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The final presidential debate in the U.S. was one of the most widely followed programs of 2016. The main broadcasters aired it live on television and streamed it through social media with closed captioning so that all Americans could access this highly awaited political event. After the debate night, most networks uploaded the full program or fragments of it to their websites in order to make it available to viewers who had missed the original transmission. This paper focuses on the closed captioning provided in the videos of the final debate available on the websites and YouTube channels of the most prominent networks that televised the event. Drawing on literature from Media Accessibility, Communication and Internet Studies, an analysis of the availability and functionality of the online captions in those clips was performed, which proved that the accessibility services offered after the debate night to audiences with hearing loss could be substantially improved.

This article offers a comparative reading of two neo-historical novels: Rose Tremain's The Colour and Maxine Alterio's Ribbons of Grace, both set in 19th century New Zealand and portraying interracial love stories between British and Chinese characters in the context of the gold rush. I read these neo-historical novels in relation to the romantic conventions they simultaneously employ and subvert. My contention is that their manipulation of certain romantic narrative and thematic conventions demonstrates the porosity between the literary and the popular ends of the historical spectrum. My analysis concentrates on how each author employs the romantic material to articulate their respective political agendas. Whereas Tremain's novel prioritises a feminist perspective and emphasises the individual dimension of the love story, Alterio's work is more concerned with the postcolonial revision of New Zealand's past and highlights the social consequences of the interracial liaison. ; Este artículo realiza un análisis comparativo de dos novelas neo-históricas The Colour, de Rose Tremain y Ribbons of Grace, de Maxine Alterio. Ambas novelas se sitúan en la Nueva Zelanda del siglo XIX y narran relaciones interraciales de amor entre personajes británicos y chinos con el trasfondo de la fiebre del oro. Mi lectura se centra en demostrar cómo estas novelas neo-históricas emplean y subvierten simultáneamente convenciones de la novela romántica. Mi argumento principal es que la manipulación de estas convenciones genéricas demuestra la porosidad que existe entre las variedades literarias y populares de la novela histórica y que cada autora utiliza el material romántico para articular su respectiva agenda política. Mientras la novela de Tremain prioriza una perspectiva feminista y coloca el énfasis en los aspectos individuales de la historia de amor, la novela de Alterio se ocupa de la revisión de la historia neozelandesa desde una perspectiva postcolonial resaltando las consecuencias sociales de la relación interracial.

This article considers the Spanish translations of New Zealand and Pacific authors and explores the circumstances that have determined their arrival into the Spanish market as well as the different editorial and marketing choices employed to present these works to a Spanish readership. It considers the scarcity of canonical authors, the branding of Maori and other "ethnic" voices, the influence of film adaptations and literary prizes in the translation market, and the construction of the "New Zealand exotic" in works written by non-New Zealand authors which, in the absence of more translations from Spain's literary Antipodes, have dominated the Spanish market in recent years.

This paper presents alternative modeling strategies to capture latent variables such as agenda control. The methodological approach offers competing models for theory testing among institutional, partisan and procedural variables grounded on the typical analysis of interbranch interaction in presidential systems. The focus is on lawmaking in two Central American countries which share key values of the independent variables (particularly, moderate multiparty systems) while substantially diverge on their patterns of inter-branch relations. The substantive contribution of this working paper is that agenda control is better explained by the informational advantages available to majority political actors than by authoritative constitutional rules empowering the Executive. Second, the pressures of the political timing sourcing from the electoral cycle are a key factor for explaining strategic behavior of actors in lawmaking. Finally, it appears that partisan characteristics - specifically cohesion and discipline - explain the interactions between the Executive and the legislature regarding the incentives to exert agenda control of the former.

Defence date: 29 June 2005 ; Examining Board: Prof. Manuela Alcantara (Univeristy of Salamanca, Spain) ; Prof. Maurizio Cotta (University of Siena, Italy) ; Prof. Adirenne Heritier (European University Institute, Florence) ; Prof. Philippe Schmitter (European University Institute, Supervisor) ; First made available online on 12 January 2015 ; The thesis covers issues of constitutional design, legislative procedures and agenda control in presidential systems, with specific empirical application to four Central American cases in a comparative perspective. The results relate to the critical view that presidential systems are inherently prone to institutional deadlock, deriving from their rigid constitutional design. My findings suggest that constitutional rules only determine broad parameters of variation, and that greater attention should be paid to the endogenous procedural design of the legislative process of policy approval in the explanation of institutional performance and inter-branch dynamics. The work is comparative and bridges quantitative and qualitative analysis. The data employed are original and allow for an innovative connection between theory-driven hypotheses on the incentives for majority political actors to circumvent ordinary procedures and play strategically employing procedural choices and political outcomes, by assessing the patterns of legislative production. The hypotheses are generated with attention to the degree of aggregation of interests in the decision-making process, as a measure of the representativeness of the decision-making process and hence as a general characteristic of the everyday democratic process. In fact, while democracy is understood as a process and not as a formal procedure, it is important to observe procedures as subtle devices where majority actors may find embedded comparative advantages to impose their political agenda unilaterally. The analysis further represents a thorough effort of theory testing whereby a competitive assessment of informational theories of legislative politics, exogenous factors such as electoral pressures or endogenous contextual characteristics such as the degree of fragmentation and polarization on the floor, is unpacked and delivers important analytical refinements to these theories. Finally, the normative agenda for analysis includes a view on constitutional choice and on methodological biases in the literature of Comparative Politics which have a large impact on the research output. The theoretical, substantive and methodological implications of the findings are thus reinserted into a normative view on procedural justice and the quality of democracy.

