bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Rhetoric in North America: United States
Authors: Klumpp James F.
Published: September 2017

The democratic ethic that has dominated the intellectual history of the United States has shaped a rhetorical practice driven by the socio‐cultural influence of the word. The result has been a rich multiplicity of voices that defy generalization, yet define a complex texture. The first rhetorical period, approximately the first century and a quarter of the presence of British settlement in North America, was dominated by religious rhetoric and specifically by the
Puritans
. Puritan sermons were highly structured, linking lessons from biblical text to everyday life. Puritans respected reason and viewed it as a gift from God that opened human insight into God's structuring of the universe. The democratic content of Puritan rhetoric was constrained. Beneath God, the minister was separated from others in the community by his trained role as the interpreter of the Word. Men and women were similarly differentiated by the biblical separation of gender. And finally the elect of the Puritan community were separated from non‐believers. Within that narrowed but still broad slice of Puritan life, democratic equality defined access to power (→ Rhetoric and Religion).
Rhetoric and Social Protest
Authors: Stewart Charles J.
Published: September 2017

Research in rhetoric and social protest strives to discover how organized, uninstitutional forces use symbols and symbolic actions to promote or resist change in societal norms and values. Its focus ranges from interpersonal to mass communication, from the colonial period to the present, from moderate to radical elements, and from formal discourses to the rhetoric of the streets.
Rhetoric in Western Europe: France
Authors: Zoberman Pierre
Published: September 2017

According to thedoxa, rhetoric flourished in France under absolutism, enjoyed a fire‐and‐brimstone revival during the Revolution, and gradually disappeared in the nineteenth century, until it was reduced to the few figures of style school children still learned in the twentieth century. Actually, after 1700, interwoven rhetorical and anti‐rhetorical strands shape a field that expands and contracts, with occasional eclipses. Rhetoric – with competing definitions as an art of → Persuasion and/or ornate speech – survived in academic programs until the late nineteenth century. Latin rhetoric thrived in the Jesuits' schools, whose curriculum remained faithful to theRatio studiorum, until their expulsion (1764); elsewhere, it was gradually restricted to French and its emphasis shifted from oratory to techniques of writing and reading, reminiscent of the Hellenisticprogymnasmata(preparatory exercises), until the 1890s, when literary history anddissertationdisplaced it. Rhetoric resurfaced in the twentieth century, especially in the 1960s–1970s: its taxonomies appealed to the structuralists (→ Structuralism); its history was reassessed; it was also recast as a theory of communication (→ Communication Theory and Philosophy; Rhetorical Studies). It has since inspired dynamic and innovative research.
Rhetoric in Western Europe: Spain
Authors: Eire Antonio López
Published: September 2017

As in the rest of Europe during the “Siècle des lumières,” the decadence of rhetoric was a fact in Spain. Persuasion based on the rhetorical employment of language was neither considered important nor respected, consequently leaving poetry as much more highly esteemed than eloquence (→ Aesthetics; Persuasion; Rhetoric and Poetics). There was only one exception, namely, sacred oratory – that is, religious discourses given by priests from the pulpit. That is how we can interpret the translation from Latin into Spanish of the work of Fray Luis de Granada (1504–1588) about eloquent preaching entitled
Rhetorica ecclesiatica
, which was published in 1770.
Rhetorics: New Rhetorics
Authors: Ritivoi Andreea Deciu
Published: September 2017

“The history of rhetoric is one of diminishing returns,” Ricoeur once argued (1996, 319), offering an apt depiction for the trajectory of a discipline originally associated with social and intellectual prestige, and gradually demoted to a status described by rhetoricians themselves as marginal. Historically, new rhetorics have arisen as responses to challenges from emerging fields and existing disciplines or reactions to pressures from the social, cultural, or intellectual climate of a particular period. Such efforts have often gone beyond preserving the traditional core of the discipline, and frequently involved radical transformations of key classical concepts or ideas and excursions into other fields. New rhetorics are profoundly interdisciplinary and live in tense relationship with the original field they modified. Of the ideas that have helped the emergence of new rhetorics, the most important ones concern style as a repository of figures marking a departure from ordinary language; the epistemic status of rhetoric; the notion of a clearly definable rhetorical core, traceable to some historical origins; and the distinctiveness of a key set of figures who can legitimately be considered rhetorical theorists.
Rapport
Authors: Hemmesch Amanda R. , Tickle‐Degnen Linda
Published: September 2017

Rapport is interpersonal harmony, commonly known as “clicking” or being “in sync” with another person. Rapport can be a goal in itself, or contribute to the successful achievement of interpersonal goals (→ Goals, Social Aspects of). It is important for personal relationships, as well as for better patient adherence to doctor recommendations, improved classroom learning, more effective negotiation between competing parties, and more successful business transactions. Rapport is an important aspect of communication because it includes verbal and nonverbal cues; is dynamic in nature; fosters liking, affiliation, and helping behaviors; and has implications beyond human interaction, including artificial intelligence (→ Interpersonal Communication; Doctor–Patient Talk; Classroom Student–Teacher Interaction).
Response Rates
Authors: Traugott Michael W.
Published: September 2017

