Citizens of the margin: citizenship and youth participation on the Moroccan social web

This paper examines how marginalized youth in Morocco use YouTube to contest hegemonic discourses of state power and institutional practices of social exclusion. The paper analyses a user-generated, YouTube web-series, Tales of Bouzebal, as a performance of marginality and a social critique of state bureaucracies and institutions in the context of post-Arab Spring Morocco. Using a combined method of textual and discourse analyses, the paper argues that the new media practices of producing and consuming user-generated video are best understood as practices of cultural citizenship that contribute to social change through the production of counter-discursive political subjectivities among youth in MENA. The paper posits that the concept of citizenship needs to be expanded to account for citizen participatory media practices that contest the conditions of marginality and inequality sustained by normative definitions of citizenship.     

Emotional Facial Expression Recognition and Expressivity in Type I and Type II Alcohol Dependent Patients

Alcohol dependent patients (ADs) are known to encounter severe interpersonal problems. Nonverbal communication skills are important for the development of healthy relationships. The present study aimed to explore emotional facial expression (EFE) recognition and posed and spontaneous EFE expressivity in male ADs divided into two groups according to Cloninger’s typology and the impact of their interpersonal relationship quality on the potential nonverbal deficits. Twenty type I ADs, twenty-one type II ADs, and twenty control participants took part in an EFE recognition task and an EFE expressivity task that considered personal emotional events (spontaneous expressivity) and EFE in response to a photo or word cue (posed expressivity). Coding was based on judges’ ratings of participants’ emotional facial expressions. Participants additionally completed a questionnaire on interpersonal relationship quality. No difference between the three groups emerged in the EFE recognition task. Type II ADs showed heightened deficits compared with type I ADs in EFE expressivity: Judges perceived less accurate posed EFE in response to a cue word and less intense and positive spontaneous EFE in type II ADs compared to control participants. In addition, type II ADs reported more relationship difficulties compared to both type I ADs and control participants. These interpersonal relationship difficulties were related to some of the EFE expressivity deficits of AD-IIs. This study underlines the important differences between the interpersonal functioning of AD subtypes.     

The aesthetic and practical fields of excrementality of L’boulevard festival

The revolutionary aspect of performance is given ample room in this article. “Conflict” deserves a renewed importance, because it places the term “transgression” in relation to festivals as sites for the embodiment of social struggles. We will hone in on L’boulevard festival, which not only participates in a dialogue with social conflicts, but also epitomises them through an ambivalent theatricality that merges the real with the unreal. As festival agents identify their marginal place in relation to the body of the system – generally present in the festival through panoptical surveillance, badges, barriers and an entire discourse of social categorisation, and as they are cognisant of the festival as possibly an empowering threshold, a place for no system other than that chosen by the theatres of roleplaying, they activate their excrementality, a mentality which, in its ideological framing, creates and innovates, inspired by excrement, its functionality and symbolism. Excreta-mental types would perform the very khsoriya (vulgarity) expected of them, by performing their marginality (their becoming central), among other things, through art.     

PRODUCTION FLOW CONTROL FOR A MANUFACTURING SYSTEM WITH FLEXIBLE ROUTINGS

We study the dynamic routing problem for a flexible manufacturing system consisting of two unreliable machines and a finite buffer. One product-type is produced which requires two operations in sequence. The demand rate is assumed to be constant. Each machine is capable of performing both operations. The objective is to trace the demand while keeping the work-in-process low and the cycle-time short. An optimal control formulation is established for the dynamic routing problem. A production flow control algorithm is developed based on a combination of mathematical modeling and heuristics. The control policy is simulated and a comparison with the numerical optimal solution shows that it performs well for the instances under consideration.     

Combining answers to direct and indirect questions: An implementation of Kuk’s randomized response model

Abstract

In this article, we propose a two folded approach for estimation of the population proportion of a sensitive attribute. The rationale of proposed technique is to give respondents choice if they want to avail randomized device or not. Thus, our technique is inherently capable of entertaining the responses attained through direct questioning and by employing randomization device, as well. We believe that free to choose policy will be helpful to develop a curtsy between interviewer and respondent (which is highly desirable, especially when sensitive issue is under consideration) and thus enhances the survey reliability. The proposed technique is developed for simple random sampling, at first, and then extended to stratified random sampling. The superior performance of proposed technique in comparison to the Kuk (1990 Kuk, A. Y. 1990. Asking sensitive questions indirectly. Biometrika 77 (2):436–8. doi:10.1093/biomet/77.2.436.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) method is demonstrated throughout this article. We provide algebraic, graphical and numerical evidences in support of our proposed technique. Furthermore, we also offer cost analysis considering most commonly used cost functions in the literature of survey research.     

Transatlantic Roundtable on High–skilled Migration and Sending Countries Issues

Globalization and the advent of the knowledge economy have created a new context where there is a greater demand for the highly skilled, especially in the information technology (IT) industry. High–skilled migration has become increasingly more complex, even if in recent years the term "brain drain" has become a generic reference to "high–skilled migration" of all types. It has also become clear that brain mobility does not automatically translate into "brain drain", and that impacts vary by the types of skills held by migrants.
The meeting demonstrated that while much is known about high–skilled migration and its effects on source countries, there is also a great deal yet to be learned in a dynamic environment. Many participants deplored the lack of reliable data, which makes it difficult to know what is really going on and to establish appropriate policies. Clearly, there are an array of policies that can offset possible adverse effects of skilled mobility and even leverage the flow into positive outcomes for source countries. A key element is improvement of the population's general level of education. Low levels of skills keep average labour productivity and wages low and therefore retard development. Long–term strategies to promote economic growth are needed to enable developing countries to retain and draw back their highly skilled and address the negative effects of the brain drain. Migrants themselves can play an important role through their remittances, diaspora networks, and own willingness to return – at least temporarily — to share their skills and contribute to economic progress. Finally, destination countries can facilitate the process through policies that promote circulation of highly skilled migrants.