`A Reporter's Paper': The National Thrift News, Journalistic Autonomy and the Savings and Loan Crisis

Business journalism comes under persistent criticism for serving its historic readership of brokers and business people while lacking sufficient autonomy and failing to sufficiently question or challenge powerful corporate and economic interests. This is a dominant theme in media criticism of the savings and loan crisis⁠ and 2008 financial crisis.⁠ Against this backdrop, this dissertation asks: Is this critique valid, and if so, how can business journalism improve? To engage these questions, this dissertation examines the question of autonomy in business journalism in an unlikely place: the trade press. The central case study is coverage of the savings and loan crisis by the National Thrift News, a small financial services newspaper that won a George Polk award for its reporting in 1988. How could a small trade newspaper succeed in some instances when larger news organizations failed to connect the dots? The National Thrift News created a newsroom environment that celebrated reporter autonomy and independence. In some cases, it used its insider knowledge and consistent beat reporting to serve both its core readers and the broader society by uncovering savings and loan corruption. This study will highlight a long-running debate among theorists of journalistic professionalism by arguing that the commercial and advertising model in journalism does not inevitably compromise journalistic independence⁠ but rather can help pave a way forward for a more independent press. It therefore challenges the political economy critique of journalism, which holds that external forces such as capitalism harm press independence. This case suggests journalistic independence and individual agency remain powerful forces in newsrooms. Lastly, the dissertation argues that in an era of media downsizing, the trade press can perform an even more useful watchdog role over industry if the mainstream news media acknowledges and pursues some of the innovative trade reporting.

ArrayMining: a modular web-application for microarray analysis combining ensemble and consensus methods with cross-study normalization

Background: Statistical analysis of DNA microarray data provides a valuable diagnostic tool for the investigation of genetic components of diseases. To take advantage of the multitude of available data sets and analysis methods, it is desirable to combine both different algorithms and data from different studies. Applying ensemble learning, consensus clustering and cross-study normalization methods for this purpose in an almost fully automated process and linking different analysis modules together under a single interface would simplify many microarray analysis tasks. Results: We present ArrayMining.net, a web-application for microarray analysis that provides easy access to a wide choice of feature selection, clustering, prediction, gene set analysis and cross-study normalization methods. In contrast to other microarray-related web-tools, multiple algorithms and data sets for an analysis task can be combined using ensemble feature selection, ensemble prediction, consensus clustering and cross-platform data integration. By interlinking different analysis tools in a modular fashion, new exploratory routes become available, e.g. ensemble sample classification using features obtained from a gene set analysis and data from multiple studies. The analysis is further simplified by automatic parameter selection mechanisms and linkage to web tools and databases for functional annotation and literature mining. Conclusion: ArrayMining.net is a free web-application for microarray analysis combining a broad choice of algorithms based on ensemble and consensus methods, using automatic parameter selection and integration with annotation databases.

Pinning Down Identity in Social Media: Food Cultural Transfer on Pinterest

This research has been conducted within the realm of where today’s digital media society and the timeless concept of cultural identity overlap. The aim of this thesis is to explore the nature of online cultural identity management. By focusing on the social media platform, Pinterest, this study considers the food-pinning behavior of a group of Americans living in Finland and connects their online actions with their cultural identity. Through an examination of Pinterest as a social space, and even a third place, the relative theoretical literature provides and interesting background for a contemporary discussion on the matter. Literature on food as a cultural marker is also brought into consideration. Using the methods of introspection and an adapted version of virtual ethnography, a study was conducted, and ultimately, the analysis of data obtained from the Pinterest boards of ten individuals shows that the vast majority of food-related information in this setting is US-sourced. A questionnaire provides further insight into the individuals’ Pinterest usage. I argue that pinning is an act of online identity management, whether it is a conscious act or a situational effect, and that using Pinterest maintains and even strengthens these individuals’ cultural identity as Americans. This study adds to current discussions pertaining to transnationalism, globalization, and online cultural identity, as well as opens channels for further research on this dynamic topic, which is needed to understand ourselves as cultural beings in the digital age.

