Towards a New Democracy: Consensus Through Quantum Parliament

We compare different actual forms of democracy and analyse in which way they are variations of a 'natural consensus decision process'. We analyse how 'consensus decision followed by majority voting' is open to 'false play' by the majority, and investigate how other types of false play appear in alternative types of democratic decision procedures. We introduce the combined notion of 'quantum parliament' and 'quantum decision procedure', and prove it to be the only one, when applied after consensus decision, that is immune to false play.Comment: 12 page

Using local knowledge in urban design practice

Ponència presentada a: Session 7: Participación en planeamiento / Participation in planning: enviromental and hermeneutic plannin

Army of One to Army Strong : visual media and U.S. Army recruitment during Bush s War on Terror

From Bush’s September 20, 2001 “War on Terror” speech to Congress to President-Elect Barack Obama’s acceptance speech on November 4, 2008, the U.S. Army produced visual recruitment material that addressed the concerns of falling enlistment numbers—due to the prolonged and difficult war in Iraq—with quickly-evolving and compelling rhetorical appeals: from the introduction of an “Army of One” (2001) to “Army Strong” (2006); from messages focused on education and individual identity to high-energy adventure and simulated combat scenarios, distributed through everything from printed posters and music videos to first-person tactical-shooter video games. These highly polished, professional visual appeals introduced to the American public during a time of an unpopular war fought by volunteers provide rich subject matter for research and analysis. This dissertation takes a multidisciplinary approach to the visual media utilized as part of the Army’s recruitment efforts during the War on Terror, focusing on American myths—as defined by Barthes—and how these myths are both revealed and reinforced through design across media platforms. Placing each selection in its historical context, this dissertation analyzes how printed materials changed as the War on Terror continued. It examines the television ad that introduced “Army Strong” to the American public, considering how the combination of moving image, text, and music structure the message and the way we receive it. This dissertation also analyzes the video game America’s Army, focusing on how the interaction of the human player and the computer-generated player combine to enhance the persuasive qualities of the recruitment message. Each chapter discusses how the design of the particular medium facilitates engagement/interactivity of the viewer. The conclusion considers what recruitment material produced during this time period suggests about the persuasive strategies of different media and how they create distinct relationships with their spectators. It also addresses how theoretical frameworks and critical concepts used by a variety of disciplines can be combined to analyze recruitment media utilizing a Selber inspired three literacy framework (functional, critical, rhetorical) and how this framework can contribute to the multimodal classroom by allowing instructors and students to do a comparative analysis of multiple forms of visual media with similar content

Using Microsoft Teams to Enhance Engagement and Learning with Any Class: It’s Fun and Easy

Microsoft Teams is a great tool for meeting virtually, collaborating and even recording class sessions. Acting as a hub for all Office 365 apps it allows for easy uploading of the videos to Stream (the organizations You Tube). MBA and graduate classes are often composed of working professionals who frequently miss class. Teams allows them to easily review class sessions so that they do not fall behind. This article discusses the experiences of one professor who collaborated with the Faculty Development Center at a small, private university to allow for a more blended, flexible classroom using Teams

Social Media for Cities, Counties and Communities

Social media (i.e., Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube) and other tools and services with user- generated content have made a staggering amount of information (and misinformation) available. Some government officials seek to leverage these resources to improve services and communication with citizens, especially during crises and emergencies. Yet, the sheer volume of social data streams generates substantial noise that must be filtered. Potential exists to rapidly identify issues of concern for emergency management by detecting meaningful patterns or trends in the stream of messages and information flow. Similarly, monitoring these patterns and themes over time could provide officials with insights into the perceptions and mood of the community that cannot be collected through traditional methods (e.g., phone or mail surveys) due to their substantive costs, especially in light of reduced and shrinking budgets of governments at all levels. We conducted a pilot study in 2010 with government officials in Arlington, Virginia (and to a lesser extent representatives of groups from Alexandria and Fairfax, Virginia) with a view to contributing to a general understanding of the use of social media by government officials as well as community organizations, businesses and the public. We were especially interested in gaining greater insight into social media use in crisis situations (whether severe or fairly routine crises, such as traffic or weather disruptions)

