The social affordances of flashpacking: exploring the mobility nexus of travel and communication

The proliferation of digital devices and online social media and networking technologies has altered the backpacking landscape in recent years. Thanks to the ready availability of online communication, travelers are now able to stay in continuous touch with friends, family and other travelers while on the move. This article introduces the practice of ‘flashpacking’ to describe this emerging trend and interrogates the patterns of connection and disconnection that become possible as corporeal travel and social technologies converge. Drawing on the concepts of ‘assemblages’ and ‘affordances’, we outline several aspects of this new sociality: virtual mooring, following, collaborating, and (dis)connecting. The conclusion situates this discussion alongside broader questions about the shifting nature of social life in an increasingly mobile and mediated world and suggests directions for future research at the intersection of tourism and technology

Small drill-hole, gas mini-permeameter probe

The distal end of a basic tube element including a stopper device with an expandable plug is positioned in a pre-drilled hole in a rock face. Rotating a force control wheel threaded on the tube element exerts force on a sleeve that in turn causes the plug component of the stopper means to expand and seal the distal end of the tube in the hole. Gas under known pressure is introduced through the tube element. A thin capillary tube positioned in the tube element connects the distal end of the tube element to means to detect and display pressure changes and data that allow the permeability of the rock to be determined

Thermal energy storage in a confined aquifer: Experimental results

This is the published version. Copyright 1979 American Geophysical UnionTo aid in testing the idea of storing thermal energy in aquifers, an experiment was performed by Auburn University in which 54,784 m3 of water was pumped from a shallow supply aquifer, heated to an average temperature of 55°C, and injected into a deeper confined aquifer where the ambient temperature was 20°C. After a storage period of 51 days, 55,345 m3 of water were produced from the confined aquifer. Throughout the experiment, which lasted approximately 6 months, groundwater temperatures were recorded at six depths in each of 10 observation wells, and hydraulic heads were recorded in five observation wells. In order to prevent errors due to thermal convection, most of the observation wells recording temperature had to be backfilled with sand. During the 41-day production period, the temperature of the produced water varied from 55° to 33°C, and 65% of the injected thermal energy was recovered. At no time was an appreciable amount of free thermal convection observed in the storage formation. The dominant heat dissipation mechanisms appeared to be hydrodynamic thermal dispersion and possible mixing of cold and hot water induced by clogging and unclogging of the injection-production well. On the basis of laboratory and field studies, it was concluded that clogging of the injection well, which constituted the major technical problem during the experiment, was caused by the freshwater-sensitive nature of the storage aquifer. Due to the relatively low concentration of cations in the supply water, clay particles would swell, disperse, and migrate until they became trapped in the relatively small pores connecting the larger pores. Surging the pump and back washing the injection well would dislodge the clogging particles and temporarily improve the storage formation permeability. The phenomenon seems largely independent of temperature because it was reproduced in the laboratory with unheated water. It may, however, depend on pore velocity. Future research should be directed toward procedures for selecting storage aquifers that will have minimal susceptibility to clogging and other geochemical problems. Procedures for overcoming such difficulties are needed also because clogging and related phenomena will be more the rule than the exception. Designing an aquifer thermal storage system for maximum energy recovery would involve selecting an appropriate aquifer, analyzing the effects of hydrodynamic thermal dispersion and thermal convection if it is predicted to occur, anticipating geochemical problems, designing the optimum supply-injection-production well configuration and injecting a sufficiently large volume of heated water to realize economies of scale related to increasing volume-surface area ratio

Using neuroimaging genomics to investigate the evolution of human brain structure

Alterations in brain size and organization represent some of the most distinctive changes in the emergence of our species. Yet, there is limited understanding of how genetic factors contributed to altered neuroanatomy during human evolution. Here, we analyze neuroimaging and genetic data from up to 30,000 people in the UK Biobank and integrate with genomic annotations for different aspects of human evolution, including those based on ancient DNA and comparative genomics. We show that previously reported signals of recent polygenic selection for cortical anatomy are not replicable in a more ancestrally homogeneous sample. We then investigate relationships between evolutionary annotations and common genetic variants shaping cortical surface area and white-matter connectivity for each hemisphere. Our analyses identify single-nucleotide polymorphism heritability enrichment in human-gained regulatory elements that are active in early brain development, affecting surface areas of several parts of the cortex, including left-hemispheric speech-associated regions. We also detect heritability depletion in genomic regions with Neanderthal ancestry for connectivity of the uncinate fasciculus; this is a white-matter tract involved in memory, language, and socioemotional processing with relevance to neuropsychiatric disorders. Finally, we show that common genetic loci associated with left-hemispheric pars triangularis surface area overlap with a human-gained enhancer and affect regulation of ZIC4, a gene implicated in neurogenesis. This work demonstrates how genomic investigations of present-day neuroanatomical variation can help shed light on the complexities of our evolutionary past