This term, or its complement – nonresponse rates – refers to the level of cooperation of respondents in a → survey. It is often used as an overall measure of the quality of a data collection, although researchers agree that this is an incomplete and inadequate indicator of quality. Since surveys and polls are a common form of data collection in communication research, understanding the impact of response rates on research results is important. The topic is especially salient as there has been a decline in response rates across a wide range of survey types for the last several decades, raising basic questions about the general quality of – or the biases inherent in – data collected through surveys (→ Interview, Quantitative; Public Opinion Polling; Election Polls and Forecasts).
Radio France Internationale
Authors: Tchouaffe Olivier J.
Published: September 2017

Radio France Internationale began in 1929 with the creation of the French national office of radio broadcasting. Two years later, in 1931, Radio France began broadcasting to French colonies in 20 languages under the name
Poste Colonial
. Its target audience was French expatriate colonizers and a few natives, termed
évolués
, who had been trained to speak French and engage in low‐status labor, such as nursing, postal clerking, and the infantry, which whites were not allowed to perform in the colonies. In 1938, Poste Colonial was renamed Paris Mondial, and was then jettisoned during the pro‐Nazi Vichy regime (1940–1944), resuming after liberation. In 1964 the French government created the ORTF (French Radio and Television Broadcasting). In 1974 Radio France became a separate entity from the ORTF. The following year, on January 6, 1975, Radio France Internationale (RFI) was created as a subsidiary of Radio France (→ France: Media System; International Radio).
Scales
Authors: Mangold Roland
Published: September 2017

In communication research scales are used to assess the intensity or the strength of personal variables like traits, states, → attitudes, feelings, and so on (→ emotion). A rating is based on a statement expressing a perception, an attribution, or an attitude toward something that is presented to the subject. He or she is asked to indicate the degree of his or her agreement with this statement by marking a corresponding label from a list provided by the scale. Bipolar
Likert scales
(Likert 1932) extend from negative to positive numbers (e.g., −2 to +2), whereas unipolar Likert scales start from non‐negative numbers like 0 or 1 (e.g., +1 to +5). Likert scales are most frequently constructed as five‐point scales, but scales with seven or even nine points are also common. The labels assigned to points on a Likert scale (like “strongly disagree,” “somewhat disagree,” “neither agree nor disagree,” “somewhat agree,” “strongly agree”) must be chosen with great care in order to hold up equal semantic distances between the labels over the entire scale. As it cannot be ensured that subjects perceive intervals between adjacent points on the scale as equidistant, responses collected from subjects should preferably be cautiously treated as ordinal (and not as interval) data (→ Measurement Theory; Scales and Indices; Rating Methods).
Scholarship of Teaching
Authors: Boileau Don M.
Published: September 2017

Because a teacher is a manager of a communication environment, investigation into the teaching process analyzes the complexity of the communication situation and the specifics of student–teacher communication. The specificity of a distinct “scholarship of teaching,” suggested by Ernest Boyer (1990), argues that studying those topics emanating from the teaching process is worthy of scholarly recognition. While Boyer started discussing an individual teacher reflecting on the teaching process, the study of instructional communication added a structured approach, with evidence‐based conclusions, to the broader dimension of teaching communication. For Boyer, scholarship existed in systematic examination and sharing with others about teaching (→ Educational Communication; Learning and Communication).
Schramm, Wilbur
Authors: McAnany Emile G.
Published: September 2017

Wilbur Schramm (1907–1987) has been called the founder of the field of communication study (Rogers 1995). More accurately, he is credited with creating the first PhD program in mass communication at the University of Illinois in 1948 (McAnany 1988) and setting the stage for the growth of university communication programs in the USA and abroad (→ Communication as a Field and Discipline; Communication as an Academic Field: USA and Canada).
Search Engines
Authors: Couvering Elizabeth Van
Published: September 2017

A search engine is a computer program that allows the user to enter a series of keywords, usually called a “query,” and that responds with a list of results from a database that match the query. Major search engines, such as Google, Yahoo Search, and Microsoft Live Search, provide the most widely used method of finding information on the world wide web. Search engine websites are the most visited in the world, with estimates showing that in 2006 the Google and Yahoo websites reached approximately 80 percent of worldwide Internet users, or approximately 500 million people each month (→ Internet; Exposure to the Internet). As more and more information and entertainment becomes digital and is stored in databases, search engines are becoming increasingly important. The ability to effectively use a search engine is becoming widely recognized as a key skill of digital or information literacy. On the Internet, there is often a strong incentive for companies to place highly in search engine results, and search engine companies have become very powerful economic actors in online media.
Security and Surveillance Agencies
Authors: Hempel Leon
Published: September 2017