The Centrality of the Center: Best Practices for Engaging Students on Campus

Communication centers exist primarily as a complementary student service (Strawser, Apostel, Carpenter, Cuny, Dvorak, & Head, 2019). As an integral campus student services, centers must place an overarching emphasis on student engagement. Student engagement, according to NSSE, is the time and effort students put into their educational activities and the institutional deployment of educational resources. Communication centers, to continue to prove their value to institutions, must continue to build programming and initiatives that are worthy of students’ time and get students to participate. To address engagement concerns, the authors of this essay offer ten best practices for building and sustaining student engagement in the communication center. The best practices are universal and transferable, meaning, any center, no matter the vision or the resources, could theoretically implement the ideas

Biochemistry of hexose and pentose transformations in soil analyzed by position-specific labeling and 13C-PLFA

© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. Microbial transformations are key processes of soil organic matter (SOM) formation, stabilization and decomposition. Combination of position-specific 13C labeling with compound-specific 13C-PLFA analysis is a novel tool to trace metabolic pathways. This combination was used to analyze short-term transformations (3 and 10 days after tracer application) of two key monosaccharides: glucose and ribose in soil under field conditions. Transformations of sugars were quantified by the incorporation of 13C from individual molecule positions in bulk soil, microbial biomass (by CFE) and in cell membranes of microbial groups classified by 13C-PLFA.The 13C incorporation in the Gram negative bacteria was higher by one order of magnitude compared to all other microbial groups. All of the 13C recovered in soil on day 3 was allocated in microbial biomass. On day 10 however, a part of the 13C was recovered in non-extractable microbial cell components or microbial excretions. As sugars are not absorbed by mineral particles due to a lack of charged functional groups, their quick mineralization from soil solution is generally expected. However, microorganisms transformed sugars to metabolites with a slower turnover. The 13C incorporation from the individual glucose positions into soil and microbial biomass showed that the two main glucose utilizing pathways in organisms - glycolysis and the pentose phosphate pathway - exist in soils in parallel. However, the pattern of 13C incorporation from individual glucose positions into PLFAs showed intensive recycling of the added 13C via gluconeogenesis and a mixing of both glucose utilizing pathways. The pattern of position-specific incorporation of ribose C also shows initial utilization in the pentose phosphate pathway but is overprinted on day 10, again due to intensive recycling and mixing. This shows that glucose and ribose - as ubiquitous substrates - are used in various metabolic pathways and their C is intensively recycled in microbial biomass.Analyzing the fate of individual C atoms by position-specific labeling deeply improves our understanding of the pathways of microbial utilization of sugars (and other compounds) by microbial groups and so, of soil C fluxes

Microbial Metabolism in Soil at Subzero Temperatures: Adaptation Mechanisms Revealed by Position-Specific 13C Labeling

Although biogeochemical models designed to simulate carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) dynamics in high-latitude ecosystems incorporate extracellular parameters, molecular and biochemical adaptations of microorganisms to freezing remain unclear. This knowledge gap hampers estimations of the C balance and ecosystem feedback in high-latitude regions. To analyze microbial metabolism at subzero temperatures, soils were incubated with isotopomers of position-specifically 13C-labeled glucose at three temperatures: +5 (control), -5, and -20°C. 13C was quantified in CO2, bulk soil, microbial biomass, and dissolved organic carbon (DOC) after 1, 3, and 10 days and also after 30 days for samples at -20°C. Compared to +5°C, CO2 decreased 3- and 10-fold at -5 and -20°C, respectively. High 13C recovery in CO2 from the C-1 position indicates dominance of the pentose phosphate pathway at +5°C. In contrast, increased oxidation of the C-4 position at subzero temperatures implies a switch to glycolysis. A threefold higher 13C recovery in microbial biomass at -5 than +5°C points to synthesis of intracellular compounds such as glycerol and ethanol in response to freezing. Less than 0.4% of 13C was recovered in DOC after 1 day, demonstrating complete glucose uptake by microorganisms even at -20°C. Consequently, we attribute the fivefold higher extracellular 13C in soil than in microbial biomass to secreted antifreeze compounds. This suggests that with decreasing temperature, intracellular antifreeze protection is complemented by extracellular mechanisms to avoid cellular damage by crystallizing water. The knowledge of sustained metabolism at subzero temperatures will not only be useful for modeling global C dynamics in ecosystems with periodically or permanently frozen soils, but will also be important in understanding and controlling the adaptive mechanisms of food spoilage organisms