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Understanding of the role of advocacy in a polarised state: Revisiting the construction of news
Full text linkThis work considers Malta, part of the understudied subject area of small states, and outlines a media system which is the product of a micro economy and unique societal culture. Taking a case-study approach, three news organisations are examined to understand the editorial routines, ownership and management structures, and social and cultural factors that affect the day-to-day business of creating news. To establish the fit between what is asserted by staff and what is actually taking place in the news-generation process, in-depth interviews with key stakeholders of each organisation are conducted alongside qualitative textual analysis of the content they publish. Contrary to previous research, advocacy continues to dominate Maltese journalism, indicating that the country has retained similarities to other media systems within its geographic region. However, this advocacy presents in different ways, influencing the nature of each organisation’s respective reporting and reflecting individual workplace cultures, routines and ownership structures, as well as constituting a response to the politically involved society in which they operate. This conflicts with the ideal typification advanced by Hallin and Mancini. The findings highlight the merits of the Maltese tradition – found wanting in the US objectivity canon. In this small state, journalistic advocacy extends media diversity and contributes to the high level of political engagement among its population
What challenges and opportunities face journalists and journalism in the age of social media?
Full text linkThe positioning of social media companies as intermediaries, elucidates the concern that they specifically impact news publishers both directly and indirectly. Indirectly because social media is taking an ever-increasing amount of the time people spend with media as well as money spent on advertising. On the other hand, the direct influence on the business of news can also be seen in the way publishers have integrated platform provided elements into their own websites. This intertwining at a technical level covers advertising, analytics, share buttons, demonstrating an evolving connection between publishers that speaks to a fundamental relationship of the contemporary world. This is a world that provides significant opportunities but under conditions we do not understand or control. While the individual is becoming empowered so are social institutions like news media, social and political institutions
Theoretical investigation of functionalized diamond-like carbon with COOH, OH and NH2: a comprehensive DFT-D study
No full textIn this study, the functionalization of diamond-like carbon (DLC) with carboxyl (COOH), hydroxyl (OH) and amine (NH₂) groups was investigated to understand its impact on the structural, electronic and nonlinear optical (NLO) properties. Dispersion-corrected density functional theory (DFT-D) calculations using the B3LYP-D3(BJ) exchange–correlation functional were performed in all calculations. The results indicated that functionalization with these groups enhanced the reactivity of the DLC surface. Molecular reactivity descriptors revealed that COOH − DLC exhibited the highest softness (S = 0.25 eV), significant electrophilicity (ω = 2.55 eV) and a reduced energy gap (∆Eg = 3.97 eV). Time-dependent DFT (TD-DFT) analysis showed that COOH − DLC achieved the maximum absorption wavelength among the systems investigated. Additionally, functionalization improved the NLO properties, including increased polarity, with COOH − DLC displaying the highest first hyperpolarizability value. Natural bond orbital (NBO) analysis indicated significant orbital delocalization between the functional groups and the pristine DLC surface. Quantum theory of atoms in molecules (QTAIM) and non-covalent interaction (NCI) analyses, based on the reduced density gradient (RDG), provided a detailed characterization of interactions, highlighting the presence of van der Waals forces
Understanding the high-order network plasticity mechanisms of ultrasound neuromodulation
Full text linkTranscranial ultrasound stimulation (TUS) is an emerging non-invasive neuromodulation technique, offering a potential alternative to pharmacological treatments for psychiatric and neurological disorders. While functional analysis has been instrumental in characterizing TUS effects, understanding the underlying mechanisms remains a challenge. Here, we developed a whole-brain model to represent functional changes as measured by fMRI, enabling us to investigate how TUSinduced effects propagate throughout the brain with increasing stimulus intensity. We implemented two mechanisms: one based on anatomical distance and another on broadcasting dynamics, to explore plasticity-driven changes in specific brain regions. Finally, we highlighted the role of higherorder functional interactions in localizing spatial effects of off-line TUS at two target areas—the right thalamus and inferior frontal cortex—revealing distinct patterns of functional reorganization. This work lays the foundation for mechanistic insights and predictive models of TUS, advancing its potential clinical applications
Cross-linguistic Asymmetries in Language Production and Code-switching Patterns in Bilingual Aphasia
