The Representation of the Feminine in the Portuguese Press : A Content Analysis of the Diário de Notícias Newspaper

This is a brief report of a research project, coordinated by me and funded by the Portuguese Government. It studies ‘The Representation of the Feminine in the Portuguese Press’ (POCI/COM 55780/2004), and works on the content analysis of discourse on the feminine in various Portuguese newspapers, covering the time span of February 1st till April 30th 2006. The paper is divided into two parts: in the first part, I will briefly discuss the typology used to code the text units of selected articles; in the second part, I will explore the most expressive percentages of the first two weeks of February for the content analysis of the Diário de Notícias newspaper. These percentages were obtained with the NVivo 6 qualitative data treatment software programme.

The construction of the museological object

"Exhibiting is or should be to work against ignorance, especially against the most refractory of all ignorance: the pre-conceived idea of stereo typed culture. To exhibit is to take a calculated risk of disorientation - in the etymological sense : ( to lose your bearings), disturbs the harmony, the evident , and the consensus, that constitutes the common place ( the banal). Needless to say however it is obvious that an exhibition that deliberately tries to scandalise will create an inverted perversion which results in an obscurantist pseudo-luxury - culture ... between demagogy and provocation, one has to find visual communication's subtle itinerary. Even though an intermediary route is not so stimulating : as Gaston Bachelard said "All the roads lead to Rome, except the roads of compromise."

The light representation of religion and power in sound

The thematic and anathematic in music-making a reflection occurring after listening to an art song and a pop song from the 19th and 20th century Levantine music. Bach’s Orchestral Suites keep popping up, elegantly unveiling “the truth”.

The construction of the museological object

Exhibiting is or should be to work against ignorance, especially against the most refractory of all ignorance: the pre-conceived idea of stereo typed culture. To exhibit is to take a calculated risk of disorientation - in the etymological sense: (to lose your bearings), disturbs the harmony, the evident , and the consensus, that constitutes the common place (the banal). Needless to say however it is obvious that an exhibition that deliberately tries to scandalise will create an inverted perversion which results in an obscurantist pseudo-luxury - culture ... between demagogy and provocation, one has to find visual communication's subtle itinerary. Even though an intermediary route is not so stimulating: as Gaston Bachelard said "All the roads lead to Rome, except the roads of compromise." It is becoming ever more evident that museums have undergone changes that are noticeable in numerous areas. As well as the traditional functions of collecting, conserving and exhibiting objects. museums have tried to become a means of communication, open and aware of the worries of modern society. In order to do this , it has started to utilise modern technology now available and lead by the hand of "marketing" and modern business management.

Representation of Cued Speech in teacher of the deaf and hard of hearing preparation programs

This descriptive study investigates the representation of Cued Speech in teacher of the deaf preparation programs as well as attitudes towards inclusion of Cued Speech in those programs in the context of the 2004 reauthorization of IDEA. The issue of Cued Speech is discussed as a communication modality and implications for deaf education are presented.

Estudios sonoros desde la Región Andina UIO-BOG = Sonic Studies from the Andean Region

