Soft Medium Research Articles

Transient high level mammalian reovirus replication in a bat epithelial cell line occurs without cytopathic effect

Mammalian reoviruses exhibit a large host range and infected cells are generally killed; however, most studies examined only a few cell types and host species, and are probably not representative of all possible interactions between virus and host cell. Many questions thus remain concerning the nature of cellular factors that affect viral replication and cell death. In the present work, it was observed that replication of the classical mammalian reovirus serotype 3 Dearing in a bat epithelial cell line, Tb1.Lu, does not result in cell lysis and is rapidly reduced to very low levels. Prior uncoating of virions by chymotrypsin treatment, to generate infectious subviral particles, increased the initial level of infection but without any significant effect on further viral replication or cell survival. Infected cells remain resistant to virus reinfection and secrete an antiviral factor, most likely interferon, that is protective against the unrelated encephalomyocarditis virus. Although, the transformed status of a cell is believed to promote reovirus replication and viral “oncolysis”, resistant Tb1.Lu cells exhibit a classical phenotype of transformed cells by forming colonies in semisolid soft agar medium. Further transduction of Tb.Lu cells with a constitutively active Ras oncogene does not seem to affect cell growth or reovirus effect on these cells. Infected Tb1.Lu cells can produce low-level of infectious virus for a long time without any apparent effect, although these cells are resistant to reinfection. The results suggest that Tb1.Lu cells can mount an unusual antiviral response. Specific properties of bat cells may thus be in part responsible for the ability of the animals to act as reservoirs for viruses in general and for novel reoviruses in particular. Their peculiar resistance to cell lysis also makes Tb1.Lu cells an attractive model to study the cellular and viral factors that determine the ability of reovirus to replicate and destroy infected cells.

Local deformations around volcanoes associated with the 2011 off the Pacific coast of Tohoku earthquake

An Mw 9.0 great earthquake struck northeast Japan on 11 March 2011, causing crustal deformation of 1 to 2 m in volcanic areas. We applied synthetic aperture radar interferometry using Phased Array type L‐band Synthetic Aperture Radar on the ALOS satellite to investigate local deformation around volcanoes associated with the earthquake. We estimated the fault‐slip distribution along the trough based on obtained interferograms and crustal deformation from GEONET, and the estimated fault model explained the observed coseismic deformations well. The residual suggested local deformation around the Akita‐Komagatake, Kurikoma, Zao, Azuma, and Nasu volcanoes. Their deformations were obtained from independent synthetic aperture radar pairs. Additionally, deformations in the Kurikoma, Zao, and Azuma volcanoes were confirmed by GEONET data (no GEONET stations are located in the deformation areas of other volcanoes). These facts indicate that the obtained local deformations must be actual deformations, rather than noise. Our hypothesis is that coseismic extensional deformation concentrates in the soft medium under a volcano (e.g., magma and its surrounding rock) and that this deformation has caused local deformation with subsidence. To validate this hypothesis, we carried out numerical experiments using the finite element method for a soft medium under a volcano. Distributions of observed local deformations stretch in the direction of the minor principal axis of strain, and such distributions were obtained in this experiment, indicating that the hypothesis is plausible. Conceivably, such a concentration of coseismic deformation in a magma chamber may induce a volcanic eruption.

Presentation and impact of market-driven journalism on sensationalism in global TV news

This study conducted a cross-national television news content analysis in 14 countries to compare the elements of sensationalism appearing in four types of media systems. A secondary analysis was further employed to examine the relationship between news sensationalization, news competition levels, and professionalism of these countries. Results reveal that crime-, accident-, and disaster-related news remain the staples of sensational news across countries. Dual broadcasting systems devoted more sensational news coverage than commercial broadcasting systems. Sensational formal features were found to be limited in all broadcasting systems. Celebrities and ordinary people tended to pose as news actors to personalize and dramatize the news more frequently than allowing officials or authoritative sources to legitimate the stories. Furthermore, news competition has been confirmed as an impact to the boom of news sensationalization. More professional journalists report more soft news than less professional ones.

