The Velvet Cage of Educational Con(pro)sumption

In the year that George Ritzer publishes the ninth edition of The McDonaldization of Society, moving his famous theory firmly Into the Digital Age, critical educator Petar Jandrić and sociologist Sarah Hayes invited George to a dialogue on the digital transformation of McDonaldization and its relationship to consumer culture. In this article, George first traces for us the origins of his theory that has endured for four decades. A key dimension of McDonaldization is the ‘iron cage’ of control, via rationalization, that was once contained within physical sites of bricks and mortar. Increasingly now, we encounter a ‘velvet cage’ in sites of digital consumption, at the hands of non-human technologies, that threaten human labour and autonomy. Exploited as unpaid con(pro)sumers, we labour to provide information for corporate digital billionaires, keeping McDonaldization alive, well, and even more predominant in augmented settings, including Higher Education, in the form of the McUniversity. With the rise of prosuming machines such as blockchain and bitcoin, that can both produce and consume without intervention from human prosumers, George concludes that prosumer capitalism will explode into unprecedented and unpredictable directions in the years to come

Specific Adhesion of Membranes Simultaneously Supports Dual Heterogeneities in Lipids and Proteins

Membrane adhesion is a vital component of many biological processes. Heterogeneities in lipid and protein composition are often associated with the adhesion site. These heterogeneities are thought to play functional roles in facilitating signalling. Here we experimentally examine this phenomenon using model membranes made of a mixture of lipids that is near a phase boundary at room temperature. Non-adherent model membranes are in a well-mixed, disordered-fluid lipid phase indicated by homogeneous distribution of a fluorescent dye that is a marker for the fluid-disordered (Ld) phase. We specifically adhere membranes to a flat substrate bilayer using biotin–avidin binding. Adhesion produces two types of coexisting heterogeneities: an ordered lipid phase that excludes binding proteins and the fluorescent membrane dye, and a disordered lipid phase that is enriched in both binding proteins and membrane dye compared with the non-adhered portion of the same membrane. Thus, a single type of adhesion interaction (biotin–avidin binding), in an initially-homogeneous system, simultaneously stabilizes both ordered-phase and disordered-phase heterogeneities that are compositionally distinct from the non-adhered portion of the vesicle. These heterogeneities are long-lived and unchanged upon increased temperature.This work was funded by start-up funds from The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) to VDG. MR was supported in part by undergraduate research fellowships from UT Austin. We are grateful to Professor Jeanne Stachowiak (Biomedical Engineering, UT Austin) for helpful conversations about membrane formation and to her and her group for technical assistance. We thank Professor Ernst-Ludwig Florin (Physics, UT Austin) for the extruder and for cover glasses. We thank Professor Lauren Ehrlich (Molecular Biosciences, UT Austin) for helpful conversations about the immune synapse.Center for Nonlinear Dynamic

Prosumer and Product Design Through Digital Tools

Currently, the growing interest of users and consumers in the participation of the creative process has led to the typical “maker culture” practices. Consequently, there is an increasing number of prosumers - users who produce what they consume - who want to be part of the design and transformation process of the products. In order to achieve it, prosumers have begun to use digital tools that greatly facilitate this task. These tools could vary depending on the number of users involved in the process and the freedom of participation that they have on the product. It has been presented a number of qualitative classification of cases involving the end user, individually or collectively, that has influenced as a prosumer in the product design process. The objective is to study the use of digital tools in the creative phase within the design process according to their different levels of participation with respect to the final product. The cases are shown in four tables according to the number of users involved in the process and their level of participation. In these tables, other important aspects related to the study of digital tools such as the type of contribution of the prosumer to the product or the design phase in which he participates will be identified. In conclusion, this work will show if there is a pattern in the use of digital tools according to the number of users involved in the process and the freedom of participation that they have and which are the reasons for their use

Predictors of Motivation to Coach in High School Students and Adult Coaches

We conducted two studies to investigate predictors of coaching motivation. In Study One, we focused on variables linked to coaching motivation and burnout in adult sports coaches. We examined high school extracurricular experiences, and coaching engagement. Positive interpersonal events experienced during high school predicted coaching motivation and a motivation. Positive interpersonal and performance events in high school predicted feelings of reduced accomplishment, while negative interpersonal and performance events in high school predicted physical exhaustion. Two aspects of coaching engagement, vigor and absorption predicted coaching motivation. Thus, coaches’ motivation was predicted by both high school and current coaching events. In Study Two, we examined whether the same high school events predicted a desire to coach in recent high school graduates. Participants retrospectively reported participation in high school sports or heavy investment in alternate activities (e.g., marching band). For both groups, identification with the activity and dedication to the activity predicted a desire to coach. A desire to coach was not predicted by high school extracurricular events. Our findings indicate that high school experiences exerted differential effects on recent graduates versus adult coaches in terms of attitudes toward coaching

