Birthing pains: How cyborgs refigure medical bodies, technologies, and objectives

Cyborgs are polymorphic and not yet visibly different from humans in part because cyborgic technologies have just been developed, in part because we are not trained to see how the post human arises. The birth of cyborgs alters the core of medicine from disease-containment and death-assessment to enhancement of function and image, to transgression of previous natural bounds as established by the possibility of space and oceanic travel. Cyborgs, as postmodern/ posthuman products of medicine, make visible the current shift in the construction of medical bodies, technologies, and objectives. Medical bodies have been determined by a conception of patienthood or diseased body. The connection of body and disease as distinct species happened in the medical enclosure: the hospital-clinic, during mid-late 19th century. In the hospital-clinic, the medical body has been clearly mapped in terms of disease identity or malfunction, and it has encountered medical technologies used to aid in diagnosis. The patient-doctor relationship has shifted because of the revolution in instrumentation at the turn of the century. Another shift can be discerned, as it is again mirrored in the relations of doctor-patient, as it has been re-structured through cyberspace and expert systems. Clearly, the revolution or scientification of medicine has been fueled by the tuberculosis crisis as it challenged medical and political institutions. A similar crisis has occurred with AIDS: is cyborg-technology the fulfillment of the modem dream of immortality and total control in the face of the epidemic? An easy answer to such question cannot be produced. Cyborgs are a product of the meeting of natural and human sciences through cybernetics. Their existence and proliferation destabilize assumptions at the philosophical foundations of knowledge and medicine as well as our conceptions of identity and rights, through an unsettling of the connection between community-individuality, of the distinction between private and public domains

An Integer Linear Programming Solution to the Telescope Network Scheduling Problem

Telescope networks are gaining traction due to their promise of higher resource utilization than single telescopes and as enablers of novel astronomical observation modes. However, as telescope network sizes increase, the possibility of scheduling them completely or even semi-manually disappears. In an earlier paper, a step towards software telescope scheduling was made with the specification of the Reservation formalism, through the use of which astronomers can express their complex observation needs and preferences. In this paper we build on that work. We present a solution to the discretized version of the problem of scheduling a telescope network. We derive a solvable integer linear programming (ILP) model based on the Reservation formalism. We show computational results verifying its correctness, and confirm that our Gurobi-based implementation can address problems of realistic size. Finally, we extend the ILP model to also handle the novel observation requests that can be specified using the more advanced Compound Reservation formalism.Comment: Accepted for publication in the refereed conference proceedings of the International Conference on Operations Research and Enterprise Systems (ICORES 2015

Middle-Class Housing Development in Thessaloniki, Greece: Polykatoikia: from Heterogeneous to Homogeneous and Vice Versa

Middle-class housing in Greece developed rapidly after World War II (WWII). Across all Greek cities a multi-story building type, so-called “polykatoikia” emerged because before the war, in 1929, a social and legal contract was constituted, according to which each apartment could be owned by “micro-owners”. The applied General and Special Building Regulations envisioned a homogeneous city volume composed of these polykatoikias. On the other hand, the new ownership model invited a heterogeneous middle-class population to buy and reside in these apartments, in contrast to the previous homogenous one owner per building model. Thessaloniki developed differently than other cities, starting with homogeneous urban planning and city volume, but heterogeneous architectural styles that would evolve vice versa in the post-WWII era. The contemporary political–social–economic changes modified the city’s development vision and population’s needs related to the polykatoikia. Today, the matured state of the polykatoikias, the expected deterioration of the building stock and its environmental (in)efficiency troubles the micro-owners. The lack of common decision-making strategies to enforce building unity increases the entropy to a dysfunctional level. The paper’s main goal is to investigate whether the polykatoikia model is reaching a breaking point. Will the future of the polykatoikia return to homogeneity by relying on one investor per building and be leading a decrease of polykatoikia’s variety, or are there strategies that lead to the sustainability of the building type and its micro-owners? The research is based on the author’s Ph.D. thesis; recent literature on the topic and in-situ observations both support the objectives

Constructing known un-knowns:International Organisations and the strategic making of non-knowledge

