From Glass Architecture to Big Brother: Scenes from a Cultural History of Transparency

In this essay, I want to reposition the Big Brother phenomenon in the context of an earlier debate about domestic space which occurred during the emergence of architectural modernism in the first decades of the twentieth century. At issue then was the physical reconstruction of the home, particularly through the increasing use of glass as a design element. While glass architecture is even more prevalent in the present, its spatial impact—particularly in terms of its capacity to alter the relationship between the ‘inside’ and the ‘outside’—has now been matched or exceeded in many respects by the effects of electronic media. By tracing the parallel between the unsettling spatial effects produced by both glass construction and the electronic screen, I will sketch a cultural logic linking the modernist project of architectural transparency to the contemporary repositioning of the home as an interactive media centre

New Service Development in Small and Medium Accounting Practice Firms. The Italian Case.

This chapter focuses on the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) as a case study for the emergence of hybrid subjectivities within the new museum. Fueled by an optimistic idealism about how technology might transform everyday life, ACMI was conceived as a catalyst for new forms of cultural consciousness. The chapter casts ACMI's initial willingness to experiment with innovative representational technology as a strategic attempt to position itself as a pioneering new media institution, and to engage in alternative forms of cultural citizenship. Its early public exhibitions, for example, often eschewed chronological histories of the moving image in favor of phenomenological displays of visual knowledge and embodied new media “experiences.” In tracking ACMI's changing curatorial, architectural, and experiential directives, this chapter foregrounds the significance of the museum as a producer rather than distributor of stories, experiences, and objects. The argument proceeds with close reference to empirical audience experience research data collected from ACMI visitors, and is situated in relation to historical transformations of pedagogy as a driver for museological display. The concept of “ambient aesthetics” is, finally, proposed as a key conceptual framework for evaluating how contemporary museums might articulate a new kind of “flexible” citizenship in a transnational public sphere

Pharmacological interventions for challenging behaviour in children with intellectual disabilities: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Background Psychotropic medications are frequently used to treat challenging behaviour in children with intellectual disabilities, despite a lack of evidence for their efficacy. This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to determine the safety and efficacy of pharmacological interventions for challenging behaviour among children with intellectual disabilities. Methods Electronic databases were searched and supplemented with a hand search of reference lists and trial registries. Randomised controlled trials of pharmacological interventions for challenging behaviour among children with intellectual disabilities were included. Data were analysed using meta-analysis or described narratively if meta-analysis was not possible. For quality assessment, the Cochrane Risk of Bias tool and the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) approach were used. Results Fourteen studies including 912 participants met inclusion criteria. Antipsychotic medication reduced challenging behaviour among children with intellectual disabilities in the short-term (SMD = −1.09, p < 0.001 for risperidone; SMD = −0.64, p <0.001 for aripiprazole). However, there were significant side-effects including elevated prolactin levels (SMD = 3.22, p < 0.001) and weight gain (SMD = 0.82, p < 0.001). Evidence was inconclusive regarding the effectiveness of anticonvulsants and antioxidants for reducing challenging behaviour. The quality of all evidence was low and there were no long term follow up studies. Conclusions Antipsychotic medications appear to be effective for reducing challenging behaviour in the short-term among children with intellectual disabilities, but they carry a risk of significant side effects. Findings from this review must be interpreted with caution as studies were typically of low quality and most outcomes were based on a small number of studies. Further long-term, high-quality research is needed to determine the effectiveness and safety of psychotropic medication for reducing challenging behaviour

Digital storytelling, image-making and self-representation: Building digital literacy as an ethical response for supporting Aboriginal young peoples’ digital identities

From the early 19th century, Aboriginal culture in southeast Australia was severely disrupted by colonisation, the affects of which continue to reverberate within that community today. Visual material from the colonial period was often used as a means for classifying and labelling Aboriginal people in the southeast, resulting in many images being used to justify the idea of the so-called inevitable decline of Aboriginal people and to reinforce racist stereotypes. In this paper we discuss a digital storytelling workshop with Aboriginal young people from southeast Australia, which sought to develop digital literacy as an ethical imperative that would allow Aboriginal youth to construct visual content that not only challenged the traditional concept of digital storytelling as a linear, first-person, autobiographical narrative, but focused on developing Aboriginal young peoples’ capacity to control digital self-representations, which supported their explorations of their identity and culture. This was considered in terms of an ethical response to the use of visual methods in research with Aboriginal young people, as some images that are produced and consumed in the digital realm may provoke inappropriate and racist responses, a reality among Aboriginal communities, and one potentially aggravated by the rapid transmission of digital images via social network sites

You and Your Neighbor

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A casa estranhada

Em meados da década de 1990, quando o mercado da internet cresceu em velocidade avassaladora, circularam notícias na mídia a respeito da casa que Bill Gates estaria construindo em Seattle. Concebida como uma inovadora fusão entre tecnologia da informática e arquitetura, a residência multimilionária de Gates ostentava todas as costumeiras funções automatizadas, como controle de temperatura e sistemas de segurança eletrônicos, além de alguns extras, como a banheira que ligava automaticamente assim que o seu ‘mestre' adentrava o espaço da casa.