Since the end of the Cold War's bipolar confrontation in 1991, the security arena has significantly changed from a once well‐bounded field, consisting of hierarchically organized state bureaucracies, to a rhizomatic, growing assemblage that merges various kinds of public and private security agencies and activities and is driven by the desire to bring systems together, to combine practices and technologies and integrate them into a larger whole (Haggerty and Ericson 2000). Security has become an important but sensitive issue on political agendas as well as in the public perception. This has resulted in an evolving patchwork of systems, procedures and technologies across multiple sites, public and private, including most urban and international transport infrastructures such as roads, metro systems, rail stations, and sea and air ports. In this entry attention will mostly be focused on key European Union and US examples, although a full survey would also need to engage with, among others, Chinese, Russian, Saudi, and Israeli surveillance practices.
Sexism in the Media
Authors: Byerly Carolyn M.
Published: September 2017

Sexism in the media relates to concerns about a range of gender inequalities – in content, employment, policy, decision‐making, and ownership – that have been a major focus of women's liberation movements throughout the world since the 1970s. Mass media matter to women everywhere. They play a central role in the formulation and dissemination of ideas and the shaping of → public opinion, whether their format is news, entertainment, or → advertising. In fact, the media's influence is even greater today than ever, with 24/7 news channels, and hundreds of satellite and digital services offering everything from natural history to hardcore pornography and picture messaging via mobile phones.
Sign Systems
Authors: Thibault Paul J.
Published: September 2017

Sign systems mediate the interactions between agents and their worlds. In Peirce's (1992, 1998) terms, an agent is a first. The principle of “firstness” refers to the property of existing in the world independently of other entities. Firstness entails relative autonomy: a first always encounters and interacts with something else that enables its autonomy to be achieved. This is what Peirce defined as “secondness.” A first is, in reality, always defined in terms of its interactions with a second. Finally, the interaction between a first and a second is always mediated by a system of relations that makes possible the encounter between a first and a second. This is “thirdness.” Thirdness refers to some principle of systematicity and organization in terms of which encounters between first and seconds are seen as not random but able to be interpreted. Thirdness provides the resources and the principles of organization whereby the interaction between a first and a second can be successfully coordinated and appropriately interpreted.
Social Cognitive Theory
Authors: Bandura Albert
Published: September 2017

Theories of human behavior differ in their conceptions of human nature and what they regard as the basic determinants and mechanisms governing self‐development, adaptation, and change. Social cognitive theory is rooted in an agentic perspective (→ Bandura 1986, 2006a). To be an agent is to influence one's own functioning and events that affect one's life. In this view people are contributors to their life circumstances, not just products of them.
Social Movements and Communication
Authors: Hertog James K.
Published: September 2017

All societies generate dissatisfaction among their people based on unequal distributions of wealth, power, and privilege, and disagreement over social policy, social norms, and public behavior. The aggrieved may organize to obtain satisfaction by petitioning legitimized political, economic, and cultural institutions. If these efforts are not successful, they may take to the streets. Social movements are sustained collective actions occurring outside legitimated institutions of social power in pursuit of social goals (→ Collective Action and Communication).
Social Networks
Authors: Valente Thomas W.
Published: September 2017

Social networks are the interpersonal relationships people have with friends, family, colleagues, acquaintances, and others they may come into contact with directly or via media communications. Social → network analysis is used to understand these social relationships and how they help explain individual and social behavior (Scott

; Wasserman & Faust

). Social networks are studied at multiple levels of analysis including dyadic, group, and system. There are three primary types of network data collection technique: local, partial, and complete (Morris

).
Social Perception: Impersonal Impact
Authors: Moy Patricia
Published: September 2017

According to the impersonal impact hypothesis, the mass media influence individuals' perceptions of risk to others (societal‐level risk), but not perceptions of risk to themselves (personal risk; → Risk Perceptions). Implicit in this hypothesis is the notion that individuals can compartmentalize various perceptions of risk, differentiating between societal‐level judgments, or beliefs about the larger community with respect to a given risk, and personal‐level judgments, or estimations of their own vulnerability to that risk (Tyler & Cook

).
Social Perception: Unrealistic Optimism
Authors: Ostman Ronald E.
Published: September 2017

Unrealistic optimism, suggested by LeJeune and Alex in 1973, was described as the “illusion of unique invulnerability.” It was further developed by Weinstein () in an article on individual perceptions of future life events. This illusion refers to an individual's tendency to believe oneself invulnerable or at very low risk of suffering misfortune and victimization. It does not refer to the perceptions of individuals who have been victims of a particular misfortune (→ Victimization, Secondary). However, victim experience with one misfortune does not negate unrealistic optimism regarding other misfortunes.
Social Stereotyping and Communication
Authors: Lee Hummert Mary
Published: September 2017

