Not Here, Right Now/Right Here, Not Now: Unfolding the context in Alana Jelinek’s ‘This is Not Art’

In this article I aim to unfold the main argument in Alana Jelinek's This Is Not Art into contiguous territories, located within the contemporary reality of urban development and the post-Olympic cultural landscape in London. Faced with the emergence and increasing production of artistic activities known as ‘creative placemaking’, and the enmeshed relationships between the continuing evacuation of social housing estates and the presence of artists as temporary occupants/practitioners in these interim spaces, a stark but necessary question is suggested: what is art doing in London at this moment in time? In asking this question, I am mindful of the precious distinction recently drawn by Angela Dimitrakaki, who suggests that we should differentiate between ‘the artwork’ as the output of artistic production, and the outcome of ‘art’ as a way of production. The production relations as ‘outcomes’ that we examine in this article are those of the forces engaged in the production of physical and social urban space in London today in which ‘art as outcome’ is a central component. I identify this as the ‘aesthetic dividend’, understood as the added value to privileged narratives of urban development inscribed both into planning authorities' scenarios and private developers' marketing strategies, and served by an array of specific artistic activities and their perception as ‘creative placemaking’. Dimitrakaki's propositions will also be important in the central section of the article, when they will be drawn as important resources into the analysis of Mike Nelson's/Artangel's unrealized artwork for the decanted Heygate Estate in Elephant & Castle, South London

Art Practice and the Community

ART AS SOCIAL ACTION will be a general introduction and textbook to the field of social practice art and include valuable lesson plans offering examples of pedagogical projects for instructors at both the college and high school levels. With contributions written by leading social practice artists, teachers and thinkers it's content will be arranged thematically to around such themes as labor rights, environmental justice, urban policy, the rights of women and girls, inequality, migrant's rights, Black Lives Matter, the rights of prisoner's and the global nexus of art/labor/capital among other areas of topical concern. Some lesson plans will be written by the students, alumni and faculty members of Social Practice Queens (SPQ), a unique partnership between Queens College CUNY and the Queens Museum. The book will consist of two main parts. A set of introductory materials focused on the concept of teaching socially engaged art (with some of these essays having an associated 20 minute podcast created for classroom use online at: http://www.socialpracticequeens.org/ ). Part two of the book will consist of two dozen actual lesson plans

On LDPC Codes for Gaussian Interference Channels

In this paper, we focus on the two-user Gaussian interference channel (GIC), and study the Han-Kobayashi (HK) coding/decoding strategy with the objective of designing low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes. A code optimization algorithm is proposed which adopts a random perturbation technique via tracking the average mutual information. The degree distribution optimization and convergence threshold computation are carried out for strong and weak interference channels, employing binary phase-shift keying (BPSK). Under strong interference, it is observed that optimized codes operate close to the capacity boundary. For the case of weak interference, it is shown that via the newly designed codes, a nontrivial rate pair is achievable, which is not attainable by single user codes with time-sharing. Performance of the designed LDPC codes are also studied for finite block lengths through simulations of specific codes picked from the optimized degree distributions.Comment: ISIT 201

‘So let's talk. Let's chat. Let's start a dialog': An analysis of the conversation metaphor employed in Clinton's and Obama's YouTube campaign clips

This paper examines how two American presidential candidates, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, make use of a Video exchange is conversation metaphor on YouTube, a channel of communication that allows the exchange of video clips on the Internet. It is argued that the politicians exploit the metaphor for its connotations of creating involvement and closeness and its potential as a persuasive strategy. They are, however, also restricted by the Video exchange is conversation metaphor: since the metaphor entails alternating speaker roles, the willingness of the addressee to engage in the exchange and to personally bond, the candidates have to construct a viewer identity and a candidate identity that matches the framework of the metaphor. In addition, the influence of the medium YouTube on the linguistic presentation is discussed in a close reading of the video clips, its main restrictions being currency (topicality and coherence), as well as asynchronicity, which results in a pseudo-dialogic character of the exchang

Fractional Korovkin Theory Based on Statistical Convergence

2000 Mathematics Subject Classification: 41A25, 41A36, 40G15.In this paper, we obtain some statistical Korovkin-type approximation theorems including fractional derivatives of functions. We also show that our new results are more applicable than the classical ones