Full text linkThis study investigates the underlying causes of cross-linguistic asymmetries in noun and verb production in a Hindi-English bilingual with severe Broca’s aphasia (RZ), focusing on the influence of task demands, morphological richness, and code-switching. We compared RZ’s performance on narrative and single word production tasks (noun naming, verb naming, repetition) with that of a non-brain-damaged bilingual control (BC) as well as analysed the frequency and type of code-switching to explore how these patterns reflect aphasic impairments in typologically distinct languages. RZ exhibited features of agrammatism in both languages, with more pronounced deficits in English. A clear grammatical class asymmetry emerged: RZ produced more verbs than nouns in Hindi, likely supported by Hindi’s rich morphological system, while English showed the opposite pattern, reflecting its limited morphological complexity. Task effects were evident, narratives elicited more verbs in Hindi, while naming tasks showed comparable noun-verb production. In English, consistent noun–verb asymmetries across tasks indicated persistent verb retrieval difficulties. Code-switching analysis revealed that RZ engaged in frequent but rigid switching, limited to English noun insertions within a Hindi matrix. This structured pattern, including the use of bilingual compound verbs, suggests a compensatory strategy to overcome a lexico-semantic deficit in Hindi and morphosyntactic challenges in English. These findings underscore the importance of language typology and task demands in shaping aphasic symptomatology in bilinguals
Understanding the high-order network plasticity mechanisms of ultrasound neuromodulation
Full text linkTranscranial ultrasound stimulation (TUS) is an emerging non-invasive neuromodulation technique, offering a potential alternative to pharmacological treatments for psychiatric and neurological disorders. While functional analysis has been instrumental in characterizing the TUS effects, understanding its indirect influence across the network remains challenging. Here, we developed a whole-brain model to represent functional changes as measured by fMRI, enabling us to investigate how TUS-induced effects propagate throughout the brain with increasing stimulus intensity. We implemented two mechanisms: one based on anatomical distance and another on broadcasting dynamics, to explore plasticity-driven changes in specific brain regions. Finally, we highlighted the role of higher-order functional interactions in localizing spatial effects of off-line TUS at two target areas—the right thalamus and inferior frontal cortex—revealing distinct patterns of functional reorganization. This work lays the foundation for mechanistic insights and predictive models of TUS, advancing its potential clinical applications
William Sancho and the Possibilities of Black British Lives in Late Georgian Britain
No full textWilliam Sancho was the son of Ignatius Sancho, one of the eighteenth century's most important Black Britons. In contrast to his father, however, William's life has never been fully explored. This Element builds a new evidential trail to uncover a multifaceted career that saw the younger Sancho undertake an apprenticeship and become a bookseller, rate-paying citizen and well-connected man about town. Sancho also contributed to the early vaccination movement and the campaign against slavery. Remarkable as elements of it were, Sancho’s story makes sound historical sense for someone so deeply embedded within the country’s burgeoning entrepreneurial, literate, male-dominated, metropolitan and imperially-focused public sphere. Sancho was a Black man who lived a distinctly ‘British’ life: his importance stands on its own terms, but also alters our perspectives of what these two historical labels have traditionally implied, and the experiences that were possible as part of them
Effective Theory Building and Manifold Learning
Full text linkManifold learning and effective model building are generally viewed as fundamentally different types of procedure. After all, in one we build a simplified model of the data, in the other, we construct a simplified model of the another model. Nonetheless, I argue that certain kinds of high-dimensional effective model building, and effective field theory construction in quantum field theory, can be viewed as special cases of manifold learning. I argue that this helps to shed light on all of these techniques. First, it suggests that the effective model building procedure depends upon a certain kind of algorithmic compressibility requirement. All three approaches assume that real-world systems exhibit certain redundancies, due to regularities. The use of these regularities to build simplified models is essential for scientific progress in many different domains
Performance of Higher-Order Networks in Reconstructing Sequential Paths: from Micro to Macro Scale
Full text linkActivities such as the movement of passengers and goods, the transfer of physical or digital assets, web
navigation and even successive passes in football, result in timestamped paths through a physical or
virtual network. The need to analyse such paths has produced a new modelling paradigm in the form of
higher-order networks which are able to capture temporal and topological characteristics of sequential
data. This has been complemented by sequence mining approaches, a key example being sequential
motifs measuring the prevalence of recurrent subsequences. Previous work on higher-order networks
has focused on how to identify the optimal order for a path dataset, where the order can be thought of
as the number of steps of memory encoded in the model. In this paper, we build on these approaches
to consider which orders are necessary to reproduce different path characteristics, from path lengths to
counts of sequential motifs, viewing paths generated from different higher-order models as null models
which capture features of the data up to a certain order, and randomise otherwise. Furthermore, we
provide an important extension to motif counting, whereby cases with self-loops, starting nodes, and
ending nodes of paths are taken into consideration. Conducting a thorough analysis using path lengths
and sequential motifs on a diverse range of path datasets, we show that our approach can shed light on
precisely where models of different order overperform or underperform, and what this may imply about
the original path data