The journalist → Walter Lippmann introduced the notion of → stereotypes in 1922 and described them as “pictures in our heads.” Current psychological theory conceptualizes those “pictures” as cognitive structures or → schemas that represent widely shared beliefs about the defining characteristics of social groups (Operario & Fiske 2004). Any group might be subject to stereotypes, but the most commonly studied stereotypes are those based on race or ethnicity, nationality, religion, sex, and age. The beliefs that compose stereotypes may include physical characteristics, personality traits, behavioral tendencies, etc. Although stereotypes have traditionally been associated with exclusively negative beliefs about social groups, they generally include positive beliefs as well. For example, stereotypes of older people include not only such negative traits as being forgetful and sad, but also positive traits such as being wise and family‐oriented (Hummert in press). According to the Stereotype Content Model (SCM; Cuddy et al. 2008), warmth (or its lack) and competence (or its lack) are the fundamental dimensions that define stereotypes of all groups, with some groups viewed as low on both dimensions (e.g., homeless persons), others as high on both (e.g., for US respondents, Americans), and still others as high on one dimension and low on the other (e.g., older people are characterized as warm but incompetent, and the wealthy as competent but cold).
South Korea: Media System
Authors: Lee Jae‐won
Published: September 2017

South Korea, in its pan‐national homogeneity across many fronts, has been a friendly and profitable market for the mass media industry. All South Koreans speak in just one common language of their own, and they all come from just one identical race. Hence they all share an identical heritage from their common history, ancient and modern. The literacy rate is extremely high at 99 percent. The literate and educated public, armed with affluence from the vibrant economy, handsomely supports a steady consumption of the traditional media as well as ready experimentation with the rapidly advancing new media.
Spirituality and Development
Authors: Steeves H. Leslie
Published: September 2017

Most approaches to → development communication are grounded in economic frameworks concerned with how material resources are allocated in society. The dominant → modernization philosophy aims to maximize individual opportunities for material gain, while critical perspectives argue for just distributions of resources and against the inequities of capitalist systems. Both literatures usually fail to consider non‐material aspects of people's lives, thereby neglecting a vital resource for empowerment and social change (→ Communication Strategies for Empowerment; Planned Social Change through Communication; Secular Social Change).
Sports and the Media, History of
Authors: Rowe David
Published: September 2017

Sports and the media, from the vantage point of the twenty‐first century, are so deeply interconnected as to give the impression of a smooth integration between two powerful sociocultural institutions. Many – perhaps most – people across the world have a daily encounter with the sports media in some form (→ Sports as Popular Communication), including print, electronic, online, and even branded T‐shirts and footwear. But it was not ever thus, and the history of sports and the media has been marked by competition and conflict as well as cooperation and synergy. Indeed, this history can be adjudged a struggle for power over sports and spectatorship that the media seem largely to have won, although at some organizational and financial cost. This is not just a matter of contending information and service industries, but also of social institutions, the people who engage with them as workers or consumers, and the wider impact of the media–sport relationship on local, national, and global popular culture (→ Globalization of the Media). It is important to understand how this “media sports cultural complex” (Rowe 2004) came to be, and why it continues to expand its activity and extend its influence.
Stars
Authors: Drake Philip
Published: September 2017

A star is an individual who is highly celebrated and deemed exceptional in a particular field or profession. The term has most commonly been associated with performers in popular media such as music, television, and, particularly, → cinema. Stardom is closely linked to fame and celebrity (→ Celebrity Culture), and these terms are often used interchangeably. The term “star,” which can be both noun (“a star”) and verb (“to star in”) originated in the popular American press of the early nineteenth century in relation to the expanding coverage of public figures and human interest stories. Articles in the so‐called → “penny press” about popular performers of stage and vaudeville had the effect of expanding public interest in the names and qualities of these recognizable individuals. The film scholar Richard DeCordova (

) has demonstrated that the institution of cinema was important to the expansion of stardom at the start of the twentieth century. He identifies an emergence of interest in “picture personalities,” and the subsequent naming of performers on screen and in film studio publicity material, as crucial in the development of the → Hollywood film industry and its star system.
Stock Photography
Authors: Frosh Paul
Published: September 2017

Stock photography is the name given to a particular type of standardized commercial imagery. This largely consists of clichéd photographs of consumer well‐being or corporate achievement: the happy couples on sun‐drenched beaches pictured in travel adverts, and the well‐groomed businessmen shaking hands who tend to grace company brochures (→ Advertisement, Visual Characteristics of). Stock photography is also the name of the industry that manufactures, promotes, and distributes these images for use in → 
Marketing
, → advertising, publishing, and increasingly multimedia products, websites, and other digital platforms (for instance, the sunsets and cloud images one can find on mobile phones). Worth an estimated US$2 billion annually, the industry continues to expand into new areas of image production and supply: its leading corporations own some of the most important historical photographic archives, manufacture and market stock film footage, and compete with traditional sources of → photojournalism. Despite the ubiquity of its products, and estimates that it supplies a majority of the photographs used in advertising and marketing, the stock photography industry is largely overlooked by researchers into photography and consumer culture (exceptions include Miller

