Search results

How do European policymakers and media companies react to the AOL‐TimeWarner merger? In this short provocation, Marsden asks whether the successful coupling of the world’s largest ISP and media content creator signal le defi americain in communications, for Europe and the rest of the world? In particular, he questions whether market actors should be permitted a similar role in Europe. In competition policy terms, the question is whether creation of economies of scale and scope, particularly through vertical integration between carriers and content providers, now causes increasing redundancy of media‐specific ownership laws at a national level in favour of European industrial policy? The outflanking policy trend is demonstrated specifically in the merger of Vodafone‐Mannesmann, and the content alliances formed with Vivendi, and between Vodafone, Vivendi and variously BSkyB and Manchester United. Even if symbolic debate continues to give primacy to democratic principle, European public policy may switch poles, from denying concentration of media on democratic principle of pluralism of ownership, to encouraging European champions to compete with the Americans. This convergence debate will centrally occupy policymakers, with new national legislation and Commission Directives in all probability preceded by critical merger decisions by the Competition Directorate.

An indirect electrochemical reduction and dyeing with indigo were carried out here to solve problems of low dye reduction rate and poor dyeing depth in the current electrochemical dyeing process.

Response surface analysis tests were performed to evaluate the effects of ferrous sulfate concentration, medium concentration, sodium hydroxide concentration and reduction time on the reduction efficiency of indirect electrochemical reduction of indigo.

The conditions obtained by design-expert optimization showed that the concentration of FeSO₄·7H₂O has the most significant effect on the reduction performance of dye liquor. Under the optimized electrochemical reduction dyeing process, the rate of dye reduction could be reached 91.21 per cent and the K/S value of indirect electrochemical dyeing of indigo can be achieved to 12.96, which is increased by about 9.56 per cent compared with that of Na₂S₂O₄ dyeing with the same color fastness basically.

The recyclability and biodegradability of the dye remain to be explored.

The strategy presented here can be developed to replace a substantial part of electrochemical dyeing with optimized product quality and reduced environmental pollution in denim production.

The strategy presented here can be developed to replace a substantial part of electrochemical dyeing with optimized product quality and reduced environmental pollution in denim production.

Application of the Fe(II)-DGS-Abal B complex media system in the indirect electrochemical reduction of indigo.

The purpose of this paper is to study the effects of chemical reaction on mixed convection flow along a sphere in non‐Darcian porous media.

The sphere surface is maintained at uniform temperature and species concentration for both cases of heated (assisting flow) and cooled (opposing flow) sphere. An appropriate transformation is employed and the transformed equations are solved numerically using an efficient implicit iterative tri‐diagonal finite difference method.

It is found that chemical reactions have significant effect on heat and mass transfer. Comparisons with previously published work are performed and the results are found to be in excellent agreement.

The paper is original and describes how a parametric study of the physical parameters was conducted and illustrates graphically a representative set of numerical results for the velocity, temperature, and concentration profiles, as well as the local skin‐friction coefficient, local wall temperature, and local wall concentration, to show interesting features of the solutions.

The surface roughness of additively manufactured parts is usually found to be high. This limits their use in industrial and biomedical applications. Therefore, these parts required post-processing to improve their surface quality. The purpose of this study is to finish three-dimensional (3D) printed acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) and polylactic acid (PLA) parts using abrasive flow machining (AFM).

A hydrogel-based abrasive media has been developed to finish 3D printed parts. The developed abrasive media has been characterized for its rheology and thermal stability using sweep tests, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and differential thermal analysis (DTA). The ABS and PLA cylindrical parts have been prepared using fused deposition modeling (FDM) and finished using AFM. The experiments were designed using Taguchi (L9 OA) method. The effect of process parameters such as extrusion pressure (EP), layer thickness (LT) and abrasive concentration (AC) was investigated on the amount of material removed (MR) and percentage improvement in surface roughness (%ΔR_a).

The developed abrasive media was found to be effective for finishing FDM printed parts using AFM. The microscope images of unfinished and finished showed a significant improvement in surface topography of additively manufactures parts after AFM. The results reveal that AC is the most significant parameter during the finishing of ABS parts. However, EP and AC are the most significant parameters for MR and %ΔR_a, respectively, during the finishing of PLA parts.

The FDM technology has applications in the biomedical, electronics, aeronautics and defense sectors. PLA has good biodegradable and biocompatible properties, so widely used in biomedical applications. The ventilator splitters fabricated using FDM have a profile similar to the shape used in the present study.

The present study is focused on finishing FDM printed cylindrical parts using AFM. Future research may be done on the AFM of complex shapes and freeform surfaces printed using different additive manufacturing (AM) techniques.

An abrasive media consists of xanthan gum, locust bean gum and fumed silica has been developed and characterized. An experimental study has been performed by combining printing parameters of FDM and finishing parameters of AFM. A comparative analysis in MR and %ΔR_a has been reported between 3D printed ABS and PLA parts.

The main goal of this paper is to evaluate the players' contribution and economic value in the soccer industry. Media visibility records provide us with comparable metrics to identify talent and make hiring decisions – these records can jointly capture sport (on-field) skills and other attractive (off-field) abilities.

This paper presents a valuation method that applies media visibility appraisals to estimate “theoretical values” of the transfer fees paid for hiring soccer players. The estimations are performed by analysing the evolution over time of the media exposure of about 5,000 individuals of more than 200 clubs.

