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The book is about future cities and possible scenarios for city futures. A question central to this book is how to face urban challenges while providing and safeguarding positive outcomes, concerned with the improvement of the quality of urban life: How can future cities be made more liveable, sustainable, and resilient? How can cities continue to provide a wide range of opportunities for all necessities of life? To tackle these complex questions, the book includes a collection of 25 articles written by 37 emerging voices in urban design and research. Together, they contribute from a diverse spectrum of interest, expertise, academic disciplines, and practice. They approach the built environment from a socio-cultural, respectively socio-economic perspective, from the viewpoint of urban policy and public health, with environmental concerns for urban sustainability and circularity in mind, and through the lens of urban computer and data science, providing a take on urban digitalization and transformation of cities into ‘smart’ cities. Together, their contributions reflect the complexity and diversity of challenges and opportunities underpinning future cities. Future Cities—City Futures intends to be a platform for trans-disciplinary urban discourse.

Luxembourg is characterized by a personal language policy in which Luxembourgish, French, German, and German Sign Language are recognized and enregistered as national (Luxembourgish) and administrative languages. Pivotal in such a policy development was the enregisterment of a Luxembourgish voice throughout the nineteenth century as either a bilingual French/German voice (subsuming Luxembourgish under German) or as a gallicized German voice through conflicting ideologies of personhood and nationhood. Through an analysis of policy, media, and linguistics texts from 1830 to 1896, I argue that cross-event linkages between these texts allow for the identification of two distinct ethnometapragmatics. These typify a Luxembourgish voice and enregister the Luxembourgish language as a highly disputed emblem of nationhood. These ethnometapragmatics were speech events that solidified into pathways that characterized nineteenth-century Luxembourg until 1896, when Caspar Mathias Spoo gave a speech in Parliament whose effects slightly shifted these two pathways by redefining the high/low register division through an ideology of democratization.

Cette contribution a pour objectif d'ouvrir ce qui apparaissait de prime abord comme un petit dossier, consacré au patrimoine détenu dans le comté de Hainaut pendant plusieurs décennies au début du XIVe siècle entre 1304 et 1343 voire par après, par les comtes de la dynastie des Luxembourg (Henri VII et son fils Jean dit l'Aveugle, roi de Bohême) dont j'ai présenté les pièces principales et l’intérêt que leur étude (et édition) pourra apporter. Ce dossier est intéressant à plus d'un titre: Il est- du côté luxembourgeois du moins, peu connu - même si des pièces importantes en sont éditées et disponibles depuis longtemps - ces possessions "excentrées" ont peu été prises en considération par les chercheurs travaillant sur la territorialisation de la principauté ou sur les "finances" de Jean de Bohême. Pourtant ils sont situés dans une région qui a dû compter pour les Luxembourg : Henri VII, futur empereur, fils de Béatrice d’Avesnes, y naquit.Il concerne aussi une période durant laquelle se développe l'écrit documentaire dans la gestion des possessions des principautés des Pays Bas – dont bien entendu le Hainaut (en union avec la Hollande-Zélande), très bien étudié par Valeria Van Camp. Au Luxembourg, il y eut élaboration d'un premier cartulaire diversement connu, appelé actuellement liber foeodorum, à partir de 1308-1309, complété par la suite ; d'un second en 1343, et également d'un censier (ou Urbar) notant les revenus des différentes composantes des possessions des Luxembourg par prévôtés, terres, châtellenies des années 1306-1317, complétées ensuite dans les années 1322-1327.Ce dossier pose des questions quant à la gestion pratique de telles possessions, tout à fait excentrées, au-delà de l'organisation administrative du comté., The purpose of this contribution is to open what appeared at first sight to be a small dossier, devoted to the heritage held in the county of Hainaut for several decades at the beginning of the 14th century between 1304 and 1343, and even afterwards, by the counts of the Luxembourg dynasty (Henry VII and his son John the Blind, King of Bohemia), of which I have presented the main items and the interest that their study (and publication) could bring. This file is interesting in more than one way: It is- on the Luxembourg side at least, little known - even if important documents have been published and available for a long time - these 'outlying' possessions have not been much taken into consideration by researchers working on the territorialisation of the principality or on the 'finances' of John of Bohemia. It also concerns a period during which documentary writing developed in the management of the possessions of the principalities of the Low Countries - including, of course, Hainaut (in union with Zealand Holland), which has been very well studied by Valeria Van Camp. In Luxembourg, a first cartulary, currently called liber foeodorum, was drawn up in 1308-1309, and subsequently completed; a second in 1343, and also a censary (or Urbar) noting the revenues of the various components of the possessions of the Luxembourgs by provostship, land, and castellany in the years 1306-1317, subsequently completed in the years 1322-1327. This file raises questions about the practical management of such possessions, which were quite remote, beyond the administrative organisation of the county.

We report the omnidirectional reflection (ODR) in one dimensional photonic crystal (PC) structure consisting of alternate layers of Graphite as material of low refractive index and Tellurium (Te) as material of high refractive index. The effects of the incidence angles on the spectral reflectance have been investigated using transfer matrix method (TMM). The proposed structure gives 100% reflection within a wide range of wavelengths in the visible-near IR region and can be used effectively in wavelength filters, optical resonators and mirrors for visible-near IR region of electromagnetic spectrum. Due to considerable control of absorption of low frequency radiation in graphite, the damping and skin effect in the PC are also suppressed. The investigation has also been made for the study of role of ambient medium and the effect of number of layers in formation of ODR.

