määrittelee eri käännösstrategiat. Lisäksi esimerkin avulla esitellään eri käännösvaihtoehtoja. Avainsanat: kääntäminen, huumori, sanaleikki, kielisidonnainen

‘Enough is enough’: Songs and messages about alcohol in remote Central Australia

This article examines some of the ways in which Australia’s First Peoples have responded to serious community health concerns about alcohol through the medium of popular music. The writing, performing and recording of popular songs about alcohol provide an important example of community-led responses to health issues, and the effectiveness of music in communicating stories and messages about alcohol has been recognised through various government-funded recording projects. This article describes some of these issues in remote Australian Aboriginal communities, exploring a number of complexities that arise through arts-based ‘instrumentalist’ approaches to social and health issues. It draws on the author’s own experience and collaborative work with Aboriginal musicians in Tennant Creek, a remote town in Australia’s Northern Territory.

Australia and the Scottish independence referendum

This essay examines how, given the close historical and cul-tural ties which exist between Australia and the United Kingdom (including Scotland), the Scottish independence referendum was reported, analysed and made sense of in the Australian media. The analysis is based on mainstream news coverage (online and print media) produced in Australia and accessed from the internet between January 2012 and the end of September 2014 (two weeks after the referendum on September 18). A total of 95 items were included in the sample, which does not include broadcast news coverage or specialist current affairs periodicals. The online sites of broadcasters such as the ABC and SBS were included in the sam-ple. The great majority of these items were published in the run-up to polling day, in August and September 2014, with spikes in the frequency of item around particular events such as the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. to the fore will be relevant for years to come.

Mining sentiments from songs using latent dirichlet allocation

Song-selection and mood are interdependent. If we capture a song’s sentiment, we can determine the mood of the listener, which can serve as a basis for recommendation systems. Songs are generally classified according to genres, which don’t entirely reflect sentiments. Thus, we require an unsupervised scheme to mine them. Sentiments are classified into either two (positive/negative) or multiple (happy/angry/sad/...) classes, depending on the application. We are interested in analyzing the feelings invoked by a song, involving multi-class sentiments. To mine the hidden sentimental structure behind a song, in terms of “topics”, we consider its lyrics and use Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA). Each song is a mixture of moods. Topics mined by LDA can represent moods. Thus we get a scheme of collecting similar-mood songs. For validation, we use a dataset of songs containing 6 moods annotated by users of a particular website.

Examining the Effectiveness of Discriminant Function Analysis and Cluster Analysis in Species Identification of Male Field Crickets Based on Their Calling Songs

Traditional taxonomy based on morphology has often failed in accurate species identification owing to the occurrence of cryptic species, which are reproductively isolated but morphologically identical. Molecular data have thus been used to complement morphology in species identification. The sexual advertisement calls in several groups of acoustically communicating animals are species-specific and can thus complement molecular data as non-invasive tools for identification. Several statistical tools and automated identifier algorithms have been used to investigate the efficiency of acoustic signals in species identification. Despite a plethora of such methods, there is a general lack of knowledge regarding the appropriate usage of these methods in specific taxa. In this study, we investigated the performance of two commonly used statistical methods, discriminant function analysis (DFA) and cluster analysis, in identification and classification based on acoustic signals of field cricket species belonging to the subfamily Gryllinae. Using a comparative approach we evaluated the optimal number of species and calling song characteristics for both the methods that lead to most accurate classification and identification. The accuracy of classification using DFA was high and was not affected by the number of taxa used. However, a constraint in using discriminant function analysis is the need for a priori classification of songs. Accuracy of classification using cluster analysis, which does not require a priori knowledge, was maximum for 6-7 taxa and decreased significantly when more than ten taxa were analysed together. We also investigated the efficacy of two novel derived acoustic features in improving the accuracy of identification. Our results show that DFA is a reliable statistical tool for species identification using acoustic signals. Our results also show that cluster analysis of acoustic signals in crickets works effectively for species classification and identification.

A fisheries management plan for the River Tweed in the Scottish Borders

The River Tweed is, in rod-catch terms, the second most important river in Britain for Atlantic salmon, with an annual rod catch of ca.10,000 fish. This article gives an outline of the second edition of the Tweed Fisheries Management Plan, which is defined as "The co-ordination of data collection and analyses with fundamental research into relevant topics to devise management actions that will beneficially affect the future state of fish stocks". Much of the work set down for the present is concerned with setting up recording and measuring systems for fish catches and exploitation rates, and for the operation of monitoring sites for juvenile densities and adult trout and salmon spawning runs. While surveys show the present state of affairs, the collection of records and regular monitoring of sites will mean that in the future, the past will be better known through a longer series of records. Two case histories are described. The first is concerned with setting aims for managing the brown trout of the Tweed and defining the present state of the fishery. The second is an investigation into the spring salmon of the Tweed.