Critical making with web2.0: on the material geographies in/of followthethings.com

Recent reviews of new media scholarship have criticised it for paying little attention to the social and environmental (in)justices in its technical infrastructure. At the same time, scholars of social and environmental (in)justice are experimenting with web2.0, using wikis, blogs, twitter and other social media to conduct and disseminate their research. These strands have collided in the making of a website called followthethings.com which simultaneously critiques the injustices embedded in everyday things, whilst also being made and maintained using everyday things, most notably a laptop, its software and the technical infrastructure of web2.0. Drawing on an emerging literature on critical making, this paper explains what has been learned about the material geographies of web2.0 and commodity activism through this making process

followthethings.com

'shopping' website - followthethings.com is an open access research output designed to resemble an online store. It is the result of a collaborative online scholar-activist project whose principal investigator, designer and co-ordinator is Ian Cook

Manejo prenatal de la anencefalia: consideraciones éticas y legales en la salud reproductiva

Texto traducido con autorización de la Federación Internacional de Ginecología y Obstetricia (FIGO): Cook, R. J., Erdman, J.N., Hevia, M, Dickens, B.M, Prenatal management of anencephaly. International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics.Examen de las cuestiones legales y éticas, en la experiencia internacional, del manejo del embarazo con un feto anencefálico dentro del contexto del abortohttp://www.sogiba.org.ar/revista/042009/Manejoprenataldelaanencefalia.pd

Fabrication critique et web 2.0

Des lecteurs reprochent actuellement aux études portant sur les nouveaux médias de n’accorder que peu d’intérêt aux injustices sociales et environnementales liées aux infrastructures techniques du web 2.0. Pourtant, dans le même temps, des chercheurs qui s’intéressent aux questions de justice sociale et environnementale font usage du web 2.0 pour conduire leurs expérimentations, et utilisent les wikis, les blogs, twitter et les réseaux sociaux pour développer et diffuser leurs recherches. C’est de la collision de ces deux courants qu’est né followthethings.com : un site internet qui livre une critique des injustices liées aux objets de tous les jours, tout en étant lui-même construit et tenu à jour au moyen d’objets de tous les jours – pour l’essentiel, un ordinateur portable, ses logiciels et les infrastructures techniques du web 2.0. En nous appuyant sur un corpus de textes récents autour du thème de la fabrication critique, nous examinerons ce que la fabrication de ce site peut nous apprendre sur les géographies du web 2.0 et la consommation militante.Recent reviews of new media scholarship have criticised it for paying little attention to the social and environmental (in)justices in its technical infrastructure. At the same time, scholars of social and environmental (in)justice are experimenting with web2.0, using wikis, blogs, twitter and other social media to conduct and disseminate their research. These strands have collided in the making of a website called followthethings.com which simultaneously critiques the injustices embedded in everyday things, whilst also being made and maintained using everyday things, most notably a laptop, its software and the technical infrastructure of web2.0. Drawing on an emerging literature on critical making, this paper explains what has been learned about the material geographies of web2.0 and commodity activism through this making process

Safety of the Deferral of Coronary Revascularization on the Basis of Instantaneous Wave-Free Ratio and Fractional Flow Reserve Measurements in Stable Coronary Artery Disease and Acute Coronary Syndromes.

OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to investigate the clinical outcomes of patients deferred from coronary revascularization on the basis of instantaneous wave-free ratio (iFR) or fractional flow reserve (FFR) measurements in stable angina pectoris (SAP) and acute coronary syndromes (ACS). BACKGROUND: Assessment of coronary stenosis severity with pressure guidewires is recommended to determine the need for myocardial revascularization. METHODS: The safety of deferral of coronary revascularization in the pooled per-protocol population (n = 4,486) of the DEFINE-FLAIR (Functional Lesion Assessment of Intermediate Stenosis to Guide Revascularisation) and iFR-SWEDEHEART (Instantaneous Wave-Free Ratio Versus Fractional Flow Reserve in Patients With Stable Angina Pectoris or Acute Coronary Syndrome) randomized clinical trials was investigated. Patients were stratified according to revascularization decision making on the basis of iFR or FFR and to clinical presentation (SAP or ACS). The primary endpoint was major adverse cardiac events (MACE), defined as the composite of all-cause death, nonfatal myocardial infarction, or unplanned revascularization at 1 year. RESULTS: Coronary revascularization was deferred in 2,130 patients. Deferral was performed in 1,117 patients (50%) in the iFR group and 1,013 patients (45%) in the FFR group (p < 0.01). At 1 year, the MACE rate in the deferred population was similar between the iFR and FFR groups (4.12% vs. 4.05%; fully adjusted hazard ratio: 1.13; 95% confidence interval: 0.72 to 1.79; p = 0.60). A clinical presentation with ACS was associated with a higher MACE rate compared with SAP in deferred patients (5.91% vs. 3.64% in ACS and SAP, respectively; fully adjusted hazard ratio: 0.61 in favor of SAP; 95% confidence interval: 0.38 to 0.99; p = 0.04). CONCLUSIONS: Overall, deferral of revascularization is equally safe with both iFR and FFR, with a low MACE rate of about 4%. Lesions were more frequently deferred when iFR was used to assess physiological significance. In deferred patients presenting with ACS, the event rate was significantly increased compared with SAP at 1 year.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Optimization of a total acid hydrolysis based protocol for the quantification of carbohydrate in macroalgae

Accurate quantification of carbohydrate content of biomass is crucial for many bio-refining applications. The standardised NREL two stage complete acid hydrolysis protocol was evaluated for its suitability towards seaweeds, as the protocol was originally developed for lignocellulosic feedstocks. The compositional differences between the major polysaccharides in seaweeds and terrestrial plants, and seaweed’s less recalcitrant nature, could suggest the NREL based protocol may be too extreme. Underestimations of carbohydrate content through the degradation of liberated sugars into furan compounds may yield erroneous data. An optimised analysis method for carbohydrate quantification in the brown seaweed L. digitata was thus developed and evaluated. Results from this study revealed stage 1 of the assay was crucial for optimisation however stage 2 proved to be less crucial. The newly optimised protocol for L. digitata yielded 210 mg of carbohydrate per g of biomass compared to a yield of only 166 mg/g from the original NREL protocol. Use of the new protocol on two other species of seaweed also gave consistent results; higher carbohydrate and significantly lower sugar degradation products generation than the original protocol. This study demonstrated the importance of specific individual optimisations of the protocol for accurate sugar quantification, particularly for different species of seawee

Phase Transitions and Computational Difficulty in Random Constraint Satisfaction Problems

We review the understanding of the random constraint satisfaction problems, focusing on the q-coloring of large random graphs, that has been achieved using the cavity method of the physicists. We also discuss the properties of the phase diagram in temperature, the connections with the glass transition phenomenology in physics, and the related algorithmic issues.Comment: 10 pages, Proceedings of the International Workshop on Statistical-Mechanical Informatics 2007, Kyoto (Japan) September 16-19, 200

Potential therapeutic applications of microbial surface-activecompounds

Numerous investigations of microbial surface-active compounds or biosurfactants over the past two decades have led to the discovery of many interesting physicochemical and biological properties including antimicrobial, anti-biofilm and therapeutic among many other pharmaceutical and medical applications. Microbial control and inhibition strategies involving the use of antibiotics are becoming continually challenged due to the emergence of resistant strains mostly embedded within biofilm formations that are difficult to eradicate. Different aspects of antimicrobial and anti-biofilm control are becoming issues of increasing importance in clinical, hygiene, therapeutic and other applications. Biosurfactants research has resulted in increasing interest into their ability to inhibit microbial activity and disperse microbial biofilms in addition to being mostly nontoxic and stable at extremes conditions. Some biosurfactants are now in use in clinical, food and environmental fields, whilst others remain under investigation and development. The dispersal properties of biosurfactants have been shown to rival that of conventional inhibitory agents against bacterial, fungal and yeast biofilms as well as viral membrane structures. This presents them as potential candidates for future uses in new generations of antimicrobial agents or as adjuvants to other antibiotics and use as preservatives for microbial suppression and eradication strategies