; Frosh

; Machin

), and is invisible to the general public.
Structural Equation
Authors: Fahr Annette
Published: September 2017

Structural equation modeling (SEM) is a statistical technique that allows tests of complex relationships between large numbers of variables. The term “structural equation modeling” is closely related to terms like covariance structure analysis, causal modeling, or path analysis. According to Kline (

), the main characteristics of SEM are as follows. First of all, there has to be a model that shows how variables are related; it has to be specified prior to statistical analysis. The idea of the model may come from theory, from prior research, or from researchers' specified knowledge and experience. The procedure is mainly confirmatory, and generally researchers decide which are dependent and independent variables and how they are linked by causal relations.
Structuralism
Authors: Jensen Klaus Bruhn
Published: September 2017

Structuralism is a tradition in the history of ideas that rose to special prominence during the twentieth century within the humanities and social sciences. A shared assumption of structuralist approaches to communication, culture, and society is that interactions, discourses, and social groupings are best understood as relatively self‐contained systems or structures. Their formation and transformation are accounted for by certain general, immanent principles, rather than by their concrete constituents, or by any external influences.
Structuration Theory
Authors: Corman Steven R.
Published: September 2017

The theory of structuration by Anthony Giddens is one of the most influential perspectives of the late twentieth century in the communication discipline. Its main argument is that communication in social systems is not simply a matter of individual action or social structure but a joint product of both these moments: social action, including communication, is an outcome of structuration, or the production and reproduction of structure in social interaction. Giddens's theory (see Giddens

for the most comprehensive statement) embeds this core phenomenon within a wide‐ranging, integrative, institutional framework that encompasses many concepts of interest to scholars of human communication, including agency, identity, power, and → modernity.
Support Talk
Authors: Pudlinski Christopher
Published: September 2017

Problems and troubles are a common aspect of human life; descriptions of these problems and troubles usually make relevant some kind of affiliative or supportive response. The study of support talk examines how interactants seek and obtain aid in a variety of informal and institutional settings. Support talk occurs when interactants attempt to aid, assist, or help another by addressing troubles that can be mutually shared and mutually solved. Support provided can be informational (e.g., advice), emotional (expressions of caring, concern, empathy, and sympathy), or tangible (offers of goods or services). One challenge in distinguishing support talk from other forms of talk in interaction is that routine talk, especially in close relationships, can also serve a supportive function (→ Intimate Talk with Family and Friends).
Teacher Confirmation
Authors: Ellis Kathleen
Published: September 2017

Teacher confirmation is the transactional process by which teachers communicate to students that they – the students – are valuable, significant individuals. Like other affective variables such as teacher immediacy and teacher caring, studies indicate that perceived teacher confirmation plays a very important role in students' learning (→ Teacher Communication Concern; Teacher Immediacy).
Teacher Immediacy
Authors: Andersen Peter , Andersen Janis
Published: September 2017

Teacher immediacy is the term used to describe communication behaviors that reduce the perceived distance between teacher and students. By definition, immediacy behaviors convey teacher warmth, communicate positive relational affect, signal approach and availability for communication, and create increased physiological arousal in receivers. In research based on her dissertation, J. Andersen (1979) identified teacher immediacy as a nonverbal construct and sought ways to measure its impact on instructional outcomes. Now, with the accumulation of over three decades of research on teacher immediacy, the substantial influences of teacher immediacy in creating positive instructional outcomes are well understood (Witt et al. 2004).
Technologically Mediated Discourse
Authors: Hutchby Ian
Published: September 2017

Communication in today's world is mediated by technologies in a multiplicity of ways. Telephones and mobile phones are integrated into the very cultures of sociability and personal connectivity, especially in large‐scale industrialized societies where contacts and relationships are maintained across significant distances. Hopper () characterized such populations as “people of the phone” in an attempt to encapsulate the extent to which telephone conversation is relied upon and even actively sought after, as persons are prone to abandon almost any other activity in order to answer the telephone's summons. Increasingly, too, Internet message exchange systems are coming to play a pivotal role in everyday sociability networks, in the light of growing accessibility of computer hardware and software, burgeoning of technological sophistication, especially among the younger population, and expansion of broadband connectivity linking home computers to the Internet.
Technology and Globalization
Authors: Lee Kwang‐Suk
Published: September 2017

The term “globalization” and related terms such as global system, global economy, and global culture have been used since the mid‐1980s in both the popular and academic literature to describe the “temporal‐spatial compression” of the physical world (Harvey