type:Journal Article, Recent studies demonstrated that the corticospinal pathway is one of the key nodes for the feedback control of human standing and that the excitability is flexibly changed according to the current state of posture. However, it has been unclear whether this pathway is also involved in a predictive control of human standing. Here, we investigated whether the corticospinal excitability of the soleus (SOL) and tibialis anterior (TA) muscles during standing would be modulated anticipatorily when perturbation was impending. We measured the motor-evoked potential (MEP) induced by transcranial magnetic stimulation over the motor cortex at six stimulus intensities. Three experimental conditions were set depending on predictabilities about perturbation occurrence and onset: No perturbation, No Cue, and Cue conditions. In the Cue condition, an acoustic signal was given as timing information of perturbation. The slope of the stimulus–response relation curve revealed that the TA-MEP was enhanced when postural perturbation was expected compared to when the perturbation was not expected (No Perturbation vs. No Cue, 0.023 ± 0.004 vs. 0.042 ± 0.007; No Perturbation vs. Cue, 0.023 ± 0.004 vs. 0.050 ± 0.009; Bonferroni correction, p = 0.01, respectively). In addition, two-way analysis of variance (intensity × condition) revealed the main effect of condition (F(1,13) = 6.31, p = 0.03) but not intensity and interaction when the MEP amplitude of the Cue and No Cue conditions was normalized by that in No Perturbation, suggesting the enhancement more apparent when timing information was given. The SOL-MEP was not modulated even when perturbation was expected, but it slightly reduced due to the timing information. The results of an additional experiment confirmed that the acoustic cue by itself did not affect the TA- and SOL-MEPs. Our findings suggest that a prediction of a future state of standing balance modulates the corticospinal excitability in the TA, and that the additional timing in, source:https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2018.00068

type:Journal Article, The prediction of upcoming perturbation modulates postural responses in the ankle muscles. The effects of this prediction on postural responses vary according to predictable factors. When the amplitude of perturbation can be predicted, the long-latency response is set at an appropriate size for the required response, whereas when the direction of perturbation can be predicted, there is no effect. The neural mechanisms underlying these phenomena are poorly understood. Here, we examined how the corticospinal excitability of the ankle muscles [i.e., the tibialis anterior (TA), the soleus (SOL), and the medial gastrocnemius (MG), with a focus on the TA], would be modulated in five experimental conditions: (1) No-perturbation; (2) Low (anterior translation with small amplitude); (3) High (anterior translation with large amplitude); (4) Posterior (posterior translation with large amplitude); and (5) Random (Low, High, and Posterior in randomized order). We measured the motor-evoked potentials (MEPs) induced by transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) at 50 ms before surface-translation in each condition. The electromyographic (EMG) responses evoked by surface-translations were also measured. The results showed that the TA-MEP amplitude was greater in the High condition (where the largest TA-EMG response was evoked among the five conditions) compared to that in the No-perturbation, Low, and Posterior conditions (High vs. No-perturbation, p < 0.001; High vs. Low, p = 0.001; High vs. Posterior, p = 0.001). In addition, the MEP amplitude in the Random condition was significantly greater than that in the No-perturbation and Low conditions (Random vs. No-perturbation, p = 0.002; Random vs. Low, p = 0.002). The EMG response in the TA evoked by perturbation was significantly smaller when a perturbation can be predicted (predictable vs. unpredictable, p < 0.001). In the SOL and MG muscles, no prominent modulations of the MEP amplitude or EMG response were observed, suggesting that, source:https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2019.00004

type:Journal Article, Transcutaneous electrical stimulation is a relatively new technique to evoke spinal reflexes in lower limb muscles. The advantage of this technique is that the spinal reflex responses can be obtained from multiple lower limb muscles simultaneously. However, repeatability of spinal reflexes evoked by transcutaneous spinal cord stimulation between days has not been evaluated. We aimed to examine repeatability of recruitment properties of the spinal reflexes evoked by transcutaneous spinal cord stimulation. Recruitment curves of the spinal reflexes evoked by transcutaneous spinal cord stimulation of 8 lower limb muscles (i.e., foot, lower leg, and thigh muscles) of 20 males were measured on two consecutive days. To confirm that responses were caused by activation of the sensory fiber, a double-pulse stimulation with 50 ms inter-pulse interval was delivered. Peak-to-peak amplitude of the first response was calculated for each muscle when no response was observed in the second response owing to post-activation depression. For comparison with the spinal reflexes evoked by transcutaneous spinal cord stimulation, the recruitment curves of the H-reflex amplitude of the soleus of 9 males were measured. Threshold intensity and maximal slope of the recruitment curves were calculated, and inter-day repeatability of the properties was quantified using intraclass correlation coefficients. For the spinal reflexes evoked by transcutaneous spinal cord stimulation, the intraclass correlation coefficient values of threshold intensity and maximal slope for each muscle ranged from 0.487 to 0.874 and from 0.471 to 0.964, respectively. Regarding the soleus H-reflex, the intraclass correlation coefficients of threshold intensity and maximal slope were 0.936 and 0.751, respectively. The present data showed that repeatability of the recruitment properties of the spinal reflexes evoked by transcutaneous spinal cord stimulation in the lower limb was moderate to high. Measurement of the spinal r, source:https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0214818

type:Journal Article, An execution of cognitive processing interferes with postural sway during quiet standing. It reduces sway variability in young adults, but the mechanism is not clear. To elucidate the mechanisms, we focused on breathing in the present study. The purpose of this study was to clarify whether a decrease in postural sway amplitude during a postural–cognitive task is related to the change in breathing movement. The center of pressure (COP) was recorded via a force plate and the motion of leg joints (ankle, knee, and hip), and breathing movements were measured with a 3D motion capture system in quiet standing and standing with cognitive (mental arithmetic) task conditions. The change ratios of each variable from the quiet standing condition to the cognitive task were also calculated. It was shown that the MASt condition produced a significantly smaller RMS of COP displacement as compared to the QSt condition (p < 0.01). The results revealed that the breathing rate was faster and the amplitude of breathing movement smaller when subjects performed the cognitive task. A significant positive correlation (r = 0.75, p < 0.01) was found between the change ratio of breathing amplitude and the COP amplitude. The present results suggest that reduced standing postural sway during a cognitive task is related, at least in part, to a decrease in breathing amplitude., source:https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0197385

