Making Taste Public: Industrialized Orders of Sensing and the Democratic Potential of Experimental Eating

Existing discussions of food democracy focus on people’s freedom to choose healthy, sustainable, or otherwise ‘good’ foods. Such foods are supposed to be unrestrained by oligopolistic structures of food supply, economic inequality, misinformation, or the misleading lobbying campaigns of the food industry. Our article aims to broaden the discussion about food democracy: focusing on people’s freedom to choose the food they want, but also on people’s freedom to engage with what they eat and how they want to eat it. This thematizes collective orders of sensing and, more specifically, taste. Based on pragmatist and praxeological studies we pose that tasting food is a matter of historically grown collective practices. In a second step, we assert that the reflexive shaping of such practices is currently dominated by the food industry and related forms of sensory science. Democratizing taste is a matter of people’s capacity to self-govern how they experience and enjoy food. To this end, we suggest the approach of ‘experimental eating’ as a way to question and reflexively engage with embodied forms of tasting. We report on the development of methods that, in a next step, are to be combined for a participatory exhibition inviting people to experimentally reconfigure their habitual tasting practices and experience agency in matters of shaping taste. The exhibition makes taste public by demonstrating the construction of sensory experience in eating practices. It positions taste as a collective issue which every human being can experiment with—and thus to contest the governance of taste as currently exercised by industrial corporations and scientific experts

Sekule, Slowakei. Ein germanisches Gräberfeld an der March

Within the framework of the German-Slovakian project to explore the Roman presence north of the Pannonian frontier on the Danube and the interaction with the native population beyond, the Germanic burial ground field in Sekule was examined. The site is located west of the Little Carpathians on the left side of the March. In four campaigns from 2012 to 2015, 36 burials from the later 1st century to the beginning of the 3rd century AD were studied. The majority of the dead were buried in the second half of the 2nd century AD. Almost all graves were equipped with Roman vessels made of bronze or ceramics. Together with the weapons in the men‘s tombs and the parts of the costume in the graves of the women, the connections between the Germanic population living in the lower Morava valley and the Roman Empire as well as far into the Germanic regions in the north are shown

Volumetric Segmentation of Cell Cycle Markers in Confocal Images Using Machine Learning and Deep Learning

© Copyright © 2020 Khan, Voß, Pound and French. Understanding plant growth processes is important for many aspects of biology and food security. Automating the observations of plant development—a process referred to as plant phenotyping—is increasingly important in the plant sciences, and is often a bottleneck. Automated tools are required to analyze the data in microscopy images depicting plant growth, either locating or counting regions of cellular features in images. In this paper, we present to the plant community an introduction to and exploration of two machine learning approaches to address the problem of marker localization in confocal microscopy. First, a comparative study is conducted on the classification accuracy of common conventional machine learning algorithms, as a means to highlight challenges with these methods. Second, a 3D (volumetric) deep learning approach is developed and presented, including consideration of appropriate loss functions and training data. A qualitative and quantitative analysis of all the results produced is performed. Evaluation of all approaches is performed on an unseen time-series sequence comprising several individual 3D volumes, capturing plant growth. The comparative analysis shows that the deep learning approach produces more accurate and robust results than traditional machine learning. To accompany the paper, we are releasing the 4D point annotation tool used to generate the annotations, in the form of a plugin for the popular ImageJ (FIJI) software. Network models and example datasets will also be available online

Pre-Test of a Light-Weight CFRP Wing Segment of a High Altitude Platform for In-flight Load Measurements Based on Strains

For the validation of loads and aeroelastic simulations of a high altitude platform (HAP) in-flight, load measurements are very helpful. One technique to obtain load measurements is to apply strain gages to the primary structure. A calibration procedure enables the reconstruction of the loads from the measured strains. To reduce the risks, gain confidence and establish a feasible measurement set-up, a pre-test based on a CFRP wing segment is performed. This paper presents the theoretical background and the set-up of the measurement equipment. The results of the calibration from three different test cases are presented, showing an excellent agreement between applied and reconstructed loading with a deviation of < +/- 1.0 N and < +/- 2.0 cm for the location. Finally, the strains measured in the experiment are compared with the simulation, showing that a prediction of the strains is possible within a range of < +/- 8%

Energieszenarien: Konstruktion, Bewertung und Wirkung - "Anbieter" und "Nachfrager" im Dialog

