Into the Life of a Pro Gamer

Being a professional gamer is, in many ways, similar to being a professional athlete. As a reminder, to succeed in a video game at the professional level requires use of strategies that need to be adjusted on the fly. This type of analysis is called eSports analytics. “We formally define eSports analytics as: the process of using eSports related data, primarily behavioural telemetry but also other sources, to find meaningful patterns and trends in said data, and the communication of these patterns using visualization techniques to assist with decision‐making processes” (Schubert, 2016). In fact, “Today, most professional teams employ analysts to observe opponents and discover their tendencies and strategies, develop counter‐ strategies etc., similar to analysts working in physical sports” (Schubert, 2016). Analysts and coaching staff are a necessity in professional gaming, as they can analyze team-wide mistakes from a spectator’s perspective in an attempt to fix them, as well as scout the opponent’s team mistakes in an attempt to exploit them.

Figure 1: Statistics on the prize pool of several eSports tournaments (Breslau, 2014)

With the case of any competition, winning is the ultimate objective. In the case of eSports, nothing is different. As shown in Figure 1, the prize pool of eSports tournaments is increasing with every passing year. Winning is great for teams as they get money and sponsors, which gives more money. Money can be used it to keep or acquire better players, coaching staff, equipment, etc.

Professional gaming is a serious commitment and job. Pro gamers do have salaries and they can earn quite a bit off sponsors. In the case of League of Legends, the League Championship Series (LCS) is the name for its official competitive scene. “Under the 2013 LCS League Rules, players received a minimum salary of $12,500 from Riot for a ten-week season, with the opportunity to earn prize money in the playoffs. Players can also receive additional compensation from their teams for producing game-related content, merchandise sales, and streaming their screens to online audiences… Incorporating these various revenue sources, one team manager recently estimated that professional LoL players can make anywhere from $30,000 to well above $300,000 annually” (Fisher, 2014). Professional gamers are by no means less well-off than a middle class worker.

As mentioned above, professional gamers also have the opportunity to “stream” their screens to online audiences. Live-streaming means to transmit live audio and footage of yourself playing the game to an online audience. It allows “fans to follow tournaments and their favourite players online… Watching your favourite player talk you through their game is a unique attraction of eSports, says Aiken. ‘If you had Usain Bolt giving an analysis of his own race people would love that,’ he says” (Heaven, 2014). During live-streams, there is a chat box that allows for fan interaction during games. This allows for some of the best pro-to-fan interaction in all of sports. Live-streaming is insanely popular among fans and professional gamers too. “Many of these players have extremely high viewer bases, even while no professional tournament is currently running. For example, it is not unusual for some streamers of a game called League of Legends to have over 30,000 concurrent viewers at any one point in time” (Hope, 2014). Because of such high viewer counts, live-streaming can be a great way to make extra money because of ad-revenue. In this case, both the player and audience win, because the player makes money, and the audience gets free entertainment.

References

Breslau, R. (2014, April 2). Report: More than 70 million people watch eSports worldwide.

Fisher, S. D. (2014, January 30). The Rise of eSports League of Legends Article Series. Foster Pepper.

Heaven, D. (2014, August 16). Rise and rise of esports. New Scientist, 223(2982), 17.

Hope, A. (2014). The Evolution of the Electronic Sports Entertainment Industry and its Popularity.

Schubert, M., Drachen, A., & Mahlmann, T. (2016, February). Esports Analytics Through Encounter Detection. MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference.

The Skillset Needed to Succeed in eSports

Similar to how sports has multiple categories of sports, such as basketball, baseball, soccer, etc., eSports also has multiple subsections of eSports. “eSports are commonly organized around specific genres of games, such as Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas (e.g. League of Legends, Dota 2), First-Person Shooters (e.g. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive), Real Time Strategy (e.g. Starcraft 2), Collectible Card Games (e.g. Hearthstone) or Sports games (e.g. FIFA-series), therefore they form many sub-cultures within eSports, in the same way that ‘traditional’ sports do” (Hamari, 2015). Each subsection of eSports takes a different set of skills to become the best of the best. Professional gamers of every subsection train and practice up to 12 hours a day to maintain and improve their level of play.