The architectures of media power: editing, the newsroom, and urban public space

This paper considers the relation of the newsroom and the city as a lens into the more general relation of production spaces and mediated publics. Leading theoretically from Lee and LiPuma’s (2002) notion of ‘cultures of circulation’, and drawing on an ethnography of the Toronto Star, the paper focuses on how media forms circulate and are enacted through particular practices and material settings. With its attention to the urban milieus and orientations of media organizations, this paper exhibits both affinities with but also differences to current interests in the urban architectures of media, which describe and theorize how media get ‘built into’ the urban experience more generally. In looking at editing practices situated in the newsroom, an emphasis is placed on the phenomenological appearance of media forms both as objects for material assembly as well as more abstracted subjects of reflexivity, anticipation and purposiveness. Although this is explored with detailed attention to the settings of the newsroom and the city, the paper seeks to also provide insight into the more general question of how publicness is material shaped and sited

Epidemiology of prenatal alcohol use and fetal alcohol spectrum disorder

Prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) can lead to fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD). FASD refers to a range of lifelong conditions caused by PAE, characterised by a distinctive facial phenotype, growth deficiencies and/or neurobehavioural impairments. This thesis presents four studies that I conducted to address knowledge gaps relevant to the epidemiology of PAE and FASD. First, objective measures of PAE are essential for identifying children at risk of adverse outcomes. Biomarkers have been advocated for use in universal PAE screening programs but their validity had not been comprehensively evaluated. I conducted a systematic review and found that biomarker test performance varied widely across studies. The quality of published studies was low, resulting in insufficient evidence to support the use of objective measures of PAE in practice. Second, the prevalence of FASD in the UK was unknown. Active case ascertainment studies have not been possible due to funding and ethical issues. To overcome these issues, I developed an algorithm to estimate FASD prevalence using existing data from a population-based birth cohort in England (ALSPAC). Up to 17% of children met criteria for FASD, indicating that it is a significant public health concern. Third, although PAE is the sole necessary cause of FASD, it is not always sufficient. Understanding risk factors for FASD is important for informing prevention strategies. However, existing studies have mostly been limited to discussion of association, rather than causation. I produced a causal diagram to depict hypothesised causal pathways to FASD. I used this diagram to guide analyses in a FASD risk factor study, reported below. Finally, I investigated FASD risk factors using multivariable logistic regression within the ALSPAC cohort. Prenatal stress, smoking and mental health problems increased the odds of FASD. Social support and folic acid supplementation were protective. These results indicate novel potential targets for FASD intervention

Plasmonic and all-dielectric chiral metamaterials for biomolecule detection

Metamaterials have proven themselves revolutionary as a means of bestowing novel properties to materials, for use in a variety of applications. One such area of focus is the enhancement of chiral light-matter interactions. Chirality is a property observed throughout the natural world, which has important consequences in health, environmental and pharmaceutical fields, to name but a few. Metamaterials have been used to enhance the detection of chiral molecules given the inherent weakness in traditional sensing methods. In this thesis, two forms of metamaterial platforms and their optical properties are investigated through a combination of experiment and numerical simulations. Firstly, the CD spectra of plasmonic gammadions are rationalised and the sensitivity of each resonance to ordered and disordered biomolecule deposits are explored. It is determined that the spectra exhibit localised and delocalised (periodic) resonances. Both types of resonance are shown to display enantiomeric sensitivity, however, only the localised modes show a dependence on the structure of the deposited chiral biomolecular layer. This is reconciled through electromagnetic field analysis, which indicated that the presence of birefringent (ordered) chiral layers can perturb the gammadion’s chiral near fields and act as sources/sinks of optical chirality. As a result, the asymmetric perturbations to the coupling between the nanostructure’s arms are reflected in the CD spectra of the metamaterials. The second form of metamaterial investigated is composed of silicon S-shaped structures, fabricated to four different heights between 160-240 nm. Both enantiomorphic and racemic arrays are fabricated, and their reflectance and ORD spectra studied. The sources of their spectral features are determined through a numerical method known as multipole decomposition, which is also used to explain the height dependence of the silicon on the spectra. It is determined that at lower silicon thicknesses the magnetic dipole contribution dominates and at higher thicknesses, the changes to their reflectance arise from red shifting of multipole contributions and an increase in magnetic quadrupole character. In addition to traditional Stokes polarimetry, Mueller matrix polarimetry was also performed on the samples. This method allows for a full characterisation of the optical properties of the samples, which were found to be bianisotropic in nature. The MMP data confirmed that the large optical rotations observed in the ORD measurements were a result of the linear birefringence of the samples, highlighting the limitations in standard polarimetry methods which often cannot distinguish between chiral and linear effects. The sensing capabilities of the silicon structures were also investigated, revealing their refractive index response to be weak. Significant changes to the reflectance and MMP spectra are, however, observed after a layered biomolecule deposition. Numerical simulations were performed, where the layer was approximated as a dipole, to determine if the observed behaviour was a result of the biomolecular charge. Some qualitative agreement in the simulated reflectance spectra was observed, and field analysis revealed that the presence of the charged chiral layer produced an asymmetric change in the field properties of the structures, consistent with the observed MMP data. The model, however, broke down under orthogonal light polarisation, indicating that further refinement is required to confirm the source of the experimental results