Optical-resolution fluorescence imaging through and within complex samples presents a major challenge due to random light scattering, with substantial implications across multiple fields. While considerable advancements in coherent imaging through severe multiple scattering have been recently introduced by reflection matrix processing, approaches that tackle scattering in incoherent fluorescence imaging have been limited to sparse targets, require high-resolution control of the illumination or detection wavefronts, or require a very large number of measurements. Here, we present an approach that allows the adaptation of well-established reflection matrix techniques to scattering compensation in incoherent fluorescence imaging. We experimentally demonstrate that a small number of conventional wide-field fluorescence microscope images acquired under unknown random illuminations can effectively be used to construct a virtual fluorescence-based reflection matrix. Processing this matrix by an adapted matrix-based scattering compensation algorithm allows reconstructing megapixel-scale images from <150 acquired frames, without any spatial light modulators or computationally intensive processing. Fluorescence microscopy images that have been distorted by scattering are computationally corrected by a matrix-based approach.
Why, despite increased female support, do social democratic parties (SDPs) in most Western European countries face electoral decline? To study this puzzle, we harness a well-documented regularity: diminishing support for SDPs by manual workers and their increased support for the far right. We contend that this trend is intensified in contexts where the economic positions of SDPs align with market-oriented policies or converge with those of the far right. Additionally, as men are disproportionately represented among manual workers, this shift contributes to the reversal of the gender gap in support for SDPs. Drawing on public opinion data from 18 countries spanning half a century, along with labor and party economic position data, our findings substantiate this argument.
Liron Lavi, Clareta Treger, Naama Rivlin-Angert, Tamir Sheafer, Israel Waismel-Manor, Shaul Shenhav, Liran Harsgor, and Michal Shamir. 2024. “The Pitkinian Public: Representation in the eyes of citizens.” European Political Science, Pp. 1–21.
Faced with desiccation stress, many organisms deploy strategies to maintain the integrity of their cellular components. Amorphous glassy media composed of small molecular solutes or protein gels present general strategies for protecting against drying. We review these strategies and the proposed molecular mechanisms to explain protein protection in a vitreous matrix under conditions of low hydration. We also describe efforts to exploit similar strategies in technological applications for protecting proteins in dry or highly desiccated states. Finally, we outline open questions and possibilities for future explorations.
Digital media ecologies present numerous challenges to established conceptualizations and measures of public opinion: Unbounded, trans-local publics, massively uneven participation rates, inauthentic contributions and various algorithmic distortions undermine most inferences regarding the distribution of opinions held among discernible communities, and raise important concerns about the meaning of census-style big data analyses of digital media contents. Moreover, the algorithmically structured, networked discursive spaces on digital media also erode existing notions of public opinion climates, which vary from platform to platform, or even from one user’s perspective to another. While digital media constitute a key site where public opinion is formed and negotiated, theoretical conceptualizations remain too fragmentary to effectively guide empirical public opinion research relying on digital media contents. In the present paper, we offer a comprehensive account of public opinion in a digital media environment, which we conceptualize as an ongoing discursive process distributed over numerous digital media sites. Reconnecting to pre-digital theories of public opinion as the negotiation of publicly acceptable stances in public discourse, we examine how public opinion is negotiated in a digital information ecosystem and transmedial communications environment, discussing key implications for the at-scale analysis of digital media contents in public opinion research. At the core of our argument, we conceptualize digital media discourse on public issues as a normative, dynamic and interactive process: By presenting opinion statements and claims in public, participating actors seek to advance, negotiate or challenge specific stances, while simultaneously positioning themselves and others as more or less legitimate and authoritative voices. Through ongoing interactions, which echo memetically across a wide range of sites and platforms, different stances emerge as dominant or marginal, consensual or contested, informing and positioning public perceptions of prevalent opinion climates, as well as any ensuing contributions to the debate. In this distributed debate, any contribution can be qualified in numerous ways – from its visibility and reach, resonance and endorsement and rejection among co-present audiences, to its distinctive positioning owing to known and observable qualities of its presentation, its author, the site, and other relevant factors. Drawing upon recent theorizing on political talk in hybrid, transmedial communication ecologies and memetic political expression in the digital age, we propose four key contingencies shaping the negotiation of public opinion in digital public spheres, namely 1) the discursive positioning of opinion expressions; 2) their socio-technical embedding into networked communication spaces and communication flows; 3) the discursive-interactive resonance of presented claims; and 4) the normative governance of public discourse within interconnected digital communication spaces. In consequence, public opinion emerges not as the linear product or aggregation of included contents, but as the outcome of an ongoing dynamic process of the public presentation, endorsement and contestation, negotiation and dissemination of opinionated discourse. With our conceptualization, we identify avenues for empirically studying public opinion negotiation processes in digital media ecologies, both in detail and at scale. At the same time, our theoretical account foregrounds the potential of studying public opinion as collaborative negotiation of societally acceptable stances on digital media, which constitutes a key venue where public opinion is formed in contemporary hybrid communication spaces.
Vladimir Nabokov's pre-war Russian language short stories were translated into English, whether by his son Dmitri or by others, but, in the novelist's lifetime, always "in collaboration with the author." The extent of this collaboration sometimes amounts to self-translation, that is, not to improving the text but to changing its details, the way a translator has no right to do while the author is entitled to revisions. Most often such changes were made in the awareness of the horizons of the new audience; but they also reflect modified attitudes to the material and suggest which meanings it was important for Nabokov to emphasize and which it was important for him to preclude. We discuss such traces of self-translation in three of Nabokov's short stories, "Torpid Smoke," "Details of a Sunset," and "Spring in Fialta."
Communication research has long explored the association between media trust and news consumption. However, the strength and direction of this relationship have remained elusive. This study suggests a new approach for investigating these complex relations, differentiating between usage and trust associated with different sources over time. Focusing on the 2022 French election and drawing on data from a four-wave panel survey (N = 1,294), we utilized Random Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Model (RI-CLPM) analysis to uncover two key over time effects: a selection effect, wherein trust reinforces usage; and a media effect, wherein usage influences trust. While a selection effect driven by news trust was observed in a right-wing political alternative channel, a media effect leading to news trust was linked with more traditional television channels. By identifying these effects and their associations with various types of outlets, this study advances the ongoing scholarly debate around the role of trust in news consumption.