Starcraft 2, a Real Time Strategy games, is one of the most demanding games in the industry. “As in chess, the object of the game is to defeat your opponent’s army. Unlike chess, however, StarCraft doesn’t involve players taking turns, and requires more complex resource management in that you must continually generate the pieces at your disposal as you play. To do as well as the pros, you must also achieve an extremely rapid rate of keyboard and mouse inputs. Some players carry out more than 300 such actions a minute, rising to 10 a second when up against it. Add in the need to think strategically and outwit your opponent by pre-empting their moves, and the top players start to look superhuman” (Heaven, 2014). One action in Starcraft is equivalent to things such as sending your unit to a location, attacking an enemy, expanding your army, utilizing resources, etc. To put 10 actions per second into perspective, try doing 10 of the above things in a mere second every second for the entirety of the game. Its incredibly demanding and seems nearly impossible, yet professional gamers make this look easy.

Not only does eSports take superhuman reflexes and dexterity, it also requires strategy to win. At the professional level, a player that plays without a plan or strategy will lose nearly 100% of the time. “Skillful play in eSports should not be limited to technical dexterity… but also includes sporting intelligence… Central to the notion of sport is to outsmart the competition… To accomplish this, a successful eSports player must possess comprehensive knowledge and skills, ‘with game sense and (tactical and strategic) judgment to act effectively to settle the issue at hand or help the [player] solve the game problem’” (Jenny, 2016). Applying this to Starcraft 2, players develop an initial strategy and follow it through, adjusting it accordingly to the opponent’s actions. All of this is done in real time at the same time they are performing these 10 actions per second, which is truly incredible.

Several games require professional gamers to make crucial in game decisions while in the heat of the moment. “A game of this type is called a strategic-form game according to game theory. In order to find a solution, also called Nash equilibrium, we need to compute the so-called game matrix consisting of the individual payoffs or outcomes each team obtains from choosing one or the other strategy” (Wagner, 2006). Decisions have to be optimal, because otherwise a bad decision can quickly be exploited by opponents of professional caliber. Decisions have to be quick, as well. Players cannot hesitate in their actions. While they are hesitating, the opponent is not, which will cause them to lose the advantage.

Figure 1: Professional gamer “Pobelter” moves his eyes every 0.07 seconds to take in game information (Erzberger, 2016)

As shown in Figure 1, a professional player moves his eyes every 0.07 seconds while in game. This is 3x faster than the time it takes a person to read a word. While in game, there is an incredible amount of information taken in every second. Information is always changing as well, since games are dynamic and played in real time. Professional players have to take in this information and decide what they should do within seconds that will result in the best-case scenario to achieve victory.

From a combination of incredible reflexes and hand-eye coordination, real time strategy adaptation, and instantaneous decision making, being a professional gamer is not an easy as you think.

References

Erzberger, T. (2016, October 28). Mid lane whiz Pobelter scores 41 on the Wonderlic test.

Hamari, J., & Sjöblom, M. (2015, November 6). What Is eSports and Why Do People Watch It? Internet Research, 27(2).

Heaven, D. (2014, August 16). Rise and rise of esports. New Scientist, 223(2982), 17.

Jenny, S. E., Manning, R., Keiper, M. C., & Olrich, T. W. (2016, March 11). Virtual(ly) Athletes: Where eSports Fit Within the Definition of “Sport”. Quest, 1-18.

Wagner, M. G. (2006, January). On the Scientific Relevance of eSports.

The Evergrowing Popularity of eSports

As a reminder, the 2013 League of Legends Season 3 World Championship had 32 million total viewers, while the 2013 NBA Finals Game 7 had only 26.3 million viewers (Hollist, 2015). Surprising as it is, it’s true that more people prefer watching computer games than basketball. There are many reasons that can explain the reasoning behind this.

