Urban Planning Unplugged: How Wireless Mobile Technology Is Influencing Design Elements in Seven Major U.S. Cities

As wireless mobile technologies become central to contemporary living in urban areas, private service providers are undertaking directives to expand their broadband designs. Using critical policy analysis, this research examines city planning documents in cities with wireless broadband technology initiatives. It finds a disconnection between urban planning efforts and wireless technology policy that must be remedied to ensure democratic communication technology policies for the future

“It’s like my life but more, and better!” - Playing with the Cathaby Shark Girls: MMORPGs, young people and fantasy-based social play

This article is available open access through the publisher’s website at the link below. Copyright @ 2011 A B Academic Publishers.Digital technology has opened up a range of new on-line leisure spaces for young people. Despite their popularity, on-line games and Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games in particular are still a comparatively under-researched area in the fields of both Education and more broadly Youth Studies. Drawing on a Five year ethnographic study, this paper considers the ways that young people use the virtual spaces offered by MMORPGs. This paper suggests that MMORPGs represent significant arenas within which young people act out a range of social narratives through gaming. It argues that MMORPG have become important fantasy spaces which offer young people possibilities to engage in what were formally material practices. Although this form of play is grounded in the everyday it also extends material practices and offers new and unique forms of symbolic experimentation, thus I argue that game-play narratives cannot be divorced from the everyday lives of their participants

Carbon nanotube dosimetry: from workplace exposure assessment to inhalation toxicology

BACKGROUND: Dosimetry for toxicology studies involving carbon nanotubes (CNT) is challenging because of a lack of detailed occupational exposure assessments. Therefore, exposure assessment findings, measuring the mass concentration of elemental carbon from personal breathing zone (PBZ) samples, from 8 U.S.-based multi-walled CNT (MWCNT) manufacturers and users were extrapolated to results of an inhalation study in mice. RESULTS: Upon analysis, an inhalable elemental carbon mass concentration arithmetic mean of 10.6 μg/m(3) (geometric mean 4.21 μg/m(3)) was found among workers exposed to MWCNT. The concentration equates to a deposited dose of approximately 4.07 μg/d in a human, equivalent to 2 ng/d in the mouse. For MWCNT inhalation, mice were exposed for 19 d with daily depositions of 1970 ng (equivalent to 1000 d of a human exposure; cumulative 76 yr), 197 ng (100 d; 7.6 yr), and 19.7 ng (10 d; 0.76 yr) and harvested at 0, 3, 28, and 84 d post-exposure to assess pulmonary toxicity. The high dose showed cytotoxicity and inflammation that persisted through 84 d after exposure. The middle dose had no polymorphonuclear cell influx with transient cytotoxicity. The low dose was associated with a low grade inflammatory response measured by changes in mRNA expression. Increased inflammatory proteins were present in the lavage fluid at the high and middle dose through 28 d post-exposure. Pathology, including epithelial hyperplasia and peribronchiolar inflammation, was only noted at the high dose. CONCLUSION: These findings showed a limited pulmonary inflammatory potential of MWCNT at levels corresponding to the average inhalable elemental carbon concentrations observed in U.S.-based CNT facilities and estimates suggest considerable years of exposure are necessary for significant pathology to occur at that level

Beyond the diluted community concept: a symbolic interactionist perspective on online social relations 1

Abstract The study of cybercommunity is inevitably linked to the development of the internet amid other cultural phenomena, and cybercommunity as a cultural practice has clearly reached a point of critical mass.The concept of online community has become increasingly diluted as it evolves into a pastiche of elements that ostensibly 'signify' community.This study grapples with the concept of community in cyberspace and suggests alternative ways of characterizing online social relations that avoid the vagaries of 'community'. Based on interviews and a theoretical consideration of online community, it finds that the metaphor of 'community' in cyberspace is one of convenient togetherness without real responsibility.This study suggests a symbolic interactionist approach to the examination of online social relationships that is free of the controversy and structural-functional baggage of the term 'community'. It suggests that community is an evolving process, and that commitment is the truly desired social ideal in social interaction, whether online or offline

Analytical High-Resolution Electron Microscopy Reveals Organ-Specific Nanoceria Bioprocessing

This is the first utilization of advanced analytical electron microscopy methods, including high-resolution transmission electron microscopy, high-angle annular dark field scanning transmission electron microscopy, electron energy loss spectroscopy, and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy mapping to characterize the organ-specific bioprocessing of a relatively inert nanomaterial (nanoceria). Liver and spleen samples from rats given a single intravenous infusion of nanoceria were obtained after prolonged (90 days) in vivo exposure. These advanced analytical electron microscopy methods were applied to elucidate the organ-specific cellular and subcellular fate of nanoceria after its uptake. Nanoceria is bioprocessed differently in the spleen than in the liver

Love Island, social media, and sousveillance : new pathways of challenging realism in reality TV

This paper explores the changing nature of audience participation and active viewership in the context of Reality TV. Thanks to the ongoing rise of social media, fans of popular entertainment programmes continue to be engaged in new and innovative ways across a number of platforms as part of an ever-expanding interactive economy. Love Island 2018 has pushed the boundaries of this participatory culture by exploiting new forms of digital media in order to encourage multi-platform consumption of content by the show's fans. This paper argues that while this strategy has enabled Love Island to successfully exploit monetization opportunities, it has simultaneously created opportunities for the show's audience to group together online and form communities of resistance which have placed themselves in opposition to the show's producers. These fan communities have harnessed the connective powers of social media to pool together their means and knowledge and to eventually exercise modes of sousveillance designed to hold “powerful” actors to account for perceived wrongdoing on the show. Examples of such behavior during Love Island 2018 hint at a paradigm shift in the relationship between television producers and audiences and demonstrate the new pathways available to audiences as they seek to answer the perennial question of this entertainment genre: how real is Reality TV

Academic/Digital Work: ICTs, Knowledge Capital, and the Question of Educational Quality

The ideology of the information society has transformed the performance of academic duties within higher education through the permeation of information and communication technologies (ICTs) into all aspects of the university. These technologies provide a common ground upon which teaching, research, and administration fuse; but how have such arrangements affected the quality of academic work? This ideology functions through values, hierarchies, rewards and punishments, and surveillance that influence routine work. Using a critical orientation, this paper examines the transformation of the quality of the intellectual products and work processes of higher education in a North American context. It examines how the educational technology industry fosters a type of control over academic workers, inhibiting the individual laborer’s pursuit of educational quality. Grounded in Foucault’s concept of “disciplinary power” and in Freire’s notions of critical consciousness, it suggests a community-centered approach toward building knowledge capital in higher education