Appeal For Unity

https://digitalcommons.acu.edu/crs_books/1090/thumbnail.jp

Understanding Huntington\u27s disease using Machine Learning Approaches

Huntington’s disease (HD) is a debilitating neurodegenerative disorder with a complex pathophysiology. Despite extensive studies to study the disease, the sequence of events through which mutant Huntingtin (mHtt) protein executes its action still remains elusive. The phenotype of HD is an outcome of numerous processes initiated by the mHtt protein along with other proteins that act as either suppressors or enhancers of the effects of mHtt protein and PolyQ aggregates. Utilizing an integrative systems biology approach, I construct and analyze a Huntington’s disease integrome using human orthologs of protein interactors of wild type and mHtt protein. Analysis of this integrome using unsupervised machine learning methods reveals a novel connection linking mHtt protein with chromosome condensation and DNA repair. I generate a list of candidate genes that upon validation in a yeast and drosophila model of HD are shown to affect the mHtt phenotype and provide an in-vivo evidence of our hypothesis. A separate supervised machine learning approach is applied to build a classifier model that predicts protein interactors of wild type and mHtt protein. Both the machine learning models that I employ, have important applications for Huntington’s disease in predicting both protein and genetic interactions of huntingtin protein and can be easily extended to other PolyQ and neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease

Photography and Social Life: An Ethnography of Chinese Amateur Photography Online

This dissertation explores the ‘middle-brow’ (Bourdieu, 1990) photography practices of contemporary Chinese people in the digital era and how they produce, circulate, and consume photographic images on and off the Internet. Through participant observation and interviews with Chinese photo hobbyists and professionals working in the visual-Internet industry based in London, Beijing, or in the virtual world, it asks how the marriage between photography and the Internet in China has been similar to, or distinct from, its counterparts in the rest of the world, consolidating a vernacular photo-scape that has emerged alongside China’s booming Internet economy and socio-economic transformation over the past forty years. The research further addresses the agencies of both individuals and images, which determine what people want from photography in today’s China and what photography wants from this new networked, mediated society. The dissertation moves across persons, communities, organisations, and real and virtual sites, making it a multi-sited ethnography that traces social relations and ‘the circulation of cultural meanings, objects, and identities in diffuse time-space’ (Marcus, 1995: 96). The thesis presents a panoramic picture of the everyday practices carried out by Chinese amateur photographers, who are often imagined and categorised as the country’s middle class. The study focuses on two main aspects. The first is the activity of amateur photography, including the conspicuous consumption of photographic equipment and participation in relevant events, as well as social behaviours on and off of Internet photography platforms. The second involves the judgement and appreciation of photographic images on sites such as Tuchong, focusing on various kinds of aesthetic strategies around and within photographic images. The combination of the two has helped photo hobbyists in China to shape their values, career paths, and new identities in the context of digitalisation and the rise of social media

Emergent Educational Practice in Community Settings

My study examines the processes and practices of community teaching, delivered by a social enterprise, between 2017 and 2020, in Wythenshawe, a Manchester suburb. I investigated the nature of my work as a community educator. Learners and tutors involved in my practice participated in my study. The thesis aimed to search out the entanglements, discourses and practices that underpin and construct understandings about teaching, learning and relations with others. I also investigated whether these practices differed sufficiently from those of established teaching to be considered emergent. Although there have been many studies of community education, there is little research on small community enterprises operating in the liminal spaces between, education, arts, and community. To contextualise my research, I drew upon Communities of Practice (Wenger, 1998) and refinements to his theory, particularly knowledgeability (2014), Figured Worlds (Holland, 2001), (Gee, 2010), and Affect Theory notably Sarah Ahmed's (2014) work on emotion. I drew upon studies I considered relevant to my lived experience. These included Alison Gilchrist (2019) on networking, Sarah Banks (2018) on co-production and co-inquiry and the series of contemporary community research books in the Connected Communities series, notably (Jones and Perry, 2019) and (Campbell and Pahl, 2018). The study evidenced many aspects of my teaching sufficiently divergent from established models to suggest emergent practice. The study implies that at a time of austerity, the approaches to education I describe may provide a model of practice for other educators within a new paradigm of community teaching