Although eSports is the noun for competitive gaming, it is still a form of video game. Video games are often played as a form of escape – escape from real-world problems and real-life responsibilities. Although some games let you meet new friends and express your true self, the case for competitive games is different. “Different from collaborative virtual worlds environments, escapism in eSports is not about the social experience of slipping into avatars’ roles and becoming the virtual ‘other’ individuals would like to be; as a competitive activity, eSports… escapism is about gathering the capabilities of highly skilled avatars while immersing into the competitive virtual world in order to gain competitive advantage, which is an instrument that leads to power in the virtual. Consequently, individuals expose their true self through the way they behave in competitive virtual worlds acting as their virtual-self” (Weiss, 2013).

Figure 1: Collegiate eSports compared to collegiate basketball (Gregory, 2015)

In addition, height and weight of eSports players have little to no effect on performance. In any sport, you must be physically gifted to excel, such as being 6’5’’ in basketball to slam dunk. In eSports, literally anyone can become a professional with enough practice. As shown in Figure 1, the average collegiate gamer is exactly the average height and weight of a male, whereas the average NCAA player is 6’9’’ 229 lbs – a genetic gift from his parents. The phrase “practice makes perfect” applies to just about everyone in eSports.

With that said, the ability to become an eSports gamer is available to anyone as well. Aside from joining your collegiate team, there are several eSports sites that host their own sponsored online tournaments. “Competitive gaming is becoming easier to try for yourself. In June, Gfinity launched a new website, Gfinity.net, for people to do just that. It functions like a social network for gamers, staging online competitions daily and awarding £30,000 in prize money each month. ‘We provide a route into professional gaming if that’s what you want,’ says Wyatt. The company also aims to run large-scale gaming tournaments in sporting arenas every couple of months. ‘If it continues growing at the same rate, events like G3 will be the norm,’ says Wyatt” (Heaven, 2014). Anyone with the motivation can join these tournaments, which are great opportunities to gain exposure if you perform well.

Remember that the eSports industry is huge. “According to the 2008 Entertainment Software Association (ESA) report, nearly 270 million computers and video game consoles were sold within the US, generating close to $10 billion in 2007, and it is estimated that video games are a $20 billion industry in the US alone. The eSports industry is also booming in other countries like South Korea in that professional gaming teams have corporate sponsors (e.g., Samsung) and tens of thousands of spectators gather and cheer for their favorite teams to win… Although these numbers do not provide precise information in terms of how much of the entire game industry is specifically about eSports, it is clear that this emerging market segment produces billions of dollars and contributes economically to the growth of the sport industry as a whole” (Lee, 2011).

References

Gregory, S. (2015, April 6). Virtual World, Varsity Sport. Time, 185(12), 44-47.

Heaven, D. (2014, August 16). Rise and rise of esports. New Scientist, 223(2982), 17.

Hollist, K. E. (2015). TIME TO BE GROWN-UPS ABOUT VIDEO GAMING: THE RISING ESPORTS INDUSTRY AND THE NEED FOR REGULATION. ARIZONA LAW REVIEW, 57(3), 823-847.

Lee, D., & Schoenstedt, L. J. (2011, Fall). Comparison of eSports and Traditional Sports Consumption Motives [Abstract]. He ICHPER-SD Journal of Research in Health, Physical Education, Recreation, Sport & Dance, 6(2), 39-44.

Weiss, T., & Schiele, S. (2013, April 20). Virtual worlds in competitive contexts: Analyzing eSports consumer needs. Electron Markets, 23, 307-316.

An Introduction to eSports and Its Rise in The Industry

More likely than not, many of us have played a video game at least once in our lives. Whether it be on a video game console, phone, or internet, we are all familiar with playing games and its verb “gaming.” At its early stages of development, games were merely played for their entertainment value, such as during a slow train ride or a boring day at home, or when you needed something to do to kill time. “Over the latter half of the twentieth century games have grown in visual fidelity and complexity allowing for more skill to be applied resulting in very good players emerging and standing out from the average gamer at the time. This led to competitions and championships being held for many games and professional gaming starting to emerge” (Hewitt, 2014). Now-a-days, gaming has completely evolved from just being a time killer. Merit such as full college scholarships are now being awarded for being skilled at a game. Even so, people are still not convinced that gaming is no longer what it once was – a “waste of time.”

eSports is a term many people are not familiar with. eSports, or electronic sports, is “considered equivalent to ‘professional gaming’, a competitive way of playing computer games within a professional setting” (Wagner, 2006). Surprising to some, the eSports industry is already massive and it will only keep growing. “While precise numbers are not known… a worldwide audience of 71 million people… watch competitive gaming in 2014. In 2015, the viewership statistics reported by Riot Games, the publisher of League of Legends (LoL), reported 36 million unique viewers for the world finals. The number of players active in the gaming community is increasing, with… a reported 27 million daily active players” (Schubert, 2016). The eSports fanbase and playerbase is incredibly large – compare these numbers to the viewership numbers of sports events and it is even more shocking.