A supplemented soft agar chemotaxis assay demonstrates the Helicobacter pylori chemotactic response to zinc and nickel

Directed motility, or chemotaxis, is required for Helicobacter pylori to establish infection in the stomach, although the full repertoire of this bacterium's chemotactic responses is not yet known. Here we report that H. pylori responds to zinc as an attractant and nickel as a repellent. To reach this conclusion, we employed both a temporal chemotaxis assay based on bacterial reversals and a supplemented soft agar spatial assay. We refined the temporal assay using a previously described chemorepellent, acid, and found that H. pylori requires rich media with serum to maintain optimal swimming motility. Surprisingly, we found that some strains respond to acid as an attractant, and that the TlpC chemoreceptor correlated with whether acid was sensed as an attractant or repellent. Using this same assay, we detected weak repellent responses to nickel and copper, and a varied response to zinc. We thus developed an alternative spatial chemotactic assay called the supplemented soft agar assay, which utilizes soft agar medium supplemented with the test compound. With Escherichia coli, the attractant serine slowed overall bacterial migration, while the repellent nickel increased the speed of overall migration. In H. pylori we detected slowed migration with doubled tryptone media, as well as zinc, consistent with an attractant response. In contrast, nickel increased migration, consistent with repulsion.

THE EFFECT OF SOFT NEWS ON PUBLIC ATTACHMENT TO THE NEWS

Data from a national Australian survey provide little evidence of a significant effect for the taste for soft news on news attachment among the general public as well as the six common sex-by-age targeted market segments of the news industry. This contradicts recent arguments that soft news is necessary to democratic life because, in an age of media proliferation and audience fragmentation, it keeps attention-scarce people with the news.

Succulent Sins, Personalized Politics, and Mainstream Media’s Tabloidization Temptation

This study uses an experiment to analyze how mainstream journalism’s use of tabloid writing techniques affects online credibility. Participants read four news stories and rated their credibility using McCroskey’s Source Credibility Scale. Participants found stories written with a tabloid style less credible than more traditional stories. Tabloidized soft news stories were more credible than tabloidized hard news stories. Results suggest that online news media may damage their credibility by using tabloidized writing techniques to increase readership. Furthermore, participants were less likely to enjoy stories written in a tabloidized style. An application of act utilitarianism suggests that tabloidization is an unethical method for increasing news readership.

An Empirical Study of C-E Soft News Translation Based on the Approach to Translation as Adaptation and Selection: With the Rendition of Soft News in Jinri Zhongguo as an Exemplar

With the rendition of soft news in Jinri Zhongguo as an exemplar, the present study concerns C-E soft news translation based on the Approach to Translation as Adaptation and Selection by contrastive analysis of texts, investigation of recognition degree for the expected versions and interview of translators. The results show that the more effective strategy of soft news translation is adaptation, and the corresponding major method is communicative and the minor one is semantic. Translation process of soft news is the translator’s adaption to the typically important components of “source text and target language” in one translation eco-environment and the selection of target text made by the typically important component of “translator” in the other. The translation ideology and method are influenced by translators’ experiences of translation, understanding of source text, knowledge of text functions, etc. There is a correlation between the “degree of holistic adaptation and selection” of soft news versions and the “recognition degree of readers”. Generally a better version has a higher “degree of holistic adaptation and selection” and higher “recognition degree of readers”.

Acoustic radiation force on a sphere in tissue

A theory is presented for the acoustic radiation force on a sphere embedded in a soft elastic medium that possesses a shear modulus μ several orders of magnitude smaller than its bulk modulus. Scattering of both compressional and shear waves is taken into account. There is no restriction on the size of the sphere or, apart from axisymmetry, the form of the incident compressional wave. The analysis employs the Piola-Kirchhoff pseudostress tensor and Lagrangian coordinates. In the linear approximation an analytical solution is obtained for the scattered waves. The nonlinear stress and full radiation force are calculated at the next order of approximation. For a small sphere and μ≈0 the classical result for a particle in liquid is recovered. For small but finite shear modulus the radiation force is evaluated for a gas bubble driven at a frequency below resonance. The predicted magnitude of the radiation force on the bubble is found to be less than that in liquid by the factor [1+(4/3)μ/γ P 0]-1, where P 0 is the ambient pressure and γ the ratio of specific heats of the gas. Influence of the scattered shear wave in this limit is negligible. [Work supported by NIH DK070618.]

Effect of Heating on the Mechanical Properties of Insole Materials

The most common method of customizing shoe insoles to the shape and surface of the foot is to heat and then mold the materials. The effect of heating on the mechanical properties of these materials is unknown. The properties of individual and common combinations of insole materials were tested before and after heating. Individual materials tested were soft Plastazote (SP), medium Plastazote (MP), Puff (F), and Nickelplast (N); combinations of materials that were tested were SP + F and MP + F, each with and without Poron (P). Three samples of each were tested five times. Materials were heated and then compressed with an MTS servohydraulic device. Load transmission and percent compression at maximal load were measured on single materials and their combinations. Stress-strain curves were measured. Compared to unheated material, the heated material transmitted higher forces. After heating, the combinations transmitted maximal load at a lower percentage of compression (i.e., became stiffer). Heating also changed the stress-strain curves of the three-material combinations, causing them to transmit maximal pressure at a lower strain. Heating insole materials changed their mechanical properties. The materials became stiffer and less effective in the attenuation of applied forces. The common practice of heating insole materials to improve their contact with the foot reduced the pressure-reducing properties of the materials, which may decrease their clinical effectiveness.

