Representaciones del migrante nacional en el cine y el video de productores ecuatorianos locales y residentes en el exterior

El presente es un informe de investigación acerca de las representaciones del migrante nacional en el cine y el video de productores ecuatorianos locales y residentes en el exterior. Para ello se analizó un conjunto de ocho películas de ficción dramática realizadas en Ecuador, España y Estados Unidos por cineastas o videastas de procedencia ecuatoriana. El análisis, tomando en cuenta el anclaje de los estudios visuales y los del discurso, implicó elaborar una herramienta propia y nueva para interrogar tales representaciones para denotar el discurso audiovisual subyacente. Tal matriz de análisis crítico del discurso audiovisual nos ubicó como espectadores críticos. Desde allá se ubicaron las estructuras narrativo-discursivas, los sistemas-mundo, los mapas conceptuales que el audiovisual ecuatoriano presenta respecto al fenómeno de la migración transnacional. Al analizar las estrategias de representación, constatamos que el cine y videos ecuatorianos actuales plantean una reflexión acerca del país, de la crisis social y moral que parece existir, del rol de los ecuatorianos en su sociedad, del sueño de tener una nueva Patria. Concluimos con el hecho de que el cine y el video nacional ponen en evidencia el papel del migrante como importante para promover la libre movilidad y la humanización de todo tipo de relaciones en la globalización.

El video clip popular de la tecnocumbia

Interesa aquí acercarnos a la comprensión de la apropiación del lenguaje del video clip, por la industria cultural de la tecnocumbia, industria al fin, pues goza de todos sus requisitos.

Poéticas y políticas del video indígena en el Ecuador

Este paper revisa críticamente los debates que se han realizado sobre el video indígena y los conceptos fundamentales que se han desarrollado para pensar su complejidad en miras a construir la noción de “prácticas audiovisuales indígenas” por fuera de las meta-narrativas de emancipación, concepciones binarias y esencialismos étnicos. En una primera parte realiza un balance de la trayectoria de los debates sobre video indígena que se han realizado en las últimas décadas, plantea una breve revisión histórica de los principales acontecimiento que llevaron del movimiento en el contexto latinoamericano, revisa críticamente un conceptos como “medios indígenas”, “medios ciudadanos”, “video comunitario”, “estéticas enraizadas”, “imagen-política”, finalmente analiza los enfoques disciplinarios e interdisciplinarios desarrollados dentro de los estudios antropológicos, comunicativos y culturales. En una segunda parte propone hacer un análisis de los procesos de resistencia cultural en el Ecuador dentro de los cuales se inscribe el video indígena. Posteriormente se plantea un estudio de la obra y el pensamiento Alberto Muenala y Amaru Cholango, dos artistas indígenas precursores en el uso del video en Ecuador que han influenciado a las nuevas generaciones. En una tercera parte, se retoma los dos casos de estudio para plantear una serie de críticas a las conceptualizaciones establecidas sobre video indígena y finalmente se establecen un conjunto de elementos para la reconceptualización de las prácticas audiovisuales indígenas.

La interactividad de las redes sociales en el video online. Estudios de casos: TerraTV (Brasil), CaracolTV (Colombia) y Ecuavisa (Ecuador)