Figure 1: Viewership numbers of several sports events in 2013 (Hollist, 2015)

It is baffling to believe that more people would watch people playing video games than people playing sports such as basketball and baseball. As stated before, the eSports industry is huge. “It would not be surprising if these gaming tournaments and teams were advertised on mainstream television in the coming years” (Hope, 2014).

References

Hewitt, E. (2014). Will eSports Ever Become Widely Accepted as Official Sports and How Will They Affect the Way We Entertain Ourselves If They Do?

Hollist, K. E. (2015). TIME TO BE GROWN-UPS ABOUT VIDEO GAMING: THE RISING ESPORTS INDUSTRY AND THE NEED FOR REGULATION. ARIZONA LAW REVIEW, 57(3), 823-847.

Hope, A. (2014). The Evolution of the Electronic Sports Entertainment Industry and its Popularity.

Schubert, M., Drachen, A., & Mahlmann, T. (2016, February). Esports Analytics Through Encounter Detection. MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference.

Wagner, M. G. (2006, January). On the Scientific Relevance of eSports.

Prevalence of Fraud in Yelp’s Review System

Yelp is a global phenomenon in that it has infiltrated businesses throughout the world while having a lasting impact on the future of their financial success. However, there are no requirements to make a Yelp account besides owning an email which can be easily made for free. This means that anyone is able to make a review that may influence a business. This makes Yelp a double-edged sword for businesses as it can either have a positive or negative impact. There is a chance that it could bring more customers if the reviews are great. Unfortunately, competition can get dangerous on Yelp if they hire malicious reviewers to reduce the reputation and popularity of a business. This is very commonplace and has provoked Yelp to create a detection algorithm for fraudulent reviews. In a study, it was shown that up to 25% of reviews may be fraudulent (Rahman, et al.).

Figure 1: Spikes in positive reviews for three different businesses (Rahman, et al.)

With the increase of risk using Yelp, how much benefit would those who abuse the service in their favor? It has been studied that every incremental star leads to a 5-9% increase in revenue and every extra-half star increases the chances of selling out by 19%. As seen in figure 1, one factor that can help spot a company that utilizes fake reviews for their own benefit is a spike in positive reviews. Those who are hired to produce fake content are called opinion spammers (Mukherjee, et al.). As seen in the graphs, we can see that the problem of opinion spamming has greatly increased since around 2010. For small businesses, this is extremely suspicious because the span of customers that they can advertise to would be small. Furthermore, if it was the superb quality that brought about many customers, they should have in the past as well and that is not seen pre-2011 for the three businesses.

There are multiple ways that can increase the chances of spotting a fake reviewer. This is interesting as it can be nearly impossible to even tell by reading them manually. It requires a lot of data analysis as it’s not reliable to directly process subjective and objective text yet alone differentiate them. One method called the quasiclique extraction creates graphs that link nodes that represent users. If they are connected, then that means they have reviewed the same business recently. Doing this, you can spot the army of review mercenaries that are supposedly a “clique” (Jain, et al.). It’s ironic to note that some of these cliques were actually Yelp scouts – reviewers hired by Yelp to basically pave the way for future Yelpers. Another method for detecting fake reviews employs a strategy of correlation between users that write positive reviews for businesses that have more negative reviews than positive and vice versa (Akoglu, et al.).

While fraudulent reviews may be positive, they can also be negative. The logic behind this is to reduce the reputation of competitors in order to wipe them out. It is indeed a nasty way to survive in the business world but it works so it’s not surprising to find this. As computer algorithms to detect these type of false reviews are flawed, it can easily flag a legitimate Yelper. As such, this brings about a controversial topic of the Freedom of Speech. By silencing negative reviews, this creates a potential problem as many may not only be dissatisfied in the future, but consumers also should have the right to voice their opinions (Castro).

