There is no doubt, journalism faces challenging times. Since the turn of the millennium, the financial health of the news industry is failing, mainstream audiences are on the decline, and ...professional authority, credibility and autonomy are eroding. The outlook is bleak and it's understandable that many are pessimistic. But this book argues that we have to rethink journalism fundamentally.
Rather than just focus on the symptoms of the 'crisis of journalism', this collection tries to understand the structural transformation journalism is undergoing. It explores how the news media attempts to combat decreasing levels of trust, how emerging forms of news affect the established journalistic field, and how participatory culture creates new dialogues between journalists and audiences. Crucially, it does not treat these developments as distinct transformations. Instead, it considers how their interrelation accounts for both the tribulations of the news media and the need for contemporary journalism to redefine itself.
News has traditionally served as a common ground, enabling people to connect to
others and engage with the public issues they encounter in everyday life. This
article revisits these theoretical ...debates about mediated public connection
within the context of a digitalized news media landscape. While academic
discussions surrounding these shifts are often explored in terms of normative
ideals ascribed to political systems or civic cultures, we propose to reposition
the debate by departing from the practices and preferences of the news user
instead. Therefore, we deconstruct and translate the concept of public
connection into four dimensions that emphasize people’s lived experiences:
inclusiveness, engagement, relevance, and constructiveness. Situating these in
an everyday life framework, this article advances a user-based perspective that
considers the role of news for people in digital societies. Accordingly, it
offers a conceptual framework that aims to encapsulate how news becomes
meaningful, rather than why it should be.
Volatile aldehydes are enriched in esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC) patients' breath and could improve early diagnosis, however the mechanisms of their production are unknown. Here, we show that weak ...aldehyde detoxification characterizes EAC, which is sufficient to cause endogenous aldehyde accumulation in vitro. Two aldehyde groups are significantly enriched in EAC biopsies and adjacent tissue: (i) short-chain alkanals, and (ii) medium-chain alkanals, including decanal. The short-chain alkanals form DNA-adducts, which demonstrates genotoxicity and confirms inadequate detoxification. Metformin, a putative aldehyde scavenger, reduces this toxicity. Tissue and breath concentrations of the medium-chain alkanal decanal are correlated, and increased decanal is linked to reduced ALDH3A2 expression, TP53 deletion, and adverse clinical features. Thus, we present a model for increased exhaled aldehydes based on endogenous accumulation from reduced detoxification, which also causes therapeutically actionable genotoxicity. These results support EAC early diagnosis trials using exhaled aldehyde analysis.
Twin pregnancy is associated with increased perinatal mortality. Close foetal monitoring is therefore warranted. Doppler Ultrasound cardiotocography is currently the only available method to monitor ...both individual foetuses. Unfortunately, the performance measures of this method are poor and erroneous monitoring of the same twin with both transducers may occur, leaving the second twin unmonitored. In this study we aimed to determine the feasibility of monitoring both foetuses simultaneously in twin gestation by means of non-invasive foetal electrocardiography (NI-fECG), using an electrode patch on the maternal abdomen.
A NI-fECG recording was performed at 25 + 3 weeks of gestation on a multiparous woman pregnant with dichorionic diamniotic twins. An electrode patch consisting of eight adhesive electrodes was applied on the maternal abdomen, yielding six channels of bipolar electrophysiological measurements. The output was digitized and stored for offline processing. The recorded signals were preprocessed by suppression of high-frequency noise, baseline wander, and powerline interference. Secondly, the maternal ECG was subtracted and segmentation into individual ECG complexes was performed. Finally, ensemble averaging of these individual ECG complexes was performed to suppress interferences.
Six different recordings were obtained from each of the six recording channels. Depending on the orientation and distance of the fetal heart with respect to each electrode, a distinction could be made between each fetus based on the morphology of the signals. Yielding of the fetal ECGs was performed manually based on the QRS complexes of each fetus.
NI-fECG with multiple electrodes allows for monitoring of the fetal heart rate and ECG of both individual fetuses in twin pregnancies.