El fulgor de las redes sociales, Facebook y Twitter, en el año 2013 ha llevado a múltiples análisis investigativos en estudios de comunicación a nivel de maestría; debido, en más de una forma, a las victorias conseguidas en el plano de la interactividad comunicativa sustentadas en los principios de libertad humana, propios de la democracia. Al reconocer al sujeto como decidor, hablamos de la libertad para seleccionar, pertenecer, y participar, formando redes de afiliación y amistad basadas en las conexiones físicas. Así, busco conocer cuál es el grado de interactividad de las redes sociales en la difusión del video online. El inicio de la comunicación moderna impulsada por la prensa bajo un formato de oferta de información derivó en la aplicación de prácticas comunicacionales semejantes en el medio televisivo, pero cuando los medios iniciaron la producción de contenidos en la web, la lógica del emisor-canal-receptor se transformó hacia una bidireccionalidad múltiple. En este punto, a partir de un método cuantitativo, cuestiono el establecimiento de un diálogo con el usuario y entre usuarios generado por las publicaciones en Facebook y Twitter de cibermedios como TerraTV, CaracolTV y Ecuavisa, identificados por la distribución de contenido en formato de video on demand con carácter noticioso. Con el posicionamiento de internet en la esfera mediática la formación de las redes humanas físicas se virtualizaron, haciendo que cada uno de los nodos de la sociedad red ofrezca sus dosis de innovación al sistema, agregando valor e impulsando el capital social. Likes, fan pages, share, tuits, comentarios y clicks han llevado a todos los medios de comunicación a mantener conexiones con las redes sociales. En el caso de Ecuador, indago si Ecuavisa está empleando todas las potencialidades ofrecidas por la arquitectura de Facebook y Twitter para desarrollar una conversación entre sus fans. Con estudios de casos de 182 post y tuits producidos en Facebook y Twitter por los cibermedios seleccionados durante la elección del papa en marzo 2013, se compara el grado de adecuación a la interactividad en la difusión del video online, tras la implementación de un modelo de medición adaptado al test de dinamismo. CaracolTV se configura, entre los representantes de Brasil, Colombia y Ecuador, como el cibermedio con mayor grado de interactividad en una escala de 70 puntos.

The EEAS and the Eastern Partnership: let the blame game stop. CEPS Commentary, 4 September 2012

In the first year and a half of its existence, the EEAS and its head have become the target of extensive criticism for the shortcomings of EU foreign policy; shortcomings that in fact date back to the creation of the European Union. The EU’s diplomatic service has been blamed variously for ‘lacking clarity,’ ‘acting too slowly’ and ‘being unable to bridge the institutional divide’. In this Commentary author Hrant Kostanyan argues that the EEAS’ discretionary power in the Eastern Partnership multilateral framework is restricted by the decision-making procedures between a wide range of stakeholders: the member states and the partner countries, as well as by the EU institutions, international organisations and the Civil Society Forum. Since this decision-making process places a substantial number of brakes on the discretionary power of the EEAS, any responsible analysis or critique of the service should take these constraints into consideration. Ultimately, the EEAS is only able to craft EU foreign policy insofar as it is allowed to do so.

Turing Test: Mindless Game?

The Turing Test, originally configured for a human to distinguish between an unseen man and unseen woman through a text-based conversational measure of gender, is the ultimate test for thinking. So conceived Alan Turing when he replaced the woman with a machine. His assertion, that once a machine deceived a human judge into believing that they were the human, then that machine should be attributed with intelligence. But is the Turing Test nothing more than a mindless game? We present results from recent Loebner Prizes, a platform for the Turing Test, and find that machines in the contest appear conversationally worse rather than better, from 2004 to 2006, showing a downward trend in highest scores awarded to them by human judges. Thus the machines are not thinking in the same way as a human intelligent entity would.

On the energetics of stratified turbulent mixing, irreversible thermodynamics, Boussinesq models and the ocean heat engine controversy