El presente trabajo se basa en el análisis de las prácticas sonoras y, a partir de ahí, de una apuesta por un nuevo campo de estudios, el de los Estudios Sonoros; cuyo fin último es establecer una perspectiva epistemológica y política de las prácticas experimentales con sonido, en diálogo con proyectos provenientes de los Estudios Culturales, como son el proyecto modernidad/ colonialidad, las teorías poscoloniales y los estudios subalternos. Desde estas posiciones teóricas y políticas, estoy conciente de que el sonido, y sus posibilidades experimentales, articulan un régimen influyente en el mundo contemporáneo. Razón por la cual, sobre todo, esta es una reflexión desde las prácticas sonoras que surgen en dos ciudades andinas: Quito y Bogotá, como una expresión emergente para establecer encuentros Sur-Sur, que puedan generar diálogos epistemológicos sobre el sonido. En otras palabras, en este libro estoy proponiéndo a mis lectoras y lectores, una especie de “juego epistémico”: comprender el sonido como un lugar de conocimiento.Y el sonido es conocimiento precisamente porque el sonido nos permite vernos (y permite verme) como un sujeto históricamente ubicado. En el capítulo primero abordaré la pregunta de cómo se fue articulando el régimen discursivo del sonido como arte, dentro de diálogos y conflictos que se generaron en el contexto de la Guerra Fría que, para el caso de Latinoamérica, constituyó la transferencia de conocimientos articulados desde promesas como el desarrollismo y la modernización. También analizaré el cómo se configuraron, tanto en Quito como en Bogotá, las nuevas subjetividades “artísticas” frente al discurso de las vanguardias europeas del siglo XX y el experimentalismo estadounidense. Como verán mis lectoras y lectores, estos modelos, aparentemente originales e innovadores, fueron influidos por formas de saber y poder moduladas alrededor de la idea de la renovación de las artes a través del sonido, formulación que instaló el sonido como dispositivo/materia desde el cual, en detrimento de lo local, se articuló la fantasía de un universal deseado: las máquinas de sonido y de reproducibilidad técnica. En el segundo capítulo me centraré en algunas prácticas de experimentación sonora para indagar cuestiones como el estilo, procedimiento posmodernista ampliamente diseminado dentro de las instituciones artísticas y de éstas hacia la vida cotidiana. A partir de lo cual intentamos esclarecer el porqué de la confiscación y sometimiento de lo sonoro bajo el cuidadoso encierro del régimen discursivo del arte, que de manera eficiente lo absorbe como un “nuevo” medio para disciplinarlo y nombrarlo como proyecto sonoro, pieza sonora, instalación sonora, performance sonoro, acción sonora, objeto sonoro, paisaje sonoro, composición, loop. En otras palabras, cómo todo lo que genera el posmodernismo es apropiado por las universidades para crear la noción de “pastiche”, en donde todo cabe, bajo la indulgencia del “estilo”, procedimiento desde el cual se va instalando el régimen de verdad de un nuevo universal deseado: El Arte Sonoro. En este mismo capítulo, indagamos sobre las lógicas de producción de estas prácticas, para avanzar hacia las lógicas culturales donde lo sonoro se define y redefine por el posicionamiento y el lugar desde el que actúan los sujetos. Bajo estas consideraciones, queda planteada la propuesta, acuñada por esta investigación, la de un nuevo campo de estudio: Los Estudios Sonoros, propuesta que debe ser entendida como lo que algunos intelectuales latinoamericanos llaman epistemes emergentes11, precisamente porque esta investigación hace un esfuerzo por esclarecer las interdependencias existentes entre prácticas artísticas con sonido, el campo discursivo del arte y otras construcciones discursivas de la modernidad-colonialidad que establecen y regulan la formación del régimen sonoro. En el capítulo tercero analizaré cómo un “medio de creación” se vuelve hegemónico y cómo ciertos artistas que usan el sonido, bajo la pretensión de representar la marginalidad, marginalizan aún más a las personas que han sido históricamente subalternizadas. Seguido de este análisis, en el capítulo cuarto, indagamos sobre las tácticas que marcan nuevas formas de adhesión, de representación y de resistencia cultural, las mismas que son estrategias suplementarias frente, y en contra, de los discursos dominantes de las prácticas artísticas con sonido y las geopolíticas de conocimiento.

La fiesta del Chivo: Trujillo entre la autoridad patriarcal y la imagen salvaje de la nación (Dossier: Novela, historia y nación en América Latina)

En La Fiesta del Chivo, de Mario Vargas Llosa, el autor representa al dictador de la República Dominicana, Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, como un híbrido entre la autoridad patriarcal y la burocracia autoritaria. La reflexión que la autora propone se centra en la observación de la relación entre representaciones de la credibilidad del gobernante en el pueblo dominicano y las pretendidas “realidades”, referentes de estas representaciones en la novela, es decir, la relación entre la ficción literaria y la pretendida lectura cultural de la legitimidad del poder en la cultura popular. Una aproximación a esta siempre inconclusa relación entre la representación y su objeto y a las pretensiones de adecuación entre ambas nos permite observar la relativización de la violencia que forma parte de la mencionada representación literaria.

Biased representation of disturbance rates in the roadside sampling frame in boreal forests: implications for monitoring design