The study’s empirical results reveal that, along with sport performance, the players' media status also affects their economic valuation, which explains why the clubs – in search of greater economic returns – fiercely compete for the most popular players. The paper also identifies the main factors determining the players' economic value. In predicting the players' transfer fees, some variables are statistically significant: individual media visibility, media visibility share of the player within his team, contract duration, status of the hiring team, years of experience, player's age at the end of the contract and the domestic league of the hiring team.

Professional sports provide reliable measures on individuals' performance that may help in the hiring process of workers. This paper identifies gifted soccer players while taking into account their skills as media leaders and the economic implications. Insofar as players' talents determine their teams' sport and economic achievements, the transfer fees paid for players must then be seen as a crucial factor. Measuring individual talent and being able to translate this talent into productivity levels entail serious methodological and empirical challenges.

The nations of the world are linked together by increasingly fast, efficient and sophisticated means of communication. Satellites, cable, and other telecommunication methods are used to implement this mass communication. The mass media forms, radio, television, newspapers, magazines, film, etc., have influenced not only their resident population, they have the potential to influence all of us. The reference sources in this article are concerned with this global aspect.

Approximately 75% of journalists in Western society maintain a Twitter account. This significant presence underscores Twitter's impact on the public agenda. The purpose of this paper is to gain an understanding of journalists' practices on Twitter, from the perspective of journalists in Israel, and explore whether journalists use Twitter's potential as a pluralistic platform of expression.

The authors conducted in-depth interviews with leading journalists working on traditional media and those active on Twitter in Israel.

Although Twitter is an open, inclusive platform for opinion exchange, in which journalists have a sense of unfettered freedom of expression, findings indicate that in Israel, Twitter effectively functions as an echo chamber used by a clique of journalists and politicians in a manner than reifies the hegemonic system. The majority of the public do not use Twitter to draw attention to contentious issues, and journalists almost exclusively continue to set and control the agenda on this platform. As a result, journalists become even more disconnected from society. Therefore, Twitter has been found to be a complementary platform to traditional media that helps to preserve the existing social order.

This paper offers not only a theoretical contribution but also social relevance, as the topics and issues discussed in the paper might concern citizens and policymakers. This paper contributes to the debate on freedom of the press, which is an important principle of pluralism and democracy. This study illustrates that the general public's opinions remain unheard-of on Twitter. Therefore, despite its potential to express a variety of opinions and voices, Twitter does not undermine the existing social order, but it is one of the cultural frameworks that help preserve the existing social order and reinforce it through uniform conformity thinking.

The novelty of this research lies in its identification and analysis of the characteristics of the Twitter scene, its meanings and its implications from the perspective of journalists. In addition, this research investigates the relationships forged in the Twitter space between journalists and politicians and among journalists themselves.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-07-2020-0324

Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus is a gram-negative predatory bacterium which can potentially inhibit microbiologically influenced corrosion by preying on sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB). However, no researches about the inhibition are reported according to the authors’ knowledge. The purpose of this paper was to investigate the Inhibition effect of B. bacteriovorus on the corrosion of X70 pipeline steel induced by SRB.

The effect of B. bacteriovorus on the growth of SRB was studied by measuring the optical density at 600 nm (OD600) and sulfate concentration in culture medium. X70 pipeline steel was used as the test material to investigate the anti-corrosion effect of B. bacteriovorus on SRB by conducting electrochemical analysis (including Tafel polarization curves and electrochemical impendence spectroscopy) and weight loss measurement.

B. bacteriovorus could inhibit the growth of SRB in culture medium by its predation on SRB, which led to decrease of OD600 value and increase of sulfate concentration. The results of electrochemical analysis indicated that B. bacteriovorus had positive inhibition efficiencies on SRB-induced corrosion of X70 pipeline steel. Moreover, corrosion rate of X70 pipeline steel was declined from 19.17 to 3.75 mg·dm-2·day-1 by the presence of B. bacteriovorus.

This is the first report about using B. bacteriovorus to inhibit the corrosion induced by SRB. Compared to other anti-corrosion methods, the microbial inhibition methods exhibit more considerable application value due to its low cost, high efficiency and non-pollution.

This article critically examines the multiple rationales for telecom, IT, media convergence regulation, on the one hand, and multisector utility regulation, on the other, and the practical questions of implementation they pose, with a view to contributing to informed policy and regulatory decisions. Both options involve substantive as well as procedural issues, not necessarily separable. The conditions that may affect the creation of convergence and multi‐sector regulation, ranging from underlying commonality of inputs and the behaviour of regulated firms to considerations that are specific to the regulatory process such as scarcity of regulatory resources and safeguards for regulatory independence, are examined. It is concluded that ICT and media convergence issues are primarily about improving the efficiency of market economies, and how changes in regulation can facilitate this process. Multi‐sector regulation issues are primarily about establishing the efficiency and effectiveness of regulation, so it can be a catalyst for network and economic development. They arise from an initial diagnosis of different problems, and represent different priorities and pathways to achieving a very similar set of development objectives.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the disconnect between policy intent and policy implementation in relation to regional/local (sub-national) TV deliverables in South Africa between 1990 and 2011, and evaluate the impact of this disconnect in pursuit of public interest objectives.

The article is based on a research case study in which data extracted from policy documents and interviews were qualitatively analysed via the Kingdon “policy streams” framework and the Feintuck and Varney public interest media regulation framework.

It was found that ruptures in deliberative policymaking, and policy implementation missteps, undermined sub-national TV delivery and, in turn, undermined pursuit of the public interest.

By combining a political science conceptual framework with a media policy conceptual framework, the article provides unique insights into South African TV policymaking in the early democratic era.