type:Journal Article, Chronic smoking has been shown to have deleterious effects on brain function and is an important risk factor for ischemic stroke. Reduced cortical excitability has been shown among chronic smokers compared with non-smokers to have a long-term effect and so far no study has assessed the effect of smoking on short-term motor learning. Paired associative stimulation (PAS) is a commonly used method for inducing changes in excitability of the motor cortex (M1) in a way that simulates short-term motor learning. This study employed PAS to investigate the effect of chronic cigarette smoking on plasticity of M1. Stimulator output required to elicit a motor-evoked potential (MEP) of approximately 1 mV was similar between the groups prior to PAS. MEP response to single pulse stimuli increased in the control group and remained above baseline level for at least 30 min after the intervention, but not in the smokers who showed no significant increase in MEP size. The silent period was similar between groups at all time points of the experiment. This study suggests that chronic smoking may have a negative effect on the response to PAS and infers that chronic smoking may have a deleterious effect on the adaptability of M1., source:https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci9030062

Gender and populism have been extensively theorized separately, but there has not been sufficient study of the way that gender undergirds populism, strengthening its diverse manifestations. Focusing on the cases of Vladimir Putin and Recep T. Erdoğan, we argue that their political performance allows them to project a right-wing populism that hides much of its political program in an ostentatious masculine posturing that has the virtue of being relatively malleable. This political masculinity allows them to position themselves at different points in time as outsiders yet insiders, bad boys yet good fathers. In their early years Putin and Erdogan established themselves as transgressive outsiders who developed a profile of power by building up their masculine, working-class biographies. As their power became consolidated, they turned to a more paternal role, fostering a conservative gender order while attacking the masculinity of their opponents and casting them as outsiders. In this way over the years they have combined political performances that have both breached the conventional gender norms and also upheld and reinforced them. The result is a Janus-faced masculinity of outsiders-yet-insiders, bad-boys-yet-good-fathers, which establishes that the leader is both the same as other men and also different from them, standing above the citizenry, mediating and fostering a conservative political order. Understanding this gender performance also helps to explain the paradox of “electoral authoritarianism” (Levitsky and Way Journal of Democracy, 13(2), 51–65, 2002; Schedler 2006), demonstrating how performed political masculinity can support and connect the cult of a popularly elected leader with conservative social and political gender norms.

Book review of “Night and fog”: a film in history, by Sylvie Lindeperg; translated by Tom Mes; edited by Michael Renov, Faye Ginsburg, and Jane Gaines. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014. ISBN 978-0-81667-9911

The twenty-first century began with a much anticipated – and, by most measures, disappointing – musical production of Love's Labour's Lost on film. Five years later, a much more successful musical adaptation of the play called The Big Life: The Ska Musical provided a breakthrough in theatre history, becoming the first ‘British black musical’ to reach London's commercial West End. This play's recollection of the Windrush immigrants and its integration of ska rhythms with an updated script seemed fresh and transformative; by contrast, most critics and scholars deemed the film musical's use of history nostalgic or superficial, and the deployment of its artistic genre partially successful at best. Nevertheless, a decade on, Kenneth Branagh's film is available on DVD and has gained a more positive overall response from IMDb (Internet Movie Database) respondents, at least, than its early reception might have predicted. Numerous critical articles have examined its nuances and relationship to the Hollywood musical tradition. Meanwhile, Paul Sirett and Paul Joseph's West End hit, despite rave reviews, a BBC Radio adaptation, and even the enduring presence of its opening number on YouTube, has as yet failed to ‘cross over’ to Broadway or to screen production, and thus to more lasting and international success. It has not gained acknowledgement in recent critical editions of Love's Labour's Lost, nor generated discernible scholarly analysis. Beyond merely lamenting the primacy of film/video over ‘live’ theatre or decrying the necessity for celebrities in artistic production, what might we say about this turn of events?

One of the most striking aspects of Meghan Warner Mettler’s lucid and groundbreaking portrayal of postwar American engagement with Japanese culture is the sheer breadth of the phenomenon. Mettler starts out by analyzing the critical acclaim that was received by three Japanese films that arrived to American art house theaters during the course of a relatively short period of time: Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon in 1951, which was followed by the 1954 release of Kenji Mizoguchi’s Ugetsu and Teinosuke Kinugawa’s Gates of Hell. The book goes on to highlight the origins of American fascination with ikebana flower arrangement and bonsai trees, both of which first emerged as popular hobbies for Americans stationed in Japan during the Allied Occupation before gaining popularity among a growing number of middle-class suburbanites across the United States. As the next chapter reveals, however, the influence of Japanese aesthetics on the American lifestyle proved even more far-reaching, leading to the adoption of Japanese architectural and landscaping techniques in American homes as well as the proliferation of Japanese home furnishing goods during the 1950s and 1960s. Turing from home interiors to inner lives, the book culminates in two chapters that are dedicated to the short-lived but nonetheless remarkable “Zen Boom” that transpired between 1957 and 1960, during which Zen Buddhism captured the attention of not only suburban consumers of self-help literature but also of prominent intellectuals and spiritual leaders, such as Erich Fromm and Thomas Merton, and even Beat icons, including Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsburg.

