Photography as unconcealment: revisiting the idea of photographic transparency

What distinguishes photography from other visual mediums? This deceptively simple but fundamental question has been at the centre of both past and current debates on the aesthetics of photography for quite some time. In this article, I will first address the premise that this question is intrinsically ontological and unfolded in pioneering debates as a sequence of implications about photographic indexicality. I will then argue that the ontological implications of photographic indexicality have been largely overlooked in subsequent research due to scholars’ concerns with how photography appears to us rather than what photography is in itself. To this end, I will specifically examine Kendall Walton's highly contested transparency thesis and some of its rebuttals, which have exerted a sprawling influence on debates on the aesthetics of photography. I will also argue that, having been exceedingly implicit in his account, what appears as indexicality to Walton and the implications thereof with respect to the transparency argument has operated on a phenomenological level; thus, the thesis itself has failed in instances in which the problem of representation and the very existence of the medium come into play. Finally, I will suggest that indexicality can be regarded as a distinctive feature of photography only when it is considered a predicate of transparency as an interstice of ‘unconcealment’ in the Heideggerian sense that would call into question the very existence of the representation and the photographic medium.     

Ab initio investigation of electron-phonon interaction in LaSn3 and CaSn3

ABSTRACT

We present results for the structural, electronic, vibrational, and electron-phonon coupling properties of LaSn₃ and CaSn₃ adopting the simple cubic AuCu₃-type structure obtained using the the generalised gradient approximation of the density functional theory and plane wave ab initio pseudopotential method. Our electronic results show that both materials display metallic character with several bands, which have mainly Sn 5p character, crossing the Fermi level. The calculated phonon spectrum of LaSn₃ accords very well with reported experimental measurements. The weights of the peaks in the Eliashberg spectral function of both compounds are enhanced with the use of experimental lattice constant in our electron-phonon calculation, increasing the value of average electron phonon coupling parameter from 0.876 to 0.937 for LaSn₃ (by 7%) and from 0.642 to 0.725 for CaSn₃ (by 13%). The use of experimental lattice constant also improves the agreement between theoretical and experimental values of the superconducting temperature for both compounds.     

High-efficiency single-layer organic light-emitting diode based on green fluorescent protein

We have fabricated a molecular organic light-emitting device comprising indium–tin oxide/a molecular organic layer/aluminum in which the organic layer is a green fluorescent protein. The device exhibits peak external quantum and power efficiencies of 8?±?0.2% and 13?±?0.7?lm?W?^??1 at a current of J?=?1.5?A?m^?2, respectively. In addition, the turn-on voltage is 2.5?V for 1?cd?m^?2 and the maximum luminance achieved is 1275?cd?m^?2. This good performance can be explained by the presence of singlet-excited states, leading to a high internal efficiency.     

MENTAL HEALTH OF TRAUMA-EXPOSED FIREFIGHTERS AND CRITICAL INCIDENT STRESS DEBRIEFING

Interest in critical incident stress debriefings for firefighters has grown over the last decade. Some researchers report that debriefings protect firefighters from stress-related disorders, including posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Proponents of the interventions claim extraordinary need and success. Controlled and correlational studies have largely failed to demonstrate therapeutic effects, and some report iatrogenic effects. This study examined the relationships between debriefings and several mental health variables in a large sample of firefighters. Debriefing had a weak inverse correlation with negative affectivity and a weak positive correlation with positive world assumptions. No relationship was found between debriefing and PTSD.     

Object and action picture naming in English and Greek

When two orthographically similar words are displayed using rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP), the repeated letters in the second critical word (W2) are not detected, leading to a deficit in reporting this word known as repetition blindness (RB). In Turkish, letters containing diacritic markings (e.g., y, ö) are considered separate letters, yet are visually highly similar to their non-diacritic analogues (s,o). Two experiments used the phenomenon of RB to investigate whether diacritic letters are represented as more similar to their non-diacritic analogues than are two unrelated letters. In Experiment 1, substantially more RB was found for words differing in just a diacritic (i y im-isim) compared to orthographic neighbours (words differing in a visually non-similar letter, such as ilim-isim). In Experiment 2, the amount of RB for identical words (isim-isim) was comparable to words that differed by a single diacritic marking (i y im-isim). We conclude that diacritic letters are mentally represented as variants of their non-diacritic analogue. Letter / word recognition researchers may be interested in pursuing these findings using standard techniques such as backward masking and orthographic priming.     

The Dynamics of Perceived Financial Difficulties

The perceptions of individuals regarding their own economic situation are sometimes used to measure individuals’ welfare or standard of living, thereby complementing the conventional income-based approach. While the importance of using longitudinal data when analysing the determinants of perceptions has recently been emphasized, the question of state dependence—the extent to which the past affects the present—has rarely been accounted for in the subjective economic well-being literature. The main contribution of the current paper is precisely to investigate the issue of state dependence in perceived financial difficulties. The application of an endogenous switching Markov model to data from the Luxembourg socioeconomic panel ‘Liewen zu Lëtzebuerg’ for the period 2003–2009 leads to the conclusion that there is a sizeable proportion of genuine state dependence, which confirms the importance of appropriately taking into account dynamic issues when modelling subjective variables.     

Probabilistic numerical discrimination in mice

Previous studies showed that both human and non-human animals can discriminate between different quantities (i.e., time intervals, numerosities) with a limited level of precision due to their endogenous/representational uncertainty. In addition, other studies have shown that subjects can modulate their temporal categorization responses adaptively by incorporating information gathered regarding probabilistic contingencies into their time-based decisions. Despite the psychophysical similarities between the interval timing and nonverbal counting functions, the sensitivity of count-based decisions to probabilistic information remains an unanswered question. In the current study, we investigated whether exogenous probabilistic information can be integrated into numerosity-based judgments by mice. In the task employed in this study, reward was presented either after few (i.e., 10) or many (i.e., 20) lever presses, the last of which had to be emitted on the lever associated with the corresponding trial type. In order to investigate the effect of probabilistic information on performance in this task, we manipulated the relative frequency of different trial types across different experimental conditions. We evaluated the behavioral performance of the animals under models that differed in terms of their assumptions regarding the cost of responding (e.g., logarithmically increasing vs. no response cost). Our results showed for the first time that mice could adaptively modulate their count-based decisions based on the experienced probabilistic contingencies in directions predicted by optimality.