The Implications of Fictional Media for Political Beliefs

Most research on media effects in political science deals with the news media or political campaigns. Although some recent work looks at the effects of soft news on beliefs and opinions, little attention has been paid to the potential consequences of media that are fictional. Although viewers typically watch fiction for entertainment, the themes, plots, and dialogue may nevertheless influence their thoughts about politics. This article examines the effects of fiction on political beliefs. We do this in the context of an experimental design, where subjects in the treatment group watched the outlandish movie, Wag the Dog. The results show that those who watched the film were more likely to believe in a far-fetched conspiracy, namely that the U.S. government has and will fabricate a war for political gain. The findings stretch the boundaries of fictional influence by focusing on extreme, conspiratorial beliefs. We suggest that political science and communications scholars should focus greater attention on the implications of fiction for beliefs and attitudes, as the consequences can be perverse.

Intermedia Framing and Intercultural Communication: How Other Media Affect American Antipathy toward Al Jazeera English

By covering underrepresented areas in the world, Al Jazeera English (AJE) can facilitate intercultural understanding among Americans. However, AJE is not widely available on television in the United States. Further, many Americans hold pre-formed suspicions of the channel. Through an online experiment, we find that pre-reception audience bias against AJE exists and correlates with prejudice against Arab Americans, limiting its conciliatory potential. However, Americans can change their views toward AJE depending on how it is covered by other media, or what we call “intermedia framing,” including both satiric soft news and hard news. An experiment finds that satiric news coverage decreases anti-Arab American prejudice and, when combined with exposure to AJE, elevates evaluations of the network.

Low-frequency resonance of an oblate spheroidal cavity in a soft elastic medium

Axisymmetric monopole resonances of an oblate spheroidal cavity in a soft elastic medium are computed using both separation of variables and finite-element approaches. The resonances are obtained for compression wavelengths much longer than the cavity size and thus have a low-frequency character. Resonant frequencies for high-aspect-ratio oblate spheroids (either air-filled or evacuated) are found to be significantly lower than their spherical counterparts with equivalent volume. This finding contrasts with the case of an air bubble in water which features weak shape dependence. The results are relevant to the design of locally-resonant acoustic media using soft-lithography techniques with elastomers.

Experiment Shows Higher Information Recall for Soft Rather than Hard Business News

For the fourth consecutive year the economy ranked as the leading news story in U.S. media. In 2011, nearly 40 percent reported paying attention to the topic, and in 2010 the domestic economy placed first or second news story of interest 41 weeks out of 52.1Since 2007 and the crisis of the housing market,2 the public's preference for domestic economic issues as measured by the Pew's News Interest Index has remained high regardless of the severity of the international economic turmoil.Subsequently, two questions bear investigation:* Despite abundant empirical evidence, do U.S. citizens truly favor domestic topics rather than international issues?* Scant research previously investigated whether Americans gravitate toward softor hard economic reports. So do U.S. citizens prefer articles with human interest or timely information instead?The Pew Research Center certainly presents the economy as a ubiquitous topic in the media,3 yet do business reporters really know which format leads to a higher recall of economic and financial information? As it privileges hard news, the Pew Index only focusdes on a partial picture. Focused on practical implications for the profession, this research relies on an experiment to evaluate what economic news yields the highest recall and consequently what type of stories should media present to the public.Domestic and International Economic CoverageResearch targeting economic news seldom introduces ample evidence regarding the difference in geographical perspectives of the stories covered. More regularly, content analyses distinguish between domestic and international stories, or local and national news. A recent investigation of the differences in coverage of the current recession between Chinese and U.S. media revealed that more than 75 percent of front-page articles in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal focused on domestic issues while international issues and the global economy accounted for 15 percent of the sample.4Similar disproportions had been previously divulged. A content analysis of national and local news organizations sampled in 2002 and 2003 found that local media devoted 41.6 percent of their coverage to national economic issues versus 4.8 percent for global topics. Furthermore, the national press secured 73.7 percent of its content for national matters and 18 percent for international issues.5As posited by agenda setting,6 issues salient in the media transpire into the public agenda as the most important questions. A survey previously showed a positive correlation between the public opinion about the economy as a major national problem and the extensive economic coverage.7 It thus appears logical considering the reported saliency of domestic economic news to present the following hypothesis:H1:People reading domestic economic news will recall more information than will those presented with international economic articles.Softand Hard NewsScholars have previously analyzed the dichotomy between hard and softnews in relation to the social history of the press, the sociology of news production and political communication. 8 Tuchman9 first introduced the distinction, defining hard news as a produced content with high news values demanding instant attention and softnews as its direct opposite. Recent publications further conceptualized softnews as typically more sensational, more personality-centered, less time-bound, more practical and more incident-based than other news.10Studies have since indicated a growing interest in softer news. A national survey revealed that international stories covering ordinary people rather than politics and governments generated a higher interest.11 Additionally, a content analysis of more than 5,000 news stories from 33 U.S. media between 1980 and 1999 exposed that articles with a human interest represented 11 percent of the sample in the early 1980s, and 26 percent 10 years later. …

