‘It’s like they’re looking inside your body or inside your brain.’ Internet surveillance practices in a special school

This chapter reflects on the struggle of a small cohort of teenagers with physical disabilities to resist surveillance when they use the internet in a special school, in England. Findings obtained from an ethnographic study with eleven students with physical disabilities in a special school revealed, students internet access and use was under two forms of surveillance, (i) physical and (ii) virtual. Each form of surveillance is discussed with reference to a case study which challenges the idea of the panopticon in the school. The first case study of a young girl, Bruna finds the physical presence of adult staff becoming oppressive and intrusive. She turns to the online realm to find a private space to socialize with friends and family. Her story highlights her daily struggle to resist the physical surveillance she is under when using the internet on her personal device in the school. The second story discusses how a young male named John, comes to learn of the virtual surveillance he is under when he uses a school laptop at home for personal use. The two stories discussed in this chapter draw on the surveillance practices as experienced by teenagers with physical disabilities in a special school. To conclude the article argues the measures of resistance expressed by the students in the school, signal their need and struggle for online privacy, and questions whether extensive measures to monitor students’ use of the internet is justified by their disability

Social access: role of digital media in social relations of young people with disabilities

Digital media have enabled people with disabilities (PWDs) to connect with each other, but online relations and gaming have been found escapist. We propose the analytical lens of social access to examine how the role of digital media in PWDs’ social relations is shaped by (i) affordances of digital media, (ii) mixedness of relations, and (iii) interaction of online and offline worlds. This paper presents an ethnographic study in a school for young PWDs and highlights two observations. First, visual profiles on social media platforms could aggravate the social exclusion of young PWDs online and offline, marked by intra-disability and intersectional differences. Second, the co-presence afforded by digital media enabled young PWDs to resort to digital interactions in unwelcoming offline environments without changing the latter. Social access underlines the importance of studying how digital media interweave with offline social relations and inequalities, rarely altering but sometimes augmenting and ameliorating them

Counterfeit Pharmaceuticals and Methods to Test Them

Pharmaceutical counterfeiting is a global threat that can kill patients, contributes to the rise of drug resistance, and increases citizens’ mistrust of health systems. To monitor drug quality, governments and health programs must invest in regulations, technologies, and infrastructure, including anti-counterfeiting measures, specialised analytical facilities run by experienced staff, and portable technologies for screening medicines in the field

Constituent Phytochemicals from Catharanthus roseus

Catharanthus roseus belonging to family Apocynaceae is a plant with high medicinal importance and wide occurrence all over the world. It shows a number of therapeutic activities like antimicrobial, antidiabetic, anticancer, antiallergic, anti-inflammatory, cardioprotective activity etc. The present study is aimed to throw a light on the analysis and distribution of phytochemical constituents of C. roseus, transporters involved and influence of various factors on their abundance. A thorough analysis of the past and recent studies done in the field was made. C. roseus whole plant as well as individual parts contain diverse types of phytochemicals like alkaloids, phenols, saponins, tannins, terpenoids, steroids, flavonoids etc. The medicinal properties of C. roseus are attributed to the bioactivity of the above compounds. As the amount of phytochemicals extracted from the plant is less than the need, other different strategies like in-vitro cell culture technique, hairy root cultures, compost application, use of endophytes and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi etc. should be employed to enhance the production of phytochemicals

Review of K Mean and Fuzzy Clustering Algorithm

Data mining is the process of discovering patterns in large data sets. It has attracted a lot of attention from various industries and researchers for critical decision making and development. Researchers has proposed a number of algorithms have been proposed in past for clustering of data as data mining techniques. There are multiple techniques of mining relevant information from existing databases. K-Means is most common used algorithm for clustering. Multiple versions of K-Means have been proposed with different improvements. In this paper, we will review few data clustering techniques

Deaf women's experiences of maternity in primary care: an integrative review

Background: An estimated 24,000 people in the UK report using British Sign Language (BSL) as their first language. Misconceptions about deaf culture and language mean that deaf people have less access to health information and their health literacy is lower. Deaf people's health needs go under the radar in primary care with ensuing poorer health outcomes. Deaf women's experiences of maternity care are poorly understood. Methods: Using Whittemore and Knafl's method for an integrative review, the following databases were searched: EMBASE, MedLine, CINAHL and Maternity and Infant Care. After reviewing 430 journal article titles and abstracts against the inclusion/exclusion criteria, 11 articles were included for final review. Selected studies were conducted internationally and were available in English. 10 were qualitative studies, 1 used survey design. They were reviewed using the Caldwell Framework. Findings: These show that deaf women avoid seeking care, have a lack of access to health information and healthcare providers, including midwives, have a lack of deaf awareness. For deaf women, during pregnancy, birth and postnatal periods, this can mean having longer hospital stays and more complex postnatal care needs in both the hospital and community setting. Conclusions: Current care provisions do not always meet the needs of the deaf BSL using women who use maternity services. Midwives should be aware of deafness as a culture and how to best meet the needs of the community to improve health outcomes for women and their babies

Nonstandard electroconvection in a bent-core oxadiazole material

Electroconvection (EC) phenomena have been investigated in the nematic phase of a bent-core oxadiazole material with negative dielectric anisotropy and a frequency dependent conductivity anisotropy. The formation of longitudinal roll (LR) patterns is one of the predominant features observed in the complete frequency and voltage range studied. At voltages much above the LR threshold, various complex patterns such as the "crisscrossed" pattern, bimodal varicose, and turbulence are observed. Unusually, the nonstandard EC (ns-EC) instability in this material, is observed in a regime in which we measure the dielectric and conductivity anisotropies to be negative and positive respectively. A further significant observation is that the EC displays distinct features in the high and low temperature regimes of the nematic phase, supporting an earlier report that EC patterns could distinguish between regions that have been reported as uniaxial and biaxial nematic phases

Crystal structure of 3-benzoyl-2-[(5-bromo-2-Hydroxy-3-methoxybenzylidene)amino]-4,5,6,7-tetrahydrobenzo[b]thiophene

In the cyclo­hexene ring of the title compound, C23H20BrNO3S, the -(CH2)4- atoms are positionally disordered [occupancy ratio = 0.753 (6):0.247 (6)]. The ring has a half-chair conformation for both the major and minor components. The dihedral angles between the mean plane of the thio­phene ring and those of the benzene and phenyl rings are 35.2 (4) and 57.7 (3)°, respectively. The planes of the two aryl rings are twisted with respect to each other by 86.4 (6)°. In the mol­ecule, there is an O-H...N hydrogen bond forming an S(6) ring motif. In the crystal, mol­ecules are linked via C-H...O hydrogen bonds, forming chains parallel to [100].Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Rhythms of moving in and between digital media: a study on video diaries of young people with physical disabilities

This article develops a new framework for analysing digital media use and access by drawing on the concepts of ‘rhythm’ and ‘wayfaring.’ It unravels how young people with physical disabilities move in and between digital media devices, online sites and activities in an embodied and rhythmic way that happens at a fast or slow pace. The framework is used to analyse the video diaries of three male secondary school students with physical disabilities on their use of digital media at home. We propose methodological advances in studying digital media use as dynamic movement and provide alternative insights on digital inequalities