The Emerging Nature of Participation in Multispecies Interaction Design

Interactive technology has become integral part of daily life for both humans and animals, with animals often interacting with technologized environments on behalf of humans. For some, animals' participation in the design process is essential to design technology that can adequately support their activities. For others, animals' inability to understand and control design activities inevitably stands in the way of multispecies participatory practices. Here, we consider the essential elements of participation within interspecies interactions and illustrate its emergence, in spite of contextual constraints and asymmetries. To move beyond anthropomorphic notions of participation, and consequent anthropocentric practices, we propose a broader participatory model based on indexical semiosis, volition and choice; and we highlight dimensions that could define inclusive participatory practices more resilient to the diversity of understandings and goals among part-taking agents, and better able to account for the contribution of diverse, multispecies agents in interaction design and beyond

Ohio Guide for Land Application of Sewage Sludge

PDF pages: 1

On D0-branes in Gepner models

We show why and when D0-branes at the Gepner point of Calabi-Yau manifolds given as Fermat hypersurfaces exist.Comment: 22 pages, substantial improvements in sections 2 and 3, references added, version to be publishe

Cooperation for innovation and its impact on technological and non-technological innovation: empirical evidence from European SMEs in traditional manufacturing industries

Drawing on a sample of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in traditional manufacturing industries from seven EU regions, this study investigates how cooperation with external organizations affects technological (product and process) innovations and non-technological (organizational and marketing) innovations as well as the commercial success of product and process innovations (i.e. innovative sales). Our empirical strategy takes into account that all four types of innovation are potentially complementary. Empirical results suggest that cooperation increases firms' innovativeness and yields substantial commercial benefits. In particular, increasing the number of cooperation partnerships has a positive impact on all measures of innovation performance. We conclude that a portfolio approach to cooperation enhances innovation performance and that innovation support programs should be demand-led

Ocean Pollution: An Examination of the Problem and an Appeal for International Cooperation

Ocean pollution is a problem that the nations of the world can no longer ignore. Industrialized nations have treated the oceans as if they were beyond the power of men to alter, an infinite sink for the assimilation of wastes. The oceans cover 70% of the earth\u27s surface and contain 350 million cubic miles of water: However, there is a world population of 3.5 billion people or 10 people for every cubic mile of seawater. as the world becomes more industrialized, man\u27s increasing capacity to contaminate is a very real threat to the ocean. Man is totally dependent upon natural processes developed over geologic times. The system is closed, everything counts, and the balance is delicate. Modifications of the environment are inevitable and not entirely undesirable, but there are limits beyond which man cannot act with impunity. The oceans and their inhabitants form a critical part of the system. About 70% of the earth\u27s oxygen, a necessity for man\u27s survival, is produced by ocean phytoplankton. Approximately 55 million metric tons of fish and other seafood are brought in annually by the world\u27s fishermen. This represents about one-tenth of the total world supply of animal protein and, to some nations, an indispensable source of such protein

Stability and BPS branes

We define the concept of Pi-stability, a generalization of mu-stability of vector bundles, and argue that it characterizes N=1 supersymmetric brane configurations and BPS states in very general string theory compactifications with N=2 supersymmetry in four dimensions.Comment: harvmac, 18 p

Double meanings will not save the principle of double effect

In an article somewhat ironically entitled “Disambiguating Clinical Intentions,” Lynn Jansen promotes an idea that should be bewildering to anyone familiar with the literature on the intention/foresight distinction. According to Jansen, “intention” has two commonsense meanings, one of which is equivalent to “foresight.” Consequently, questions about intention are “infected” with ambiguity—people cannot tell what they mean and do not know how to answer them. This hypothesis is unsupported by evidence, but Jansen states it as if it were accepted fact. In this reply, we make explicit the multiple misrepresentations she has employed to make her hypothesis seem plausible. We also point out the ways in which it defies common sense. In particular, Jansen applies her thesis only to recent empirical research on the intentions of doctors, totally ignoring the widespread confusion that her assertion would imply in everyday life, in law, and indeed in religious and philosophical writings concerning the intention/foresight distinction and the Principle of Double Effect. Key words: double effect, end-of-life, foresight, intention, sedatio

Orientifolds of Gepner Models

We systematically construct and study Type II Orientifolds based on Gepner models which have N=1 supersymmetry in 3+1 dimensions. We classify the parity symmetries and construct the crosscap states. We write down the conditions that a configuration of rational branes must satisfy for consistency (tadpole cancellation and rank constraints) and spacetime supersymmetry. For certain cases, including Type IIB orientifolds of the quintic and a two parameter model, one can find all solutions in this class. Depending on the parity, the number of vacua can be large, of the order of 10^{10}-10^{13}. For other models, it is hard to find all solutions but special solutions can be found -- some of them are chiral. We also make comparison with the large volume regime and obtain a perfect match. Through this study, we find a number of new features of Type II orientifolds, including the structure of moduli space and the change in the type of O-planes under navigation through non-geometric phases.Comment: 142 page

BPS branes in discrete torsion orbifolds

We investigate D-branes in a Z_3xZ_3 orbifold with discrete torsion. For this class of orbifolds the only known objects which couple to twisted RR potentials have been non-BPS branes. By using more general gluing conditions we construct here a D-brane which is BPS and couples to RR potentials in the twisted and in the untwisted sectors.Comment: 20 pages, LaTe