The down-to-earth subtitle of this collection deflects attention from the paronomasia possibilities suggestively compressed within the title. Although none of the essays claim that other animals do the counting themselves, they all demonstrate that animals themselves matter, whether, from the human perspective, their numbers are too great, too small, or just right. The rubrics under which the contributions are grouped emphasize the conjunction of evaluation with quantification. In order of decreasing plenitude, they are excess, abundance, equilibrium, scarcity, and extinction. The collection illustrates the significance of both senses incorporated in the title.

The moment an early career scholar decides how to deposit a dissertation often comes during a fraught period of transition. For those who have options, they must weigh the often unquantifiable benefits of open access against the fear of not being able to turn their dissertation into a viable book for publication to earn tenure. Much of this anxiety stems from concerns about university press policies and copyright with respect to digital publication. Currently, there is not much data around open access dissertations being published by presses. Additionally, scholars without a publication track record may not be mentally prepared for an additional level of scrutiny from the public after rounds of reviews with their committee. Though dissertations are vetted by important stakeholders in the field, they are often not structurally overhauled by professional editors and polished by copyeditors beyond the writer’s own departmental resources. This lack of a final quality assurance process during an already stressful time can cause the dissertator to err on the side of caution and embargo their dissertation for several years if they have the option.1

Thesis: S.M. in Comparative Media Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Comparative Media Studies/Writing, 2018., Cataloged from PDF version of thesis., Includes bibliographical references (pages 114-125)., This thesis seeks to understand how different groups of people in Puerto Rico and the diaspora deploy internet memes for political critique. In this work, I analyze three case studies focused on how Puerto Rican groups and individuals use internet memes to express political discontent, make calls to action, engage in catharsis, and seek political change. The cases explore critical political meme production under varying circumstances on the island. The first case study, La Junta de Control Fiscal, is a group that uses Facebook to satirize the fiscal control board that was imposed on the island by the US Congress; they do this by making use of satirical socialist realist meme aesthetics, and visual vocabulary. The second case study, Puerto Rican vaporwave, explores the local deployment of an ironic, anti-capitalist aesthetic form of meme production and its transformation into a method of critique of colonialism and recovery of national identity. The third case study, Huracan Maria memes, focuses on how people use internet memes with varying aesthetics to express their frustrations and anger towards federal and state governmental disaster response before, during, and after the 2017 hurricane event. In each case, I gathered an archive of relevant internet memes, conducted content analysis, and interviewed key meme culture participants to get insight into the development process.Together, these case studies showcase the ways that Puerto Rican people make use of memes to tackle issues like climate change, colonialism, disaster response, and austerity measures. This thesis also develops new insights into the collective meme production process. In particular, the work demonstrates that participation within internet meme culture takes different forms. Meme culture participants perform four different types of engagement: original creation, remixing, curation and sharing. Furthermore, this work proves that internet meme production should be seen as a collective storytelling p, by Aziria D. Rodríguez., S.M. in Comparative Media Studies

Thesis: S.M. in Comparative Media Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Comparative Media Studies/Writing, 2018., Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis., Includes bibliographical references (pages 101-113)., Digital representations of food (food texts) have become mainstream content on social media sites and digital streaming sites. While they accomplish some similar goals to their analog counterparts (e.g. in-print cookbooks), like communicating information about the food's preparation or what its consumption would be like, the surplus of food texts has been ushered in by a transformation of media infrastructure such as the internet, cameras on cheap mobile phones, and digital social network platforms. The creators of the bulk of food texts have shifted from authority figures in the field to anyone who dines out and goes online. With this shift in media ownership comes a change in status -- from expert to everyone. As a result, the dynamics of food discourse has also changed. I use interviews and ethnographies with fine dining chefs, food industry professionals, and media makers to illustrate these convergences and divergences in the creation and consumption of food texts today. TL;DR: While the underlying purpose of the construction and consumption of food texts remain the same from analog to digital form, the authority of food culture and its complimentary narrative control has shifted as a result of the convergence of food texts and digital media affordances., by Victoria (Vicky) Jean Zeamer., S.M. in Comparative Media Studies

Thesis: S.M. in Comparative Media Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Comparative Media Studies/Writing, 2018., Cataloged from PDF version of thesis., Includes bibliographical references (pages 103-109)., When we think of pleasures to be found in video games, we often talk about power, control, agency, and fun. But to center these pleasures is to privilege certain stories, players, actions and possibility spaces. This thesis uses the framework of intimacy to closely examine three games for their capacity to create pleasure in vulnerability, the loss of control, dependence on others, and precarity. Drawing from Deleuzian affect theory and feminist, queer and posthuman theorists, I read for intimate affects in the formal, aesthetic, proprioceptive and structural elements of Overwatch, The Last Guardian and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Ultimately, I argue two points: that video games have a unique capacity to generate intimate affects, and that my games of choice push us to rethink our assumptions about what constitutes intimacy more broadly., by Kaelan Doyle-Myerscough., S.M. in Comparative Media Studies

Thesis: S.M. in Comparative Media Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Comparative Media Studies/Writing, 2018., Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis., Includes bibliographical references (pages 85-86)., The popular understanding of moderation online is that moderation is inherently reactive, where moderators see and then react to content generated by users, typically by removing it; in order to understand the work already being performed by moderators, we need to expand our understanding of what that work entails. Drawing upon interviews, participant observation, and my own experiences as a volunteer community moderator on Reddit, I propose that a significant portion of work performed by volunteer moderators is social and communicative in nature. Even the chosen case studies of large-scale esports events on Twitch, where the most visible and intense tasks given to volunteer moderators consists of reacting and removing user-generated chat messages, exposes faults in the reactive model of moderation. A better appreciation of the full scope of moderation work will be vital in guiding future research, design, and development efforts in this field., by Claudia Lo., S.M. in Comparative Media Studies