Resistance performances: (Re)constructing spaces of resistance and contention in the 2010-2011 University of Puerto Rico student movement

On the night of April 20, 2010, a group of students from the University of Puerto Rico (UPR), Río Piedras campus, met to organize an indefinite strike that quickly broadened into a defense of accessible public higher education of excellence as a fundamental right and not a privilege. Although the history of student activism in the UPR can be traced back to the early 1900s, the 2010-2011 strike will be remembered for the student activists’ use of new media technologies as resources that rapidly prompted and aided the numerous protests. ^ This activist research entailed a critical ethnography and a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of traditional and alternative media coverage and treatment during the 2010 -2011 UPR student strike. I examined the use of the 2010-2011 UPR student activists’ resistance performances in constructing local, corporeal, and virtual spaces of resistance and contention during their movement. In particular, I analyzed the different tactics and strategies of resistance or repertoire of collective actions that student activists used (e.g. new media technologies) to frame their collective identities via alternative news media’s (re)presentation of the strike, while juxtaposing the university administration’s counter-resistance performances in counter-framing the student activists’ collective identity via traditional news media representations of the strike. I illustrated how both traditional and alternative media (re)presentations of student activism developed, maintained, and/or modified students activists’ collective identities. ^ As such, the UPR student activism’s success should not be measured by the sum of demands granted, but by the sense of community achieved and the establishment of networks that continue to create resistance and change. These networks add to the debate surrounding Internet activism and its impact on student activism. Ultimately, the results of this study highlight the important role student movements have had in challenging different types of government policies and raising awareness of the importance of an accessible public higher education of excellence.^

Exploring Hidden Coherent Feature Groups and Temporal Semantics for Multimedia Big Data Analysis

Thanks to the advanced technologies and social networks that allow the data to be widely shared among the Internet, there is an explosion of pervasive multimedia data, generating high demands of multimedia services and applications in various areas for people to easily access and manage multimedia data. Towards such demands, multimedia big data analysis has become an emerging hot topic in both industry and academia, which ranges from basic infrastructure, management, search, and mining to security, privacy, and applications. Within the scope of this dissertation, a multimedia big data analysis framework is proposed for semantic information management and retrieval with a focus on rare event detection in videos. The proposed framework is able to explore hidden semantic feature groups in multimedia data and incorporate temporal semantics, especially for video event detection. First, a hierarchical semantic data representation is presented to alleviate the semantic gap issue, and the Hidden Coherent Feature Group (HCFG) analysis method is proposed to capture the correlation between features and separate the original feature set into semantic groups, seamlessly integrating multimedia data in multiple modalities. Next, an Importance Factor based Temporal Multiple Correspondence Analysis (i.e., IF-TMCA) approach is presented for effective event detection. Specifically, the HCFG algorithm is integrated with the Hierarchical Information Gain Analysis (HIGA) method to generate the Importance Factor (IF) for producing the initial detection results. Then, the TMCA algorithm is proposed to efficiently incorporate temporal semantics for re-ranking and improving the final performance. At last, a sampling-based ensemble learning mechanism is applied to further accommodate the imbalanced datasets. In addition to the multimedia semantic representation and class imbalance problems, lack of organization is another critical issue for multimedia big data analysis. In this framework, an affinity propagation-based summarization method is also proposed to transform the unorganized data into a better structure with clean and well-organized information. The whole framework has been thoroughly evaluated across multiple domains, such as soccer goal event detection and disaster information management.

Development, Evaluation and Optimization of Fabrication Processes for Daylight Guiding Systems Based on Micromirror Arrays

In this work, fabrication processes for daylight guiding systems based on micromirror arrays are developed, evaluated and optimized.Two different approaches are used: At first, nanoimprint lithography is used to fabricate large area micromirrors by means of Substrate Conformal Imprint Lithography (SCIL).Secondly,a new lithography technique is developed using a novel bi-layered photomask to fabricate large area micromirror arrays. The experimental results showing a reproducible stable process, high yield, and is consuming less material, time, cost and effort.

