1,721,250 research outputs found
"The ‘other’ Europeans: the semiotic imperative of style in Euro Visions by Magnum Photos"
No full textIn this article, the author examines Euro Visions, the exhibition created by Magnum Photos to portray the new countries that joined the European Union in 2004 and 2007. She begins by observing that this project's deviations from the world-leading agency's trademark humanist style of photography were discursively ascribed to Euro Visions photographers' authorial style. In this regard, she identifies two key semiotic resources - typing and juxtaposition - that were mobilized as markers of individual style. She then argues that both typing and juxtaposition should instead be seen as generic semiotic resources rooted in corporate styles of visual communication, which contribute to othering the 'new' Europeans. She also argues that in Euro Visions, the notion of 'distinctive' authorial style was deployed as symbolic currency for a global(ist) market that rewards cultural production and, broadly, aestheticization. She finally posits that, in projects like Euro Visions, what is mostly (generic) design may get passed off as (specific) representation, and that this aestheticization of styles and identities may be mystified as the substantial honouring of difference and diversity
Forum: (De)centring Europe in urban communication research
Full text linkThis special forum includes six contributions by scholars affiliated with the European Communication Research and Education (ECREA) “Media, Cities and Space” Section. It focuses on “European” urban communication research as a way to explore what matters, both critically and theoretically, in media and communication studies of the urban. As a whole, the special forum aims to “decentre” existing assumptions regarding the urban locales, critical questions, and conceptual outlooks covered in each contribution-both from pre-constituted notions of “Europeanness” and from dominant approaches to the relationship between communication, media, and the urban
Review of Mobilities (by John Urry)
No full textWith Mobilities, John Urry sets out to conceptualize, promote and ultimately establish a ‘movement-driven social science’ (p. 18). The book’s core argument is that it is necessary to develop a new paradigm for the social sciences, based on the recognition that contemporary society is organized around practices which entail various forms of movement of people, ideas, information and objects, rather than a static set of relations, structures and institutions. Mobilities is the keystone publication for the interdisciplinary programme of research spearheaded by John Urry, which has its headquarters in the Centre for Mobilities Research at Lancaster University. While the centre’s website showcases a wide range of important publications by various scholars affiliated with it, Urry’s latest book is positioned as the
flagship publication for the new mobilities paradigm. With this latest work, Urry’s goal is not only to conceptualize further the theoretical and methodological tenets of mobilities research, but also to establish firmly the status of the mobilities paradigm within the social sciences as one of prominence, if not centrality
Communicating the “world-class” city: a visual-material approach
Full text linkIn this article, I demonstrate my visual-material approach to researching the urban built environment as a medium of communication in its own right. Specifically, I discuss my research on second-tier cities with “world-class” aspirations, which highlights the significance of both symbolic and material resources in processes of urban regeneration and redevelopment. A visual-material approach draws not only from social semiotics and multimodality, but also from critical and material rhetoric to engage with the ways in which increasingly widespread “formats” of urban regeneration and redevelopment are mobilized to transform the urban built environment in the service of a globally appealing aesthetic. In doing so, this is also an approach that illuminates the dialectical relationship between cities’ perceived necessity to appear competitive on a heavily mediatized global stage and to intervene on their landscape in ways that mediate the everyday lives of urban communities in lasting ways
NUTRITIONAL PEPTIDOMICS: DISCOVERY, QUANTIFICATION, AND FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS OF PLANT PROTEIN DERIVED PEPTIDES
Full text linkNUTRITIONAL PEPTIDOMICS: DISCOVERY, QUANTIFICATION, AND FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS OF PLANT PROTEIN DERIVED PEPTIDES
Sector CHIM/10 - Food chemistry
Introduction and aims of thesis
The study of bioactive peptides is a central issue in the development of innovative therapies. The increased attention for fresher and ‘greener’ foods and nutraceuticals possessing health-preventing or health-promoting properties makes bioactive peptides suitable candidates for a new era of pharmaceutical products. Analysing and understanding nature and bioactivity of nutritional peptides, typically delivered from parent food proteins, means comprehending an important level of environmental regulation of the human genome: diet is the environmental factor having the most profound life-long influence on health. Although a remarkable progress has been done in protein analysis, as a consequence of proteomic research, and in small molecule analysis, as a consequence of drug discovery/development initiatives, the field of nutritional peptidomic is still quite unexplored and some drawbacks should be addressed.