Thesis: S.M. in Comparative Media Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Comparative Media Studies/Writing, 2018., Cataloged from PDF version of thesis., Includes bibliographical references (pages 149-168)., In the current political climate in the United States, much attention has been paid to the role of the press in our increasingly polarized society and to what extent it exacerbates or mends divisions. While the majority of that analysis is focused on national politics and news outlets, the role of local media and the crucial role it plays in civic life has been often neglected in the wider debate. In this thesis, I argue that local journalism is critical as a tool for informing citizens so they can be civically engaged and hold the powerful accountable, as well as keeping communities together. Methodologically, this thesis seeks to incorporate the worlds of both media theory and journalism practice. To understand the role local news plays in society, I utilize various theoretical frameworks, but particularly that of James Carey and his explanation of the "transmission" and "ritual" functions of communication. In my more expansive understanding of these theories, I suggest the transmission role encompasses the ways in which local journalism informs citizens on matters of public interest so that they can participate in democracy and keeps the powerful in check. The ritual model highlights the often-ignored but significant manner in which local media serves a vehicle for community identification and maintaining societal bonds. After explaining the decades-long economic decline of the local media industry, I survey the various projects and experiments in the fields of journalism and philanthropy that are seeking to revive or at least prevent local news outlets from disappearing. In the final chapter, which is based on my field research and uses a style of journalistic reportage rather than academic writing, I profile several new local news initiatives in West Virginia and Kentucky. While these projects are too recent to yet offer any definitive results, I conclude with some initial takeaways and a discussion of possible metrics to measure their success in the future. As, by Sara Rafsky., S.M. in Comparative Media Studies

Thesis: S.M. in Comparative Media Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Comparative Media Studies/Writing, 2018., Cataloged from PDF version of thesis., Includes bibliographical references (pages 101-106)., As the media landscape in the United States has shifted and changed, the emphasis placed on digital technologies - particularly with respect to audience engagement - has become increasingly noteworthy. However, when situated against a backdrop of risk communications and sensationalized spectacle, such an emphasis also becomes concerning. This thesis examines the audience engagement considerations and practices of the media industry at present through a discussion of current social media policies and practices, a discussion of the affordances and constraints of social media as they relate to public health communications concerns, and an analysis of the affective implications of the heavy emphasis placed on images used on social media. This breakdown is partnered with a data-oriented exploration of U.S. audience trends and U.S. media coverage of the 2014 Ebola and 2015-2017 Zika outbreaks to underscore the perception gap that U.S. audiences are contending with. In doing so, I use a theoretical framework of sensationalism, gatekeeping, and media figurations to argue that audience engagement is not merely a journalistic, revenue-oriented concern - it is a public health concern too., by Aashka Dave., S.M. in Comparative Media Studies

In Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor (1861), a massive, four-volume survey of urban workers living on the economic margins of Victorian society, city streets offer up plenty of appalling working-class vulgarity – strident voices, coarse language, gaudy clothing, and brazen behavior undisciplined by bourgeois standards of decency and reticence.1 But even as these crimes against propriety sharpen the contrast between the privileged observer and “the poor,” they also disturb the power relations between Mayhew and the subjects of his investigations. While vulgarity is generally understood as a lack of good taste and propriety, it can also result from an unwillingness to make an appropriate show of deference to one’s superiors. As James C. Scott argues, subordinate classes can subtly withhold deference in everyday practices such as speech, clothing, gestures, tone of voice, and word choice. These “hidden transcripts,” as he calls them, represent local, relatively safe assertions of power in a stratified society. Seen in this way, vulgarity – bad manners, slang, obscenity, sexual indecency – arises not from a lack of sophistication but from a deliberate intention to offend, resting on an awareness of the power dynamics of class relations. Scott quotes Pierre Bourdieu’s observation, “[t]he concession of politeness always contains political concessions ... the symbolic taxes due from the individual” (Bourdieu, Outline 4; qtd. in Scott 47-8). For some of Mayhew’s subjects, vulgarity is a form of tax evasion, amounting to an oblique protest against the would-be hegemony of bourgeois standards and a defense of their own territories, customs, and traditions. In London Labour and the London Poor, currents of power, speech, and judgment do not run in only one direction, and vulgarity often supplies the energy that turns these currents back on the observer.

My garden is being invaded by Japanese knotweed, as are those of my neighbors and those of many people who live in other places far from its native East Asia. I keep it more or less under control by eliminating individual extrusions, but I know that I am engaged in an open-ended struggle rather than a campaign leading to possible victory. The knotweed’s root system is extensive and deep, making it nearly impossible to extirpate once it has become established. In Massachusetts, the Japanese knotweed is one of sixty-six species that have been designated “invasive” by the Massachusetts Invasive Plant Advisory Group (a nonprofit organization that works in coordination with state and federal agencies). Like the other sixty-five species on the blacklist, it has been banned for importation, propagation, and sale within the state; but given the robustness and vigor of the plant, these official sanctions seem a bit like closing the barn door after the horse has run away. The same may be true of ostensibly more draconian measures promulgated in other polities: in the United Kingdom, the discovery of Japanese knotweed on a property may reduce its assessed value, and in parts of Australia it is formally prohibited.

It would be difficult to find a map that places the Scottish Highlands at the center of the world. And over the past few centuries their core demographic experience has tended to be centrifugal rather than centripetal, as erstwhile Highlanders swelled the populations of far-flung outposts of empire (or former empire). But their landscape and their legends have disproportionately attracted diverse and numerous imaginations; as Hugh Trevor Roper concluded in “The Invention of Tradition: The Highland Tradition of Scotland,” tartans are now purchased and “worn, with tribal enthusiasm, by Scots and supposed Scots from Texas to Tokyo” (in The Invention of Tradition, ed. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger [Cambridge, 1983], 41). In Fredrik Albritton Jonsson’s deeply researched study, however, the author argues that the impact of the Highlands was not confined to the romantic realms conjured by Ossian and Walter Scott. From the geographical periphery he moves the Highlands to the theoretical heart as both the inspiration and the laboratory for Enlightenment efforts to understand and exploit the natural world and (especially) its resources.

