The media landscape of West Asia includes countries and media systems as diverse as Turkey, with big media conglomerate holdings; Lebanon, whose media strongly influence developments in the Arab media sector, state-controlled Syrian media, partly controlled media under the Palestinian National Authority (PNA); and pro-government media in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The media market
Every biological system—microbe, athlete, or team—can be described formally in terms of its time evolution or dynamics. This becomes feasible if one capitalizes on a crucial characteristic of biological systems, namely that they exchange energy and matter, and in some cases also information, with their surroundings. In statistical physics, such systems are called open systems
Sign systems mediate the interactions between agents and their worlds. In Peirce’s (1992, 1998) terms, an agent is a first. The principle of “firstness” refers to the property of existing in the world independently of other entities. Firstness entails relative autonomy: a first always encounters and interacts with something else that enables its autonomy to
Sensory systems are the peripheral parts of the nervous system responsible for the transformation of physical stimuli into a neural code. Receptors of each sensory system are sensitive to a distinct kind of energy, like the hair cells of the inner ear to sound energy and the mechanoreceptors of the tactile system to mechanical energy
The term law is surprisingly difficult to define. Perhaps the best-known definition within the sociology of law community is that of Max Weber: “An order will be called law if it is externally guaranteed by the probability that coercion (physical or psychological), to bring about conformity or avenge violation, will be applied by a staff
The word “system” is widely used. We speak of planetary systems, transportation systems, nervous systems, number systems, filing systems, political systems, systems of checks and balances, systems of grammatical rules, systems of weights and measures, and so on as if they shared the same reality. Their common denominator is a multitude of component parts, depending
The term caste comes from the Portugese casta (breed, lineage) and was coined by Portuguese travelers to India in reference to the social, economic, and religious system they witnessed. The traditional Hindu term is varna, and its earliest meanings include color, covering, tribe, and species. The caste system is easily the most controversial aspect of
Systems setup specialists are responsible for installing new computer systems and upgrading existing ones to meet the specifications of the client. They install hardware, such as memory, sound cards, fax/modems, fans, microprocessors, and systems boards. They also load software and configure the hard drive appropriately. Some systems setup specialists install computer systems at the client’s
Typologies of media systems date to the publication of Four Theories of the Press, which proposed a typology of authoritarian, libertarian, social responsibility and Soviet Communist media systems. Hallin and Mancini’s typology of media systems in Western Europe and North America has influenced most recent work in comparative analysis of media systems. Hallin and Mancini proposed
Every biological system—microbe, athlete, or team—can be described formally in terms of its time evolution or dynamics. This becomes feasible if one capitalizes on a crucial characteristic of biological systems, namely that they exchange energy and matter, and in some cases also information, with their surroundings. In statistical physics, such systems are called open systems