Although scholarship has devoted a lot of attention to statistical knowledge production by organisations like the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Bank, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and many others, we know far less about parallel processes of construction of ‘non-knowledge’. This article’s focus is on the enactment of ‘non-knowledge’ in the governance of education and well-being; or, in other words, the strategic prioritization of certain knowledge versus other. Specifically, through a focus on two empirical examples, the paper examines the construction of non-knowledge as an essential part of the measurement process: rather than the opposite of knowledge however, or its reading as a binary, the paper views the construction of both knowledge and non-knowledge as a symbiotic relationship, necessary for balancing out and achieving equilibrium of the metrological field.Bien que les chercheurs aient consacré beaucoup d'attention à la production de connaissances statistiques par des organisations telles que l'Organisation de coopération et de développement économiques, la Banque mondiale, l'Organisation des Nations unies pour l'éducation, la science et la culture et bien d'autres, nous en savons beaucoup moins sur les processus parallèles de construction du "non-savoir ". Cet article se concentre sur la mise en œuvre du "non-savoir" dans la gouvernance de l'éducation et du bien-être ou, en d'autres termes, sur la priorité stratégique accordée à certaines connaissances par rapport à d'autres. Plus précisément, en se concentrant sur deux exemples empiriques, l'article envisage la construction du non-savoir comme une partie essentielle du processus de mesure plutôt que son opposé selon une logique binaire. L'article considère ainsi la construction du savoir et du non-savoir comme une relation symbiotique, nécessaire pour équilibrer le champ métrologique

RNA-dependent selenocysteine biosynthesis in eukaryotes and Archaea

Selenocysteine (Sec), the 21st genetically encoded amino acid, is the major metabolite of the micronutrient selenium. Sec is inserted into nascent proteins in response to a UGA codon. The substrate for ribosomal protein synthesis is selenocysteinyl-tRNASec. While the formation of Sec-tRNASec from seryl-tRNASec by a single bacterial enzyme selenocysteine synthase (SelA) has been well described, the mechanism of Sec-tRNASec formation in archaea and eukaryotes remained poorly understood. Herein, biochemical and genetic data provide evidence that, in contrast to bacteria, eukaryotes and archaea utilize a different route to Sec-tRNASec that requires the tRNASec-dependent conversion of O-phosphoserine (Sep) to Sec. In this two-step pathway, O-phosphoseryl-tRNA kinase (PSTK) first converts Ser-tRNASec to Sep-tRNASec. This misacylated tRNA is the obligatory precursor for a Sep-tRNA: Sec-tRNA synthase (SepSecS); this protein was previously annotated as Soluble Liver Antigen/Liver Pancreas (SLA/LP). SepSecS genes from Homo sapiens, the lower eukaryote Trypanosoma brucei and the archaea Methanocaldococcus jannaschii and Methanococcus maripaludis complement an Escherichia coli DeltaselA deletion strain in vivo. Furthermore, genetic analysis of selenoprotein biosynthesis in T. brucei in vivo demonstrated that eukaryotes have a single pathway to Sec-tRNASec that requires Sep-tRNASec as an intermediate. Finally, purified recombinant SepSecS converts Sep-tRNA Sec into Sec-tRNASec in vitro in the presence of sodium selenite and purified E. coli selenophosphate synthetase.The final step in Sec biosynthesis was further investigated by a structure-based mutational analysis of the M. maripaludis SepSecS and by determining the crystal structure of human SepSecS complexed with tRNA Sec, phosphoserine and thiophosphate at 2.8 A resolution. In vivo and in vitro enzyme assays support a mechanism of Sec-tRNASec formation based on pyridoxal phosphate, while the lack of active site cysteines demonstrates that a perselenide intermediate is not involved in SepSecS-catalyzed Sec formation. Two tRNASec molecules, with a fold distinct from other canonical tRNAs, bind to each human SepSecS tetramer through their unique 13 base-pair acceptor-TPsiC arm. The tRNA binding induces a conformational change in the enzyme\u27s active site that allows a Sep covalently attached to tRNASec, but not free Sep, to be oriented properly for the reaction to occur