Moving with the Screen on Zoom: Reconnecting with Bodily and Environmental Awareness

Rather than seeing Zoom as a replacement for practicing movement and dance in a shared physical space, I propose to consider our relationship with the screen on Zoom as a movement in its own right. Using my experience of teaching movement on Zoom, I ask how we can connect with another via the screen without losing awareness of our bodies and the space which we're in. I argue that Zoom is a place of 'moving selfies' in dialogue where we can engage critically with the screen by practicing seeing with the whole body and moving with diffuse awareness and where we can critically reflect on our own habits of framing the world and its biases

La cérémonie du thé dans la peinture anglaise du dix-huitième siècle

Au dix-huitième siècle, un nouveau genre pictural apparaît en Angleterre avec l’essor du commerce du thé et l’évolution des modes de vie. La cérémonie du thé se développe parmi les classes dirigeantes et chez les négociants de l’East India Company, qui se font peindre dans des conversation pieces. Ces tableaux qui regroupent la famille et parfois les amis soulignent le statut social des personnages représentés dans leur environnement et révèlent les transformations des relations familiales. Ce genre national évolue avec les sensibilités et sera même tourné en dérision par quelques caricatures à la fin du siècle.A new genre appeared in eighteenth-century Britain with the development of the tea trade and changing lifestyles. The tea party was widespread among the ruling classes and the traders of the East India Company who were painted in conversation pieces. These paintings, which brought together families and sometimes friends, focus on the social status of the characters shown in their environment and highlight the changes in family life. This national genre evolved with sensibilities and was even ridiculed by some caricatures at the end of the century

'Buying moments of happiness' : luck, time and agency among Chinese casino players in London

This thesis explores how Chinese individuals experience social change as a result of migration and how this takes shape in the practice of casino gambling in the UK. In London, a high proportion of casino customers are of Chinese origin, especially in those casinos which are situated in the vicinity of Chinatown where I carried out fieldwork. In the thesis, the nature of this relationship is reconsidered as a mutual encounter against the political and economic background of the British gambling environment, a phenomenological description of gamblers’ actions when they are gambling and an examination of how migration is experienced by different individuals. The aim is to challenge the perception of gambling as an irrational activity which presupposes a restricted conception of time, economic rationality and success. As such, this thesis focuses on Chinese gamblers’ ideas of luck, fate and greed and reflects on the different ideas of success that emerge from risk taking of various kinds including in business, through migration and last, but not least, in the casino. It demonstrates that the relationship between time and money cannot be assumed but must be reconsidered in situ through the way individuals create and experience different temporalities and rationalities via the circulation of money. The casino is a particularly illuminating place since the articulation of time and money is constructed in contrast with the notion of time discipline that dominates most other life rhythms. This means that even though the circulation of money and the flow of time may be suspended or slowed down in the aftermath of the migration journey, the space of the casino, with its contained spatiotemporality, still offers the opportunity to experience movement in a repeated and systematic manner. To summarise, this thesis shows how Chinese people in London shape and re-shape their selves forming different temporalities and using various ways of exchanging money.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Qualitative Research in Gambling

Gambling is both a multi-billion-dollar international industry and a ubiquitous social and cultural phenomenon. It is also undergoing significant change, with new products and technologies, regulatory models, changing public attitudes and the sheer scale of the gambling enterprise necessitating innovative and mixed methodologies that are flexible, responsive and ‘agile’. This book seeks to demonstrate that researchers should look beyond the existing disciplinary territory and the dominant paradigm of ‘problem gambling’ in order to follow those changes across territorial, political, technical, regulatory and conceptual boundaries. The book draws on cutting-edge qualitative work in disciplines including geography, organisational studies, sociology, East Asian studies and anthropology to explore the production and consumption of risk, risky places, risk technologies, the gambling industry and connections between gambling and other kinds of speculation such as financial derivatives. In doing so it addresses some of the most important issues in contemporary social science, including: the challenges of studying deterritorialised social phenomena; globalising technologies and local markets; regulation as it operates across local, regional and international scales; and the rise of games, virtual worlds and social media

C-terminal phosphorylation of NaV1.5 impairs FGF13-dependent regulation of channel inactivation

International audienceVoltage-gated Na(+) (NaV) channels are key regulators of myocardial excitability, and Ca(2+)/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaMKII)-dependent alterations in NaV1.5 channel inactivation are emerging as a critical determinant of arrhythmias in heart failure. However, the global native phosphorylation pattern of NaV1.5 subunits associated with these arrhythmogenic disorders and the associated channel regulatory defects remain unknown. Here, we undertook phosphoproteomic analyses to identify and quantify in situ the phosphorylation sites in the NaV1.5 proteins purified from adult WT and failing CaMKIIδc-overexpressing (CaMKIIδc-Tg) mouse ventricles. Of 19 native NaV1.5 phosphorylation sites identified, two C-terminal phosphoserines at positions 1938 and 1989 showed increased phosphorylation in the CaMKIIδc-Tg compared with the WT ventricles. We then tested the hypothesis that phosphorylation at these two sites impairs fibroblast growth factor 13 (FGF13)-dependent regulation of NaV1.5 channel inactivation. Whole-cell voltage-clamp analyses in HEK293 cells demonstrated that FGF13 increases NaV1.5 channel availability and decreases late Na(+) current, two effects that were abrogated with NaV1.5 mutants mimicking phosphorylation at both sites. Additional co-immunoprecipitation experiments revealed that FGF13 potentiates the binding of calmodulin to NaV1.5 and that phosphomimetic mutations at both sites decrease the interaction of FGF13 and, consequently, of calmodulin with NaV1.5. Together, we have identified two novel native phosphorylation sites in the C terminus of NaV1.5 that impair FGF13-dependent regulation of channel inactivation and may contribute to CaMKIIδc-dependent arrhythmogenic disorders in failing hearts

Fair Game: producing gambling research

In 2011 we began a four-year project funded by the European Research Council (ERC) to investigate new ways to study emerging gambling phenomena across territorial, conceptual and disciplinary boundaries. While we do not attribute any essential moral value to gambling we are interested in the inequalities it generates within and between communities. e work across a number of different scales, from the global and exceptional to the local and everyday. The relationship between financial services, gambling and capitalism is of interest to us, for example, as are apparently mundane encounters between blackjack players in a casino in Nova Gorica. We are equally interested in the production of gambling as its consumption: it is impossible to understand the impact of gambling products without considering the conditions which enable and constrain their production. In order to study these phenomena we have spent several years embedded within different gambling cultures. Claire Loussouarn has worked with Chinese casino customers in London and more recently with spread betting companies and the financial services industry in the City of London. Andrea Pisac is a trained croupier who has worked in Nova Gorica and London. Rebecca Cassidy has worked in the horse racing industries in the United Kingdom and the United States and in betting shops in London