Objective
Non‐invasive spectral analysis of fetal heart rate variability is a promising new field of fetal monitoring. To validate this method properly, we studied the relationship between ...gestational age and the influence of fetal rest–activity state on spectral estimates of fetal heart rate variability.
Design
Prospective longitudinal study.
Setting
Tertiary care teaching hospital.
Population
Forty healthy women with an uneventful singleton pregnancy.
Methods
Non‐invasive fetal electrocardiogram measurements via the maternal abdomen were performed at regular intervals between 14 and 40 weeks of gestation and processed to detect beat‐to‐beat fetal heart rate. Simultaneous ultrasound recordings were performed to assess fetal rest–activity state.
Main outcome measures
Absolute and normalized power of fetal heart rate variability in the low (0.04–0.15 Hz) and high (0.4–1.5 Hz) frequency band were obtained, using Fourier Transform.
Results
14% of all measurements and 3% of the total amount of abdominal data (330 segments) was usable for spectral analysis. During 21–30 weeks of gestation, a significant increase in absolute low and high frequency power was observed. During the active state near term, absolute and normalized low frequency power were significantly higher and normalized high frequency power was significantly lower compared with the quiet state.
Conclusions
The observed increase in absolute spectral estimates in preterm fetuses was probably due to increased sympathetic and parasympathetic modulation and might be a sign of autonomic development. Further improvements in signal processing are needed before this new method of fetal monitoring can be introduced in clinical practice.
In relation to journalism, the concept of ‘emotion’ is consistently undertheorized. Employed with commonsensical discernment, it is conflated with tabloid practices, sensationalism, bias, ...commercialization, and the like. Consequently, when discussed, emotion is often treated dismissively; a marker of unprincipled and flawed journalism. Yet hard, self-styled objective, ‘just the facts’ journalism is not unemotional, just as soft, so-called tabloid news is not irrational. For authors who study the sociology of emotions note, emotion has a social component and can more broadly be conceptualized as the experience of involvement. This article utilizes this understanding to interrogate traditional news dichotomies before applying this perspective to consider non-valorized news alternatives. One significant change over the past few decades is not that the news has become emotional (indeed, it has always been); rather, the diversity of emotional styles, the acceptability of journalistic involvement, and attempts to involve the audience have become more explicit.
Bayesian Approach to Patient-Tailored Vectorcardiography Vullings, Rik; Peters, Chris H. L.; Mossavat, Iman ...
IEEE transactions on bio-medical engineering/IEEE transactions on biomedical engineering,
03/2010, Volume:
57, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
For assessment of specific cardiac pathologies, vectorcardiography is generally considered superior with respect to electrocardiography. Existing vectorcardiography methods operate by calculating the ...vectorcardiogram (VCG) as a fixed linear combination of ECG signals. These methods, with the inverse Dower matrix method the current standard, are therefore not flexible with respect to different body compositions and geometries. Hence, they cannot be applied with accuracy on patients that do not conform to the fixed standard. Typical examples of such patients are obese patients or fetuses. For the latter category, when recording the fetal ECG from the maternal abdomen the distance of the fetal heart with respect to the electrodes is unknown. Consequently, also the signal attenuation/transformation per electrode is not known. In this paper, a Bayesian method is developed that estimates the VCG and, to some extent, also the signal attenuation in multichannel ECG recordings from either the adult 12-lead ECG or the maternal abdomen. This is done by determining for which VCG and signal attenuation the joint probability over both these variables is maximal given the observed ECG signals. The underlying joint probability distribution is determined by assuming the ECG signals to originate from scaled VCG projections and additive noise. With this method, a VCG, tailored to each specific patient, is determined. The method is compared to the inverse Dower matrix method by applying both methods on standard 12-lead ECG recordings and evaluating the performance in predicting ECG signals from the determined VCG. In addition, to model nonstandard patients, the 12-lead ECG signals are randomly scaled and, once more, the performance in predicting ECG signals from the VCG is compared between both methods. Finally, both methods are also compared on fetal ECG signals that are obtained from the maternal abdomen. For patients conforming to the standard, both methods perform similarly, with the developed method performing marginally better. For scaled ECG signals and fetal ECG signals, the developed method significantly outperforms the inverse Dower matrix method.
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