Statistical convergence of double-complex Picard integral operators

AbstractIn this work, we study the statistical approximation properties of the double-complex Picard integral operators. We also show that our statistical approach is more applicable than the classical one

Fractional Trigonometric Korovkin Theory in Statistical Sense

2000 Mathematics Subject Classification: 41A25, 41A36.In the present paper, we improve the classical trigonometric Korovkin theory by using the concept of statistical convergence from the summability theory and also by considering the fractional derivatives of functions. We also show that our new results are more applicable than the classical ones

Arginine, a Key Residue for the Enhancing Ability of an Antifreeze Protein of the Beetle Dendroides canadensis

Antifreeze proteins (AFPs) can produce a difference between the nonequilibrium freezing point and the melting point, termed thermal hysteresis (TH). The TH activity of an antifreeze protein (AFP) depends on the specific AFP and its concentration as well as the presence of cosolutes including low molecular mass solutes and/or proteins. We recently identified series of carboxylates and polyols as efficient enhancers for an AFP from the beetle Dendroides canadensis. In this study, we chemically modified DAFP-1 using the arginine-specific reagent 1,2-cyclohexanedione. We demonstrated that 1,2-cyclohexanedione specifically modifies one arginine residue and the modified DAFP-1 loses its enhancing ability completely or partially in the presence of previously identified enhancers. The stronger the enhancement ability of the enhancer on the native DAFP-1, the stronger the enhancement effect of the enhancer on the modified DAFP-1. The weaker enhancers (e.g., glycerol) completely lose their enhancement effect on the modified DAFP-1 due to their inability to compete with 1,2-cyclohexanedione for the arginine residue. Regeneration of the arginine residue using hydroxylamine fully restored the enhancing ability of DAFP-1. These studies indicated that an arginine residue is critical for the enhancing ability of DAFP-1 and the guanidinium group of the arginine residue is important for its interaction with the enhancers, where the general mechanism of arginine−ligand interaction is borne. This work may initiate a complete mechanistic study of the enhancement effect in AFPs

Design and implementation of a cost-aware and smart oyster mushroom cultivation system

Mushrooms are a nutritious food source, which can play a crucial role in providing affordable sources of proteins, vitamins and minerals for people worldwide, but their cultivation requires extensive training and considerable relevant expertise in order to fine-tune multiple environmental parameters. Internally displaced people in the Northern regions of Syria rely on very small-scale traditional oyster mushroom production, which cannot meet their local demand. Many international and local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working for Syrian refugees, work on mushroom cultivation projects. They have reported significant difficulties and challenges in mushroom cultivation amongst the targeted beneficiaries. Therefore, the two main questions driving this research are: (1) How can organic mushroom cultivation be promoted using a robust and affordable intelligent mushroom farming system? (2) How can organic mushroom farming practices be simplified to support internally displaced and refugee Syrians? This research evaluates the process of automating mushroom cultivation by designing and implementing a smart oyster (Pleurotus ostreatus) mushroom farming system to remotely monitor and manage environmental parameters, such as temperature, humidity, air quality and illumination, inside the farm. Furthermore, ready and dedicated user-friendly web interfaces were also implemented to enable farmers to remotely monitor and manage their farms through the Internet. As a result, a dependable and cost-effective intelligent oyster mushroom cultivation system was designed and implemented in this work. The system includes remote monitoring and management via user-friendly interfaces. This simplifies mushroom cultivation for not only refugees and displaced communities, but also for mushroom farmers in low-income countries. This work can contribute to the eradication of poverty and hunger, in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals one and two

Design of LDPC Codes for Two-Way Relay Systems with Physical-Layer Network Coding

Cataloged from PDF version of article.This letter presents low-density parity-check (LDPC) code design for two-way relay (TWR) systems employing physical-layer network coding (PLNC). We focus on relay decoding, and propose an empirical density evolution method for estimating the decoding threshold of the LDPC code ensemble. We utilize the proposed method in conjunction with a random walk optimization procedure to obtain good LDPC code degree distributions. Numerical results demonstrate that the specifically designed LDPC codes can attain improvements of about 0.3 dB over off-the-shelf LDPC codes (designed for point-to-point additive white Gaussian noise channels), i.e., it is new code designs are essential to optimize the performance of TWR systems