Works Cited

Akoglu, Leman, Rishi Chandy, and Christos Faloutsos. “Opinion Fraud Detection in Online Reviews by Network Effects.” ICWSM 13 (2013): 2-11.

Castro, Daniel. “Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation US Senate November 4, 2015.” (2015).

Jain, Paras, et al. “Poster: Spotting Suspicious Reviews via (Quasi-) clique Extraction.”

Mukherjee, Arjun, et al. “Spotting opinion spammers using behavioral footprints.” Proceedings of the 19th ACM SIGKDD international conference on Knowledge discovery and data mining. ACM, 2013.

Rahman, Mahmudur, et al. “To catch a fake: Curbing deceptive Yelp ratings and venues.” Statistical Analysis and Data Mining: The ASA Data Science Journal 8.3 (2015): 147-161.

Quasicrystals: Symmetry and Characteristics and Their Application as an Art Form

Part of artist M.C. Escher’s work focused on tessellations in the second dimension, many of which would periodically tile the plane.  However, tilings can also be aperiodic, not having a set repeating pattern.  Roger Penrose and his Penrose tilings are examples of these types of tiles.  Penrose tilings have another characteristic about them as well: they are also quasicrystals.  A quasicrystal is an ordered, non-periodic structure, which differs crystals that do have periodic structure.  These quasicrystals also exist in the third dimension, and there is “an infinite set of 2D and 3D lattices that exhibit self-similarity properties of a crystal, but have quasiperiodic, rather than periodic, translational order” [1].

As with two dimensional tessellations, groups and the symmetries they are characterized by play an important role.  For crystals, rotational symmetry must be of a fold number k, where k ∈ {1,2,3,4,6} in the second and third dimensions.  This is known as the crystallographic restriction [2].  However, a specific crystal produced by Peter Kramer in 1984 icosahedral symmetry, which is not allowed under this crystallographic restriction [3].  This crystal became known as the quasicrystal, or quasiperiodic crystal, due to its quasiperiodic nature resulting from the symmetry group it is in.  Quasicrystals are able to fill space, as they can be tessellations.  Yet, they do not have translational symmetry, like Penrose tilings.

Quasicrystals also exhibit some other interesting properties.  Second and third dimensional quasicrystals are shown to be projections from higher dimensional structures.  One example of this is of De Brujin proving Penrose tilings to be planar projections of hypercubic tessellations, namely that of 5 space [3].  Electron diffraction patterns for icosahedral quasicrystals show 10-fold diffraction patterns, in which inflation symmetry can be seen [1].

Figure 1. Diffraction patterns of various quasicrystals.  The top icosahedral quasicrystal contains pentagonal shapes, which inflate out from the center [1]

These quasicrystal shapes have inspired the mathematician Tony Robbin to create art with these shapes, namely that of sculptures [4].  These sculptures would need to exist within space, however, so their rigidity needed to be taken into account.  In order to create the quasicrystals with enough support, computer programs were used to identify the hidden makeup behind the “seemingly random patterns.”  One such sub structure was that of parallel ribbons that adjacent cells have with one another, which are called multigrids, and are residues of the higher dimensional shapes that produce quasicrystals.  The multigrids can then be used to identify where to place braces in the structure to give it support.  Along with other characteristics of the quasicrystals, Robbin was able to produce large scale version in space.  In this way, the mathematical analysis of the structures is used to inform the art and its creation.

Figure 2. The ribbon multigrids of a quasicrystal, as well as sites for braces in a three dimensional model [4].

Figure 3. One of Tony Robbin’s quasicrystal sculptures [4].

References:

[1]  Levine, Dov, and Paul Joseph Steinhardt. “Quasicrystals: a new class of ordered structures.” Physical review letters 53.26 (1984): 2477.

[2]  Baake, Michael. “A guide to mathematical quasicrystals.” Quasicrystals. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2002. 17-48.

