123 research outputs found

    Bad Blood: A Critical Inquiry into UK Blood Donor Activism

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    Since 1983, men who have sex with men have been prohibited from donating blood in the UK on the basis of purportedly elevated rates of HIV and other transfusion transmissible infections. This policy of deferral, known to many as the ‘gay blood ban’, has persisted in some form ever since and has been the subject of protest by individuals or groups termed blood donor activists. Utilising an array of theory from across science and technology studies (STS) and queer studies – situated at the nexus of a burgeoning queer STS – this thesis is a critical inquiry into UK blood donor activism. Drawing on archival research and 31 semi-structured interviews with blood donor activists in the UK as well as representatives of patient groups and the UK blood services, this research seeks to understand and critically interrogate the aims, motivations, and implications of the work of blood donor activists. This thesis argues, first, that blood donor activism in the UK is motivated both by an opposition to blood donor deferral criteria as a technology of homophobia and a contingent framing of blood donation as an altruistic act, which marks out blood donors as good and happy citizens (an affective economy into which queer men seek inclusion). This thesis goes on to argue, however, that blood donor activism is a deeply homonormative political form with a politics that tends to centre ‘respectable’ (e.g. monogamous) gay men at the expense of other figures of risk, like sex workers or promiscuous queers. These politics, this thesis contends, are a product not merely of activist agencies but the epistemic (hetero)norms of the biomedical context within which lay activists seek to raise their credibility. This thesis suggests, therefore, that blood donor activism operates in pursuit of Pyrrhic victories governed by chilling structures that demand we seek alternative routes of political investment

    2011 GREAT Day Program

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    SUNY Geneseo’s Fifth Annual GREAT Day.https://knightscholar.geneseo.edu/program-2007/1005/thumbnail.jp

    Real-world listening effort in adult cochlear implant users

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    Cochlear implants (CI) are a treatment to provide a sense of hearing to individuals with severe-to-profound sensorineural hearing loss. Even when optimal levels of intelligibility are achieved after cochlear implantation, many CI users complain about the effort required to understand speech in everyday life contexts. This sustained mental exertion, commonly known as “listening effort”, could negatively affect their lives, especially regarding communication, participation, and long-term cognitive health. This thesis aimed to evaluate the listening effort experienced by CI recipients in real-world sound scenarios. The research focused on social listening situations that are particularly common in everyday life such as having conversations in a busy café or communicating through video call. Additionally, some situations that prevailed during the COVID-19 pandemic were also examined (e.g., listening to someone who is wearing a facemask). Multimodal measures of listening effort were employed throughout the research project to obtain a comprehensive assessment. Nonetheless, the primary focus was on measures that quantify objectively the cognitive demands of listening through a CI. To that end, we used a combination of physiological measures, functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) brain imaging and simultaneous pupillometry, both of which are compatible with CIs and capable of providing insights into the neural underpinnings of effortful listening. We also proposed a novel approach to quantify “listening efficiency”, an integrated behavioural measure that reflects both intelligibility and listening effort. We successfully applied these assessments to 168 CI users and 75 age-matched normally hearing (NH) controls who were recruited throughout the project. We found that CI users experienced high levels of listening effort, even when their intelligibility was optimal under highly favourable listening conditions. Objective measures revealed that CI listeners exhibited significantly inferior listening efficiency than NH controls when listening to speech under moderate levels of cafeteria background noise and when attending online video calls. Physiologically, they showed elevated levels of arousal as revealed by larger and prolonged pupil dilations to baseline compared with NH controls, suggesting high cognitive load and increased need for recovery. The importance of visual cues was evident; the presence of video and captions benefited CI recipients by improving considerably their listening efficiency during online communication. These results were consistent with their subjective ratings of effort, both in the experiments and in daily life. These findings provide objective evidence of the cognitive burden endured by CI listeners in everyday life. In addition, the objective assessments proposed were proved feasible to quantify the performance and cognitive demands of listening through a CI. In particular, listening efficiency showed sensitivity to differences in task demands and between groups, even when intelligibility remained near perfect. We argue that listening efficiency holds potential to become a CI outcome measure