Energieszenarien sind ein wesentliches Mittel zur Entscheidungsunterstützung in Politik und Wirtschaft. Für Infrastrukturentscheidungen im Energiebereich sind lange Zeiträume geltend. Daher ist eine sorgfältige Analyse möglicher "Energiezukünfte" von hoher Bedeutung. In diesem Band finden sich sowohl Beiträge von Wissenschaftlern als auch von Akteuren aus der Praxis, die sich mit Methodologie, Konstruktion und Bewertung von Energieszenarien in Gesellschaft, Politik und Wirtschaft beschäftigen

Energieszenarien: Konstruktion, Bewertung und Wirkung - "Anbieter" und "Nachfrager" im Dialog

Energieszenarien sind ein wesentliches Mittel zur Entscheidungsunterstützung in Politik und Wirtschaft. Für Infrastrukturentscheidungen im Energiebereich sind lange Zeiträume geltend. Daher ist eine sorgfältige Analyse möglicher "Energiezukünfte" von hoher Bedeutung. In diesem Band finden sich sowohl Beiträge von Wissenschaftlern als auch von Akteuren aus der Praxis, die sich mit Methodologie, Konstruktion und Bewertung von Energieszenarien in Gesellschaft, Politik und Wirtschaft beschäftigen

Protein modification with ISG15 blocks coxsackievirus pathology by antiviral and metabolic reprogramming

Protein modification with ISG15 (ISGylation) represents a major type I IFN–induced antimicrobial system. Common mechanisms of action and species-specific aspects of ISGylation, however, are still ill defined and controversial. We used a multiphasic coxsackievirus B3 (CV) infection model with a first wave resulting in hepatic injury of the liver, followed by a second wave culminating in cardiac damage. This study shows that ISGylation sets nonhematopoietic cells into a resistant state, being indispensable for CV control, which is accomplished by synergistic activity of ISG15 on antiviral IFIT1/3 proteins. Concurrent with altered energy demands, ISG15 also adapts liver metabolism during infection. Shotgun proteomics, in combination with metabolic network modeling, revealed that ISG15 increases the oxidative capacity and promotes gluconeogenesis in liver cells. Cells lacking the activity of the ISG15-specific protease USP18 exhibit increased resistance to clinically relevant CV strains, therefore suggesting that stabilizing ISGylation by inhibiting USP18 could be exploited for CV-associated human pathologies

Einführung des cloudbasierten Bibliothekssystems Alma in Berlin – ein Erfahrungsbericht

Die enge Zusammenarbeit der vier Berliner Universitätsbibliotheken [Freie Universität Berlin (FU), Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HU), Technische Universität Berlin (TU), Universität der Künste Berlin (UdK)] reicht weit zurück. Bereits vor der Jahrtausendwende haben die Berliner Universitätsbibliotheken (UBs) gemeinsam das Bibliothekssystem Aleph 500 ausgewählt und implementiert, danach folgten weitere Systeme – das Linking System SFX, die Digitale Bibliothek MetaLib und das Bibliotheksportal Primo. Es war daher folgerichtig und selbstverständlich, dass auch die Auswahl und Implementierung eines neuen Bibliothekssystems in enger Abstimmung und Zusammenarbeit erfolgte. Die Erfahrungen bei Vertragsverhandlungen und Implementierung von Alma sind Gegenstand des folgenden Berichtes.As regards implementing new library technology, the Berlin University libraries have been working closely together for more than 20 years. It was the case for the implementation of the legacy system Aleph 500, the linking system SFX, the digital library MetaLib and the library portal Primo, and therefore it was a matter of course to continue the close cooperation during the implementation of the new cloud-based library system, too. The experience gained during the contract negotiations and the implementation project, and lessons learned are the focus of this report.Peer Reviewe

Ecologies of participation in socio-technical change: The case of energy system transitions

Studies of societal engagement with socio-technical change are undergoing a systemic turn. Rather than simply viewing public engagement in science, policy and behavioural change in terms of discrete cases, key social theories in deliberative democracy, practice theory, socio-technical transitions and co-productionist scholarship in science and technology studies (STS) are moving to consider how diverse forms of participation interrelate in wider systems. In this paper we take stock of these advances to develop a conceptual framework for understanding ecologies of participation in socio-technical and democratic systems, grounded in relational co-productionist theory in STS. The framework is illustrated through empirical analysis of a systematic mapping of participation in UK energy system transitions between 2010 and 2015. This provides the first insights into system-wide patternings, diversities and inequalities of energy participation, the significant types of interrelation between practices of public engagement within wider ecologies of participation, and their mutual construction with political cultures and constitutions. The value and implications of adopting an ecologies of participation approach are considered with respect to the theoretical, empirical and practical challenges of understanding and building more inclusive, responsible and just socio-technical (energy) transitions