Socialising Big Data: From concept to practice

The working paper is a report on an ESRC-fundedproject, Socialising Big Data, that sought to address problematic conceptions of Big Data in popular discourse such as the ‘data deluge’ and the tendency to reduce the term to definitions such as the oft-cited‘3 Vs’. Instead, building on how social scientists have conceived of things, methods and data as having social and cultural lives, the project sought to identify the normative, political and technical imperatives and choices that come to shape Big Data at various momentsin its social lives. Recognising that Big Data involves distributed practices across a range of fields, the project experimentedwith collaboratories as a method for bringing together and engaging with practitioners acrossthree different domains –genomics, national statistics and waste management. In this way it explored how relations between data are also simultaneously relations between people and that it is through such relations that a shared literacyand social framework for Big Datacan be forged

Public Acceptance/Preference for Dairy Calf Housing Systems and Perceptions of Dairy Calf Welfare

University of Minnesota M.S. thesis. July 2019. Major: Animal Sciences. Advisor: Marcia Endres. 1 computer file (PDF); viii, 132 pages.The objective of the research reported in this thesis was to understand acceptance or preference of dairy calf housing options among the general public, adult and youth. Participants 18 years of age or greater (n = 1,310) and 5 – 17 years of age (n = 463) completed a survey at the Minnesota State Fair (St. Paul, MN, USA) in summer 2018. The survey presented three images of calf housing options (individual, pair, or group) and asked participants to indicate their acceptance of the housing option (adults) or select their preferred option (youth). Descriptive statistics of demographic data were obtained using the SURVEYFREQ Procedure of SAS (9.4). Rao-Scott Chi-Square test (PROC SURVEYFREQ, SAS 9.4) was used to investigate relationships between demographics and housing acceptance or preference, respectively. Content analysis was used for qualitative analysis with the goal of identifying perceptions, concerns, and values with respect to dairy calf welfare and reasoning underlying dairy calf house acceptance or preference. The median age range of adult participants was 45 – 54 years, 64.9% were female, 81.5% urban residents, 41.3% completed a Bachelor’s degree, 94.0% owned a pet, 78.5% did not have a loved one who worked in the dairy industry, 80.7% did they have prior experience handling agricultural animals, and 62.9% had visited a farm in the past. For youth, the median age of participants was 11 yrs and 60.8% were female, 82.3% were urban residents, 89.6% owned a pet, and 62.6% did not have prior experience handling agricultural animals but 83.2% had visited a farm in the past. Overall, all participants were most accepting of the group housing option. For the adults, males, rural residents, and individuals with previous livestock handling experience were more accepting of the individual housing option. Group housing was most accepted due to the calves’ ability to socialize with other calves and space allowance. For youth, housing preference was not associated with age, gender, pet ownership, or prior visits to a farm. However, rural youth more frequently preferred individual housing compared to urban youth (13.6 ± 4.5% SE vs. 5.1 ± 1.3% SE, respectively) and urban youth more frequently preferred pair housing compared to rural youth (15.3 ± 2.2% SE vs. 6.8 ± 3.3% SE, respectively). Youth that preferred group housing most commonly referenced reasons of socialization and space allowance. These findings suggest that the public is more accepting of group housed dairy calves compared to individual or pair housed systems

Quinceañera: Girls’ Coming-of-Age Rituals in Contemporary Havana, Cuba

In this chapter, the author explores the phenomenon of flamboyant girls’ fifteenth birthday parties (quinceañeras) as a gender–specific ritual. The author discusses the ways that this life–cycle ritual celebrates the girl’s entry into sexual adulthood, portrays her as an object of heterosexual desire, while simultaneously granting the girls ritual and exotic agency. The author concludes that contemporary quinceañera rituals also reflect the island’s recent political and economic turn toward a more capitalist society and displays the growing racialized and gendered inequalities on the island.Peer reviewe

The Cowl - v. 71 - n. 17 - Feb 15, 2007

The Cowl - student newspaper of Providence College. Volume 71 - Number 17 - February 15, 2007. 24 pages

Designing for a playful future:a review of how humorous play within the urban realm can make adult play a part of everyday life

Abstract. Everybody plays. It is a behaviour that is common to all people and indeed most species. A person’s inclination to play is dependant, not only on his mental and emotional state, but also on his surroundings. Despite our physiological separation from the rest of the evolving natural kingdom, our brains have scarcely evolved further than those of our hunter-gatherer forefathers. So often the playful side of adults is forgotten, un-nurtured and neglected, much to the detriment of public physical and mental health. In this ever-changing and fast-paced human society, we are constantly trying to avoid or subdue our primal instincts because we believe we are somehow different... “We are not animals”. We make our primal desire to be free and rampant something to be ashamed of, afraid of and even embarrassed by. This thesis discusses the importance of play with regard to mental health and how urban environments can be and become conducive to play in adults. It poses some ideas about how designers can provide opportunities for both active and fantasy play in transitional urban spaces that we use on a regular basis. The thesis addresses the issue of ‘what is play?’ by establishing a working definition of play in terms of an individual adult player and their surroundings. This definition then serves as the basis for evaluating how contemporary urban design uses a wide array of techniques and strategies to incorporate adult play within everyday life through literature review and case studies. Moreover, it tackles the concept of humour and identifies the benefits to encouraging communication of the self through humour and freedom of expression within the urban realm. These observations provide the basic structure for developing some design parameters which an architect or urban designer might utilise in designing spaces and environments that facilitate play and designing humour for playable cities in order to attain the ‘playful’ city