The pharmacological applications of bioactive peptides depend primarily on their ability to be absorbed in order to exert their bioactivity. In addition, it is very likely that peptide sequences are subjected to structural alterations before performing their final activity in vivo due to different events, such as the attack of gastrointestinal enzymes, brush border peptidases, absorption through the intestinal barrier, and attack of intracellular peptidases in the intracellular absorption. Therefore, all of these different aspects about the bioavailability have attracted a growing interest in the last years. In addition, the possibility of the peptides breakdown during the gastrointestinal digestion is one of the most important factor to be considered when evaluating food-derived peptides for the promotion of human health.
Chemical stability is also crucial for proper assay development, since these peptides could lose stability when placed in solution or in biological fluids or even before absorption.
Once they are delivered, the biodistribution of bioactive peptides may be sometimes hampered as a result of proteolytic attack, primarily due to the action of brush border peptidases overexpressed at the microvilli surface of intestinal cells.
However, before evaluating aspects such as the bioavailability, the optimization of hydrolytic conditions and the chemical identification of protein hydrolysates are other important aspects to be highlighted. The broad variety of physiological activities attributed to protein hydrolysates are determined by the type, number, position, and properties of amino acids present in the sequence of bioactive peptides. The optimization of the hydrolytic conditions for the obtainment of bioactive hydrolysates was also addressed in this work. Since peptides derive from proteins, the integration of peptidomics and proteomics methodologies permitted the enlargement of proteomic databank, which may facilitate the improvement of peptidomics platform libraries.
In this context, advanced analytical techniques such as those based on mass spectrometry (MS) have emerged as indispensable and irreplaceable tools in the discovery, identification, quantification and functional analysis of bioactive peptides arising from proteolysis. Among the toolkit of techniques developed to investigate proteins at the proteome-wide scale, MS has gained popularity especially because of its ability to handle the hierarchical complexity associated with the biological systems. In addition, MS-based approaches coupled to cell culturing and bioinformatics tools set a new standard in peptide research.
Based on these premises, the aim of my PhD project was to set-up and apply MS strategies in order to evaluate:
I. The absorption at intestinal level of peptic and tryptic hydrolysates from lupin protein using an in vitro model based on Caco-2 cells, providing for the first time this kind of data on peptides from this seed.
II. The modulation of protein-protein interaction (PPI) of proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin type 9 (PCSK9) with the low density lipoprotein receptor (LDL-R) in HepG2 cells induced by lupin peptides as well as the quantification by MS of the absorbed peptides that had been predicted to be the best inhibitors of the PCSK9-LDLR PPI by molecular modeling.
III. The absorption and metabolism of authentic samples of peptides from soy proteins using Caco-2 cells.
IV. The extensive investigation of the hempseed proteome including the identification of minor protein components by CPLL methodology.
V. The production of some hydrolysates from hempseed protein endowed of hypocholesterolemic properties using different proteases.
VI. The enlargement of apricot seed protein databank through an extensive proteome characterization followed by an in silico driven approach for the prediction of the peptides released by simulated gastrointestinal digestion.
General conclusion. The results obtained in this work allowed the enlargement of the bioactive-peptide library platform adding a new dimension to the potential health benefits derived from protein from the seeds of different plants of agronomic importance. In details, a growing body of reports on novel peptide sequences and function-structure relationships contributed to the improvement of plant protein and peptide knowledge. Information obtained from characterizing structural components of plant hydrolysates offers useful technological and functional implications for food ingredient formulation or pharmacological use
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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