In this paper, the available potential energy (APE) framework of Winters et al. (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 289, 1995, p. 115) is extended to the fully compressible Navier– Stokes equations, with the aims of clarifying (i) the nature of the energy conversions taking place in turbulent thermally stratified fluids; and (ii) the role of surface buoyancy fluxes in the Munk & Wunsch (Deep-Sea Res., vol. 45, 1998, p. 1977) constraint on the mechanical energy sources of stirring required to maintain diapycnal mixing in the oceans. The new framework reveals that the observed turbulent rate of increase in the background gravitational potential energy GPEr , commonly thought to occur at the expense of the diffusively dissipated APE, actually occurs at the expense of internal energy, as in the laminar case. The APE dissipated by molecular diffusion, on the other hand, is found to be converted into internal energy (IE), similar to the viscously dissipated kinetic energy KE. Turbulent stirring, therefore, does not introduce a new APE/GPEr mechanical-to-mechanical energy conversion, but simply enhances the existing IE/GPEr conversion rate, in addition to enhancing the viscous dissipation and the entropy production rates. This, in turn, implies that molecular diffusion contributes to the dissipation of the available mechanical energy ME =APE +KE, along with viscous dissipation. This result has important implications for the interpretation of the concepts of mixing efficiency γmixing and flux Richardson number Rf , for which new physically based definitions are proposed and contrasted with previous definitions. The new framework allows for a more rigorous and general re-derivation from the first principles of Munk & Wunsch (1998, hereafter MW98)’s constraint, also valid for a non-Boussinesq ocean: G(KE) ≈ 1 − ξ Rf ξ Rf Wr, forcing = 1 + (1 − ξ )γmixing ξ γmixing Wr, forcing , where G(KE) is the work rate done by the mechanical forcing, Wr, forcing is the rate of loss of GPEr due to high-latitude cooling and ξ is a nonlinearity parameter such that ξ =1 for a linear equation of state (as considered by MW98), but ξ <1 otherwise. The most important result is that G(APE), the work rate done by the surface buoyancy fluxes, must be numerically as large as Wr, forcing and, therefore, as important as the mechanical forcing in stirring and driving the oceans. As a consequence, the overall mixing efficiency of the oceans is likely to be larger than the value γmixing =0.2 presently used, thereby possibly eliminating the apparent shortfall in mechanical stirring energy that results from using γmixing =0.2 in the above formula.

Psychophysiological responses to appraisal dimensions in a computer game

A computer game was used to study psychophysiological reactions to emotion-relevant events. Two dimensions proposed by Scherer (1984a, 1984b) in his appraisal theory, the intrinsic pleasantness and goal conduciveness of game events, were studied in a factorial design. The relative level at which a player performed at the moment of an event was also taken into account. A total of 33 participants played the game while cardiac activity, skin conductance, skin temperature, and muscle activity as well as emotion self-reports were assessed. The self-reports indicate that game events altered levels of pride, joy, anger, and surprise. Goal conduciveness had little effect on muscle activity but was associated with significant autonomic effects, including changes to interbeat interval, pulse transit time, skin conductance, and finger temperature. The manipulation of intrinsic pleasantness had little impact on physiological responses. The results show the utility of attempting to manipulate emotion-constituent appraisals and measure their peripheral physiological signatures.

KQQKQQ and the Kasparov-World Game

The 1999 Kasparov-World game for the first time enabled anyone to join a team playing against a World Chess Champion via the web. It included a surprise in the opening, complex middle-game strategy and a deep ending. As the game headed for its mysterious finale, the World Team re-quested a KQQKQQ endgame table and was provided with two by the authors. This paper describes their work, compares the methods used, examines the issues raised and summarises the concepts involved for the benefit of future workers in the endgame field. It also notes the contribution of this endgame to chess itself.

Efficient operator pipelining in a bit serial genetic algorithm engine

The authors propose a bit serial pipeline used to perform the genetic operators in a hardware genetic algorithm. The bit-serial nature of the dataflow allows the operators to be pipelined, resulting in an architecture which is area efficient, easily scaled and is independent of the lengths of the chromosomes. An FPGA implementation of the device achieves a throughput of >25 million genes per second

Innovative use of vodcast (Video-Podcast) to enrich learning experience in structures laboratory