The North American Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) is the principal source of data to inform researchers about the status of and trend for boreal forest birds. Unfortunately, little BBS coverage is available in the boreal forest, where increasing concern over the status of species breeding there has increased interest in northward expansion of the BBS. However, high disturbance rates in the boreal forest may complicate roadside monitoring. If the roadside sampling frame does not capture variation in disturbance rates because of either road placement or the use of roads for resource extraction, biased trend estimates might result. In this study, we examined roadside bias in the proportional representation of habitat disturbance via spatial data on forest “loss,” forest fires, and anthropogenic disturbance. In each of 455 BBS routes, the area disturbed within multiple buffers away from the road was calculated and compared against the area disturbed in degree blocks and BBS strata. We found a nonlinear relationship between bias and distance from the road, suggesting forest loss and forest fires were underrepresented below 75 and 100 m, respectively. In contrast, anthropogenic disturbance was overrepresented at distances below 500 m and underrepresented thereafter. After accounting for distance from road, BBS routes were reasonably representative of the degree blocks they were within, with only a few strata showing biased representation. In general, anthropogenic disturbance is overrepresented in southern strata, and forest fires are underrepresented in almost all strata. Similar biases exist when comparing the entire road network and the subset sampled by BBS routes against the amount of disturbance within BBS strata; however, the magnitude of biases differed. Based on our results, we recommend that spatial stratification and rotating panel designs be used to spread limited BBS and off-road sampling effort in an unbiased fashion and that new BBS routes be established where sufficient road coverage exists.

Digitisation, representation, and formalisation - Digital libraries of mathematics

One of the main tasks of the mathematical knowledge management community must surely be to enhance access to mathematics on digital systems. In this paper we present a spectrum of approaches to solving the various problems inherent in this task, arguing that a variety of approaches is both necessary and useful. The main ideas presented are about the differences between digitised mathematics, digitally represented mathematics and formalised mathematics. Each has its part to play in managing mathematical information in a connected world. Digitised material is that which is embodied in a computer file, accessible and displayable locally or globally. Represented material is digital material in which there is some structure (usually syntactic in nature) which maps to the mathematics contained in the digitised information. Formalised material is that in which both the syntax and semantics of the represented material, is automatically accessible. Given the range of mathematical information to which access is desired, and the limited resources available for managing that information, we must ensure that these resources are applied to digitise, form representations of or formalise, existing and new mathematical information in such a way as to extract the most benefit from the least expenditure of resources. We also analyse some of the various social and legal issues which surround the practical tasks.

Visual Object Recognition Using Deformable Models of Vehicles

This workshop paper reports recent developments to a vision system for traffic interpretation which relies extensively on the use of geometrical and scene context. Firstly, a new approach to pose refinement is reported, based on forces derived from prominent image derivatives found close to an initial hypothesis. Secondly, a parameterised vehicle model is reported, able to represent different vehicle classes. This general vehicle model has been fitted to sample data, and subjected to a Principal Component Analysis to create a deformable model of common car types having 6 parameters. We show that the new pose recovery technique is also able to operate on the PCA model, to allow the structure of an initial vehicle hypothesis to be adapted to fit the prevailing context. We report initial experiments with the model, which demonstrate significant improvements to pose recovery.

Can wavelets improve the representation of forecast error covariances in variational data assimilation?

Two wavelet-based control variable transform schemes are described and are used to model some important features of forecast error statistics for use in variational data assimilation. The first is a conventional wavelet scheme and the other is an approximation of it. Their ability to capture the position and scale-dependent aspects of covariance structures is tested in a two-dimensional latitude-height context. This is done by comparing the covariance structures implied by the wavelet schemes with those found from the explicit forecast error covariance matrix, and with a non-wavelet- based covariance scheme used currently in an operational assimilation scheme. Qualitatively, the wavelet-based schemes show potential at modeling forecast error statistics well without giving preference to either position or scale-dependent aspects. The degree of spectral representation can be controlled by changing the number of spectral bands in the schemes, and the least number of bands that achieves adequate results is found for the model domain used. Evidence is found of a trade-off between the localization of features in positional and spectral spaces when the number of bands is changed. By examining implied covariance diagnostics, the wavelet-based schemes are found, on the whole, to give results that are closer to diagnostics found from the explicit matrix than from the nonwavelet scheme. Even though the nature of the covariances has the right qualities in spectral space, variances are found to be too low at some wavenumbers and vertical correlation length scales are found to be too long at most scales. The wavelet schemes are found to be good at resolving variations in position and scale-dependent horizontal length scales, although the length scales reproduced are usually too short. The second of the wavelet-based schemes is often found to be better than the first in some important respects, but, unlike the first, it has no exact inverse transform.

The representation of conditional expectations of non-Gaussian noise

For Wiener spaces conditional expectations and $L^{2}$-martingales w.r.t. the natural filtration have a natural representation in terms of chaos expansion. In this note an extension to larger classes of processes is discussed. In particular, it is pointed out that orthogonality of the chaos expansion is not required.