Digital worker inquiry and the critical potential of participatory worker data science for on‐demand platform workers

The knowledge that workers have of the systems they work under is an outcome of strategic choices by platforms and by workers themselves. Based on three initiatives undertaken by food distribution workers in Scotland, this article explores the obstacles that platform workers face when conducting inquiries into their systems of control, and investigates the potential for workers to overcome these obstacles through collaborative research projects. By drawing analogies from the history of workers' inquiries into changing labour processes, the article evaluates these three initiatives in light of previous efforts by workers to monitor complex and concealed management structures. It offers a new concept of ‘worker data science’ to describe the techniques, skills and methods that workers require to arrive at answers to questions that emerge through their inquiries, and concludes that such purposive science has the potential to equip workers to support one another and to resist and challenge some of the commands and calculations that emerge from platforms' hidden algorithmic systems.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

EFFECT OF WHEAT GERM AGGLUTININ AND CONCANAVALIN A ON ERYTHROCYTE MEMBRANE SKELETON. THERMAL DIELECTROSCOPY STUDY

Deformability and stability of erythrocyte membrane (EM) largely depend on spectrin-based membrane skeleton (MS) and its attachment to the lipid bilayer. Concanavalin A binds to band 3 without effect on EM deformability, while wheat germ agglutinin (WGA) binds to Glycophorin A decreasing the EM deformability by unclear mechanism. Here, the binding of these lectins was studied using the dielectric relaxation on MS which involves a piezo effect on spectrin, powered by the electrostriction of EM through the attachment sites of MS (Ivanov and Paarvanova, 2016). To bind lectins, erythrocytes were suspended in working medium of isotonic 10 mM NaCl and mannitol solution, containing the lectin, at 22 °C for 30 min, hematocrit 0.10. The erythrocytes were washed, suspended at hematocrit 0.45 in working medium and heated. At the spectrin denaturation temperature (49.5 °C) the C* = Cre + jCim changed by ΔC* = ΔCre + jΔCim. The dielectric loss curve of spectrin, ΔC"im, derived from ΔCim data, and the ΔCre vs Cre plot were used to study the dielectric relaxation, assuming the dielectric activity of denatured spectrin nil. Up to 0.25 mg/ml, WGA strongly subdued the ΔC"im curve and ΔCre vs Cre plot, while Concanavalin A was without effect. This outcome indicates that WGA, in contrast to Concanavalin A, could sever the bridges between MS and bilayer, such that implicate Glycophorin A

Eagle

<p>This is Eagle's Elements of Bioinformatics, also known as the Periodic Table of Bioinformatics. The table lists many bioinformatics tools by category, licence, and year of release. The online version is searchable and includes more information on each tool that is available by clicking on its symbol. The table is updated every few months and community contributions are welcome - tweet them to @eaglegen using hashtag #egelements.</p

Drug Exchange between Albumin Nanoparticles and Erythrocyte Membranes

The effects of thioridazine (TDZ) and chlorpromazine (CPZ) and bovine serum albumin nanoparticles (BSA-NPs) on erythrocyte membranes have been investigated. Two kinds of hemolytic assays were used; hemolysis under hypotonic conditions and hemolysis in physiological conditions. Under hypotonic conditions for 50% hemolysis, both TDZ and CPZ have a biphasic effect on membranes; namely, stabilization at low concentrations and destabilization after reaching a critical concentration. In physiological conditions, there are other critical concentrations above which both drugs hemolyse the erythrocites. In each case, the critical concentrations of TDZ are lower than those of CPZ, which is consistent with the ratio of their partition coefficients. When BSA-NPs are added to the erythrocyte suspension simultaneously with the drugs, the critical concentrations increase for both drugs. The effect is due to the incorporation of a portion of drug substances into the BSA-nanoparticles, which consequently leads to the decrease of the active drug concentrations in the erythrocyte suspension medium. Similar values of the critical concentrations are found when the BSA-NPs are loaded with the drugs before their addition to the erythrocyte suspension in which case the events of the partition are: desorption of the drug from BSA-NPs, diffusion through the medium, and adsorption on erythrocyte membranes. This result suggests that the drugs are not influenced by the processes of adsorption and desorption onto and out of the BSA-NPs, and that the use of BSA-NPs as drug transporters would allow intravenous administration of higher doses of the drug without the risk of erythrocyte hemolysis