New media art, participation, social engagement and public funding

This article investigates the current condition of new media art in Britain, examining how cuts to arts funding have affected the art form's infrastructure and capacity for survival and growth. It considers media art in relation to other contemporary art practices, particularly in relation to its inherent capacity for enhanced and sustained user participation, and asks why it is that, though government agendas favour participatory art as ‘socially useful', media art appears to have been hit harder than other art forms. The article puts forward four reasons that could explain this paradox, and argues the importance of the survival of new media art, not as isolated practices invited to exist within mainstream contexts, but as a distinct art form

The Survival of Art and the Art of Survival in Stalin\u27s Russia

There are several questions that should be posed before one begins the study of 20th century Russian literature, to prevent such an undertaking from becoming merely a series of witty observations. The first of these questions is where do the boundaries of 20th century literature lie, not in the order of books on a bookshelf, but as objects of academic study? The second is how unified was the the literary process, which is the primary focus of the literary historian? In modern academic and near-academic discourse two approaches exist to answering these questions

Captive Body, Free Mind: Euphrosinia Kersnovskaia, the Gulag, and Art Under Oppression

This paper examines the art of Euphrosinia Kersnovskaia (1907-1994) as it relates to both the larger experience and narrative of the Soviet Gulag and to the survival of the artist. Larger trends of art made under oppression are used to find reason for such seemingly insignificant acts, and art therapy frameworks provide analytical bases for approach. By looking at such deeply subjective forms of memory and its transcription, individuality and humanity is returned to an inhuman penal system

A Recurrent Neural Network Survival Model: Predicting Web User Return Time

The size of a website's active user base directly affects its value. Thus, it is important to monitor and influence a user's likelihood to return to a site. Essential to this is predicting when a user will return. Current state of the art approaches to solve this problem come in two flavors: (1) Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) based solutions and (2) survival analysis methods. We observe that both techniques are severely limited when applied to this problem. Survival models can only incorporate aggregate representations of users instead of automatically learning a representation directly from a raw time series of user actions. RNNs can automatically learn features, but can not be directly trained with examples of non-returning users who have no target value for their return time. We develop a novel RNN survival model that removes the limitations of the state of the art methods. We demonstrate that this model can successfully be applied to return time prediction on a large e-commerce dataset with a superior ability to discriminate between returning and non-returning users than either method applied in isolation.Comment: Accepted into ECML PKDD 2018; 8 figures and 1 tabl

The Survival Benefits of Antiretroviral Therapy in South Africa

Background. We sought to quantify the survival benefits attributable to antiretroviral therapy (ART) in South Africa since 2004. Methods. We used the Cost-Effectiveness of Preventing AIDS Complications–International model (CEPAC) to simulate 8 cohorts of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)–infected patients initiating ART each year during 2004–2011. Model inputs included cohort-specific mean CD4+ T-cell count at ART initiation (112–178 cells/µL), 24-week ART suppressive efficacy (78%), second-line ART availability (2.4% of ART recipients), and cohort-specific 36-month retention rate (55%–71%). CEPAC simulated survival twice for each cohort, once with and once without ART. The sum of the products of per capita survival differences and the total numbers of persons initiating ART for each cohort yielded the total survival benefits. Results. Lifetime per capita survival benefits ranged from 9.3 to 10.2 life-years across the 8 cohorts. Total estimated population lifetime survival benefit for all persons starting ART during 2004–2011 was 21.7 million life-years, of which 2.8 million life-years (12.7%) had been realized by December 2012. By 2030, benefits reached 17.9 million life-years under current policies, 21.7 million life-years with universal second-line ART, 23.3 million life-years with increased linkage to care of eligible untreated patients, and 28.0 million life-years with both linkage to care and universal second-line ART. Conclusions. We found dramatic past and potential future survival benefits attributable to ART, justifying international support of ART rollout in South Africa

The effect of HIV and antiretroviral therapy on chromosomal radiosensitivity

Introduction: Antiretroviral Treatment (ART) has led to an improvement in survival of HIV infected individuals. Some of them will develop cancer during the course of their infection and will require radiation therapy. HIV positive cancer patients have presented with adverse side effects of radiotherapy and elevated chromosomal radiosensitivity. This study investigated if ART has an influence on chromosomal radiosensitivity of HIV positive individuals. Methods and Materials: Blood samples from 60 HIV positive individuals were in vitro exposed to doses of X-rays of 0, 2 and 4Gy and chromosomal radiosensitivity was assessed with the micronucleus assay. The micronucleus assay was also performed on lymphocytes of a group of non HIV-infected health care workers taking prophylactic post-exposure ART to measure the effect of these ART drugs on chromosomal radiosensitivity without HIV as a confounding factor. Results: All HIV patients (those on ART and without ART) had significantly higher radiation induced Micronuclei (MN) than healthy controls. The MN yields increased in the HIV patients taking ART compared to HIV patients not on treatment. The evaluation of chromosomal radiosensitivity of health care workers on ART revealed no effects of ART. Conclusions: HIV positive individuals show an increased chromosomal radiosensitivity. Antiretroviral treatment given to HIV positive individuals can lead to enhanced chromosomal radiosensitivity and therefore impose higher risks for radiotherapy side effects in these patients

A dual inheritance: the politics of educational reform and PhDs in art and design

This paper examines the changing relationship of art practice to academic research in higher education since 1960. Whereas art practice was often conceived of as divorced from any notion of academic or theoretical work in the post 1960 art school, by the 1990s the ground had changed to such a degree that it was possible to pursue doctoral study in art practice. This emergence of practice-based PhDs can be considered as part of a larger shift in art education and its acceptance of theory. On the one hand, the practice-based PhD could be interpreted as the logical consequence of critical, politically aware practices. On the other hand, the founding of the practice-based PhD can be connected to a series of educational reforms, particularly the introduction of the RAE, and the increasing need for departments to develop strategies for economic survival. In addition to tracing both the pedagogical, institutional and artistic legacy of practice based PhDs this paper focuses on the way in which a predominantly socialist commitment to integrated theory and practice meets with conservative educational reforms over the ground of the PhDs. I argue that this both highlights the institutional input into what art practice or indeed research is acknowledged to be and raises questions concerning the possibility of maintaining a critical art agenda

The art of survival: Tourism businesses in Thailand recovering from COVID-19 through brand management

The purpose of this study is to employ the existing theory on crisis management and corporate branding in a service context to explore how tourism businesses in Thailand can recover from the crisis caused by the impact of COVID-19. To manage the impact of COVID-19, the concepts of crisis management from different scholars are integrated, and crisis management is divided into three phases: the Pre-Crisis, Crisis, and Post-Crisis phases. This exploratory research employs stake-holder interviews to discover the impacts of COVID-19 on tourism businesses and attempts to develop guidelines for recovering tourism businesses within the service context. Our findings indicate that a strong brand and its proper management can help firms to survive during the crisis period. Moreover, our findings highlight the importance of communication for engaging with all staff during the recovery period. This paper sheds light on how a brand is employed as a proactive strategy to mitigate the impacts of the crisis. Most brands have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, and only strong brands are able to survive. Our study also adds to the limited empirical evidence on tourism business recovery during COVID-19 in the context of a developing country. From prac-titioners' perspectives, trust, solid relationships, and honest communication with their business partners play an important role in survival after the crisis. Additionally, in this paper, corporate branding is conceived as a strategic tool that affects how staff and stakeholders can collaborate and unite in response to the crisis