ON THE LOGIC, METHOD AND SCIENTIFIC DIVERSITY OF TECHNICAL SYSTEMS: AN INQUIRY INTO THE DIAGNOSTIC MEASUREMENT OF HUMAN SKIN

This dissertation explores some of the scientific, technical and cultural history of human skin measurement and diagnostics. Through a significant collection of primary texts and case studies, I track the changing technologies and methods used to measure skin, as well as the scientific and sociotechnical applications. I then map these histories onto some of the diverse understandings of the human body, physics, biology, natural philosophy and language that underpinned the scientific enterprise of skin measurement. The main argument of my thesis demonstrates how these diverse histories of science historically and theoretically inform the succeeding methods and applications for skin measurement from early Greek medicine, to beginnings of Anthropology as scientific discipline, to the emergence of scientific racism, to the age of digital imaging analysis, remote sensing, algorithms, massive databases and biometric technologies; further, these new digital applications go beyond just health diagnostics and are creating new technical categorizations of human skin divorced from the established ethical mechanisms of modern science. Based on this research, I inquire how communication practices within the scientific enterprise address the ethical and historical implications for a growing set of digital biometric applications with industrial, military, sociopolitical and public functions

Neuroimaging of Discourse Processing in Aging and Alzheimer's Disease

Detection of very early stages of Alzheimer's Disease (AD) has been an area of difficulty for researchers due to confounds with age. Prose recall has been suggested as a diagnostically sensitive test of episodic memory declines in AD; however, the process by which this occurs has not been adequately defined. Theories of discourse processing suggest that prose comprehension can be mapped onto distinct patterns of brain activation and that the cognitive mechanisms used for comprehension are dependent on prose content; however, most studies have been limited to healthy adults. In this study we examined healthy young adults, healthy older adults, and adults with AD during comprehension of two different prose genres, expository and narrative. We found significant activation in posterior cingulate cortex for healthy older adults who read expository prose, and significant deactivation in anterior cingulate cortex for AD adults who read narrative prose. These results indicate that aging involves noncompensatory overrecruitment of cognitive control areas for long term memory, and that AD involves attentional deficits. This study further supports the sensitivity of prose comprehension as a diagnostic tool for AD

Diagnostic reasoning in medical students using a simulated environment

No description supplie