The fact that light is necessary for life is generally accepted as an axiom. The extent to which light interacts and influences human biology, however, is often not fully appreciated. Exposure to sunlight, for instance, can both promote and degrade human health. There is now general scientific consensus that, although the eye evolved to respond to light, it is also damaged by excessive exposure. Light-mediated ocular damage is involved in the pathophysiology of many common forms of blindness. The type of ocular tissue damage induced by light exposure depends on the extent of exposure and wavelength. The tissues of the lens, cornea, and retina contain specific chemical moieties that have been proven to exhibit light-mediated oxidative degradation. Proteins and lipids present in the cornea, lens, and retina, meet all of the physical requirements known to initiate the process of oxidative photodegradation upon exposure to solar radiation. As such, different mechanisms have evolved in the lens, cornea, and retina to ameliorate such light-mediated oxidative damage. It appears, however, that such mechanisms are ill-matched to handle modern conditions: namely, poor diet and longer life-spans (and the degenerative diseases that accompany them). Hence, steps must be taken to protect the eye from the damaging effects of light. Preventative measures include minimizing actinic light exposure, providing exogenous filtering (e.g., through the use of protective lenses), and enhancing antioxidant defenses (e.g., through increased dietary intake of antioxidants). These strategies may yield long-term benefits in terms of reducing oxidative photodegradation of the ocular tissues.
Various multiple-disciplinary terms and concepts (although most commonly “interdisciplinarity,” which is used herein) are used to frame education, scholarship, research, and interactions within and outside academia. In principle, the premise of interdisciplinarity may appear to have many strengths; yet, the extent to which interdisciplinarity is embraced by the current generation of academics, the benefits and risks for doing so, and the barriers and facilitators to achieving interdisciplinarity, represent inherent challenges. Much has been written on the topic of interdisciplinarity, but to our knowledge there have been few attempts to consider and present diverse perspectives from scholars, artists, and scientists in a cohesive manner. As a team of 57 members from the Canadian College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists of the Royal Society of Canada (the College) who self-identify as being engaged or interested in interdisciplinarity, we provide diverse intellectual, cultural, and social perspectives. The goal of this paper is to share our collective wisdom on this topic with the broader community and to stimulate discourse and debate on the merits and challenges associated with interdisciplinarity. Perhaps the clearest message emerging from this exercise is that working across established boundaries of scholarly communities is rewarding, necessary, and is more likely to result in impact. However, there are barriers that limit the ease with which this can occur (e.g., lack of institutional structures and funding to facilitate cross-disciplinary exploration). Occasionally, there can be significant risk associated with doing interdisciplinary work (e.g., lack of adequate measurement or recognition of work by disciplinary peers). Solving many of the world’s complex and pressing problems (e.g., climate change, sustainable agriculture, the burden of chronic disease, and aging populations) demands thinking and working across long-standing, but in some ways restrictive, academic boundaries. Academic institutions and key support structures, especially funding bodies, will play an important role in helping to realize what is readily apparent to all who contributed to this paper—that interdisciplinarity is essential for solving complex problems; it is the new norm. Failure to empower and encourage those doing this research will serve as a great impediment to training, knowledge, and addressing societal issues.
2001. Il est actuellement professeur titulaire à l'École des médias (Faculté de communication) de l'UQAM et directeur du Centre de recherche interuniversitaire sur la communication, l'information et la société (CRICIS). Ses recherches portent sur l'économie des médias, les politiques de communication, la communication à l'ère de la mondialisation, les usages sociaux des TIC, l'espace public médiatique et plus fondamentalement sur les rapports entre communication, capitalisme et démocratie. Il est l'auteur de plus de quatre-vingt textes (articles, chapitres de livres et actes de colloques) avec révision par les pairs et, récemment, a été éditeur de trois publications : Critique, sciences sociales et communication (Mare et Martin, 2014) (avec Fabien Granjon) ; The Francophone School of Communication and Information (Canadian Journal of Communication, 2014), Autochtones et médias (Recherches amérindiennes au Québec, 2012). Résumé : Les TIC jouant un rôle croissant tant à l'échelle planétaire que dans nos vies quotidiennes, les aborder d'un point de vue critique devient un enjeu scientifique majeur. Adoptant nous-même une telle démarche, nous nous interrogeons tout d'abord sur les sens à attribuer au terme « critique » et sur les significations de l'acronyme « TIC ». Après quoi, nous proposons de mettre l'accent sur plusieurs façons d'analyser les TIC d'un point de vue critique. Pour ce faire, nous commençons sur l'intérêt d'effectuer des analyses qui visent à replacer ces objets dans le contexte du « système technicien ». Puis nous abordons deux autres ensembles de travaux, l'un consacré aux recherches en économie politique de la communication et l'autre portant sur les usages sociaux des TIC. Avant de conclure à la pertinence d'intégrer deux autres dimensions dans l'analyse : le temps long et les questions environnementales.
Due to its multi-faceted nature and its appropriation by different social actors, “convergence” is a complex concept. In the 1990s it had its heyday when there was a lot of talk about “information highways.” In this text, the author revisits convergence through an examination of recent changes to the culture and communication industries in Canada. The article reveals that convergence is always a horizon and that it includes several interrelated processes that advance slowly. In some cases, it is even possible to speak of “divergence.”RÉSUMÉ La « convergence » est une notion complexe à cause de sa nature polysémique et de son appropriation par différents acteurs sociaux. Elle a connu son heure de gloire à la fin des années 1990 alors qu’on parlait beaucoup des « autoroutes de l’information ». Dans ce texte, nous souhaitons revisiter la notion à partir de l’étude des mutations récentes des industries de la culture et de la communication au Canada. Nous verrons que la convergence est toujours un horizon et qu’il s’agit de plusieurs processus interreliés entre eux qui avancent lentement. Il est même possible de parler dans certains cas de « divergence ».
Over the past 40 years, important work has been done on cultural industries through the close collaboration of researchers in Québec and France, to
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