[3]  Senechal, Marjorie. “Coxetering Crystals.” Renaissance Banff: Mathematics, Music, Art, Culture. Bridges Conference, 2005.

[4]  Robbin, Tony. “The Visual and Structural Porperties of Quasicrystals.” Proceedings of the International Conference Transformables. 2013.

[5]  Kramer, Peter, and Roberto Neri. “On periodic and non-periodic space fillings of Em obtained by projection.” Acta Crystallographica Section A: Foundations of Crystallography 40.5 (1984): 580-587.

Calcium Ions: The Unexpected Key in Cell Communication

In my previous paper I was intrigued that a certain component kept showing up in the papers I was researching. Calcium ions showed up numerous times and I had no idea how they played such an important role in a complicated process as cell communication. It honestly never occurred to me that cell communication could be effected by a difference in electrical charge.

Calcium ions were even show to be possibly related with potassium activation (Meech 1972). Potassium conductance increased in the neuron once calcium salt was injected into the cell. Electrical charge and ions play an important role in neurons and the way they communicate. However, calcium ions are also heavily present in our immune system, as they are used to initiate the human T-cell line to produce interleukin (Imboden 1985). The immune system has dedicated areas where they store calcium ions so that it can regulate cell communication and the production of proteins such as interleukin.

Calcium ions play such an important role in cell communication because they act as a secondary messenger in multicellular organisms. They are even used in plants, such as their guard cells. They can change the guard cell’s turgor (McAinish 1997).  It is even being used in nanomachine research. The nanomachines are “communicating” with cells through calcium ions and gap junctions (Nakano 2005). Gap junctions are made of connexins which are transmembrane proteins, and form into a channel that pass small molecules such as inorganic ions between neighboring cells, as seen in figure 1.

The tubes represent the connexins which transport the molecules that are represented by the circles.

Once the calcium ions pass through the gap junctions, they attach to a receiver by a selective receptor, which can then flow into the cell (Suda 2005). This alongside gap junctions are becoming the basis for a molecular communication system and can help pave the future for nanomachines in health and medicine.

Sources

Meech, R.w. “Intracellular Calcium Injection Causes Increased Potassium Conductance in Aplysia Nerve Cells.” Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology Part A: Physiology 42.2 (1972): 493-99.

Imboden, J. B. “Transmembrane Signalling by the T Cell Antigen Receptor. Perturbation of the T3-antigen Receptor Complex Generates Inositol Phosphates and Releases Calcium Ions from Intracellular Stores.” Journal of Experimental Medicine 161.3 (1985): 446-56.

Mcainsh, Martin R., Colin Brownlee, and Alistair M. Hetherington. “Calcium Ions as Second Messengers in Guard Cell Signal Transduction.” Physiol Plant Physiologia Plantarum 100.1 (1997): 16-29.

Nakano, T., T. Suda, M. Moore, R. Egashira, A. Enomoto, and K. Arima. “Molecular Communication for Nanomachines Using Intercellular Calcium Signaling.” 5th IEEE Conference on Nanotechnology, 2005. (n.d.): n. pag.

Suda, Tatsuya, Michael Moore, Tadashi Nakano, Ryota Egashira, and Akihiro Enomoto. “Exploratory Research on Molecular Communication between Nanomachines.” GECCO ’05 (2005)

Notch Signaling: Developmental Regulation

As discussed before, Notch signaling is a form of cell communication that is a direct cell-to-cell interaction. It is the start of a signaling pathway in which from the outer membrane of a cell, a messenger is sent from one cell to the other’s nucleus area so that it can regulate a certain gene expression.

Notch signaling is a huge step in cell evolution. It became major component of our cell development to allow complex cell communication. It allowed neighboring cells to respond to both internal and external cues for development of the cells (Artavanis-Tsakonas, 1999). This adaptation would help cells survive in different situations and environments. It can be used in a defensive matter, but also as a developmental matter. As an organism develops into maturity, it has a stash of cells ready to become certain specialized cells. Notch signaling helps regulate the production of these specialized cells so the organism doesn’t have more than it needs (Lai, 2004). Without notch signaling, the organism never develops to maturity, but if it produces all the specialized cells at once, it loses the ability to express those cells later in its life. Notch signaling keeps a delicate balance for the organism to mature and function.

