Review of Listening Up, Writing Down, and Looking Beyond: Interfaces of the Oral, Written, and Visual, edited by Susan Gingell and Wendy Roy

Review of Listening Up, Writing Down, and Looking Beyond: Interfaces of the Oral, Written, and Visual, edited by Susan Gingell and Wendy Ro

Path to overcome material and fundamental obstacles in spin valves based on Mo S2 and other transition-metal dichalcogenides

Experimental studies on spin valves with exfoliated 2D materials face the main technological issue of ferromagnetic electrode oxidation during the 2Ds integration process. As a twofold outcome, magnetoresistance (MR) signals are very difficult to obtain and, when they finally are, they are often far from expectations. We propose a fabrication method to circumvent this key issue for 2D-based spintronics devices. We report on the fabrication of NiFe/MoS2/Co spin valves with mechanically exfoliated multilayer MoS2 using an in situ fabrication protocol that allows high-quality nonoxidized interfaces to be maintained between the ferromagnetic electrodes and the 2D layer. Devices display a large MR of 5%. Beyond interfaces and material quality, we suggest that an overlooked more fundamental physics issue related to spin-current depolarization could explain the limited MR observed so far in MoS2-based magnetic tunnel junctions. This points to a path towards the observation of larger spin signals in line with theoretical predictions above 100%. We envision the impact of our work to be beyond MoS2 and its broader transition-metal dichalcogenides family by opening the way to an accelerated screening of other 2D materials that are yet to be explored for spintronics

The Java system dependence graph

The Program Dependence Graph was introduced by Ottenstein and Ottenstein in 1984 [14]. It was suggested to be a suitable internal program representation for monolithic programs, for the purpose of carrying out certain software engineering operations such as slicing and the computation of program metrics. Since then, Horwitz et al. have introduced the multi-procedural equivalent System Dependence Graph [9]. Many authors have proposed object-oriented dependence graph construction approaches [11, 10, 20, 12]. Every approach provides its own benefits, some of which are language specific. This paper is based on Java and combines the most important benefits from a range of approaches. The result is a Java System Dependence Graph, which summarises the key benefits offered by different approaches and adapts them (if necessary) to the Java language

On the Rocks

On the Rocks is a one-woman poetry-theatre hybrid project about a woman’s quest for self-discovery. MERMAID, a landlocked prairie woman is shocked to learn that things aren’t exactly as they seem when GRANDMOTHER, on her deathbed, reveals that her “legs aren’t really legs.” So, MERMAID ventures to Eastern Canada to uncover the secrets of her maternal history. Her travels lead her to the water, where she dives into a whole new world of knowing. GRANDMOTHER and the poetry of Adrienne Rich serve as guideposts for MERMAID as she uncovers the origin myths of mermaids from around the world. She discovers that her own experiences mirror those of the women in these folk-stories and of women today; MERMAID discovers that she is not alone in her experiences navigating sexual assault. Using spoken word poetry, On the Rocks discusses hybridity, bisexuality, trauma, healing, depression, myth, and maternal lineage: the proverbial shoreline or liminal space. Using projections, shadow puppetry and live performance, On the Rocks creates a modern mythical world where MERMAID can finally find her fins

Communication, Machines & Human Augmentics

This essay reformulates the question of human augmentation as a problem of advanced human-machine communication, theorizing that such communication implies robust artificial intelligence and necessitates understanding the relational role new technologies play in human-machine communication. We focus on the questions, “When do electronic tools cease to be ‘simply’ tools, and become meaningfully part of ourselves,” and, “When might we think of these tools as augmenting our selves, rather than simply amplifying our capabilities?” These questions, already important to the medical and rehabilitative fields, loom larger with increasing commodification of pervasive augmentation technologies, and indicate the verge on which human-machine communication now finds itself. Through analyses of human and machine agency, mediated through a theory of close human-machine communication, we argue that the critical element in discussions of human-machine communication is an increase in sense of agency, extending the traditional human-computer interface dictum to provide an internal locus of control

Unimagining Song:Making Kin in the Vocal Scene

Practitioners in the soundsinging tradition are frequently subjected to evaluations of their vocal music that refuse to label it as singing or song. While these evaluations might be considered justified based on certain commonplace definitions of singing and song, I argue here that these terms refer often to social institutions that exceed these definitions, institutions that mark certain vocal performances as signifiers of "fully-human" vocal expression and that deny this status to other human vocal sounds. Soundsingers commonly challenge these assertions, refusing even the term soundsinging on the basis that it divides their vocal practice from the privileges accorded to practices marked singing and song. To help make these refusals audible, I reject the invitation to imagine liminal spaces between speech and song and choose instead to examine liminal states between this institution—which I, drawing on the work of Suzanne Cusick, label capital S Song—and a new construct I label symsong. I derive the term symsong from the recent work of Donna Haraway and her notion that it is urgent that we begin to identify in sympoietic rather than autopoietic manners, that rather than imagining ourselves as belonging to a closed and exclusive category, we imagine ourselves as coming into existence in and through all other lifeforms with which we are "[n]either One nor Other." When listeners look to the voice to affirm a symbolic order that denies "fully-human" status to some voices in order to reserve that status for others, they are often forced into a liminal state when exposed to sounds that fail to symbolize the "fully-human" emerging from bodies these listeners deem their categorical equivalent. The "less-than-human" sounds they hear become articulated with their bodies through this equivalency and a symbolic privilege they accorded themselves becomes disturbed. With the concept of symsong, I give name to the space on the other side of this liminality. Symsong is a space where no vocal sound is marked as Other and identity through exclusivity becomes unthinkable. Haraway argues that sympoietic forms of identification are necessary to lead us out of our current era of planetary crisis. I attempt to suggest one way we can help achieve this shift of consciousness in the musical realm and I try to bring to light symbolic processes that unfold quietly but regularly in and through encounters with the voice