"I'm an American Girl … Whatever That Means": Girls Consuming Pleasant Company's American Girl Identity

The American Girl collection of dolls, accessories, and books was introduced by Pleasant Company in 1985. The collection, created to "bring history alive" and "provide girls with role models," has been an unqualified financial success: 5 million dolls and 50 million books have been sold. Using in-depth interviews with girls who own American Girl dolls and their mothers, this paper links representation, consumption, and identity, examining how girls create identity through consumption of American Girl texts and products, that is, how girls integrate Pleasant Company's products into their everyday liver and their construction of an American Girl identity.     

Gendered construction of the American Indian in popular media

Contemporary popular culture is permeated with images of Native Americans, who have become symbols of wisdom, beauty, peace, and nostalgia. In this paper, I trace the changes in this imagery over time, with particular emphasis on the role of gender, and how Native American men and women have become sexualized in relation to the White gaze, which is an important component of colonial domination. Many other Americans never encounter a Native American, and media fill a knowledge vacuum with outmoded and limited stereotypes. The 1990s lovely princess and Native American stud may be more benign images than the earlier squaw or crazed savage, but they are equally unreal and dehumanizing.     

Preserving the Moment, Commodifying Time, and Improving Upon the Past: Insights Into the Depiction of Time in American Advertising

Despite its pervasiveness in ads, the depiction of time in American advertising remains one of the least understood cultural values, perhaps because of its complexity and its taken-for-grantedness. Using a sample of magazine ads, this study adds to the existing knowledge and provides new insights into 5 time categories: limited time, marking time, more time, planning time, and oriented time. Examples and frequencies of time categories are provided with an analysis of use across product categories. The study also provides insights into how advertising as a cultural product sends "unintended" messages about cultural values. Despite the availability of alternative time concepts, the time categories observed in this study exclusively support the monochronic culture (Hall, 1983), making it appear as the only time system available.     

American Symbolism in Intercultural Communication: An Animosity/Ethnocentrism Perspective on Intergroup Relations and Consumer Attitudes

What leads to acceptance versus rejection of messages that represent one's own culture/in‐group, or a foreign culture/out‐group? We investigate how symbols in mass communication might be used to overcome biases toward in‐group and out‐group messages. We experimentally study these effects across countries representing varying levels of consumer ethnocentrism (which relates to attitudes about one's own country, or in‐group) and country‐specific animosity (which relates to attitudes about a particular foreign country, or out‐group). We select 4 countries based on varying levels of ethnocentrism and U.S.‐focused animosity. Using a Social Identity perspective, we find support for asymmetries of response regarding in‐group preference and out‐group discrimination within the context of U.S. and indigenous cultural representations in the form of symbols and brands.     

Lower Bounds for Finite Intersymbol Interference Error Rates

Some simple lower bounds for the probability of error for band-restricted digital communication are presented. The bounds revolve two values of the complementary error function, the system SNR, the peak value, second moment, and sometimes, the fourth moment of the intersymbol interference. Contrary to other available lower bounds, no parameter searches or infinite series computations are required. The bounds hold when the system "eye" is open and in some cases when the source symbols are correlated.     

Unequal error protection for convolutional codes

In this correspondence, unequal error-correcting capabilities of convolutional codes are studied. For errors in the information symbols and code symbols, the free input- and output-distances, respectively, serve as "unequal" counterparts to the free distance. When communication takes place close to or above the channel capacity the error bursts tend to be long and the free distance is not any longer useful as the measure of the error correcting capability. Thus, the active burst distance for a given output and the active burst distance for a given input are introduced as "unequal" counterparts to the active burst distance and improved estimates of the unequal error-correcting capabilities of convolutional codes are obtained and illustrated by examples. Finally, it is shown how to obtain unequal error protection for both information and code symbols using woven convolutional codes.     

Achieving near-capacity on a multiple-antenna channel

Recent advancements in iterative processing of channel codes and the development of turbo codes have allowed the communications industry to achieve near-capacity on a single-antenna Gaussian or fading channel with low complexity. We show how these iterative techniques can also be used to achieve near-capacity on a multiple-antenna system where the receiver knows the channel. Combining iterative processing with multiple-antenna channels is particularly challenging because the channel capacities can be a factor of ten or more higher than their single-antenna counterparts. Using a "list" version of the sphere decoder, we provide a simple method to iteratively detect and decode any linear space-time mapping combined with any channel code that can be decoded using so-called "soft" inputs and outputs. We exemplify our technique by directly transmitting symbols that are coded with a channel code; we show that iterative processing with even this simple scheme can achieve near-capacity. We consider both simple convolutional and powerful turbo channel codes and show that excellent performance at very high data rates can be attained with either. We compare our simulation results with Shannon capacity limits for ergodic multiple-antenna channel.     

