Material Sight: A Sensorium for Fundamental Physics

Often our attempts to connect to the spatial and temporal scales of fundamental physics - from the subatomic to the multiverse - provoke a form of perceptual vertigo, especially for non-scientists. When we approach ideas of paralysing abstraction through the perceptual range of our sensing bodies, a ‘phenomenological dissonance’ can be said to be invoked, between material presence and radical remoteness. This relational dynamic, between materiality and remoteness, formed the conceptual springboard for 'Material Sight' (2016-2018), a research project based at three world-leading facilities for fundamental physics, that brought to fruition a body of photographic objects, film works and immersive soundscape that re-presented the spaces of fundamental physics as sites of material encounter. The research was premised on a paradoxical desire to create a sensorium for fundamental physics, asking if photography, film and sound can embody the spaces of experimental science and present them back to scientists and non-scientists alike, not as illustrations of the technical sublime but as sites of phenomenological encounter. This article plots the key conceptual coordinates of 'Material Sight' and looks at how the project’s methodological design – essentially the production of knowledge through the 'act of looking' – emphatically resisted the gravitational pull of art to be instrumentalised as an illustrative device within scientific contexts

‘Monkey Business’ : an artist’s action research into the parameters of temporary gallery installation through reflexive formal and informal documentary practice

The term ‘installation’, referring to both process and product, is a significant component of contemporary fine art practice and the working lives of those involved. Consequently ‘installation’ can be seen as a domain of both fine art professional development and practice-led research. However, as art historian Mary Ann Staniszewski has observed (1998), the implication is that as process, this is an underresearched field of knowledge and this Ph.D. is an attempt, through a thesis and a body of practical work, to address this omission. Writing as an artist with significant experience as a technician, the thesis explores the insights that inform the work of technicians, using related theoretical concepts which map the conditions particular to the processes of installation: that of exhibits being subject to a binary condition, which I term ‘proper/improper’, and the concept of ‘tacit knowing’, developed by Michael Polyani (1966) as an index of specialist embedded understanding. Both ‘proper/improper’ and ‘tacit knowing’ are concealed by the sense of what I term ‘effortlessness’ that makes displayed objects part of an immutable fabric of exhibition culture. This is, in turn, compounded by the photographic ‘installation shot’, a form of documentation that, for commentators such as the writer and artist Brian O’Doherty (1976), creates idealized images of artworks. In reflecting upon the action research I have undertaken in order to penetrate the idealized surface of the ‘installation shot’, the thesis journeys from the visual to the aural in order to open up the ‘sensual 7 culture’ (Howes, 2005) around ‘installation’. Although not directly settingout to respond to Staniszewski’s proposition, the experiments with sound practice described and exhibited do, I claim, offer a creative response to our amnesia and an unfolding re-presentation of the processes and conditions of exhibition as it is currently experienced throughout museum and gallery culture.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceArts and Humanities Research Council : East Lothian Educational Trust : University of Edinburgh, Kerr-Fry AwardGBUnited Kingdo

‘The Schwartz Round was a rewarding experience for all of the team involved’

Elizabeth Crisp and Fiona Cust on the impact of running a Schwartz Round in a multidisciplinary environment

Ruptures and Wrong-Footings: Destabilizing Disciplinary Cultures

In this transcribed conversation, three artists from the research group The Cultural Negotiation of Science (UK) consult each other on the different generational perspectives they bring to the contested field of arts-science research. Traversing territories between art-practice, physics, genetics and critical theory, their practice-based strategies actively destabilize the binary nature of cross-disciplinary dialogue in productive ways, allowing the spaces between artistic and scientific modes of enquiry to become sites of learning, both within and beyond academic institutions

Institutional Fieldwork:CNoS@10, Group Exhibition, Northumbria University Gallery North, Experimental Studio and City Campus, Newcastle

Exhibition dates: 16th November – 1st December 2023 Exhibition venue: Northumbria University Gallery North, Experimental Studio and City Campus, NewcastleInstitutional Fieldworking: CNoS @10 is a three-week series of exhibitions and events celebrating the tenth anniversary of Northumbria University’s Cultural Negotiation of Science Research Group (CNoS). CNoS was inaugurated at the 2013 British Science Festival when three founder members developed the exhibition and networking event, Extraordinary Renditions, for BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art. The event set out to explore the compelling questions thrown up when artists negotiate scientific practices; questions that require artists to perform ‘extraordinary renditions’ across the ethical and political spaces where personal vulnerability and risk-taking is impossible to avoid.CNoS has grown over the last ten years to bring together artists, academics and research students who engage with expert cultures across a broad spectrum of science and technology, including bio-medical, fundamental and environmental sciences. The ‘negotiations’ consider the creative, critical and ethical dimensions of working in and with the scientific realm, as a distinct contemporary art practice. The Institutional Fieldworking programme shares and tests our commitment to supporting innovative, practice-based methods to negotiate and re-vision the relationships between scientific and artistic research in ways that both unsettle and connect. The programme proposes our institution of Northumbria University as the ‘field’ in which we perform and make manifest examples of critical cross disciplinary research and practice via six ‘strands’ of activity that embody the authenticity of what it is to work together<br/

