From protecting to performing privacy

Privacy is increasingly important in an age of facial recognition technologies, mass data collection, and algorithmic decision-making. Yet it persists as a contested term, a behavioural paradox, and often fails users in practice. This article critiques current methods of thinking privacy in protectionist terms, building on Deleuze\u27s conception of the society of control, through its problematic relation to freedom, property and power. Instead, a new mode of understanding privacy in terms of performativity is provided, drawing on Butler and Sedgwick as well as Cohen and Nissenbaum. This new form of privacy is based on identity, consent and collective action, a process to be performed individually and together to create new structures that instil respect at the heart of our sociotechnical systems

College Professors as Servant Leaders: Promoting Student Dignity in the Classroom

The COVID-19 pandemic brought great disparities to society as a whole. In the education sector, teachers were forced to deliver content while exploring new ways to do so through new or unfamiliar technologies, working in various modalities, while keeping students engaged. This change called for instructors to be flexible, be aware, have empathy, have foresight, build community, communicate, and care for students in this new, mostly virtual, environment. This research explores the idea of college educators as servant leaders by examining definitions of servant leadership, exploring how a servant leader empowers those they lead in times of crisis, examining implications for the classroom, and finally proposing a framework for the concept of the Professor as a servant leader, while considering what that might mean for students

Diffusion of scientific credits and the ranking of scientists

Recently, the abundance of digital data enabled the implementation of graph based ranking algorithms that provide system level analysis for ranking publications and authors. Here we take advantage of the entire Physical Review publication archive (1893-2006) to construct authors' networks where weighted edges, as measured from opportunely normalized citation counts, define a proxy for the mechanism of scientific credit transfer. On this network we define a ranking method based on a diffusion algorithm that mimics the spreading of scientific credits on the network. We compare the results obtained with our algorithm with those obtained by local measures such as the citation count and provide a statistical analysis of the assignment of major career awards in the area of Physics. A web site where the algorithm is made available to perform customized rank analysis can be found at the address http://www.physauthorsrank.orgComment: Revised version. 11 pages, 10 figures, 1 table. The portal to compute the rankings of scientists is at http://www.physauthorsrank.or

The Cyborg Subject: Parallax Realities, Functions of Consciousness and the Void of Subjectivity

A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WOLVERHAMPTON FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHYThis thesis contributes to the fields of digital technology, consciousness studies and cultural theory by reassessing the relation of the contemporary subject to physical and digital worlds. By moving beyond the materiality of these worlds, this investigation will position the subject as a cyborg: a series of relations within consciousness that defines the reality and psychological construction of the subject across and through physical and digital perspectives. The functions of consciousness are set out as Existence, Meaning, Virtual, and Real, and their shifting relations defined in terms of physical and digital modes of consciousness. Using Slavoj Žižek’s conception of parallax, applied ontologically to digital technology, and introducing a new framework for analysing consciousness as a series of relations between functions, the void of subjectivity is defined as the gap between physical and digital worlds. Within this framework the work of Gilles Deleuze and the philosophy of quantum physics are employed to negotiate a disruption of conventional reality with the Virtuality of thought and matter respectively, towards the conception of the subject as an engaged spectator. These methodological tools are developed to analyse cultural phenomena that highlight and challenge our consciousness of the relation between physical and digital worlds. Online and gallery-based digital art interventions, avatar-mediated spaces, computer games and representations of digital technology and culture in literature are examined in order to assess specific relations between functions, drawing the discussion towards the antagonism between Virtuality and Reality within the construction of the cyborg subject. Through these analyses, a critical position is established through which the contemporary subject is able to achieve the rupture of a minimal distance towards its own parallax position to confront the void of subjectivity between Virtual and Real functions of consciousness and between physical and digital modes of cyborg reality

Who’s at stake? The role of the stakeholder in UK tech policy

The idea of the ‘stakeholder’ is prevalent in discussions of technology policy. But who counts as a stakeholder, who holds power over who is included, whose voice is left out of technology policy discourses and practices? The aim of this project is to gain a critical understanding of the definition and role of the ‘stakeholder’ in the development of technology policy. What counts as a ‘stake’? Who has a ‘stake’? In this report, we present an analysis of 195 UK tech policy documents, assessed for the usage of the term stakeholder and citational practices. We also present results of a workshop with government, academia and civil society discussing policy practices, and provide recommendations for more representative processes for tech policy.Funded by a Solent University RIKE grant

miR-1-5p targets TGF-βR1 and is suppressed in the hypertrophying hearts of rats with pulmonary arterial hypertension.

The microRNA miR-1 is an important regulator of muscle phenotype including cardiac muscle. Down-regulation of miR-1 has been shown to occur in left ventricular hypertrophy but its contribution to right ventricular hypertrophy in pulmonary arterial hypertension are not known. Previous studies have suggested that miR-1 may suppress transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-β) signalling, an important pro-hypertrophic pathway but only indirect mechanisms of regulation have been identified. We identified the TGF-β type 1 receptor (TGF-βR1) as a putative miR-1 target. We therefore hypothesized that miR-1 and TGF-βR1 expression would be inversely correlated in hypertrophying right ventricle of rats with pulmonary arterial hypertension and that miR-1 would inhibit TGF-β signalling by targeting TGF-βR1 expression. Quantification of miR-1 and TGF-βR1 in rats treated with monocrotaline to induce pulmonary arterial hypertension showed appropriate changes in miR-1 and TGF-βR1 expression in the hypertrophying right ventricle. A miR-1-mimic reduced enhanced green fluorescent protein expression from a reporter vector containing the TGF-βR1 3'- untranslated region and knocked down endogenous TGF-βR1. Lastly, miR-1 reduced TGF-β activation of a (mothers against decapentaplegic homolog) SMAD2/3-dependent reporter. Taken together, these data suggest that miR-1 targets TGF-βR1 and reduces TGF-β signalling, so a reduction in miR-1 expression may increase TGF-β signalling and contribute to cardiac hypertrophy

Deflationary tactics with the archive of life: contemporary Jewish art and popular culture

This paper discusses art works by Suzanne Treister, Deborah Kass and Doug Fishbone. It considers the importance of their work for contemporary Jewish identity within the terms of wider conceptual questions that preoccupy contemporary art. These concerns are challenging the perceived structures of power, the “performance” of subjectivity and the questioning of authenticity. A deflationary aesthetic is central to the critique of these structures of thinking fuelled by an interest in the relationship between Jewish subjectivity and popular culture that underpins all of these art works. I argue that popular culture plays a key role as a constituting factor in the production of contemporary Anglophone subjectivity. I use the case studies to develop the argument in the three artists’ specificities and the way they all question the idea of authenticity as a stable source of self-understanding. Suzanne Treister questions history and our relationship with historical events, specifically the Holocaust. She also explores questions of the relationship between structures of power and narratives of history. Debora Kass considers the representation of Jewish women, power and iconicity. Doug Fishbone, a younger artist, takes on self-hate as a transformative tool and as a motif that destabilizes Jewishness as a category, especially in an age of the accelerated post-internet-derived subjectivity