). New information and (tele)communication technologies (ICTs) are viewed as linking distant localities into one globalizing world in a synchronous time zone that goes beyond real territories. The speed and mobility generated by electronic networks becomes indispensable for creating the physical conditions of globalization, tying together the world as a whole (Virilio

; → Mobility, Technology for).
Telegraph, History of
Authors: Putnis Peter
Published: September 2017

The term “telegraph” was used from the late eighteenth century to describe line‐of‐sight distance communication systems, most notably Claude Chappé's semaphore network. By 1810, this network linked 29 of France's largest cities to Paris. Experimental telegraphs utilizing electricity passing over wire for signaling purposes were developed in the early 1800s, though it was the inventions of Cooke and Wheatstone in the UK in the late 1830s which led to their practical application, initially on railways, where, in warning of accidents and stoppages, this form of signaling had the obvious advantage of traveling much faster than any train itself. Around the same time Samuel Morse, in the US, developed his system of using a series of short and long pulses of electric current, generated by turning the current on and off with a Morse key, to represent letters of the alphabet (Morse code). This system came to dominate telegraph communication for the next 100 years.
Television, Visual Characteristics of
Authors: Caldwell John T.
Published: September 2017

Television – which literally means “seeing from a distance” – has seldom been discussed by either critics or scholars primarily as a visual medium. Yet from the start, key sectors of the television industry itself were fascinated by the possibilities and potential for televisual representation (→ Visual Representation). In the shadow of more “legitimate” art forms in the twentieth century, and → cinema's → spectacle‐oriented wide screen in particular, television came to be known in largely style‐less terms as “the small screen.” But this denigration of television glosses over a great deal of visual complexity and diversity that can be understood within three broad perspectives: the industry, the audience, and scholarship (→ Television; Television: Social History).
Theatre
Authors: Carlson Marvin
Published: September 2017

The term theatre refers to that art form based on mimetic activity. It differs from the closely related performance arts of → cinema and → Television by its requirement that the enactment be physically present to its observers, which gives it an important specificity of occasion or event. Despite its traditional close connection to the dramatic text, the play script, and the importance of both the spoken word and other auditory effects, the theatre has generally relied strongly on visual effects, not only involving the physical bodies of the performers, but also the supplementary arts of scenic and lighting design, costume, and makeup (→ Visuals, Cognitive Processing of; Visual Representation).
Trust of Publics
Authors: Bentele Günter
Published: September 2017

The “trust of publics” or “public trust” can be defined as a process and outcome of a publicly generated, communicative, complexity‐reducing mechanism within which publicly perceptible individuals, organizations, and other social systems act as “trust objects.” Public trust is generated and subjected to change within a mediated, public communication process in which “trust subjects” have their future‐oriented expectations shaped by past experiences (see Bentele; Bentele & Seidenglanz). “Trust” has been defined by a variety of disciplines in social studies (sociology, psychology, communication, political science, etc.). The emphasis is put on interpersonal trust, hence, that obtaining between individuals. An important conception of trust is presented by the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann, who defines trust as a “complexity‐reducing mechanism,” as a risky prior concession to future events (Luhmann, 23ff). As “personal trust” it represents the basis of any social relationship. In information and communication societies it is mainly relevant as “public trust.”
Twitter
Authors: Hermida Alfred
Published: September 2017

Twitter is a free service that combines elements of blogging and social networking (→ Blogger; Facebook; Social Networks) and is considered as a form of → social media. Commonly described as a micro‐blogging service, it is one of a class of communication and information platforms defined as social awareness streams that allow for the rapid and immediate sharing of content, from short status messages to links, photos, and videos (Naaman et al. 2011; → Photography; Video).
Systematic Study of Effect on Enhancing Specific Capacity and Electrochemical Behaviors of Lithium–Sulfur Batteries
Authors: Zhang Junhao , Huang Man , Xi Baojuan , Mi Kan , Yuan Aihua , Xiong Shenglin
Published: September 2017

Herein, a flexible method is designed to engineer nitrogen‐doped carbon materials (NC) with different functional and structural specialties involving N‐doping level, graphitization, and surface area via tuning the carbonization temperature of the pre‐prepared zeolitic imidazolate framework‐8 (ZIF‐8 ) crystals. With the aim to unveil the effect of these features on the electrochemical performance of sulfur cathode, these samples are evaluated as sulfur host and comprehensively investigated. NC‐800 (800 °C, 10.45%N, 1032.4 m2 g−1) exhibits the best electrochemical capability comparing with NC‐700 (700 °C, 16.59%N, 891.4 m2 g−1) and NC‐900 (900 °C, 7.59%N, 987.6 m2 g−1). High surface area and N‐doping can work together to well increase the capacity of sulfur cathode, thanks to the improved transportation of charge carriers and effective anchoring of active sulfur, while the latter specialty just makes sulfur cathode have decent capacity in case of low surface area. Graphitization and quaternary nitrogen favorably improve the electric conductivity of the electrode, empowering the improvement of discharge capacity initially and rendering the good cyclability cooperatively relying on the effective immobilization of active materials. The related results suggest the significance of rational design of carbon maxtrix for sulfur to improve the performance of Li‐S batteries.
Fully Automated Quantum‐Chemistry‐Based Computation of Spin–Spin‐Coupled Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectra
Authors: Grimme Stefan , Bannwarth Christoph , Dohm Sebastian , Hansen Andreas , Pisarek Jana , Pracht Philipp , Seibert Jakob , Neese Frank
Published: September 2017

