206 research outputs found

    Using hypertext for textual genetics, or, what is suitable in a hypertext system for an information gardening application

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    Gender and Gaming: Postmodern Narratives of Liminal Spaces and Selves

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    This study employs a narrative approach to explore the relationship between gender and video gaming using a postmodern theoretical perspective. At issue here is the meaning ascribed to the construction and iterative performance of gender identity by self-identified female gamers. Using an alternative to the conventional multicase methodology (which inscribes stark demarca-tions around distinct cultural identities) this research understands participant cases as fragmented and fluid artifacts of hypermediated postmodern experiences. This study examines three gamers in an attempt to offer some provisional answers to the question: What does it mean to the participant in this study to identify as a female gamer? Furthermore, the following sub-questions will assist in cultivating understandings that offer unique and multifaceted worldviews: (a) How is gender identity enacted within video games? (b) How is gender identity enacted in out-of-game contexts related to gaming? (c) How does the construction and enactment of a gendered identity as part of the gaming experience influence individual gamer conceptions of gender? Data sources—including interviews, observations, audiovisual artifacts, and researcher memos—reveal types of “lived” events (Deleuze & Guattari, 1991/1994, pp. 33-34) as opposed to participants’ truths as substantiated by means of “brute data” (St. Pierre, 2013a). Data is represented in narrative form as a means of disrupting the prevailing discourse that stages digital culture as male purview, and opening up the space for reinscription

    Interoperability of semantics in news production

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    Visual analysis of anatomy ontologies and related genomic information

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    Challenges in scientific research include the difficulty in obtaining overviews of the large amount of data required for analysis, and in resolving the differences in terminology used to store and interpret information in multiple, independently created data sets. Ontologies provide one solution for analysis involving multiple data sources, improving cross-referencing and data integration. This thesis looks at harnessing advanced human perception to reduce the cognitive load in the analysis of the multiple, complex data sets the bioinformatics user group studied use in research, taking advantage also of users’ domain knowledge, to build mental models of data that map to its underlying structure. Guided by a user-centred approach, prototypes were developed to provide a visual method for exploring users’ information requirements and to identify solutions for these requirements. 2D and 3D node-link graphs were built to visualise the hierarchically structured ontology data, to improve analysis of individual and comparison of multiple data sets, by providing overviews of the data, followed by techniques for detailed analysis of regions of interest. Iterative, heuristic and structured user evaluations were used to assess and refine the options developed for the presentation and analysis of the ontology data. The evaluation results confirmed the advantages that visualisation provides over text-based analysis, and also highlighted the advantages of each of 2D and 3D for visual data analysis.Overseas Research Students Awards SchemeJames Watt Scholarshi

    Library Services and Construction Act: Testimonies (1994): Speech 23

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    How did DNA become hackable and biology personal? Tracing the self-fashioning of the DIYbio network

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    The DIYbio (Do-It-Yourself biology) group was established with the aim of turning biology and biotechnology into a creative practice accessible to everyone. The group is composed of graduate and post-graduate students and drop-out graduate students, but also disenfranchised researchers and professionals who see in the initiative the possibility of reviving their passion for science. Inspired by the analogy of the personal computer as a 'spokes-technology' for a free, egalitarian and decentralized society, that of the free and open-source software movement, and inspired by the image of the Victorian amateur and his home laboratory, DIYbio members organize regionally in what they call 'community laboratories,' or they practice in the comfort of their homes. Based on a series of interviews with DIYbio members, participants' observations of DIYbio's transient practices and a literary analysis of DIYbio members' use of social media, this thesis traces what I provisionally call 'the making of a personal biology.' Starting from the narrative formation the network, it then moves from the foundation of the DIYbio network in 2008 to the establishment of the first 'community laboratories', tracing the contingent orchestration of a diverse set of people, sites, tools and events, into a four-year community building effort. Due to its recent emergence in the field of Science and Technology Studies, only a limited number of research initiatives engage with the DIYbio network. Such works, mainly in the form of dissertations chapters and short articles, are analytically rich but limited in their observations, and often focus only on specific aspects of the network (Aguiton, 2010; Roosth, 2010; Delfanti, 2011; Meyer, 2012). This thesis recognizes the emergence of the DIYbio network as a cultural phenomenon in itself, and addresses the gap in the literature by tracing how DNA became hackable and biology became personal. Following Donna Haraway's effort to critically address the politics of technoscience as a practice of 'turning tropes into worlds' (1997: 59), the overarching topic of this research is how the trope of the biohacker became a world, and what type of world it became. The aim of this research is, therefore, to explore how members of the DIYbio network and biohackers define themselves, construct their identities and organize their work. This research also aims to situate the discourses and practices of DIYbio members in a context where governments and industries are intensifying their effort to make the coming century of biology into a reality

    Homogeneity and heterogeneity in disciplinary discourse : tracking the management of intertextuality in undergraduate academic lectures