(A) showcases the goal for notch signaling, so that not all the cells are expressed at once. (B) shows when there is no notch at all, and when it signals to much. (D) (E) and (F) show what happens when notch is defective. (C) is a wild type organism.

This delicate balance is kept through a multiple different regulations of notch signaling. It can be regulated through methods like protein ligases interfering with endocytosis of signals, and the receptors being glycosylated, thus changing its ability to receive signals (Schweisguth, 2004). Carbohydrates are attached to the receptors, causing their shape to change. This limits its cell interaction on the outer membrane level. When this regulation goes awry, it can have lethal repercussions. It has been found that notch signaling can actually help tumors form and grow (Leong, 2006). When functioning, the notch signaling can help prevent growth by initiating apoptosis of the deadly cell.

Sources

Artavanis-Tsakonas, S. “Notch Signaling: Cell Fate Control and Signal Integration in Development.” Science 284.5415 (1999): 770-76.

Lai, E. C. “Notch Signaling: Control of Cell Communication and Cell Fate.” Development131.5 (2004): 965-73.

Schweisguth, François. “Regulation of Notch Signaling Activity.” Current Biology 14.3 (2004)

Leong, K. G. “Recent Insights into the Role of Notch Signaling in Tumorigenesis.” Blood107.6 (2006): 2223-233.

Evolution of Mass Communication in the 21st Century

In discussing the different media through which advertisers broadcast their message, it is important to realize exactly how mass communication in conducted with the dawn of digital technology. The advanced technologies that we now have access to have created a limitless ability to send and interpret information in easier and more coherent ways than ever before. Take for instance education television; toddlers are now able to absorb and learn basic science concepts more effectively than in a traditional classroom setting (Shafer, 202). Additionally, mass communication is highly influential on the development of personality traits and cultural norms in everyday people. When observing young children, it was found that exposure to violent films increased aggressive behavior and imitate of content viewed than those who had not (Dickens, 218).

Figure 1. Preferred news sources for presidential campaign coverage.

An interesting point to note about mass communication is that it tends to lean towards a representation of hyper-reality. What this means is that actual events may be embellished with hyperbole and exaggerated details in order to shock and retain an audience and consequentially generate more revenue for the companies producing said content (McQuail, 97). Moreover, the content produced for mass communication is edited and crafted by the administrative leaders in order to manufacture a certain message. These companies are working on tight deadlines and budgets, and therefore assign their own league of “experts” to selectively choose content to produce for the masses (Holz, 196). The motivation by the mechanics behind mass communication is simply to attract both the attention and the capital found in a national audience. This is why the media has come under very heavy scrutiny as of late because of its focus on buzzworthy, sensationalist news rather than value-neutral, factual truth.

As a result, mass communication experts have now drawn to push for an emphasis on the regulation of media companies. Since self-regulation is the system currently in place for producers for media, the notion is that it is up to both the public and the government to call out incorrect news and provide checks for abusive media practices (Phenix, 17). While it is easy to immediately trust the news being communicated to you through the television screen, the reality is that we must be vigilant in how we interpret the information given to us and understand the influence mass communication has on our views on all issues and general practices in everyday life.

Works Cited:

• Shafer, Robert E. “Mass Communication.” Review of Educational Research, vol. 31, no. 2, 1961, pp. 197–207. www.jstor.org/stable/1169140.
• Dickens, Milton, and Frederick Williams. “Mass Communication.” Review of Educational Research, vol. 34, no. 2, 1964, pp. 211–221. www.jstor.org/stable/1169758.
• McQuail, Denis. “Sociology of Mass Communication.” Annual Review of Sociology, vol. 11, 1985, pp. 93–111. www.jstor.org/stable/2083287.
• Holz, Josephine R., and Charles R. Wright. “Sociology of Mass Communications.” Annual Review of Sociology, vol. 5, 1979, pp. 193–217. www.jstor.org/stable/2945953.
• Phenix, Philip H. “Education and Mass Communications.” The Phi Delta Kappan, vol. 43, no. 1, 1961, pp. 15–19. www.jstor.org/stable/20342657.