Facilitated hypertext for collective sensemaking: 15 years on from gIBIS

Hypertext research in the mid-1980s on representing argumentation for design rationale (DR) foreshadowed what are now dominant concerns in knowledge management: representing, codifying and manipulating semiformal concepts, the use of formalisms to mediate collective sensemaking, and the construction of group memory. With the benefit of 15 years' hindsight, we can see the failure of so many DR systems to be adopted as symptomatic of the more general problem of fostering new kinds of 'literacy' in real working environments. Pursuing Engelbart's goal of "augmenting human intellect", we describe the Compendium approach to collective sensemaking, which demonstrates the impact that a facilitator can have on the learning and adoption problems that plagued earlier DR systems. We also describe how conventional documents and modelling notations can be morphed into and out of Compendium's 'native hypertext' in order to support other modes of working across diverse communities of practice

Deb8 : a tool for collaborative analysis of video

Funding: This research is supported by the Brazilian National Council of Technological and Scientific Development (CNPq) and the National Research Foundation, Prime Minister’s Office, Singapore under its International Research Centres in Singapore Funding Initiative.Public, parliamentary and television debates are commonplace in modern democracies. However, developing an understanding and communicating with others is often limited to passive viewing or, at best, textual discussion on social media. To address this, we present the design and implementation of Deb8, a tool that allows collaborative analysis of video-based TV debates. The tool provides a novel UI designed to enable and capture rich synchronous collaborative discussion of videos based on argumentation graphs that link quotes of the video, opinions, questions, and external evidence. Deb8 supports the creation of rich idea structures based on argumentation theory as well as collaborative tagging of the relevance, support and trustworthiness of the different elements. We evaluated the design of the tool in a study of three groups of three people. We present the results of the study and a reflection on the challenges involved.Postprin

Space Based Gravitational Wave Astronomy Beyond LISA

The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) will open three decades of gravitational wave(GW) spectrum between 0.1 and 100 mHz, the mHz band [1]. This band is expected to be the richest part of the GW spectrum, in types of sources, numbers of sources, signal-to-noise ratios and discovery potential. When LISA opens the low-frequency window of the gravitational wave spectrum,around 2034, the surge of gravitational-wave astronomy will strongly compel a subsequent mission to further explore the frequency bands of the GW spectrum that can only be accessed from space. The 2020's is the time to start developing technology and studying mission concepts for a large-scale mission to be launched in the 2040's. The mission concept would then be proposed to Astro2030. Only space-based missions can access the GW spectrum between 108 and 1 Hz because of the Earth's seismic noise. This white paper surveys the science in this band and mission concepts that could accomplish that science. The proposed small scale activity is a technology development program that would support a range of concepts and a mission concept study to choose a specific mission concept for Astro2030. In this white paper, we will refer to a generic GW mission beyond LISA as bLISA

Building a Field: The Future of Astronomy with Gravitational Waves

Harnessing the sheer discovery potential of GW Astronomy will require bold, deliberate,and sustained efforts to train and develop the requisite workforce. The next decaderequires a strategic plan to build - from the ground up - a robust, open, andwell-connected GW Astronomy community with deep participation from traditionalastronomers, physicists, data scientists, and instrumentalists. This basic infrastructure issorely needed as an enabling foundation for research. We outline a set ofrecommendations for funding agencies, universities, and professional societies to helpbuild a thriving, diverse, and inclusive new field

The limits of corporate social responsibility : Techniques of neutralization, stakeholder management and political CSR

Since scholarly interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) has primarily focused on the synergies between social and economic performance, our understanding of how (and the conditions under which) companies use CSR to produce policy outcomes that work against public welfare has remained comparatively underdeveloped. In particular, little is known about how corporate decision-makers privately reconcile the conflicts between public and private interests, even though this is likely to be relevant to understanding the limitations of CSR as a means of aligning business activity with the broader public interest. This study addresses this issue using internal tobacco industry documents to explore British-American Tobacco’s (BAT) thinking on CSR and its effects on the company’s CSR Programme. The article presents a three-stage model of CSR development, based on Sykes and Matza’s theory of techniques of neutralization, which links together: how BAT managers made sense of the company’s declining political authority in the mid-1990s; how they subsequently justified the use of CSR as a tool of stakeholder management aimed at diffusing the political impact of public health advocates by breaking up political constituencies working towards evidence-based tobacco regulation; and how CSR works ideologically to shape stakeholders’ perceptions of the relative merits of competing approaches to tobacco control. Our analysis has three implications for research and practice. First, it underlines the importance of approaching corporate managers’ public comments on CSR critically and situating them in their economic, political and historical contexts. Second, it illustrates the importance of focusing on the political aims and effects of CSR. Third, by showing how CSR practices are used to stymie evidence-based government regulation, the article underlines the importance of highlighting and developing matrices to assess the negative social impacts of CSR

Matrix stiffness drives epithelial–mesenchymal transition and tumour metastasis through a TWIST1–G3BP2 mechanotransduction pathway

Matrix stiffness potently regulates cellular behavior in various biological contexts. In breast tumours, the presence of dense clusters of collagen fibrils indicates increased matrix stiffness and correlates with poor survival. It is unclear how mechanical inputs are transduced into transcriptional outputs to drive tumour progression. Here we report that TWIST1 is an essential mechano-mediator that promotes epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) in response to increasing matrix stiffness. High matrix stiffness promotes nuclear translocation of TWIST1 by releasing TWIST1 from its cytoplasmic binding partner G3BP2. Loss of G3BP2 leads to constitutive TWIST1 nuclear localization and synergizes with increasing matrix stiffness to induce EMT and promote tumour invasion and metastasis. In human breast tumours, collagen fiber alignment, a marker of increasing matrix stiffness, and reduced expression of G3BP2 together predict poor survival. Our findings reveal a TWIST1-G3BP2 mechanotransduction pathway that responds to biomechanical signals from the tumour microenvironment to drive EMT, invasion, and metastasis