A hermeneutic inquiry into user-created personas in different Namibian locales

Persona is a tool broadly used in technology design to support communicational interactions between designers and users. Different Persona types and methods have evolved mostly in the Global North, and been partially deployed in the Global South every so often in its original User-Centred Design methodology. We postulate persona conceptualizations are expected to differ across cultures. We demonstrate this with an exploratory-case study on user-created persona co-designed with four Namibian ethnic groups: ovaHerero, Ovambo, ovaHimba and Khoisan. We follow a hermeneutic inquiry approach to discern cultural nuances from diverse human conducts. Findings reveal diverse self-representations whereby for each ethnic group results emerge in unalike fashions, viewpoints, recounts and storylines. This paper ultimately argues User-Created Persona as a potentially valid approach for pursuing cross-cultural depictions of personas that communicate cultural features and user experiences paramount to designing acceptable and gratifying technologies in dissimilar locales

Natural and projectively equivariant quantizations by means of Cartan Connections

The existence of a natural and projectively equivariant quantization in the sense of Lecomte [20] was proved recently by M. Bordemann [4], using the framework of Thomas-Whitehead connections. We give a new proof of existence using the notion of Cartan projective connections and we obtain an explicit formula in terms of these connections. Our method yields the existence of a projectively equivariant quantization if and only if an \sl(m+1,\R)-equivariant quantization exists in the flat situation in the sense of [18], thus solving one of the problems left open by M. Bordemann.Comment: 13 page

Intracellular mechanism of the action of inhibin on the secretion of follicular stimulating hormone and of luteinizing hormone induced by LH-RH in vitro

The FSH secretion-inhibiting action of inhibin in vitro under basal conditions and also in the presence of LH-RH is suppressed by the addition of MIX, a phosphodiesterase inhibitor. In the presence of LH-RH, inhibin reduces significantly the intracellular level of cAMP in isolated pituitary cells. In contrast, the simultaneous addition of MIX and inhibin raises the cAMP level, and this stimulation is comparable to the increase observed when MIX is added alone. These observations suggest that one mode of action of inhibin could be mediated by a reduction in cAMP within the pituitary gonadotropic cell

Decomposition of symmetric tensor fields in the presence of a flat contact projective structure

Let $M$ be an odd-dimensional Euclidean space endowed with a contact 1-form $\alpha$. We investigate the space of symmetric contravariant tensor fields on $M$ as a module over the Lie algebra of contact vector fields, i.e. over the Lie subalgebra made up by those vector fields that preserve the contact structure. If we consider symmetric tensor fields with coefficients in tensor densities, the vertical cotangent lift of contact form $\alpha$ is a contact invariant operator. We also extend the classical contact Hamiltonian to the space of symmetric density valued tensor fields. This generalized Hamiltonian operator on the symbol space is invariant with respect to the action of the projective contact algebra $sp(2n+2)$. The preceding invariant operators lead to a decomposition of the symbol space (expect for some critical density weights), which generalizes a splitting proposed by V. Ovsienko

On sl(2)-equivariant quantizations

By computing certain cohomology of Vect(M) of smooth vector fields we prove that on 1-dimensional manifolds M there is no quantization map intertwining the action of non-projective embeddings of the Lie algebra sl(2) into the Lie algebra Vect(M). Contrariwise, for projective embeddings sl(2)-equivariant quantization exists.Comment: 09 pages, LaTeX2e, no figures; to appear in Journal of Nonlinear Mathematical Physic

Cohomology of groups of diffeomorphims related to the modules of differential operators on a smooth manifold

Let $M$ be a manifold and $T^*M$ be the cotangent bundle. We introduce a 1-cocycle on the group of diffeomorphisms of $M$ with values in the space of linear differential operators acting on $C^{\infty} (T^*M).$ When $M$ is the $n$-dimensional sphere, $S^n$, we use this 1-cocycle to compute the first-cohomology group of the group of diffeomorphisms of $S^n$, with coefficients in the space of linear differential operators acting on contravariant tensor fields.Comment: arxiv version is already officia

First-order dynamical phase transition in models of glasses: an approach based on ensembles of histories

We investigate the dynamics of kinetically constrained models of glass formers by analysing the statistics of trajectories of the dynamics, or histories, using large deviation function methods. We show that, in general, these models exhibit a first-order dynamical transition between active and inactive dynamical phases. We argue that the dynamical heterogeneities displayed by these systems are a manifestation of dynamical first-order phase coexistence. In particular, we calculate dynamical large deviation functions, both analytically and numerically, for the Fredrickson-Andersen model, the East model, and constrained lattice gas models. We also show how large deviation functions can be obtained from a Landau-like theory for dynamical fluctuations. We discuss possibilities for similar dynamical phase-coexistence behaviour in other systems with heterogeneous dynamics.Comment: 29 pages, 7 figs, final versio

A numerical approach to large deviations in continuous-time

We present an algorithm to evaluate the large deviation functions associated to history-dependent observables. Instead of relying on a time discretisation procedure to approximate the dynamics, we provide a direct continuous-time algorithm, valuable for systems with multiple time scales, thus extending the work of Giardin\`a, Kurchan and Peliti (PRL 96, 120603 (2006)). The procedure is supplemented with a thermodynamic-integration scheme, which improves its efficiency. We also show how the method can be used to probe large deviation functions in systems with a dynamical phase transition -- revealed in our context through the appearance of a non-analyticity in the large deviation functions.Comment: Submitted to J. Stat. Mec

Chaotic properties of systems with Markov dynamics

We present a general approach for computing the dynamic partition function of a continuous-time Markov process. The Ruelle topological pressure is identified with the large deviation function of a physical observable. We construct for the first time a corresponding finite Kolmogorov-Sinai entropy for these processes. Then, as an example, the latter is computed for a symmetric exclusion process. We further present the first exact calculation of the topological pressure for an N-body stochastic interacting system, namely an infinite-range Ising model endowed with spin-flip dynamics. Expressions for the Kolmogorov-Sinai and the topological entropies follow.Comment: 4 pages, to appear in the Physical Review Letter

Differential operators on supercircle: conformally equivariant quantization and symbol calculus

We consider the supercircle $S^{1|1}$ equipped with the standard contact structure. The conformal Lie superalgebra K(1) acts on $S^{1|1}$ as the Lie superalgebra of contact vector fields; it contains the M\"obius superalgebra $osp(1|2)$. We study the space of linear differential operators on weighted densities as a module over $osp(1|2)$. We introduce the canonical isomorphism between this space and the corresponding space of symbols and find interesting resonant cases where such an isomorphism does not exist