We study dispersion in the prices an airline charges to different passengers on the same route. This variation in fares is substantial: the expected absolute difference in fares between two passengers on a route is 36 percent of the airline's average ticket price. The pattern of observed price dispersion cannot easily be explained by cost differences alone. Dispersion increases on routes with more competition or lower flight density, consistent with discrimination based on customers' willingness to switch to alternative airlines or flights. We argue that the data support models of price discrimination in monopolistically competitive markets.

This article attempts to audit underwater music. There are two primary venues for underwater music: field settings of the ocean and lab settings of swimming pools. For the field tradition, underwater music emerges from the noise of the Cold War, revealing the songs of whales and harboring evidence of global warming, of sea creatures under stress, etc. For the lab tradition, the pool is a stage to realize the aesthetic of Cagean modernism. It becomes a space to play with meanings of water. While the field setting is “wild” and entangled with nonhuman sounds and the lab setting is more social, cultural, or anthropocentric, artists working in both settings seek to evoke an “immersive” experience. In both settings the transductive properties of water must be managed to invoke water as a material accomplice in this enterprise, this aim of soaking listeners in the sublime surround of sound submerged.

rom the perspective even of stay-at-home European naturalists in the seventeenth century, the world kept getting bigger as increasing animal, vegetable, and mineral evidence of its breadth and variety poured into metropolitan centers. At the same time, the technology of the microscope and the virtuoso practice of dissection (of living animals as well as corpses—Anita Guerrini argues that these practices were perceived as less distinct by her subjects, and by their private and public audiences, than has subsequently become the case) turned the attention of anatomists to things that were small and hidden. Written with interdisciplinary erudition and insight, The Courtiers’ Anatomists persuasively demonstrates that these modes of inquiry were neither independent nor inconsistent; on the contrary, they could be pursued at the same time by the same individuals. As her subtitle indicates, Guerrini does not attempt to survey Enlightenment science. Instead she focuses on a particular group of anatomists who were based in Paris and who enjoyed the support of Louis XIV.

The Zoological Society of London was established in 1826, and its menagerie in Regents Park opened two years later. Even before the animals were available for public inspection it attracted anticipatory press attention, which only increased in subsequent years and decades. The reasons for this media focus are not hard to find. The zoo occupied a conspicuous location in the metropolis, and its collection appealingly combined the traditional and the novel. The display of exotic animals had a long history in Britain as elsewhere, and early visitors to Regent's Park could also have admired many similar creatures individually exhibited at fairs or in the yards of taverns or grouped in traveling or stationary menageries. London's oldest such collection, the royal menagerie at the Tower of London, dated from the thirteenth century. All these venues implicitly defined captive animals as spectacle or as entertainment. As the name...

I begin by stating a small set of troublesome but pervasive educational issues. While these have remained in the background during our work, they have served as the impetus for developing and reflecting on possible roles for computer technology in classrooms. In the remaining sections of the paper I propose that the computer can serve as an effective mediator between action and symbol. After setting the scene in the Laboratory for Making Things, I give an extended example of how computer-as-mediator contributes to learning when played out in this rather unusual classroom.

During the early decades of the twentieth century, before Canon and Nikon became global brands—and long before photographers such as Moriyama Daidō and Araki Nobuyoshi rose to prominence in the eyes of critics and curators across the world—a vibrant culture of amateur photography had already emerged in Japan. Kerry Ross's Photography for Everyone introduces readers to the world that pre-1945 Japanese amateur photographers would have encountered, going into the shops where they bought their cameras and beyond. It is a welcome addition to the historiography of Japanese photography, which, as Ross points out, has tended to focus on art photography and works of major auteurs. Instead, this book seeks to highlight the significance not only of amateur photography, but also of processes such as camera production, retail, and marketing in the making of Japan's photographic culture (3–5). By focusing on the overwhelmingly male-dominated world of amateur photography in prewar Japan, Photography for Everyone also draws our attention to the ways in which camera makers, retailers, and publishers envisioned middle-class, male consumers during a historical period that has been better known for the rise of their female counterparts.

We present the deployment of a 16-DoF dual-arm mobile manipulator as an on-stage actor in the MIT2016 Pageant, a 60 minute live play performed for the centennial celebration of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus move from Boston to Cambridge. The robot performed using expressive motions, navigated a 250ft-long thrust stage through a wireless connection, and was directed remotely by a human operator using a shared autonomy system. We report on the technical framework and human-robot interaction that enabled the performance, including motion planning, coordination of action with human actors, and the challenges in navigation, manipulation, perception and system reliability.

Noah im kalten Krieg: Igor Straw insky’s Musical Play “The Flood.” By Hannah Dübgen. (Musiksoziologie, no. 17.) Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2012. [131 p. ISBN 9783761822654. €29.95.] Music examples, facsimiles, bibliography. Noah im kalten Krieg presents a variety of interpretations and insights regarding a single work: Igor Stravinsky’s The Flood, composed for a CBS television broadcast in 1962. Each of Hannah Dübgen’s eight chapters approaches the piece from a different angle, marshaling evidence from source material, music analysis, secondary sources, and published statements by Stravinsky (with Robert Craft), to sketch a series of narratives about how the work might be understood. The introduction poses the question, “Why did Stravinsky compose a work of music theater on the subject of the story of Noah’s Ark at the beginning of the 1960’s in America?” (p. 13). Dübgen’s title gives a clue to her answer: the Cold War is the overarching interpretive reference point, specifically referring to the connection between the biblical cataclysm presented in The Flood and the fear of the atomic bomb (as she quotes Stravinsky, “The Flood is also The Bomb” [p. 12]). Dübgen argues that the story ought to best be considered allegorically, and that the allegory in question is no mere moral abstraction, but is really a kind of contemporary analogy. The best moments of the book are those that tie back to this allegory by integrating a discussion of modern musical techniques with questions of theology and dramatic tradition.