    PROCEEDINGS 5th PLATE Conference

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    The 5th international PLATE conference (Product Lifetimes and the Environment) addressed product lifetimes in the context of sustainability. The PLATE conference, which has been running since 2015, has successfully been able to establish a solid network of researchers around its core theme. The topic has come to the forefront of current (political, scientific & societal) debates due to its interconnectedness with a number of recent prominent movements, such as the circular economy, eco-design and collaborative consumption. For the 2023 edition of the conference, we encouraged researchers to propose how to extend, widen or critically re-construct thematic sessions for the PLATE conference, and the paper call was constructed based on these proposals. In this 5th PLATE conference, we had 171 paper presentations and 238 participants from 14 different countries. Beside of paper sessions we organized workshops and REPAIR exhibitions

    The Small Matter of Suing Chevron

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    Suzana Sawyer traces Ecuador’s lawsuit against the Chevron corporation for the environmental devastation resulting from its oil drilling practices, showing how distinct legal truths were relationally composed of, with, and through crude oil

    Greening the Maple

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    Ecocriticism can be described in very general terms as the investigation of the many ways in which culture and the environment are interrelated and conceptualized. Ecocriticism aspires to understand and often to celebrate the natural world, yet it does so indirectly by focusing primarily on written texts. Hailed as one of the most timely and provocative developments in literary and cultural studies of recent decades, it has also been greeted with bewilderment or scepticism by those for whom its aims and methods are unclear. This book seeks to bring into view the development of ecocriticism in the context of Canadian literary studies. Selections include work by Margaret Atwood, Northrop Frye, Sherrill Grace, and Rosemary Sullivan

    Applied Methuerstic computing

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    For decades, Applied Metaheuristic Computing (AMC) has been a prevailing optimization technique for tackling perplexing engineering and business problems, such as scheduling, routing, ordering, bin packing, assignment, facility layout planning, among others. This is partly because the classic exact methods are constrained with prior assumptions, and partly due to the heuristics being problem-dependent and lacking generalization. AMC, on the contrary, guides the course of low-level heuristics to search beyond the local optimality, which impairs the capability of traditional computation methods. This topic series has collected quality papers proposing cutting-edge methodology and innovative applications which drive the advances of AMC

    Applied Metaheuristic Computing

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    For decades, Applied Metaheuristic Computing (AMC) has been a prevailing optimization technique for tackling perplexing engineering and business problems, such as scheduling, routing, ordering, bin packing, assignment, facility layout planning, among others. This is partly because the classic exact methods are constrained with prior assumptions, and partly due to the heuristics being problem-dependent and lacking generalization. AMC, on the contrary, guides the course of low-level heuristics to search beyond the local optimality, which impairs the capability of traditional computation methods. This topic series has collected quality papers proposing cutting-edge methodology and innovative applications which drive the advances of AMC

    Ethics, media, theology and development in Africa : a Festschrift in honour of Msgr Prof. Dr Obiora Francis Ike

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    This Festschrift is published in honour of Msgr Prof. Dr Obiora Francis Ike on the auspicuous occasion of his 65th birthday celebration and 40th priestly ordination anniversary in the year of the Lord two thousand and twenty two (2022), for his immensely distinguished and valuable services and contributions to Nigeria, Africa and the world as a priest, a scholar and an administrator. This Festschrift commemorates the successful six years of his tenure as the Executive Director of Globethics.net, Geneva, Switzerland (2016-2022).This book is a collection of scholarly articles, structured into six different parties and topics such as Reflections on Obiora Ike, Ethics and Christian Faith, Ethics and Environment, War, Ethics, Value, Culture and the Media in Africa, Ethics and the Media in Nigeria, Ethics and Administration. These parties are aiming at understanding and highlighting thoughts and areas of scholarly interest of Msgr Prof. Obiora Ike on theology, ethics and development issues. By showing several serious ethical issues observed on the African continent the book is aiming at being a resource material for theology scholars, applied ethicists, media scholars and professionals, development planners, technological entrepreneurs, policymakers, curriculum developers, society leaders and administrators in general
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