Este artículo explora los patrones de rendimiento institucional del Poder Legislativo y del Poder Ejecutivo en cuatro países centroamericanos buscando una explicación en fuentes procedentes del diseño constitucional y del diseño procedimental. El trabajo explora de forma comparativa los escenarios determinantes del control legislativo por parte del Poder Ejecutivo y lo pone en relación con el grado de agregación de intereses en el proceso decisional legislativo. Finalmente, propone la combinación de análisis centrados en ámbitos formales con la comprensión de los incentivos de los actores para buscar vías informales, o utilizar espacios de discrecionalidad endógenos a la estructura decisional y a los patrones históricos de comportamiento de los actores políticos. ; [EN] This article explores the patterns of institutional performance of the Legislative and Executive branches in four Central American countries searching for explanatory sources in the constitutional and procedural design. The article explores in a comparative fashion which are the varying scenarios explaining the Executive dominance of the legislative agenda, and puts it in relation to the degree of interests' aggregation in the legislative decisional process. Finally, the article proposes a combined analysis of both formal and informal rules, or which are the in - centives of actors to use discrecional spaces, endogenous to the decisional structure and to the historical patterns of behaviour of the political actors.

SIMPLE SUMMARY: Palmero PDO (Protected Denomination of Origin) cheese is a typical product of La Palma (Canary Isles, Spain) and it is manufactured from raw goat milk of the Palmera breed. All goat herds must be fed with local vegetal resources: pastures and or/grazing. It is an uncooked, pressed cheese, commercialised both fresh (from 8 to 20 days), as semi-hard (from 21 to 60 days) and hard (from 60 days). The aim of this study was to evaluate the changes in the physicochemical and sensorial parameters of Palmero PDO cheeses during 90 days of aging, also making an intravarietal comparison between dairy plants. This characterization could lead a better and complete cheese definition. Some variations have been observed between cheese artisanal factories because each cheesemaker has some cheese making particularities that are inherited from parents to children. These differences can be used for purchasing and marketing as added values linked to "terroir" and cheese handmade practices. ABSTRACT: Palmero cheese is an artisanal dairy product from the Canary Islands (Spain), awarded with the Protected Denomination of Origin (PDO) from the European Union. It is made with raw milk from the Palmera dairy goat on La Palma island. The aim of this research covered the physicochemical and sensorial characterization of Palmero cheese along 90 days of ripening. Palmero cheeses from four cheese factories were analysed for basic physicochemical parameters, instrumental texture and colour and sensorial profile. Most of the basic composition and the texture and colour attributes of Palmero cheese changed significantly along maturation. During the 90 days of ripening an increase in hardness, fracturability and gumminess (p < 0.001) occurred while elasticity decreased simultaneously (p < 0.001). The internal lightness value decreased significantly (p < 0.001), while yellowness increased (p < 0.001) during cheese ripening. Ripening time affected six of nine sensorial texture characteristics and the entire odour and ...

Information disorders (misinformation, fakes news, alternative facts, post-truth, deepfakes, etc.) are intentional productions whose strategy is focused on the fabrication of doubt and false controversies in order to achieve economic or ideological benefits. Information disorders are all interrelated and depend, in a necessary way, on post-Internet technologies which have modified the very nature of collective interpersonal communication. Information disorders have their origin and basis in different causes that have facilitated their development, scope and unprecedented current impact as: a) the war on science from the corporate sphere, b) the crisis of the post Internet national and local media, c) the development of technological platforms that have socialized the ability to publish and distribute content at low cost, d) the crisis of the experts with a consequent epistemic crisis, e) advances in psychology, that exploit the psychological bases of informative disorders through cognitive biases, and f) a significant change in the way of understanding and exercising power in the 21st century, such as the ability to establish the relations of definition of reality itself (Beck, 2017). This supposes a true will of authority on the reality and, in the practice, a will of ideological supremacy and a serious risk for the liberal democracies.