Against Amateur Economies: Spec Work Competitions and the Anti-spec Movement

The rise and rise of the amateur cultural producer has been greeted with a spectacular amount of celebratory rhetoric, in both popular and academic writing . It has also been criticised, often for the inferior quality of amateur productions compared to the fruits of professional labour. But apart from that by a small number of journalism scholars, little empirical research has been carried out with professional creative labourers about the impact of amateur economies on their work, and their responses to amateur production practices. This article addresses that gap, and also counterbalances the dominant celebratory discourse by focusing on an initiative that is critical of amateur economies and that emerges from creative workers themselves: the anti-spec movement within design industries. Anti-spec activists campaign against speculative (or spec) work, which is seen as one problematic materialisation of crowdsourced, amateur economies. Here, it is argued that responses to spec work can be understood in relation to designers’ ethics and values and the extent to which they feel that these are thrown into question by amateur activity

Seeing Data: Visualisation design should consider how we respond to statistics emotionally as well as rationally.

Understanding data visualisations is an essential skill in today’s data-driven society. But beyond technical considerations like accuracy and consistency, what makes a good visualisation and what should researchers consider when looking to communicate complex findings? Helen Kennedy presents an overview of her research investigating the many factors affecting our engagement with visualisations

How people feel about what companies do with their data is just as important as what they know about it

The recent revelation that Cambridge Analytica was able to acquire the Facebook data of 50 million people has led to a surge of interest and questions around what companies do with people's data. Amidst all of this, little attention has been paid to the feelings of those whose data are used, shared, and acted upon. According to Helen Kennedy, more qualitative understanding of how different people experience, negotiate, trust, distrust, or resist big data and data mining is required. Emotions and data are not separate. Given their significance, we need much more understanding of how people feel, as well as what they know, about what happens to their data

The vaccine passport debate reveals fundamental views about how personal data should be used, its role in reproducing inequalities, and the kind of society we want to live in

Helen Kennedy draws on evidence from the Living With Data survey to link public attitudes to data collection and use to views on Covid-19 vaccine passports. Finding widespread concern about the involvement of commercial technology companies in such initiatives and about the ways that data-driven schemes might deepen inequalities, she suggests there is an urgent need to listen to the thoughts and feelings of diverse and minoritized publics to ensure their voices are heard in related debates

Simple data visualisations have become key to communicating about the COVID-19 pandemic, but we know little about their impact

If you had mentioned ‘flattening the curve’ in 2019, chances are you would have been met with a blank stare. However, almost halfway through 2020, the language of data visualisation has become commonplace, and data visualisations are widely used to communicate about the pandemic to the public. However, as Helen Kennedy observes, their power to influence the public is still little understood

Defining the Civilian: The International Committee of the Red Cross’ Response to Crisis in Bosnia, 1992–1995

This article explores how the International Committee of the Red Cross defined non-combatants during the Bosnian War (1992–1995) and how those definitions contributed to a counter-narrative that disrupts familiar conceptualizations of the war as exclusively ethnic. Through an examination of Red Cross press releases, I argue that the Red Cross defined identity primarily based on individual experiences with violence and/or transnational constructions of vulnerability in war based on age and gender. This is largely in contrast to Western politicians and journalists who repeated the language of ultranationalist leaders and relied on ethno-nationalist categories to describe non-combatants. By examining the discursive practices of the Red Cross, historians have an opportunity to further understand why some communities and individuals experienced violence, and participated in the war, in ways counter-intuitive to the nationalist discourse

Subjective Intersections in the Face of the Machine

This article is a call to feminist science and technology studies (STS) to engage with debates about the intersectionality of gender with race and class in analyses of women’s relationships with their computers - these debates are well established in the broader field of gender studies, but comparatively absent from studies of gender and technology. Furthermore, in order to understand women’s many and varied technological relationships, it is necessary to explore the diverse ways in which individual women experience their gender, race and class in their relationships with their PCs. The article draws on the stories told by 14 working-class women from ethnic minority communities about the introduction of networked computers in their homes, to argue that we need to account for women’s subjective experiences of the identity intersections that take place in the face of the machine

Transcriptional regulation of copper metabolism genes in the liver of fetal and neonatal control and iron-deficient rats

Acknowledgments The authors’ work is supported by Scottish Government (Rural and Environmental Scientific and Analytical Services). We are grateful to Ms Val Stevens for analytical and technical assistance and to the Biological Resource Facility staff for husbandry and maintenance of the experimental animals. The authors declare no conflicts of interest. Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and the source are credited.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Viridans streptococcal bacteraemia in paediatric immunocompromised patients with malignant disease

Amongst the paediatric haematology/oncology patients attending the Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Glasgow, episodes of viridans streptococcal bacteraemia increased from 12% of al microbiologically documented bacteraemias (i.e. 10/81) in 1993 to 22% (18/83) in 1994. During the first year of this project (which started in December 1994), ITU support was required following the development of viridans streptococcal bacteraemia on 6 occasions, and of these, there were two fatalities. The overall aim of this study was to improve the management of this infection and to explore preventative strategies. Three different approaches were adopted: (1) an extensive epidemiological analysis was undertaken - to include all episodes of viridans streptococcal bacteraemia from December 1994 to December 2000. (2) Phenotypic, followed by genotypic analyses of isolates of viridans streptococci from mouth swabs and blood cultures were carried out to determine whether the mouth was in fact the source of organisms responsible for this infection. (3) Extensive antibiotic susceptibility studies were performed on all isolates of viridans streptococci from blood culture. In total, 69 episodes of viridans streptococcal bacteraemia occurred in 54 children. The infection was more often associated with patients with haematological malignancy (particularly AML), than those with solid tumours, and in the majority (84%) of episodes, the patients suffered from chemotherapy-induced mucositis or other forms of oral compromise. Forty-eight episodes of infection (70% of total) responded well to antimicrobial therapy with no evidence of additional clinical complications. However, in 21 cases (30% of total), pulmonary complications developed, with 8 of these requiring mechanical ventilation and supplemental oxygen. Five of these 8 cases also developed septic shock. S. oralis was the species most commonly isolated from blood culture (63% of total isolates of viridans streptococci) and S. mitis represented 25% of total isolates. Polymicrobial bloodstream infection occurred in 23% of episodes