Processes of Compromise in International Development Consultancies - Getting Heard as a Social Scientist

This thesis explores the theme of compromise from the perspective of a social scientist working in the technically oriented environment of international development. My involvement is through my employment in a Danish consultancy company working in, inter alia, Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East with government agencies, national companies, and non-governmental organisations. The main puzzle addressed in this research arises out of the link between compromise and conflict: how and why do people find ways to compromise and move out of situations of conflict? Associated aspects of this puzzle are how we might experience compromise and how it is, or might be, related to getting heard. I employ a narrative and ethnographic approach with episodes from my everyday work situations, including interactions with colleagues and clients, to inquire into the social, political, and emotional relationships involved in compromise. This research puzzle is of particular relevance to me as a social scientist with a frequent experience of being marginalised, where my interactions with others seem to involve compromise. My indications are that this experience is shared by many other social scientists working in international development—and perhaps by others finding themselves in a marginalised situation—and that my research puzzle would be of relevance and interest to them. Various disciplines have taken up compromise, particularly marketing, politics, sociology, and ethics. In these fields, compromise appears typically to be considered a product, an agreement, or a solution, with some recognising that relational aspects play a role in reaching such outcomes. In contrast to this apparently common understanding of compromise, I view it as a relational and radically social process. This evolves in our interactions with others and in our private conversations with ourselves, the latter involving our anticipations of how others will react to what we might say or do. Compromising is about negotiations and adaptations to each other’s views, enabling us to move on in conflictual situations, despite the sense of loss this involves either temporarily or permanently. Such processes are intertwined with power relations, which involve processes of inclusion in and exclusion from groups. I assert that persons or groups experiencing themselves in marginalised positions tend to adapt their views more than others, in attempts to gain some influence. I argue that the experience of compromising is temporal and dynamic; that is, the meaning, significance, and the related emotions might change several times. My research indicates that compromising always involves some sense of loss at some point, but that the intensity of this varies. Compromising might simultaneously or at some other point be experienced in other ways, depending on the situation and the persons involved. For example, it involved a sense of novelty in one of my narratives when compromising paved the way for us to move towards a cooperative atmosphere and relationship. It is when we reflect on our differences in views or ‘stuckness’ and adjust to different frames of reference in our compromising that novelty might evolve. My argument is that for processes of compromise to evolve out of conflictual situations those involved must be aware of each other’s views, with leaders—both those in formal and informal leadership positions—taking a key role in enabling others to be heard. This awareness might arise in several ways, primarily i) by those directly involved speaking up themselves, ii) through forming of alliances with others, and/or iii) through support from leaders. The latter’s engagement in compromise includes their role in enabling those in marginalised positions to participate in processes of compromise, which might involve making it easier for these persons to speak up themselves or supporting them in other ways. I assert that relational leadership requires engagement in processes of compromise, currently often considered a feminine trait/skill. Speaking up, often viewed as a masculine trait/skill, is an inherent part of a leader’s role in compromising; importantly, this means speaking up as a leader focused on mutual adaptations to each other’s views, rather than on wanting to control the situation. I do not want to idealise compromising. There are situations where stubbornly standing up for our views and value commitments will be the most ethical way to act, for example, to avoid harm to others and/or to maintain our integrity and what is important for us. There is a need for practical judgement in each situation of how best to act ethically

Divide and compromise

We introduce two symmetrized versions of the popular divide-and choose mechanism for the allocation of a collectively owned indivisible good among two agents when monetary compensation is available. Our proposals retain the simplicity of divide-and-choose and correct its expostasymmetry. When there is complete information, i.e., agents know each other well, both mechanisms implement in subgame perfect equilibria a unique allocation that would be obtained by a balanced market. The results hold for general continuous preferences that may not be quasi-linear