SU-E-I-41: Characterization of a Linear Fiber-Optic Coupled Dosimeter.

This study investigated the dosimetry performance of a linear fiber-optic coupled dosimeter with a sensitive element varying from 3 to 15 cm in length. The dosimeter is comprised of a tissue equivalent plastic scintillating fiber coupled to a photomultiplier tube (PMT). The sensitive element has a length representative of the dimensions of common adult internal organs and measures the absorbed dose along the entire sensitive length. The measurement of absorbed dose in one dimensional space provides a more meaningful measure of the average organ dose compared to current dosimeters which evaluate the dose at a small volume, or point inside the organ. A fiber-optic coupled dosimetry system was modified by increasing the linear dimension of the sensitive element to sizes ranging from 3 to 15 cm. A FOC element providing a variable output as a function of exposed dosimeter length, beam energy, depth, and beam intensity, was characterized for various exposure parameters relating to Computed Tomography. A clinical x-ray tube, with half-value layer of 5.60 mm Al at 120 kVp, was used to evaluate the dosimeter response to beam energy, intensity, beam quality, and exposed length. The system consistently demonstrated linearity with tube output and length of the sensitive element and offering excellent sensitivity and reproducibility. The dosimeter also demonstrated a linear response of detected counts to length of scintillation material in the x-ray field over the range of interest. The sensitivity with respect to energy and depth showed a positive linear dependence. An 8% variation in sensitivity across a 12 cm depth was observed within a soft tissue-equivalent medium. The system allows for rapid and accurate average organ dose measurements relevant to x-ray sources within the diagnostic energy range. The response to previously discussed parameters was independent of the sensitive element length.

Formula omitted] analysis of inclusive jet and di-jet production in heavy ion reactions at the Large Hadron Collider

Jets physics in heavy ion reactions is an important new area of active research at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) that paves the way for novel tests of QCD multi-parton dynamics in dense nuclear matter. At present, perturbative QCD calculations of hard probes in elementary nucleon–nucleon reactions can be consistently combined with the effects of the nuclear medium up to O(αs3). While such accuracy is desirable but not necessary for leading particle tomography, it is absolutely essential for the new jet observables. With this motivation, we present first results and predictions to O(αs3) for the recent LHC lead–lead (Pb+Pb) run at a center-of-mass energy of 2.76 TeV per nucleon–nucleon pair. Specifically, we focus on the suppression of the single and double inclusive jet cross sections. Our analysis includes not only final-state inelastic parton interactions in the QGP, but also initial-state cold nuclear matter effects and an estimate of the non-perturbative hadronization corrections. We demonstrate how an enhanced di-jet asymmetry in central Pb+Pb reactions at the LHC, recently measured by the ATLAS and CMS experiments, can be derived from these results. We show quantitatively that a fraction of this enhancement may be related to the ambiguity in the separation between the jet and the soft background medium and/or the diffusion of the parton shower energy away from the jet axis through collisional processes. We point to a suite of measurements that can help build a consistent picture of parton shower modification in heavy ion collisions at the LHC.

Adaptive Haptic Control for Telerobotics Transitioning Between Free, Soft, and Hard Environments

This paper presents an adaptive haptic control for a one degree-of-freedom master-slave teleoperated device. The aim is to reduce excessive collision forces that occur when there are significant time delays in master-slave communication. The control design also allows the operator to move the slave in free space and in a soft medium. Previous approaches to haptic teleoperation typically design for either movement in a medium or constrained contact with a solid surface; then, it is up to the operator to avoid collisions or precisely anticipate collisions. The proposed control runs on the slave side inner loop, with no time delay, and tracks commanded forces from the outer loop. A Lyapunov-stable backstepping-with-tuning-functions design provides a way to ensure smooth forces are applied that guarantee stability in the presence of unmodeled environmental stiffness and viscosity. Experiments using a Phantom hand controller interacting with simulated environment show that collision forces are substantially reduced compared to two other control methods. In collision-free operation, the performance is comparable to other methods.