Little Words That Matter: Discourse Markers "So" and "Oh" and the Doing of Other-Attentiveness in Social Interaction

The article presents an analysis of actual, recorded social interactions between close familiars with the goal to describe discursive practices involved in showing engagement with the other party, or other-attentiveness. Focusing on the deployment of the discourse markers "so" and "oh" in utterances that launch new conversational topics, the article demonstrates that "so" overwhelmingly prefaces other-attentive topics, whereas "oh" prefaces self-attentive topics. We consider the interactional implications of this distribution and how the basic meanings of these linguistic objects are employed in the service of communicating interpersonal involvement.     

On the Effect of the "Third-Person Effect": Perceived Influence of Media Coverage and Residential Mobility Intentions

This study demonstrates that third-person perceptions regarding the influence of media coverage of peripheral towns indirectly affect the desire to consider moving. It is argued that regardless of whether people's perceptions of where they live are really shaped by media coverage, if people believe others are affected by this coverage more than they are, they are more likely to consider relocation. We investigated whether the perceived stigmatization of peripheral development towns in Israel has an impact on the desire of their residents to stay or leave, over and above the disaffection with actual living conditions in these communities. Using structural equation modeling ( N = 472), we show that third-person estimations indeed influence both perceptions and behavioral intentions.     

On the Binary DPSK Communication Systems in Correlated Gaussian Noise

Using the recently developed probability density function we obtain "directly" the error rate expressions for the binary differential phase-shift keyed (DPSK) systems when the noise values at the sampling instants in adjacent time slots are statistically dependent. Two cases are considered: One corresponding to equal SNR at each of the two sampling instants, and the other to unequal SNR's. The consideration of the former case, together with the assumption of unequal a priori symbol probabilities P0and P1results in an error rate expressionP_{E} =1/2[1 + (P_{0} - P_{1})rho] exp (-h^{2})where ρ is the noise correlation coefficient, and h²is the SNR. This expression shows clearly why PEis independent of noise correlation when the source symbols are equi-probable provided intersymbol interference is assumed absent. We then obtain the error probability expression in terms of unequal SNR's (at the two sampling instants) and the correlation coefficient ρ. Since intersymbol interference in a binary DPSK system gives rise to unequal SNR's, this expression provides a useful formula for estimating the system performance under such circumstances.     

On the Achievable Rate for Wideband Channels with Estimated CSI

We consider the achievable rate for frequency-selective fading channels when the channel state information (CSI) is to be estimated at the receiver. Since the estimated CSI is not perfect, the achievable rate must be degraded from that with perfect CSI. Using the rate-distortion theory, we study an upper bound on the achievable rate and investigate how the achievable rate can be maximized through an optimization problem by allocating the resources such as degrees of freedom (the transmission time in our work or transmission power) for the exploration of CSI (i.e., the channel estimation) using pilot symbols, and the exploitation of channels to transmit data symbols. Although our study is based on some ideal assumptions, the results could help develop flexible communication systems such as software defined radio (SDR) to achieve a best performance by optimizing radio resources for unknown channels.     

"I Know I'm a Freierit, But…": How a Key Cultural Frame (En)genders a Discourse of Inequality

This article investigates how a key frame of interaction establishes and reinforces gendered social relations within a given culture. It analyzes how the concept of the freier (roughly glossed as "sucker") is used in Israel, interpersonally and via the mass media, to demonstrate how gender is constructed through communication and inextricably bound to the specific cultural context in which it is located. This work exposes how the frame reinforces the underlying dynamics of gender inequality in society, examines the oppositional ways in which it is employed by women, and argues that its use in any form further entrenches the social bias. The article calls for analyses of discourse focusing on nondominant groups, within their specific cultural context, in order to examine the practical distribution of power in society.     

Authenticity within hip-hop and other cultures threatened with assimilation

This essay examines claims of authenticity within hip-hop, African American culture. In the mid- to late 1990s, authenticity claims have been pervasive within hip-hop music communities, which had previously existed on the margins of mainstream U.S. culture. By mapping the range of meanings associated with authenticity as they are invoked discursively, we can gain a better understanding of how a culture in danger of assimilation seeks to preserve its identity. The use of the conceptual apparatus of semantic dimensions highlights how that culture's most central and powerful symbols are organized and given meaning vis-á-vis authenticity within a discursive system.     

ITERATIVE "ONE-SHOT" DECORRELATION IN DS-CDMA SYSTEMS

In this paper, an iterative "one-shot" decorrelator for asynchronous code Division Multiple Access(CDMA) systems is proposed. This decorrelator feedbacks the decorrelated symbols of interfering users before decision to mitigate their interferences. As a result, this decorrelator is a linear detector and does not need any amplitude information of users as in decision-feedback detectors. Compared with existing "one-shot" decorrelator, it has reduced complexity and provided better performance while eliminating all Multiple Access Interference(MAI). The performance of this decorrelator is analyzed thoeritically, and analytical result is given. Numerical results show near-far resistant capability of this decorrelator in both AWGN and fading channel.     