We present a composite procedure for the quantum‐chemical computation of spin–spin‐coupled 1H NMR spectra for general, flexible molecules in solution that is based on four main steps, namely conformer/rotamer ensemble (CRE) generation by the fast tight‐binding method GFN‐xTB and a newly developed search algorithm, computation of the relative free energies and NMR parameters, and solving the spin Hamiltonian. In this way the NMR‐specific nuclear permutation problem is solved, and the correct spin symmetries are obtained. Energies, shielding constants, and spin–spin couplings are computed at state‐of‐the‐art DFT levels with continuum solvation. A few (in)organic and transition‐metal complexes are presented, and very good, unprecedented agreement between the theoretical and experimental spectra was achieved. The approach is routinely applicable to systems with up to 100–150 atoms and may open new avenues for the detailed (conformational) structure elucidation of, for example, natural products or drug molecules.
Classifying tumor event attributes in radiology reports
Authors: Yim Wen‐wai , Kwan Sharon W. , Yetisgen Meliha
Published: September 2017

Radiology reports contain vital diagnostic information that characterizes patient disease progression. However, information from reports is represented in free text, which is difficult to query against for secondary use. Automatic extraction of important information, such as tumor events using natural language processing, offers possibilities in improved clinical decision support, cohort identification, and retrospective evidence‐based research for cancer patients. The goal of this work was to classify tumor event attributes: negation, temporality, and malignancy, using biomedical ontology and linguistically enriched features. We report our results on an annotated corpus of 101 hepatocellular carcinoma patient radiology reports, and show that the improved classification improves overall template structuring. Classification performances for negation identification, past temporality classification, and malignancy classification were at 0.94, 0.62, and 0.77 F1, respectively. Incorporating the attributes into full templates led to an improvement of 0.72 F1 for tumor‐related events over a baseline of 0.65 F1. Improvement of negation, malignancy, and temporality classifications led to significant improvements in template extraction for the majority of categories. We present our machine‐learning approach to identifying these several tumor event attributes from radiology reports, as well as highlight challenges and areas for improvement.
Prevalence trends of selected major birth defects: A multi‐state population‐based retrospective study, United States, 1999 to 2007
Authors: St. Louis Amanda M. , Kim Keewan , Browne Marilyn L. , Liu Gang , Liberman Rebecca F. , Nembhard Wendy N. , Canfield Mark A. , Copeland Glenn , Fornoff Jane , Kirby Russell S. ,   The National Birth Defects Prevention Network
Published: September 2017

Background

We evaluated selected birth defects over a 9‐year period to assess prevalence trends by selected maternal and infant factors.

Methods

Data were pooled from 11 population‐based birth defects surveillance programs in the United States for children born between 1999 and 2007. Overall prevalence, as well as 3‐year interval prevalence, was calculated for 26 specific birth defects, stratified by maternal age, maternal race/ethnicity, and infant sex. Average annual percent change (AAPC) was calculated for each birth defect. Poisson regression was used to determine change in AAPC, and joinpoint regression to identify breakpoints and changes in slope for prevalence of each defect over time.

Results

Between 1999 and 2001 and 2005 and 2007, four birth defects increased by 10% or more: coarctation of the aorta (17%), gastroschisis (83%), omphalocele (11%), and Down syndrome (10%). Among mothers <20 years of age, the gastroschisis AAPC increased 10.1% overall and, cross‐classified by maternal race/ethnicity, the AAPC for mothers <20 years increased 9.2%, 25.7%, and 7.7% among non‐Hispanic white (NHW), non‐Hispanic black (NHB), and Hispanic mothers, respectively. A small increase in Down syndrome (AAPC 4.4%) was found for NHB mothers ≥35 years.

