Syncretic expertise in TED Talks

This paper focuses on the popularization of information related to environmental issues in media texts, with a particular focus on TED Talks. TED talks are a distinctive genre with has considerable social implications, especially when the presentations concern themes such as the environment, the understanding of which is a key determinant in the full realization of specific environmental policies. In this respect, this study suggests a critical need to go beyond the purely technical analysis of environmental issues by framing them within a wider discourse, which is more likely to influence the public at large. The paper explores a corpus of popular talks which deal with environmental issues and analyzes their macro-structural components. Methodologically, traditional genre analysis is integrated with a critical stimulus in order to unveil the strategies employed to overcome the technophilic/technophobic dichotomy which often typifies environmental discourse. The findings show the flexible and dynamic nature of TED Talks. Their communicative success lies specifically in the ability of the presenters to attract the audience’s attention by making use of different communicative strategies and drawing on different forms of expertise, within the specific structural constraints imposed by this genre.

Filling the Gap between Hypervelocity and Low Velocity Impacts

During more than one decade of studying initiation phenomenology numerous papers at the previous HVIS and other symposia ([1] - [12]) were published. Most of them dealt with the hypervelocity impact initiation of plastic bonded high explosive charges by shaped charge jets (SCJ) and a few ones reported results in the ordnance velocity impact regime with STANAG projectiles and explosively formed projectiles (EFP) ([2] & [11]). A recent finding of our investigations of shaped charge jet (SCJ) attacks suggests that the critical stimulus S = v2∙d (v = SCJ / projectile velocity; d = SCJ / projectile diameter) for the initiation of a munition can no longer be seen as a constant (S ≠ const.) ([11] & [10]). Also, known equations, e.g. Jacobs-Roslund [13], are not capable to describe low velocity and hypervelocity impacts with the same parameter set.

Neural Processing of Amplitude-Modulated Sounds

Joris, P. X., C. E. Schreiner, and A. Rees. Neural Processing of Amplitude-Modulated Sounds. Physiol Rev 84: 541–577, 2004; 10.1152/physrev.00029.2003.—Amplitude modulation (AM) is a temporal feature of most natural acoustic signals. A long psychophysical tradition has shown that AM is important in a variety of perceptual tasks, over a range of time scales. Technical possibilities in stimulus synthesis have reinvigorated this field and brought the modulation dimension back into focus. We address the question whether specialized neural mechanisms exist to extract AM information, and thus whether consideration of the modulation domain is essential in understanding the neural architecture of the auditory system. The available evidence suggests that this is the case. Peripheral neural structures not only transmit envelope information in the form of neural activity synchronized to the modulation waveform but are often tuned so that they only respond over a limited range of modulation frequencies. Ascendingthe auditory neuraxis, AM tuning persists but increasingly takes the form of tuning in average firing rate, rather than synchronization, to modulation frequency. There is a decrease in the highest modulation frequencies that influence the neural response, either in average rate or synchronization, as one records at higher and higher levels along the neuraxis. In parallel, there is an increasing tolerance of modulation tuning for other stimulus parameters such as sound pressure level, modulation depth, and type of carrier. At several anatomical levels, consideration of modulation response properties assists the prediction of neural responses to complex natural stimuli. Finally, some evidence exists for a topographic ordering of neurons according to modulation tuning. The picture that emerges is that temporal modulations are a critical stimulus attribute that assists us in the detection, discrimination, identification, parsing, and localization of acoustic sources and that this wide-ranging role is reflected in dedicated physiological properties at different anatomical levels.

Book Review: Student Services: A Handbook for the Profession, Third Edition

"Student Services: A Handbook for the Profession" traces its origins back to a conversation that Allen Jossey-Bass had with the authors of the book's first edition, Ursula Delworth and Gary R. Hanson, over twenty years ago. That conversation charted a course for developing a handbook for practicing student affairs administrators that has continued through its three editions. Not only is the "Handbook" one of today's most widely read texts in student affairs graduate programs, it remains a critical stimulus and reference source for all those who aspire to work or who do work in student affairs positions. It can also serve as a resource for others in academic institutions who wish to more fully understand student affairs programs and services.

Effects of Three Stimulus Parameters on Eye Position in Cerebral Palsied Adults

Bilateral eye position was measured in 6 cerebral palsied adults to assess the effects of stimulus dimension (horizontal, vertical), amplitude (±4°, ±6°, ± 8°), and frequency (0.3, 0.5, 0.7 Hz) on saccadic and pursuit movements. The head-free, corneal reflection method was used for 54 10-sec. trials of square, triangle, and sine wave stimuli. Shared variance between each eye's position and the stimulus was tested by Wilcoxon T (dimension) and Friedman analysis of variance (amplitude, frequency) showing that the effects of saccadic and pursuit dimension and amplitude were individualized with regard to subject and right and left eye positions. The bilateral eye position of 5 of 6 subjects was affected by saccadic frequency; pursuit frequency affected bilateral eye position of 4 of 6 subjects. The lowest shared variance (critical difference in ranks) was at 0.7 Hz. The results are discussed with regard to subjects' disability, stimulus velocity, and frequency of directional reversal. Reversal may be the most critical stimulus property.