Books: Strange Ways

This book how people owe their self-awareness to "strange loops." The author believes that any system capable of representing a suite of symbols could develop self-awareness; it doesn't matter if the microlevel of the strange loop is composed of neurons or transistors. The author carries the concept of "strange loops" in self-awareness to the human brain. Examines what happens when someone dies and explores the realm of carrying on one's consciousness after death. The author's model is based on his theories of how self-awareness can arise out of inanimate atoms.     

Responses of American readers to visual aspects of a mid-sizedJapanese company's annual report: a case study

American document design process models reflect the assumption that comprehension and usability are the most important characteristics of effective documents, but it is increasingly evident that other cultures value other communicative features of documents and that purposes and intentions vary across cultures. This case study examines the responses of four sets of American readers (three sets familiar with American document design research and practice and one set of content specialists-engineers by training) to the visual aspects of an annual report. The original document was prepared for a mid-sized Japanese corporation and published and distributed in Japan; the American version is an almost literal translation of the original document from Japanese to English, with no changes in visuals, graphic design or format. Protocol analyses of readers' responses revealed distinct patterns of expectations and preferences based on (1) cultural biases, (2) degree of familiarity with the American document design model, and (3) ignorance of Japanese culture and corporate communicative practices. This study raises questions about the effectiveness in terms of cultural sensitivity of what we have called the “American” document design process model and usability testing procedures, and calls for extensive collaborative research designed to describe and analyze current practice in international settings     

Informed content delivery across adaptive overlay networks

Overlay networks have emerged as a powerful and highly flexible method for delivering content. We study how to optimize throughput of large transfers across richly connected, adaptive overlay networks, focusing on the potential of collaborative transfers between peers to supplement ongoing downloads. First, we make the case for an erasure-resilient encoding of the content. Using the digital fountain encoding approach, end hosts can efficiently reconstruct the original content of size n from a subset of any n symbols drawn from a large universe of encoding symbols. Such an approach affords reliability and a substantial degree of application-level flexibility, as it seamlessly accommodates connection migration and parallel transfers while providing resilience to packet loss. However, since the sets of encoding symbols acquired by peers during downloads may overlap substantially, care must be taken to enable them to collaborate effectively. Our main contribution is a collection of useful algorithmic tools for efficient summarization and approximate reconciliation of sets of symbols between pairs of collaborating peers, all of which keep message complexity and computation to a minimum. Through simulations and experiments on a prototype implementation, we demonstrate the performance benefits of our informed content-delivery mechanisms and how they complement existing overlay network architectures.     

Understanding perception through neural "codes"

A major challenge for cognitive scientists is to deduce and explain the neural mechanisms of the rapid transposition between stimulus energy and recalled memory-between the specific (sensation) and the generic (perception)-in both material and mental aspects. Researchers are attempting three explanations in terms of neural codes. The microscopic code: cellular neurobiologists correlate stimulus properties with the rates and frequencies of trains of action potentials induced by stimuli and carried by topologically organized axons. The mesoscopic code: cognitive scientists formulate symbolic codes in trains of action potentials from feature-detector neurons of phonemes, lines, odorants, vibrations, faces, etc., that object-detector neurons bind into representations of stimuli. The macroscopic code: neurodynamicists extract neural correlates of stimuli and associated behaviors in spatial patterns of oscillatory fields of dendritic activity, which self-organize and evolve on trajectories through high-dimensional brain state space. This multivariate code is expressed in landscapes of chaotic attractors. Unlike other scientific codes, such as DNA and the periodic table, these neural codes have no alphabet or syntax. They are epistemological metaphors that experimentalists need to measure neural activity and engineers need to model brain functions. My aim is to describe the main properties of the macroscopic code and the grand challenge it poses: how do very large patterns of textured synchronized oscillations form in cortex so quickly?     

Bounds on mutual information for simple codes using information combining

For coded transmission over a memoryless channel, two kinds of mutual information are considered: the mutual information between a code symbol and its noisy observation and the overall mutual information between encoder input and decoder output. The overall mutual information is interpreted as a combination of the mutual informations associated with the individual code symbols. Thus, exploiting code constraints in the decoding procedure is interpreted as combining mutual informations. For single parity check codes and repetition codes, we present bounds on the overall mutual information, which are based only on the mutual informations associated with the individual code symbols. Using these mutual information bounds, we compute bounds on extrinsic information transfer (exit) functions and bounds on information processing characteristics (ipc) for these codes.