Institutional Fieldwork:CNoS@10, Group Exhibition, Northumbria University Gallery North, Experimental Studio and City Campus, Newcastle

Exhibition dates: 16th November – 1st December 2023 Exhibition venue: Northumbria University Gallery North, Experimental Studio and City Campus, NewcastleInstitutional Fieldworking: CNoS @10 is a three-week series of exhibitions and events celebrating the tenth anniversary of Northumbria University’s Cultural Negotiation of Science Research Group (CNoS). CNoS was inaugurated at the 2013 British Science Festival when three founder members developed the exhibition and networking event, Extraordinary Renditions, for BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art. The event set out to explore the compelling questions thrown up when artists negotiate scientific practices; questions that require artists to perform ‘extraordinary renditions’ across the ethical and political spaces where personal vulnerability and risk-taking is impossible to avoid.CNoS has grown over the last ten years to bring together artists, academics and research students who engage with expert cultures across a broad spectrum of science and technology, including bio-medical, fundamental and environmental sciences. The ‘negotiations’ consider the creative, critical and ethical dimensions of working in and with the scientific realm, as a distinct contemporary art practice. The Institutional Fieldworking programme shares and tests our commitment to supporting innovative, practice-based methods to negotiate and re-vision the relationships between scientific and artistic research in ways that both unsettle and connect. The programme proposes our institution of Northumbria University as the ‘field’ in which we perform and make manifest examples of critical cross disciplinary research and practice via six ‘strands’ of activity that embody the authenticity of what it is to work together<br/

Effects of antiplatelet therapy on stroke risk by brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases: subgroup analyses of the RESTART randomised, open-label trial

Background Findings from the RESTART trial suggest that starting antiplatelet therapy might reduce the risk of recurrent symptomatic intracerebral haemorrhage compared with avoiding antiplatelet therapy. Brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases (such as cerebral microbleeds) are associated with greater risks of recurrent intracerebral haemorrhage. We did subgroup analyses of the RESTART trial to explore whether these brain imaging features modify the effects of antiplatelet therapy

The impact of the anti-vaccination movement and vaccine hesitancy on the health of the child

Few topics in medicine have been studied more thoroughly than vaccines. The science is clear on the public and global health benefits of vaccinations; however, the topic still results in vigorous discussion about their efficacy, safety and possible adverse effects. Anti-vaccination groups and conspiracy theorists have found a place in the online world and on social media sites to spread misinformation. Parents want the best for their children, but when they are influenced by the anti-vaccination movement the health of their children when not vaccinated, can be compromised. They also present a risk to health of others in the community. Health professionals, including nurses, have a responsibility to educate themselves and others about the science of vaccination, and take active steps to dispel misinformation

Gerschenkron revisited: The new corporate Russia

© 2015, Journal of Economic Issues / Association for Evolutionary Economics. Our analysis is based on firm-specific data compiled from the Russian Trading System stock exchange and SKRIN (CKP-H in Russian) database. We seek to identify the factors behind Russias dramatically improved corporate sector performance from the beginning of the 2000s to December 2007. We argue that improved long-term corporate performance was a consequence of several policy initiatives associated with the state-dominated banking sector, which enabled statesubsidized investment funds to be channeled from a structurally reengineered energy sector to targeted investment projects located in other industries. We claim that Russias industrial strategy closely conforms to Alexander Gerschenkrons catch-up theory

Multiple novel prostate cancer susceptibility signals identified by fine-mapping of known risk loci among Europeans

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified numerous common prostate cancer (PrCa) susceptibility loci. We have fine-mapped 64 GWAS regions known at the conclusion of the iCOGS study using large-scale genotyping and imputation in 25 723 PrCa cases and 26 274 controls of European ancestry. We detected evidence for multiple independent signals at 16 regions, 12 of which contained additional newly identified significant associations. A single signal comprising a spectrum of correlated variation was observed at 39 regions; 35 of which are now described by a novel more significantly associated lead SNP, while the originally reported variant remained as the lead SNP only in 4 regions. We also confirmed two association signals in Europeans that had been previously reported only in East-Asian GWAS. Based on statistical evidence and linkage disequilibrium (LD) structure, we have curated and narrowed down the list of the most likely candidate causal variants for each region. Functional annotation using data from ENCODE filtered for PrCa cell lines and eQTL analysis demonstrated significant enrichment for overlap with bio-features within this set. By incorporating the novel risk variants identified here alongside the refined data for existing association signals, we estimate that these loci now explain ∼38.9% of the familial relative risk of PrCa, an 8.9% improvement over the previously reported GWAS tag SNPs. This suggests that a significant fraction of the heritability of PrCa may have been hidden during the discovery phase of GWAS, in particular due to the presence of multiple independent signals within the same regio