Bernd Alois Zimmermann. Die Soldaten. DVD (Blu-ray). Ingo Metzmacher / Salzburg Festival. Directed by Alvis Hermanis. With Alfred Muff, Laura Aikin, Tanja Ariane Baumgartner, Tomasz Konieczny, Renée Morloc, Gabriela Beňačková, Matthias Klink, Daniel Brenna, Wolfgang Ablinger, Boaz Daniel.Germany: EuroArts Music International, 2013. 2072584. $39.99. As its fiftieth anniversary approaches, Die Soldaten seems to be making a renewed bid for canonicity: it has been staged in six cities since 2002 and will be produced in two more in 2014. So it is an auspicious time to have a new production released on video, the first to be widely available since the Stuttgart production was re-released on DVD (Arthaus Musik, 100270 [2002, 1989]). With its excellent musical performances, detailed characterization, and straightforward direction, this performance, recorded at the Salzburg Festival in August 2012, stands as an eminently plausible record of an important and difficult twentieth-century work.

Thesis: S.M. in Comparative Media Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Humanities, 2016., Cataloged from PDF version of thesis., Includes bibliographical references (pages 125-131)., Comics studies tends to privilege the visual, and some scholars, like Scott McCloud believe that comics are solely visual. However, as Ian Hague has noted, the idea that comics are a solely visual medium is not only incomplete but does not align with what the sciences of perception and embodied cognition tell us. This paper seeks to build upon Hague's work by calling attention to and analyzing comics which exist without or with little visual imagery. These comics can be sorted into two primary categories, audiocomics and tactile comics. As these comics were created for people who have partial or no sight, existing guidelines and standards for creating aural and tactile imagery for people with partial or no sight are used to analyze the comics' success in achieving an experience that is easy to understand and also utilizes the medium's strengths. The comics are then analyzed as a whole in order to determine areas for improvement and additional experimentation., by Lacey Lord., S.M. in Comparative Media Studies

Thesis: S.M. in Comparative Media Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Humanities, 2017., Cataloged from PDF version of thesis., Includes bibliographical references (pages 89-96)., This thesis explores a mode of collective meaning making at the intersection of humor, insult, and jest that increasingly occupies social media conversations, online comment sections, and Internet writing far and wide: for lack of a better word, snark. Though akin to the similarly maligned practices of irony and sarcasm, snark is more unwieldy and less refined. To accuse others of snark is to question their intentions, their sincerity, even the validity of their claims. Snark is often seen as destructive. Per the subtitle of critic David Denby's book on the matter, "it's mean, it's personal, and it's ruining our conversations."' In the following pages, I investigate the role of snark in online discourse and attempt to salvage it from its bad reputation. I define and historicize snark as a humor- and insult-based social practice rooted in oral rather than written traditions. I argue that snark can adopt a pro-social role in online environments whose architecture tends to reward vapid or deceptive content (which, per former Gawker writer Tom Scocca, I call smarm and situate within Harry Frankfurt's concept of bullshit). After a discussion of the differences between politeness and civility, I define pro-social snark as impolite yet civil. Lastly, I analyze snark's affective qualities, and specifically its close relationship with paranoia. Utilizing Eve Sedgwick's notions of paranoid and reparative reading, I advocate for a reparative practice of snark that gives back to the culture it ridicules., by George Tsiveriotis., S.M. in Comparative Media Studies

Thesis: S.M. in Comparative Media Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Humanities, 2017., "June 2017." Cataloged from PDF version of thesis., Includes bibliographical references (pages 106-111)., The improbable election of Donald Trump relied on myriad factors. Among the most important of these, I argue here, was Trump's deft use of the social media site Twitter, which Trump used as a means to both communicate with his supporters directly, and to reach a far wider audience in the mainstream media. In adopting this hybrid communications strategy, Trump's political communications reached a wider audience, on a sturdier basis, than earlier figures who had similarly adopted what I dub a "paranoid populist" philosophy. I present case studies of two of these historical figures, Charles Coughlin, whose radio "sermons" reached millions in the 1930s, and Pat Robertson, whose cable television network inspired a devout following from afar. The grander political ambitions of both Coughlin and Robertson were stymied by a combination of technological, legal and economic factors, which did not serve to constrain Trump's candidacy in the same way. Instead, Trump's hybrid use of Twitter blended the breadth of Coughlin's audience with the depth of Robertson's following, providing him both an unfiltered line of communication to his supporters and a means of reaching a far wider audience through the provocative nature of his pronouncements. Through a combination of theoretical and empirical analysis, I illustrate the extent of Trump's paranoid populism on Twitter, and explain how Trump secured an avalanche of mainstream media coverage through the eternally controversial nature of his candidacy. I conclude with some reflections on Trump's early presidency, and his evolving use of Twitter as a platform for decrying the very news organizations without whose coverage his election would have proved impossible., by Josh Cowls., S.M. in Comparative Media Studies

