En contra de la aumentación

This article originated from a conversation between John Richards and Tim Shaw. The conversation is a response to the journal’s theme, Augmented Instruments. Instead of focusing on just one instrument, the authors decided to talk more generally about their overall aesthetic and process of making performance-installations. The conversation touches on augmentation, DIY instruments, unpredictability, and offers the reader examples of their own self-made musical devices. The discussion concludes with three emergent themes: Reductionism, Raw Materials, and Fields of Influence. They hope this transcribed conversation provides a useful starting point for readers interested in Richards’ and Shaw’s experimental approach to electronic music and idiosyncratic instrument design.Este artículo nace desde una conversación entre Jon Richards y Tim Shaw como respuesta al tema de la revista: Instrumentos Aumentados. En vez de enfocarse sobre un solo instrumento, los autores decidieron hablar más en general sobre sus estéticas y formas de crear instalaciones-performance. La conversación toca los temas de la aumentación, los instrumentos DIY, la imprevisibilidad, y ofrece al lector ejemplos de aparatos musicales hechos por los autores mismos. La discusión concluye con tres temas emergentes: el Reduccionismo, las Materias Primas y los Campos de Influencia. Los autores esperan que la transcripción de su conversación proporcione un punto de partida útil para los lectores interesados en el acercamiento experimental de Richards y Shaw a la música electrónica y al diseño idiosincrático de los instrumentos

Studying innovation ecosystems using ecology theory

This paper proposes a set of perspectives for studying innovation ecosystems that are based on ecological research. Our perspectives are based on fundamental similarities between natural and business systems. We suggest that innovation ecosystems can be defined as pathways of interlinked business models. Pathways are characterised by the flows they convey not the types of business model that support the flows. These pathways convey material and informational resources, as well as value. Like the nutrient and energy pathways in natural ecosystems. Pathways help to recycle scarce resources such as customer attention and customer-derived information. Business model descriptions are similar to an organism’s genome in that they describe limitations on sensing, acting and understanding. We conceptualise this as the ‘umwelt’; the self-world. These limitations have implications for how firms and customers interact with customers. They have other implications for how firms interact with each other in business model communities and how they accommodate each other. We illustrate and test these ecological perspectives using a case study of a healthcare smartphone app’s ecosystem. We find that our perspectives can be used as novel methods of studying interactions between business models; or to study ecosystem building

STEM and Branches: Update on the Columbus State University STEM-II Initiative

Two USG STEM Initiative awards to Columbus State University have spawned the growth of several STEM and STEM education programs and nearly $2.6 million in grants. We provide an update on STEM-II Initiative projects including a peer leader program for core math and science courses, a faculty mini-grants program to promote scholarship on teaching and learning and awareness of best practices models, and a service learning course. The infrastructure that emerged through the first STEM Initiative and continued to develop with the STEM-II Initiative paved the way for a$1.4 million UTeach replication grant and a $1.2 million Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program grant. We describe key developments in these two programs designed to recruit and prepare more STEM teachers

Outgrowths of USG STEM Initiatives: Service Learning Courses and a STEM Honors Camp

We examine two programs that have developed out of USG STEM Initiative projects. With the first STEM Initiative, Columbus State University initiated an Academy of Future Teachers that has led to an expanded STEM Honors Camp for recruiting university students into high school teaching and heightening high school students’ interests in STEM careers. With STEM Initiative II, Columbus State launched a Project FOCUS replication that contributed to the establishment of the UTeach Columbus program for preparing high school STEM teachers

Sustainable lifestyles: sites, practices and policy

Author's draft. Final version published in Environment and Planning A. Available online at http://www.envplan.com/A.htmlPro-environmental behaviour change remains a high priority for many governments and agencies and there are now numerous programmes aimed at encouraging citizens to adopt sustainable forms of living. However, although programmes for addressing behaviour change in and around the home are well developed, there has been significantly less attention paid to activities beyond this site of practice. This is despite the environmental implications of consumption choices for leisure, tourism and work-related activities. Notwithstanding the extensive literatures which have explored environmental practices at a wide range of specific sites, there has been little research on the relationships between sites of practice and environmental behaviours. Using data from a series of in-depth interviews, this paper identifies two major challenges for academics and practitioners concerned with understanding and promoting more environmentally-responsible behaviour. First, attention must shift beyond the home as a site of environmental practice to consider the ways in which individuals respond to exhortations towards ‘greener’ lifestyles in other high-consumption and carbon-intensive contexts, particularly leisure and tourism. Second, in broadening the scope of environmental practice, policy makers need to re-visit their reliance on segmentation models and related social marketing approaches. This is in the light of data that suggest those with strong environmental commitments in the home are often reluctant to engage in similar commitments in other sites of practice

Assessing the Impact of Tutorial Services

This is a preliminary report assessing the impact of tutorial services on student performance. We discuss a statistical approach, and why regression models do not appear suitable for the analysis

Developing a STEM Teacher Recruitment Pipeline

The Columbus Region Academy of Future Teachers of STEM (CRAFT-STEM), a Phase I Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program, combines internships and scholarships, an exciting summer STEM Honors Camp, a new Teaching Connections Seminar, and an impressive array of existing resources to recruit, prepare, and graduate an increasing number of STEM teachers committed to serving high need high schools

International study into the use of intermittent hormone therapy in the treatment of carcinoma of the prostate : A meta-analysis of 1446 patients

OBJECTIVE: To review pooled phase II data to identify features of different regimens of intermittent hormone therapy (IHT), developed to reduce the morbidity of treating metastatic prostate cancer, and which carries a theoretical advantage of delaying the onset of androgen-independent prostate cancer, (AIPC) that are associated with success, highlighting features which require exploration with prospective trials to establish the best strategies for using this treatment. METHODS: Individual data were collated on 1446 patients with adequate information, from 10 phase II studies with >50 cases, identified through Pubmed. RESULTS: Univariate and multivariate Cox proportional hazard models were developed to predict treatment success with a high degree of statistical success. The prostate-specific antigen (PSA) nadir, the PSA threshold to restart treatment, and medication type and duration, were important predictors of outcome. CONCLUSIONS: The duration of biochemical remission after a period of HT is a durable early indicator of how rapidly AIPC and death will occur, and will make a useful endpoint in future trials to investigate the best ways to use IHT based on the important treatment cycling variables described above. Patients spent a mean of 39% of the time off treatment. The initial PSA level and PSA nadir allow the identification of patients with prostate cancer in whom it might be possible to avoid radical therapy.Peer reviewe