The transition to ‘patienthood’, the contribution of the nursing assistant: a grounded theory study

The face of nursing is changing, as health-care organizations are looking to new assistant roles to support the registered nurse and potentially provide a source for apprenticeship toward registration. These developments are within a context of an existing assistant staff group, delivering much of the bedside care. Few studies have explored the dyadic relationship between nursing assistant and patient, despite the potential for their interactions to contribute to the patient experience. This study aimed to gain an understanding of patients’ perceptions of the nursing assistant role using constructivist grounded theory. Constant comparison guided data collection and analysis, and 4 core categories emerged: expectation, observation, meaningful connections, and adaptation. Within these core categories, we suggest the assistant plays a part in how participants adapt from the known self to a self of patienthood and the overall patient experience. We conclude that there is a necessity to understand more fully the dyadic relationship between patients and nursing assistants

Perceptions and images of “typical” Australian dishes: An exploratory study

The research investigates the perceived images that ‘typical’ Australian dishes evoke in the minds of consumers, including words they associate to describe typical Australian dishes. A questionnaire designed and distributed among undergraduate students at various universities yielded 561 usable responses. Three predominant responses, grilled/barbequed meats, steaks, and meat pies associated typical Australian dishes with; in addition, Australian dishes evoked four different images among respondents: positive, related to specific images (e.g., barbequed foods), neutral, negative, and food related. Overall, the findings underline limited knowledge. Consumer education could help broaden understanding, with resulting enhanced images of the country’s culinary attributes

Shopping with violence: Black Friday sales in the British context

This article argues that the 2014 adoption of the US shopping tradition of Black Friday sales to stores and supermarkets in the United Kingdom and beyond represents an important point of enquiry for the social sciences. We claim that the importation of the consumer event, along with the disorder and episodes of violence that accompany it, are indicative of the triumph of liberal capitalist consumer ideology while reflecting an embedded and cultivated form of insecurity and anxiety concomitant with the barbaric individualism, social envy and symbolic competition of consumer culture. Through observation and qualitative interviews, this article presents some initial analyses of the motivations and meanings attached to the conduct of those we begin to understand as ‘extreme shoppers’ and seeks to understand these behaviours against the context of the social harms associated with consumer culture

Translucent perovskite photovoltaics for building integration

Transparent photovoltaics provide diverse levels of average visible transmittance (AVT) along with concurrent light harvesting, making glass façades and windows accessible for photovoltaics. However, improvements in power conversion efficiency (PCE) and aesthetics are required to enhance commercial viability and public acceptance. This work presents the scalable fabrication of efficient micro-patterned translucent perovskite photovoltaics at optical qualities suited for building integration. Optimized laser-scribed transparent areas (25 μm) mitigate detrimental effects on electrical performance, featuring perovskite solar cells with 44% AVT and demonstrating industrial glass quality through neutral color rendering (CRI 97) and only 3% haze. Highlighting scalability, submodules yield PCEs of 9.0% at 32% AVT (4 cm2 aperture area). The transfer to two-terminal perovskite–perovskite tandem solar cells exhibiting PCEs of 17.7% at 12% AVT and 11.1% at 31% AVT demonstrates the first translucent perovskite tandem photovoltaics. Lastly, the novel concept of transmittance gradients with 7% cm−1 absolute change in AVT and 12.0% PCE for submodules is presented, providing a foundation for architectural individualizations

Health States of Exception: unsafe non-care and the (inadvertent) production of ‘bare life’ in complex care transitions

This paper draws on the work of Giorgio Agamben to understand how the social organisation of care transitions can reduce people to their 'bare' life thereby making harmful and degrading treatment seemingly legitimate. The findings of a two-year ethnographic study show how some people experience hospital discharge as undignified, inhumane and unsafe process, expressed through their lack of involvement in care planning, delayed discharge from hospital, and poorly coordinated care. Our analysis explores how these experiences stem from the way patients are constituted as 'unknown' and 'ineligible' subjects and, in turn, how professionals become 'not responsible' for their care. In effect the person is reduce to their 'bare' life with limited value within the care system. We suggest the social productio