Short reflections on the history of African communication

This article aims to propose a chronological subdivision in the history of African communication. African communication today is one of the most important axes for implementing development strategies, sustaining education, health, and schooling programmes, and so on. However, many of these programmes fail due to a lack of or ineffective communication between international organisations, local elite and lay people. The reasons for this situation must be found in Africa’s history of communication, which has undergone radical transformations in its different phases. Using the functionalist analysis drawn up by Jakobson, this article proposes a new chronological subdivision of Africa’s history of communication, reflecting on the current contradictions in contemporary communication in Africa.

The (in)visible scar. Representation of the body in blogs by women with breast cancer

In this paper we analyze the representation of the body in blogs by women with breast cancer. Taking into account both texts and images, we study the representation of the body on the basis of the body problems proposed by Frank (1995): control, body-relatedness, other-relatedness and desire. In the blogs studied we find a desiring and dyadic body, which is understood as part of a network of affection and care. The diagnosis of cancer can generate both dissociation, when the body is experienced as a threat, and association, a wish to be connected to it. In relation to control, a clear will of predictability is observed but traces of assumption of contingency also appear.

‘Close as a kiss’: Gyn/Affection in Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad

Margaret Atwood’s novella The Penelopiad (2005) seemingly celebrates Penelope’s agency in opposition to Homer’s myth in The Odyssey. However, the twelve murdered maids steal the book to suggest the possibility of what Janice Raymond calls gyn/affection, a female bonding based on the logic of emotion that, in Atwood’s revision, verges on Kristevan abjection, the sinister and the fantastic, and serves a cathartic effect not only in the maids but also in the reader. This essay aims to question the generally accepted empowerment of Atwood’s Penelope and celebrates the murdered maids as the locus of emotion, where marginal aspects of gender and class merge to weave a powerful metaphorical tapestry of popular and traditionally feminized literary genres that, in plunging into and embracing the semiotic realm, ultimately solidify into an eclectic but compact alternative tradition of women’s writing and myth-making.

La lógica poética. Una fenomenología del pensamiento artístico

We tried to extend the notion of truth, from the rational concept towards the subjective one. We not only exist by the thought, but also by the feeling. If we apply the scientific method to everything, we remain without art. We want to adhere ourselves to the intimate experience of the subjective thing. In art, the eye introduces the perspective and eliminates the interpretation possibility. Something similar happens with the matter: verb is to matter as name is to form. The Academy has given importance to the form, and it has forgotten the poetical qualities of the matter; it has focused on the figure and it has forgotten the background. However, we have to pay attention to the accidental thing, to the rupture of the protocol, to the frenzy of everything that is alive. For this reason, we pay attention to our intuition, to the sleepy subsoil of our ordinary experience whose inertia has lost the disruptive value of the action. At the end of this article we offer practical exercises, with which we wish to revitalize our centres of attention.

Patrimonio e Identidad en la Investigación Educativa Basada en las Artes desde un Enfoque Multimodal

Este artículo describe dos experiencias de investigación de nuestro grupo interconectadas, la primera desarrollada durante el año 2007 a través del proyecto internacional CALVINO del Programa Cultura 2000 de la Unión Europea, y la segunda implementada durante el año 2014 en el marco del Proyecto Investigación e Innovación en Secundaria en Andalucía (PIIISA). Ambos proyectos tienen en común el eje temático de la identidad a partir de una idea de patrimonio y el hecho de haber puesto en práctica metodologías de investigación basadas en las artes visuales con un enfoque multimodal. Desde estos dos puntos de anclaje relativos a la temática (qué) y a la metodología (cómo) analizamos lo acontecido para obtener conclusiones relevantes que, por una parte, pongan en valor estas prácticas significativas y, por otra, aporten nuestra experiencia para futuras propuestas de investigación en el ámbito temático y/o metodológico.

Expertise is perceived from both sound and body movement in musical performance

Music is a rich form of nonverbal communication, in which the movements that expert musicians make during performance can influence the perception of expressive and structural features of the music. Whether the actual skill of a musician is perceivable from vision of movement was examined. In Experiment 1, musicians and non-musicians rated performances by novice, intermediate and expert clarinettists from point-light animations of their movements, sound recordings, or both. Performances by clarinettists of more advanced skill level were rated significantly higher from vision of movements, although this effect was stronger when sound was also presented. In Experiment 2, movements and sound from the novice and expert clarinettists' performances were switched for half the presentations, and were matched for the rest. Ratings of novice music were significantly higher when presented with expert movements, although the opposite was not found for expert sound presented with novice movements. No perceptual effect of raters' own level of musicianship was found in either experiment. These results suggest that expertise is perceivable from vision of musicians' body movements, although perception of skill from sound is dominant. The results from Experiment 2 further indicate a cross-modal effect of vision and audition on the perception of musical expertise. © 2012 Elsevier B.V.

Visualising Textual Knowledge about Risks to Aid Risk Communication

This paper demonstrates a potential application for latent semantic analysis and similar techniques in visualising the differences between two levels of knowledge about a risk issue. The HIV/AIDS risk issue will be examined and the semantic clusters of key words in a technical corpora derived from specific literature about HIV/AIDS will be compared with the semantic clusters of those in more general corpora. It is hoped that these comparisons will create a fast and efficient complementary approach to the articulation of mental models of risk issues that could be used to target possible inconsistencies between expert and lay mental models.