The social affordances of flashpacking: exploring the mobility nexus of travel and communication

The proliferation of digital devices and online social media and networking technologies has altered the backpacking landscape in recent years. Thanks to the ready availability of online communication, travelers are now able to stay in continuous touch with friends, family and other travelers while on the move. This article introduces the practice of ‘flashpacking’ to describe this emerging trend and interrogates the patterns of connection and disconnection that become possible as corporeal travel and social technologies converge. Drawing on the concepts of ‘assemblages’ and ‘affordances’, we outline several aspects of this new sociality: virtual mooring, following, collaborating, and (dis)connecting. The conclusion situates this discussion alongside broader questions about the shifting nature of social life in an increasingly mobile and mediated world and suggests directions for future research at the intersection of tourism and technology

The Production of Hospitable Space: Commercial Propositions and Consumer Co-Creation in a Bar Operation

This paper examines the processes through which a commercial bar is transformed into a hospitable space. Drawing on a study of a venue patronized by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual/transgender consumers, it considers how social and commercial forms of hospitality are mobilized. The paper argues that hospitable space has an ideological, normative and situational dimension. More specifically, it suggests the bar’s operation is tied to a set of ideological conceptions, which become the potential basis of association and disassociation among consumers. It examines the forces and processes that shape who participates in the production and consumption of hospitality and how. Finally, it considers the situational, emergent nature of hospitality and the discontinuous production of hospitable space. Rather than focusing exclusively on host-guest or provider-customer relations, which dominates existing work on hospitality, the paper examines how consumers’ perceptions, actions and interactions shape the production of hospitality. By doing so the paper offers an alternative approach to understanding queer spaces, bar operation as well as hospitality

Geostatistical analysis of centimeter-scale hydraulic conductivity variations at the MADE site

This is the published version. Copyright American Geophysical Union[1] Spatial variations in hydraulic conductivity (K) provide critical controls on solute transport in the subsurface. Recently, new direct-push tools were developed for high-resolution characterization of K variations in unconsolidated settings. These tools were applied to obtain 58 profiles (vertical resolution of 1.5 cm) from the heavily studied macrodispersion experiment (MADE) site. We compare the data from these 58 profiles with those from the 67 flowmeter profiles that have served as the primary basis for characterizing the heterogeneous aquifer at the site. Overall, the patterns of variation displayed by the two data sets are quite similar, in terms of both large-scale structure and autocorrelation characteristics. The direct-push K values are, on average, roughly a factor of 5 lower than the flowmeter values. This discrepancy appears to be attributable, at least in part, to opposite biases between the two methods, with the current versions of the direct-push tools underestimating K in the highly permeable upper portions of the aquifer and the flowmeter overestimating K in the less permeable lower portions. The vertically averaged K values from a series of direct-push profiles in the vicinity of two pumping tests at the site are consistent with the K estimates from those tests, providing evidence that the direct-push estimates are of a reasonable magnitude. The results of this field demonstration show that direct-push profiling has the potential to characterize highly heterogeneous aquifers with a speed and resolution that has not previously been possible

Imaging genetics of language network functional connectivity reveals links with language-related abilities, dyslexia and handedness

Published on 28 september 2024Language is supported by a distributed network of brain regions with a particular contribution from the left hemisphere. A multi-level understanding of this network requires studying its genetic architecture. We used resting-state imaging data from 29,681 participants (UK Biobank) to measure connectivity between 18 left-hemisphere regions involved in multimodal sentence-level processing, as well as their right-hemisphere homotopes, and interhemispheric connections. Multivariate genome-wide association analysis of this total network, based on genetic variants with population frequencies >1%, identified 14 genomic loci, of which three were also associated with asymmetry of intrahemispheric connectivity. Polygenic dispositions to lower language-related abilities, dyslexia and left-handedness were associated with generally reduced leftward asymmetry of functional connectivity. Exome-wide association analysis based on rare, protein-altering variants (frequencies <1%) suggested 7 additional genes. These findings shed new light on genetic contributions to language network organization and related behavioural traits.This research was funded by the Max Planck Society (Germany), together with grants from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) (grant number 054-15-101) and French National Research Agency (ANR, grant No. 15-HBPR-0001-03) as part of the FLAG-ERA consortium project “MULTI-LATERAL”, a Partner Project to the European Union’s Flagship Human Brain Project, and the Language in Interaction consortium (NWO Gravitation grant number 024-001-006). The study was conducted using the UK Biobank resource under application no. 16066 with C.F. as the principal applicant. Our study made use of quality-controlled brain images generated by an image-processing pipeline developed and run on behalf of the UK Biobank. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, and the decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript. The authors thank Else Eising, Giacomo Bignardi and Tristan Looden for their thoughts on the methodology. The authors thank Fabrice Crivello and Antonietta Pepe for their involvement in the inception of this project. The authors would like to thank the research participants and employees of 23andMe, Inc. for making this work possible