Age and Gender Identification using Stacking for Classification⋆ Notebook for PAN at CLEF 2016

This paper presents our approach of identifying the profile of an unknown user based on the activities of known users. The aim of author profiling task of PAN@CLEF 2016 is cross-genre identification of the gender and age of an unknown user. This means training the system using the behavior of different users from one social media platform and identifying the profile of other user on some different platform. Instead of using single classifier to build the system we used a combination of different classifiers, also known as stacking. This approach allowed us explore the strength of all the classifiers and minimize the bias or error enforced by a single classifier.

Proposição de um método de análise de movimentos de jogadores de tênis de campo a partir de vídeos televisivos = : Proposition of a method for tennis players motion analysis on broadcast videos

Universidade Estadual de Campinas . Faculdade de Educação Física

Use of Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) in Portuguese for categorizing web-based healthcare content

Introduction: Internet users are increasingly using the worldwide web to search for information relating to their health. This situation makes it necessary to create specialized tools capable of supporting users in their searches. Objective: To apply and compare strategies that were developed to investigate the use of the Portuguese version of Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) for constructing an automated classifier for Brazilian Portuguese-language web-based content within or outside of the field of healthcare, focusing on the lay public. Methods: 3658 Brazilian web pages were used to train the classifier and 606 Brazilian web pages were used to validate it. The strategies proposed were constructed using content-based vector methods for text classification, such that Naive Bayes was used for the task of classifying vector patterns with characteristics obtained through the proposed strategies. Results: A strategy named InDeCS was developed specifically to adapt MeSH for the problem that was put forward. This approach achieved better accuracy for this pattern classification task (0.94 sensitivity, specificity and area under the ROC curve). Conclusions: Because of the significant results achieved by InDeCS, this tool has been successfully applied to the Brazilian healthcare search portal known as Busca Saude. Furthermore, it could be shown that MeSH presents important results when used for the task of classifying web-based content focusing on the lay public. It was also possible to show from this study that MeSH was able to map out mutable non-deterministic characteristics of the web. (c) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

University of Queensland Working Papers in Linguistics

University of Queensland Working Papers in Linguistics is an opportunity to share and showcase ongoing research by staff, students, and associates of UQ’s Linguistics program, housed in the School of English, Media Studies, and Art History. This, the first volume, covers a number of topics ranging from formal syntactic theory to second language acquisition, and is representative of the broad spectrum of research that is carried out at The University of Queensland. While the papers herein represent works in progress, they have all been reviewed by two peer assessors, and revised in accordance with the assessors’ reports.

Special issue: Selected papers from the sixth IFIP 2.6 working conference on visual database systems: Guest editors' introduction

While multimedia data, image data in particular, is an integral part of most websites and web documents, our quest for information so far is still restricted to text based search. To explore the World Wide Web more effectively, especially its rich repository of truly multimedia information, we are facing a number of challenging problems. Firstly, we face the ambiguous and highly subjective nature of defining image semantics and similarity. Secondly, multimedia data could come from highly diversified sources, as a result of automatic image capturing and generation processes. Finally, multimedia information exists in decentralised sources over the Web, making it difficult to use conventional content-based image retrieval (CBIR) techniques for effective and efficient search. In this special issue, we present a collection of five papers on visual and multimedia information management and retrieval topics, addressing some aspects of these challenges. These papers have been selected from the conference proceedings (Kluwer Academic Publishers, ISBN: 1-4020- 7060-8) of the Sixth IFIP 2.6 Working Conference on Visual Database Systems (VDB6), held in Brisbane, Australia, on 29–31 May 2002.