Conclusion

No significant trends in prevalence were identified for most birth defects. Gastroschisis prevalence increased significantly among NHW and NHB mothers <20 years of age, with the greatest increases in NHB mothers. Prevalence of Down syndrome among NHB mothers ≥35 years also increased slightly. Stratified results may suggest avenues of research in birth defect etiology and in evaluating prevention efforts. Birth Defects Research 109:1442–1450, 2017.© 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Intergrated metabonomic study of the effects of Guizhi Fuling capsule intervention on primary dysmenorrheal using RP‐UPLC–MS complementary with HILIC‐UPLC–MS technique
Authors: Lang Lang , Meng Zhaorui , Sun Lan , Xiao Wei , Zhao Longshan , Xiong Zhili
Published: September 2017

Guizhi Fuling capsule (GFC), developed from the traditional Chinese prescription of Guizhi Fuling Wan, has been commonly used for the treatment of primary dysmenorrhea (PD). However, the intervention effective mechanism in vivo has not been well elucidated. In this study, an integrated plasma metabonomic strategy based on RP‐UPLC‐MS coupled with HILIC‐UPLC‐MS technique has been developed to investigate the global therapeutic effects and intervention mechanisms of GFC on dysmenorrhea rats induced by oxytocin. The 20 potential biomarkers were identified and primarily related to sphingolipid metabolism, steroid hormone biosynthesis, glycerophospholipid metabolism, amino acid metabolism, lipid metabolism and energy metabolism. The results showed that the GFC has therapeutic effects on rats with dysmenorrhea via the regulation of multiple metabolic pathways. Some new potential biomarkers associated with primary dysmenorrhea such as phenylalanine, tryptophan, taurine, carnitine, betaine, creatine and creatinine have been discovered in this study for the first time. This study provides a metabonomic platform based on RP‐UPLC‐MS complementary to HILIC‐UPLC‐MS technique to investigate both nonpolar and polar compounds, so as to get a more comprehensive metabolite information to yield insight into the pathophysiology of PD and assessing the efficacy of GFC on PD rats.
Prosocial deficits in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia relate to reward network atrophy
Authors: Sturm Virginia E. , Perry David C. , Wood Kristie , Hua Alice Y. , Alcantar Oscar , Datta Samir , Rankin Katherine P. , Rosen Howard J. , Miller Bruce L. , Kramer Joel H.
Published: September 2017

Introduction

Empathy and shared feelings of reward motivate individuals to share resources with others when material gain is not at stake. Behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) is a neurodegenerative disease that affects emotion‐ and reward‐relevant neural systems. Although there is diminished empathy and altered reward processing in bvFTD, how the disease impacts prosocial behavior is less well understood.

Methods

A total of 74 participants (20 bvFTD, 15 Alzheimer's disease [AD], and 39 healthy controls) participated in this study. Inspired by token‐based paradigms from animal studies, we developed a novel task to measure prosocial giving (the “Giving Game”). On each trial of the Giving Game, participants decided how much money to offer to the experimenter, and prosocial giving was the total amount that participants gave to the experimenter when it cost them nothing to give. Voxel‐based morphometry was then used to identify brain regions that were associated with prosocial giving.

Results

Prosocial giving was lower in bvFTD than in healthy controls; prosocial giving in AD did not differ significantly from either of the other groups. Whereas lower prosocial giving was associated with atrophy in the right pulvinar nucleus of the thalamus, greater prosocial giving was associated with atrophy in the left ventral striatum.

Conclusion

These findings suggest that simple acts of generosity deteriorate in bvFTD due to lateralized atrophy in reward‐relevant neural systems that promote shared feelings of positive affect.
Vascular configurations of anastomotic basket of conus medullaris in human spinal cord
Authors: Rojas Santiago , Ortega Marisa , Rodríguez‐Baeza Alfonso
Published: September 2017

The arterial basket of the conus medullaris is one of several anastomoses between the anterior and posterior spinal arteries. The anatomy of this structure has attracted little attention. This work sought to investigate its configuration in human spinal cords. Spinal cords from male and female cadavers (n = 32) were injected with colored latex through the intercostal, lumbar, medial sacral and the posterior trunks of the hypogastric arteries. After injection, specimens preserving the dural sac were obtained and fixed in formaldehyde solution. Finally, the spinal arteries were microdissected. In 18.75% of the specimens, the anterior spinal artery divided symmetrically and formed anastomoses with the posterior spinal arteries. In 81.25%, the branching pattern observed was asymmetrical. In 21.87% there were differences in the diameter of the anastomotic arteries, and 40.63% originated at different levels along the craniocaudal axis. Interestingly, 12.5% of the specimens presented an intraparenchymatous anastomosis that has not been described previously. True unilateral anastomosis was only observed in 6.25% of the spinal cords. The most frequent configuration of the anastomotic basket of the conus medullaris is a bilateral asymmetric anastomosis. The asymmetry of the branches could be caused by differences in their diameters or in their origins along the craniocaudal axis. Symmetrical patterns are less frequent, and unilateral anastomoses are rare. In reality, some cases of apparently unilateral anastomosis present an intramedullary course of the anastomotic artery. Clin. Anat. 31:441–448, 2018. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.