Thesis: S.M. in Comparative Media Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Humanities, 2016., This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections., Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis., Includes bibliographical references (pages 83-86)., Virtual reality, as the name implies, is implicitly evaluated by its ability to reproduce or imitate aspects of reality, particularly in ways that convince users that they are physically present in the virtual space. This approach to the medium, a form of immediacy, effaces the material reality of the medium and can obscure the ways through which a medium can offer new forms of knowledge. Virtual reality's realism is a construct, and by acknowledging this, creators can push the medium to more experimental and novel ends. The framework of embodied montage proposed in this thesis seeks to provide an expressive vocabulary and techniques for creating virtual reality work that accounts for the material aspects of the medium. Drawing on theoretical research from film and media theory, analyzing existing virtual reality work, and discussing the process of creating an original virtual reality work, I analyze the 3D capture and interaction design process. I offer the term machine vision perspective to describe the process of experiencing such images through virtual reality systems. This process provides a ground to experiment with embodied modes of thinking that are not possible with the human body situated in the real world. This makes embodied montage, a novel framework proposed by this thesis, possible. Embodied montage is the decoupling and recoupling of action and perception in virtual reality experiences in order to generate new meanings, similar to montage in film. Drawing on film theory, media history and cognitive science, this framework creates a territory for creative expression that challenges embodied cognitive structures and could effectively use the medium in ways that are distinguished from other media forms., by Halil Deniz Tortum., S.M. in Comparative Media Studies

Thesis: S.M. in Comparative Media Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Humanities, 2017., Cataloged from PDF version of thesis., Includes bibliographical references (pages 116-122)., Location-based media have always played a key role in defining both spaces and publics. Due to the proliferation of sophisticated locative technologies, location-based media are increasingly ubiquitous in areas including art, gaming, urban planning, marketing, and tourism. While location-based approaches have enormous potential, however, rapid technological change and widely dispersed communities of practice have limited critical discourse. This thesis explores how we can better theorize and create innovative and compelling location-based media. I situate location-based media within the broad category of spatial narrative, identifying key concepts and approaches through historical and contemporary examples. In showing that location-based media have always been a form of augmenting our physical environments, I argue that augmented reality as a concept is far broader than current industry discourse indicates, and suggest location-based media as a lens through which to rethink AR's affordances and potentials. In keeping with an emphasis on new forms of storytelling, I propose a taxonomy for location-based media that distinguishes three different levels of participation and user agency: Consumption, Interaction, and Participation. Participatory works that allow users to shape the narrative-becoming deeply invested as co-creators--challenge traditional notions of authorship, consumption, linearity, and temporality. They embrace the affordances of networked locative technologies, provide a platform for a multitude of voices, and draw on the profound power of both community and place. Three case studies-Round-ware, Yellow Arrow, and the 96 Acres Project-highlight the affordances and challenges of participatory location-based approaches. Throughout this thesis, I endeavor to show that participatory location-based media offer vast creative, social, and political potential. Drawing on the rich tradition of spatial narrative, as well as the affordances of locative technologies, by Sue Ding., S.M. in Comparative Media Studies

Thesis: S.M. in Comparative Media Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Humanities, 2016., Cataloged from PDF version of thesis., Includes bibliographical references (pages 113-121)., In academic and activist contexts, "voice" has long served as shorthand for inclusion, empowerment, and the like, occasioning bromides about having or not having a voice, giving voice to the voiceless, breaking the silence, and speaking truth to power. Such metaphysically inflected phrasings often serve to reinforce a binary between sound and silence at the expense of attending to other vocal modulations. This thesis first assembles calls by queer and feminist scholars for such nuanced portrayals of vocality; then, so as to answer those calls, it stages scenes of listening. I examine vocality through technology: by looking at how vocality is structured by enclosing technologies, which in turn structure relations and the reverse. More specifically, my thesis traces the ways in which vocality travels in the world by attending to three particular technologies through which the voice is filtered: the answering machine, Auto-Tune pitch correction software, and the sound spectrograph. This approach enables me to probe the distinct claims that specific sound technologies allow us to hold on one another-claims about mourning and loss, about calling and the promise of response, about the identification of individuals (or oneself) via the voice. Though my investigations span various archives, I center them on two characters: the performer Cher and her son Chaz, who is transgender. I do so to consider the ways in which a sonically inflected media theory can inform queer theory and vice versa, and to consider the particular relational dilemmas made incumbent upon subjects whose vocal trajectories are discontinuous, depart from normative pitch, and/or deemed an invitation to violence., by Lilia Maud Kilburn., S.M. in Comparative Media Studies

Thesis: S.M. in Comparative Media Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Humanities, 2017., Cataloged from PDF version of thesis., Includes bibliographical references (pages 88-92)., Agency is often taken as a given in branching-path stories because they, almost by definition, allow for enhanced user involvement. But this truism hasn't changed as the structure of the worlds that these branching texts exist within have. Transmedia, branching-path texts represent an intersection of both linear media and forking ones and thus, an interesting case study of how player agency can be expanded and re-categorized in these larger universe. By looking at where and how agency is located in three different case studies, we can get a better sense of how agency is changing-and staying the same-in these multi-platform, player-driven worlds. The first chapter in this thesis looks at the intersection of worldbuilding and transmedia and where player agency can hope to fit between these traditions. The second focuses on the Game of Thrones universe, looking to understand the effects that adding the branching-path Telltale game had on this universe. The third chapter looks to Mass Effect and all its related media in an effort to understand how an undefined hero ties the whole universe together. The fourth chapter focuses on Quantum Break, and its groundbreaking, wholly integrated, transmedia structure. The final chapter discusses steps creators in the future can take to expand player agency. By looking at these worlds through an increased understanding of where the player fits in, it becomes clearer how these universes can be expanded in the future while still giving the player the most autonomy over their story., by Evan Higgins., S.M. in Comparative Media Studies