Baseline hippocampal theta oscillation speeds correlate with rate of operant task acquisition

Many lines of evidence indicate that theta rhythm, a prominent neural oscillatory mode found in the mammalian hippocampus, plays a key role in the acquisition, processing, and retrieval of memories. However, a predictive neurophysiological feature of the baseline theta rhythm that correlates with the learning rate across different animals has yet to be identified. Here we show that the mean theta rhythm speed observed during baseline periods of immobility has a strong positive correlation with the rate at which rats learn an operant task. This relationship is observed across rats, during both quiet waking (r=0.82; p<0.01) and paradoxical sleep (r=0.83; p<0.01), suggesting that the basal theta frequency relates to basic neurological processes that are important in the acquisition of operant behavior. (c) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Cognitive training increases platelet PLA(2) activity in healthy elderly subjects

Phospholipases A(2) (PLA(2)) are ubiquitous enzymes involved in membrane fatty acid metabolism and intracellular signalling. Recent studies have shown that PLA(2) subtypes are implicated in the modulation of pathways related to memory acquisition and retrieval. We investigated the effects of cognitive training on platelet PLA(2) activity in healthy elderly individuals. Twenty-three cognitively unimpaired older adults were randomly assigned to receive memory training or standard outpatient care only. Both groups were cognitively assessed by the same protocol, and the experimental group (EG) underwent a four-session memory training intervention. Pre- and post-test measures included prose and list recall, WAIS-III digit symbol, strategy use measures and platelet PLA(2) group activity. After cognitive training, patients in the EG group had significant increase in cytosolic, calcium-dependent PLA(2) (cPLA(2)), extracellular (or secreted), calcium-dependent PLA(2) (sPLA(2)), total platelet PLA(2) activity, and significant decrease in platelet calcium-independent PLA(2) (iPLA(2)) activity. Our results suggest that memory training may have a modulating effect in PLA(2)-mediated biological systems associated with cognitive functions and neurodegenerative diseases. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

T allele of-344C/T polymorphism in aldosterone synthase gene is not associated with resistant hypertension

Resistant hypertension (RH) is the maintenance of elevated blood pressure concurrent with the use of three different antihypertensive drugs, one of which is a diuretic. The Renin-Angiotensin-Aldosterone System plays a major role in volume-dependent hypertension. Therefore, its components are interesting targets for genetic association studies. This work focused on the -344 C/T polymorphism in the CYP11b2 gene, which encodes aldosterone synthase. This work evaluates the association between T allele and resistance to anti-hypertensive treatment. Genotyping analysis included 88 subjects with RH, 142 who were responsive to anti-hypertensive treatment and 110 subjects as a control group. Plasmatic concentrations of aldosterone, renin and cortisol, carotid intima-media thickness and carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity were assessed in a smaller subset of hypertensive patients. An association was found between T allele and hypertension (P < 0.005), but there was no difference in allele frequencies between both hypertensive groups. There was no difference in plasmatic parameters either, in remodeling indicators between the genotypic groups.

Brachial artery pulsatility index change 1 minute after 5-minute forearm compression - Comparison with flow-mediated dilatation

Objective. Endothelial impairment evaluation by sonographic measurement of flow-mediated dilatation (FMD) has become broadly used. However, this method has 2 main caveats: the dilatation depends on the baseline arterial diameter, and a high precision level is required. Vasodilatation leads to an amplified fall in impedance. We hypothesized that assessment of the pulsatility index change (PI-C) 1 minute after 5-minute forearm compression might evaluate that fall in impedance. The aim of this study was to compare the PI-C with FMD. Methods. Flow-mediated dilatation and the PI-C were assessed in 51 healthy women aged between 35.1 and 67.1 years. We correlated both FMD and the PI-C with age, body mass index, waist circumference, cholesterol level, high-density lipoprotein level, glucose level, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, pulse pressure, brachial artery diameter, simplified Framingham score, intima-media thickness, and carotid stiffness index. Intraclass correlation coefficients between 2 FMD and PI-C measurements were also examined. Results. Only FMD correlated with baseline brachial diameter (r=-0.53). The PI-C had a high correlation with age, body mass index, waist circumference, cholesterol level, systolic blood pressure, pulse pressure, simplified Framingham score, and intima-media thickness. The correlation between FMD and the PI-C was high (r=-0.66). The PI-C had a higher intraclass correlation coefficient (0.991) than FMD (0.836) but not brachial artery diameter (0.989). Conclusions. The PI-C had a large correlation with various markers of cardiovascular risk. Additionally, PI-C measurement does not require offline analysis, extra software, or electrocardiography We think that the PI-C could be considered a marker of endothelial function. However, more studies are required before further conclusions.