Changing Paradigms in Space Theories:Recapturing 20th Century Architectural History

The concept of space entered architectural history as late as 1893. Studies in art opened up the discussion, and it has been studied in various ways in architecture ever since. This article aims to instigate an additional reading to architectural history, one that is not supported by "isms" but based on space theories in the 20th century. Objectives of the article are to bring the concept of space and its changing paradigms to the attention of architectural researchers, to introduce a conceptual framework to classify and clarify theories of space, and to enrich the discussions on the 20th century architecture through theories that are beyond styles. The introduction of space in architecture will revolve around subject-object relationships, three-dimensionality and senses. Modern space will be discussed through concepts such as empathy, perception, abstraction, and geometry. A scientific approach will follow to study the concept of place through environment, event, behavior, and design methods. Finally, the research will look at contemporary approaches related to digitally supported space via concepts like reality-virtuality, mediated experience, and relationship with machines.

The establishment of a 3D breast photography service in medical illustration

This paper aims to describe the development of a 3D breast photography service managed by the Medical Illustration Department, in the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust, Northern Ireland. Dedicated 3D breast photography equipment was installed in Medical Illustration for 18 months. Women were referred for a variety of indications including pre- and post-surgical assessment. A dedicated 3D breast photography protocol was developed locally and this requires further refinement to allow reproducibility in other centres. There are image/data artefacts associated with this technology and special techniques are required to reduce these. Specialist software is necessary for clinicians and scientists to use 3D breast photography data in surgical planning and measurement of surgical outcome.

A Pilot Evaluation of the Palliative Performance Scale in Long Term Care: Tips for Success

Aims: Palliative care in long-term care (LTC) homes is an area of growing concern. Little work has been done to explore innovative ways to identify and care for residents who become palliative. The purpose of this intervention study was to evaluate the implementation of the Palliative Performance Scale (PPS) in LTC. Specifically we explored staff perceptions about implementing the PPS and how it cued staff to initiate palliative care discussion with residents and family when a resident’s health declined.

Methods: This study utilized a qualitative descriptive design that included data from four separate sources: journals of three ‘champions’ who were responsible for leading the implementation of the PPS; staff evaluations of three educational training sessions; minutes from meetings; and 11 interviews from key staff who were involved in the implementation process. Data were analyzed using thematic content analysis.

Results: Staff generally felt positively about using the PPS in LTC and stated that it increased awareness of palliative care and helped identify those residents who were nearing the end of life. There were some barriers to implementing it, such as staff resistance and lack of time to complete it. The importance of having a designated ‘champion’ and effective interdisciplinary communication in addition to widespread training, were identified as successful strategies to facilitate the implementation process.

Conclusion: These study findings support the use of the PPS in LTC and offer some perspective about ways to implement it successfully. Future work is needed to evaluate the PPS in LTC using more rigorous designs.

Polarization Distortion as a Means for Securing Wireless Communication

This paper presents a simple polarization encoding strategy that operates using only single element dual port transmit and receive antennas in such a way that selective spatial scrambling of QPSK data can be effected. The key transmitter and receiver relationships needed for this operation to occur are derived. The system is validated using a cross dipole antenna arrangement. Unlike all previously reported physical layer wireless solutions the approach developed in this paper transfers the security property to the receive side resulting in very simple transmit and receive side architectures thus avoiding the need for near field modulated array technology. In addition the scheme permits, for the first time, multiple spatially separated secured receive sites to operate in parallel.

Relay Selection for Security Enhancement in Cognitive Relay Networks

This letter proposes several relay selection policies for secure communication in cognitive decode-and-forward (DF) relay networks, where a pair of cognitive relays are opportunistically selected for security protection against eavesdropping. The first relay transmits the secrecy information to the destination,
and the second relay, as a friendly jammer, transmits the jamming signal to confound the eavesdropper. We present new exact closed-form expressions for the secrecy outage probability. Our analysis and simulation results strongly support our conclusion that the proposed relay selection policies can enhance the performance of secure cognitive radio. We also confirm that the error floor phenomenon is created in the absence of jamming.

Transcending Boundaries of Creativity: Active learning in the Design Studio

This essay investigates the changing dynamics of interaction and paradigm of communication in the design studio. It analyses the process of practical implementation of interactive tools in architectural education which placed the
diversity of students’ cultural experiences, contextual awareness and individual interests as crucial resource for design innovation and inquiry. Building on Brian Lawson’s thesis on creativity in design thinking, this research project undertook
comprehensive investigation of students’ satisfaction of their roles in the studio and the room for liberal thought they are given to elaborate on genuine approach to architectural matters. The cyclical development of interactive learning strategy is explored through two different settings: first, it analyses architectural students’ position as passive/active in the studio, considering their relationships with tutors’ ideals; second, it reports on empirical strategy of students-led workshops at British schools of architecture, during which students have taken the lead of their creative design agenda. The practical implementation of interactive learning tools proved influential in helping students to personalize their design direction and to build a sense of confidence and independence.

Frequency Diverse Array OFDM Transmitter for Secure Wireless Communication

In this reported work, the frequency diverse array concept is employed to construct an orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) transmitter that has the capability of securing wireless communication in free space directly in the physical-layer without the need for mathematical encryption. The characteristics of the proposed scheme in terms of its secrecy performance are validated via bit error rate simulation under both high and low signal to noise ratio scenarios using the IEEE 802.11 OFDM physical-layer specification.