Students may have difficulty in understanding some of the complex concepts which they have been taught in the general areas of science and engineering. Whilst practical work such as a laboratory based examination of the performance of structures has an important role in knowledge construction this does have some limitations. Blended learning supports different learning styles, hence further benefits knowledge building. This research involves an empirical study of how vodcasts (video-podcasts) can be used to enrich learning experience in the structural properties of materials laboratory of an undergraduate course. Students were given the opportunity of downloading and viewing the vodcasts on the theory before and after the experimental work. It is the choice of the students when (before or after, before and after) and how many times they would like to view the vodcasts. In blended learning, the combination of face-to-face teaching, vodcasts, printed materials, practical experiments, writing reports and instructors’ feedbacks benefits different learning styles of the learners. For the preparation of the practical, the students were informed about the availability of the vodcasts prior to the practical session. After the practical work, students submitted an individual laboratory report for the assessment of the structures laboratory. The data collection consisted of a questionnaire completed by the students, follow-up semi-structured interviews and the practical reports submitted by them for assessment. The results from the questionnaire were analysed quantitatively, whilst the data from the assessment reports were analysed qualitatively. The analysis shows that most of the students who have not fully grasped the theory after the practical, managed to gain the required knowledge by viewing the vodcasts. According to their feedbacks, the students felt that they have control over how to use the material and to view it as many times as they wish. Some students who have understood the theory may choose to view it once or not at all. Their understanding was demonstrated by their explanations in their reports, and was illustrated by the approach they took to explicate the results of their experimental work. The research findings are valuable to instructors who design, develop and deliver different types of blended learning, and are beneficial to learners who try different blended approaches. Recommendations were made on the role of the innovative application of vodcasts in the knowledge construction for structures laboratory and to guide future work in this area of research.

Blended learning approach to include the innovative use of vodcasts (video-podcasts) to enrich students learning experience in structures laboratory

Students may have difficulty in understanding some of the complex concepts which they have been taught in the general areas of science and engineering. Whilst practical work such as a laboratory based examination of the performance of structures has an important role in knowledge construction this does have some limitations. Blended learning supports different learning styles, hence further benefits knowledge building. This research involves the empirical studies of how an innovative use of vodcasts (video-podcasts) can enrich learning experience in the structural properties of materials laboratory of an undergraduate course. Students were given the opportunity of downloading and viewing the vodcasts on the theory before and after the experimental work. It is the choice of the students when (before or after, before and after) and how many times they would like to view the vodcasts. In blended learning, the combination of face-to-face teaching, vodcasts, printed materials, practical experiments, writing reports and instructors’ feedbacks benefits different learning styles of the learners. For the preparation of the practical laboratory work, the students were informed about the availability of the vodcasts prior to the practical session. After the practical work, students submit an individual laboratory report for the assessment of the structures laboratory. The data collection consists of a questionnaire completed by the students, and the practical reports submitted by them for assessment. The results from the questionnaire were analysed quantitatively, whilst the data from the assessment reports were analysed qualitatively. The analysis shows that students who have not fully grasped the theory after the practical were successful in gaining the required knowledge by viewing the vodcasts. Some students who have understood the theory may choose to view it once or not at all. Their understanding was demonstrated by the quality of their explanations in their reports. This is illustrated by the approach they took to explicate the results of their experimental work, for example, they can explain how to calculate the Young’s Modulus properly and provided the correct value for it. The research findings are valuable to instructors who design, develop and deliver different types of blended learning, and beneficial to learners who try different blended approaches. Recommendations were made on the role of the innovative application of vodcasts in the knowledge construction for structures laboratory and to guide future work in this area of research.

GIS in the cloud: implementing a web map service on Google App Engine

Many producers of geographic information are now disseminating their data using open web service protocols, notably those published by the Open Geospatial Consortium. There are many challenges inherent in running robust and reliable services at reasonable cost. Cloud computing provides a new kind of scalable infrastructure that could address many of these challenges. In this study we implement a Web Map Service for raster imagery within the Google App Engine environment. We discuss the challenges of developing GIS applications within this framework and the performance characteristics of the implementation. Results show that the application scales well to multiple simultaneous users and performance will be adequate for many applications, although concerns remain over issues such as latency spikes. We discuss the feasibility of implementing services within the free usage quotas of Google App Engine and the possibility of extending the approaches in this paper to other GIS applications.