Constraining the physics of jet quenching

Hard probes in the context of ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions represent a key class of observables studied to gain informations about the QCD medium created in such collisions. However, in practice the so-called jet tomography has turned out to be more difficult than expected initially. One of the major obstacles in extracting reliable tomographic information from the data is that neither the parton-medium interaction nor the medium geometry are known with great precision, and thus a difference in model assumptions in the hard perturbative Quantum Choromdynamics (pQCD) modelling can usually be compensated by a corresponding change of assumptions in the soft bulk medium sector and vice versa. The only way to overcome this problem is to study the full systematics of combinations of parton-medium interaction and bulk medium evolution models. This work presents a meta-analysis summarizing results from a number of such systematical studies and discusses in detail how certain data sets provide specific constraints for models. Combining all available information, only a small group of models exhibiting certain characteristic features consistent with a pQCD picture of parton-medium interaction is found to be viable given the data. In this picture, the dominant mechanism is medium-induced radiation combined with a surprisingly small component of elastic energy transfer into the medium.

Food Journalism or Culinary Anthropology? Re-evaluating Soft News and the Influence of Jeanne Voltz's Food Section in the Los Angeles Times

Jeanne Voltz was a groundbreaking food editor at the Los Angeles Times in the 1960s—a time of great change for journalism and gender roles. This articles outlines her career path and includes an analysis of her work at the Times, including her approach to food journalism as a mix of hard news, such as food safety and consumer awareness; and soft news, including recipes, and restaurant reviews. The research illuminates the significance of food sections and lays the foundation for future research on the contributions of women to food journalism.

Characterization of cancer stem-like cells in chordoma

Chordomas are locally aggressive bone tumors known to arise from the remnants of the notochord. Because chordomas are rare, molecular studies aimed at developing new therapies are scarce and new approaches are needed. Chordoma cells and cancer stem-like cells share similar characteristics, including self-renewal, differentiation, and resistance to chemotherapy. Therefore, it seems possible that chordomas might contain a subpopulation of cancer stem-like cells. The aim of this study is to determine whether cancer stem-like cells might be present in chordomas. In this study, the authors used gene expression analysis for common cancer stem-like cellmarkers, including c-myc, SSEA-1, oct4, klf4, sox2, nanog, and brachyury, and compared chordoma cells and tissues with nucleus pulposus tissues (disc degenerated nontumorigenic tissues). Differentiation through agents such as all-trans retinoic acid and osteogenic differentiation medium was induced to the chordoma cells. Additionally, U-CH1 cells were sorted via magnetic cell sorting for stem cell markers CD133 and CD15. After separation, positive and negative cells for these markers were grown in a nonadherent environment, soft agar, to determine whether the presence of these cancer stem-like cells might be responsible for initiating chordoma. The results were compared with those of untreated cells in terms of migration, proliferation, and gene expression by using reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction. The results indicate that chordoma cells might be differentiating and committing into an osteogenic lineage when induced with the osteogenic differentiation agent. Chordoma cells that are induced with retinoic acid showed slower migration and proliferation rates when compared with the untreated cells. Chordoma cells that were found to be enriched by cancer stem-like cell markers, namely CD133 and CD15, were able to live in a nonadherent soft agar medium, demonstrating a self-renewal capability. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first time that cancer stem-like cell markers were also found to be expressed in chordoma cells and tissues. Cancer stem-like cell detection might be an important step in determining the recurrent and metastatic characteristics of chordoma. This finding may lead to the development of new approaches toward treatments of chordomas.

Hard and soft news: A review of concepts, operationalizations and key findings

Over 30 years, a large body of research on what is often called ‘hard’ and ‘soft news’ has accumulated in communication studies. However, there is no consensus about what hard and soft news exactly is, or how it should be defined or measured. Moreover, the concept has not been clearly differentiated from or systematically related to concepts addressing very similar phenomena – tabloidization and ‘infotainment’. Consequently, the results of various studies are hard to compare and different scientific discourses on related issues remain unconnected. Against this backdrop, this article offers a conceptual analysis of the concept based on studies in English and other languages. We identify key dimensions of the concept and make suggestions for a standardized definition and multi-dimensional measurement of harder and softer news. In doing so, we propose to distinguish thematic, focus and style features as basic dimensions that – in their combination – make up harder and softer types of news.