Ebookness

Since the mid-2000s, the ebook has stabilized into an ontologically distinct form, separate from PDFs and other representations of the book on the screen. The current article delineates the ebook from other emerging digital genres with recourse to the methodologies of platform studies and book history. The ebook is modelled as three concentric circles representing its technological, textual and service infrastructure innovations. This analysis reveals two distinct properties of the ebook: a simulation of the services of the book trade and an emphasis on user textual manipulation. The proposed model is tested with reference to comparative studies of several ebooks published since 2007 and defended against common claims of ebookness about other digital textual genres

Freedom in mundane mobilities: caravanning in Denmark

Freedom is a widely discussed and highly elusive concept, and has long been represented in exoticised, masculinised and individualised discourses. Freedom is often exemplified through the image of a solitary male explorer leaving the female space of home and familiarity and going to remote places of the world. Through in-situ interviews with families caravanning in Denmark, the primary aim of this study is to challenge existing dominant discourses surrounding the subject of freedom within leisure and tourism studies. Secondly, we shed further light on an under-researched medium of mobility, that of domestic caravanning. This serves to not only disrupt representations of freedom as occurring through exoticised, masculinised and individualised practices, but to give attention to the domestic, banal contexts where the everyday and tourism intersect, which are often overlooked. This novel repositioning opens up new avenues in tourism studies for critical research into the geographies of freedom in mundane, everyday contexts

Conveying identity with mobile content

A series of mobile phone prototypes called The Swarm have been developed in response to the user needs identified in a three-year empirical study of young people’s use of mobile phones. The prototypes take cues from user led innovation and provide multiple avatars that allow individuals to define and manage their own virtual identity. This paper briefly maps the evolution of the prototypes and then describes how the pre-defined, color coded avatars in the latest version are being given greater context and personalization through the use of digital images. This not only gives ‘serendipity a nudge’ by allowing groups to come together more easily, it provides contextual information that can reduce gratuitous contact

Substrates and Settings: Quantifying Locomotor Performance in Functional and Ecological Contexts

Animal locomotion has been studied extensively in the lab to understand the fundamental mechanisms required for stability, propulsion, endurance, and speed. Yet, quantifying and comparing these same types of parameters is much more difficult in the field and thus remains uncommon. We endeavor to shed light on several well-studied aspects of locomotion using a model species moving both in the lab on unnatural substrates and in the field on natural substrates. In the field, we measured the length of over 600 strides of a small lizard (Aspidoscelis sexlineata) to examine movement in a natural context. Furthermore, we measured escape velocity on a subset of animals and compared these data to sprint velocities captured in the lab on a two-meter photo-celled timed track. From lizard spoor, we found that stride length is not related to incline, heading, or path length, but that escape speed was related to path length, incline, and heading. We will present data on sprint and walking performance, as well as compare acceleration capacity on an artificial surface vs a nature sand substrate

Submental sensitive transcutaneous electrical stimulation reverses virtual lesion of the oropharyngeal cortex

ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to assess the effect of submental sensitive transcutaneous electrical stimulation (SSTES) on pharyngeal cortical representation after a virtual pharyngeal lesion in healthy subjects.MethodsMotor-evoked potentials of the mylohyoid muscles and videofluoroscopic parameters were measured before and after the creation of the virtual lesion, at the end of SSTES (T0), at 30minutes (T30) and 60minutes (T60).ResultsNine subjects completed the study. After 20minutes of SSTES, there was an increase of motor-evoked potential amplitude at 0 and 30min (P<0.05). There was no significant modification of videofluoroscopic measurements. Regarding the cortical mapping after SSTES, there was an increase in the number of points with a cortical response in the dominant hemisphere but also in the non-dominant hemisphere, effect which remained constant at 60minutes (P<0.05).DiscussionSSTES is effective on cortical plasticity for the mylohyoid muscles and reverses pharyngeal cortical inhibition in healthy subjects. It could therefore be a simple non-invasive way to treat post-stroke dysphagia