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    Using a corpus of twenty-four lectures drawn from The BASE corpus, this study is an analysis and inter-disciplinary comparison of the management of Intertextuality in the genre of the undergraduate lecture. Theorising Intertextuality as central within the discursive (re-)construction of disciplinary knowledge, the investigation of Intertextuality is viewed as the investigation of the discursively-mediated interaction(s) of a current lecturer with original knowledge-constituting discourses, and with their agents too, of an academic community. As there is no holistic and comprehensive methodology for assessing the management of Intertextuality in academic discourse both qualitatively and quantitatively, this study uses two further lectures to devise such a methodology. This involves segregating lecture discourse into consistent independent units and then coding each unit according both to its function in the discourse and the participant voice(s) behind it. Applying this comprehensive scheme shows that independent units in lecture discourse are classifiable under three broad functional areas, Intertextuality (units realising propositional input), Intratextuality (units realising the mechanics of text and discursive interaction), and Metatextuality (units realising unit-length evaluation of emerging discourse). These functional areas and the functions within them are manageable via different participant voice(s), the manifestations and pragmatic effects of which in discourse vary, meaning the management of Intertextuality can be assessed qualitatively and quantitatively using the coherent, consistent and data-driven coding scheme derived from these analyses. This methodology, applied qualitatively and quantitatively to the corpus, reveals management similarities broadly between Arts & Humanities and Social Sciences lectures, typically a dialogic management, and management differences broadly between these two groupings and Physical Sciences lectures, typically a monophonic management. These management choices are understood as both constituted by and as reconstitutive of the social and epistemological landscapes behind lectures, meaning the management of Intertextuality is viewed as the dominant influence in shaping disciplinary discourse

    Homogeneity and heterogeneity in disciplinary discourse: tracking the management of intertextuality in undergraduate academic lectures

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    Using a corpus of twenty-four lectures drawn from The BASE corpus*, this study is an analysis and inter-disciplinary comparison of the management of Intertextuality in the genre of the undergraduate lecture. Theorising Intertextuality as central within the discursive (re-)construction of disciplinary knowledge, the investigation of Intertextuality is viewed as the investigation of the discursively-mediated interaction(s) of a current lecturer with original knowledge-constituting discourses, and with their agents too, of an academic community. As there is no holistic and comprehensive methodology for assessing the management of Intertextuality in academic discourse both qualitatively and quantitatively, this study uses two further lectures to devise such a methodology. This involves segregating lecture discourse into consistent independent units and then coding each unit according both to its function in the discourse and the participant voice(s) behind it. Applying this comprehensive scheme shows that independent units in lecture discourse are classifiable under three broad functional areas, Intertextuality (units realising propositional input), Intratextuality (units realising the mechanics of text and discursive interaction), and Metatextuality (units realising unit-length evaluation of emerging discourse). These functional areas and the functions within them are manageable via different participant voice(s), the manifestations and pragmatic effects of which in discourse vary, meaning the management of Intertextuality can be assessed qualitatively and quantitatively using the coherent, consistent and data-driven coding scheme derived from these analyses. This methodology, applied qualitatively and quantitatively to the corpus, reveals management similarities broadly between Arts & Humanities and Social Sciences lectures, typically a dialogic management, and management differences broadly between these two groupings and Physical Sciences lectures, typically a monophonic management. These management choices are understood as both constituted by and as reconstitutive of the social and epistemological landscapes behind lectures, meaning the management of Intertextuality is viewed as the dominant influence in shaping disciplinary discourse. * The BASE (British Academic Spoken English) corpus is a corpus of authentic academic speech events currently being developed at the universities of Warwick and Reading in The UK with funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Board

    Ubiquitous User Modeling

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    More and more interactions take place between humans and mobile or connected IT-systems in daily life. This offers a great opportunity, especially to user modeling, to reach better adaptation with ongoing evaluation of user behavior. This work develops a complete framework to realize the newly defined concept of ubiquitous user modeling. The developed tools cover methods for the uniform exchange and the semantic integration of partial user models. They also account for the extended needs for privacy and the right of every human for introspection and control of their collected data. The SITUATIONALSTATEMENTS and the exchange language USERML have been developed on the syntactical level, while the general user model ontology GUMO and the UBISWORLD ontology have been developed on the semantical level. A multilevel conflict resolution method, which handles the problem of contradictory statements, has been implemented together with a web-based user model service, such that the road capability and the scalability can be proven with this approach.Immer hĂ€ufiger auftretende Interaktionen im tĂ€glichen Leben zwischen Menschen und vernetzten oder mobilen IT-Systemen bieten insbesondere fĂŒr die Benutzermodellierung eine große Chance, durch stĂ€ndige Evaluation des Benutzerverhaltens verbesserte Adaptionsleistungen zu erzielen. Die vorliegende Arbeit entwickelt ein komplettes Rahmensystem, um dieses neu definierte Konzept der ubiquitĂ€ren Benutzermodellierung zu realisieren. Die erarbeiteten Werkzeuge umfassen Methoden zum einheitlichen Austausch und zur semantischen Integration von partiellen Benutzermodellen. Sie berĂŒcksichtigen aber auch die erhöhten Anforderungen an die PrivatsphĂ€re, sowie das Recht der Menschen auf Introspektion und Kontrolle ĂŒber die erhobenen Daten. Auf syntaktischer Ebene werden die situationsbeschreibenden Aussagen sowie die Austauschsprache UserML entworfen. Auf semantischer Ebene werden die allgemeine Benutzermodell-Ontologie GUMO und die UBISWELT-Ontologie entwickelt. Ein mehrstufiger Konfliktlösungsmechanismus, der das Problem sich widersprechender Aussagen bearbeitet, wird zusammen mit einem webbasierten Benutzermodell-Service implementiert, sodass die Praxistauglichkeit und die Skalierbarkeit dieses Ansatzes an mehreren Beispielen gezeigt werden kann
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