Now I can feel myself!

This paper addresses the visual discourse of psychopharmaceuticals, such as Prozac, in order to investigate the network of relationships of affects, advertising, design and the production of new identity practices. As psychopharmaceuticals enter the public sphere through television and print advertisements, as well as first person narratives increasingly promoted in the media, the cultural discourse surrounding their use and the identity of the users are also changing. Drawing from a Spinozist notion of affect, ‘the trace of one body upon another’, as well as from a semiotic analysis of advertisements, I intend to examine the identity practices and the type of embodiment emerging in, and envisioned by, the increasingly normalised object ‘psychopharmaceutical’. The centrality of affects in the constitution of subjectivity is increasingly relevant to contemporary critical theory (see the notion of ‘affective turn’, Clough). Addressing the network of affective investments we exchange with objects is crucial for an understanding of how embodied subjectivities mutate accordingly to the objects they interact with. Against the theoretical backdrop provided by what Nikolas Rose calls the ‘pharmaceutical biopolitics of the neurochemical self’, the analysis of packaging, colour, visual and textual language of their advertising suggests how new scripts of selfhood are inscribed in the relationship between users and psychopharmaceuticals. The ensuing dialogue among chemistry, affects and design creates narratives of the self as a myth-making operation in which psychopharmaceuticals perform as objects imbued with magic properties

Object-relics and their effects: for a neo-animist paradigm

Our relationship with objects is far less clear-cut than a rational materialism predicated upon a subject/object distinction would have us believe. On the contrary, it is a messy and unpredictable one, electrified by emotional investments, often anxiety-ridden, never innocent or neutral, and always implicated in powerful identity-forming practices. This essay examines instances of contemporary animism in our relationship with object-relics by mapping the symbolic and affective investments these objects are charged with. The hypothesis is that their borderline ontological status defies simple categorization and that it might be better examined through the lens of a neo-animist paradigm able to express the complex, relational and negotiated engagement between us and the material world. The belief in the thaumaturgical power of object-relics is a persistent if irrational cultural topos that, precisely because it operates transversally and adheres to a wide array of commodities, can be the entry point for an investigation into how the meaning of things around us is generated and produces tangible effects in the making (and unmaking) of subjectivities. It is my intention to question the distinction between animate and inanimate objects, to privilege instead their opaque and enigmatic status, and the way in which they act as clusters of excess of meaning, as strange attractors of a surplus of significance quintessentially irreducible

The un-designability of the virtual. Design from problem-solving to problem-finding.

Drawing on Gilles Deleuze (1991) this chapter investigates the virtual as what problematizes the possible by inserting contingency in the process of emergence of the new. The tension between the virtual as what is uniquely placed to engender true innovation, and its aleatory and unforeseeable nature mirrors the tension existing in design between form-making and the need to acknowledge contingency. In embracing the un-designability of the virtual, design is called to take contingency and material variability as forces impinging on the process of emergence of the new. The chapter puts forward a new model for design research that shifts from problem-solving to problem-finding and is predicated on the undesigned at the core of design itself. This points to a further shift: the role of designer from creator to facilitator, teasing form out of the formless, engaged with the manifold forces expressed through material variation

Measurement of R(D∗)\mathcal{R}(D^*) with Three-Prong τ\tau Decays at LHCb

The observable $\mathcal{R} ( D^{(*)} ) = \mathcal{B}\left( B^{0}\to D^{(*)-} \tau^{+} \nu_{\tau} \right) / \mathcal{B}\left( B^{0}\to D^{(*)-} \mu^{+} \nu_{\mu} \right)$ is a probe for Lepton Universality violation, so it is sensitive to New Physics processes. The current combination of the measurements of $\mathcal{R} ( D^{(*)} )$ differs from Standard Model predictions with a $4\sigma$ significance. A measurement of $\mathcal{R} ( D^* )$ using three-prong $\tau$ decays is currently ongoing at LHCb. The statistical precision of this analysis is 6.7%, i.e. the smallest statistical uncertainty for a single measurement of this observable. Therefore this measurement will be important to confirm or disprove the current discrepancy from the theoretical expectations.Comment: Proceeding of the 52nd Rencontres de Moriond EW 2017, La Thuile, Italy, March 18-25, 201

Strong mobility degradation in ideal graphene nanoribbons due to phonon scattering

We investigate the low-field phonon-limited mobility in armchair graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) using full-band electron and phonon dispersion relations. We show that lateral confinement suppresses the intrinsic mobility of GNRs to values typical of common bulk semiconductors, and very far from the impressive experiments on 2D graphene. Suspended GNRs with a width of 1 nm exhibit a mobility close to 500 cm^2/Vs at room temperature, whereas if the same GNRs are deposited on HfO2 mobility is further reduced to about 60 cm^2/Vs due to surface phonons. We also show the occurrence of polaron formation, leading to band gap renormalization of ~118 meV for 1 nm-wide armchair GNRs.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figure

Charged black holes in a generalized scalar-tensor gravity model

We study 4-dimensional charged and static black holes in a generalized scalar-tensor gravity model, in which a shift symmetry for the scalar field exists. For vanishing scalar field the solution corresponds to the Reissner-Nordstr\"om (RN) solution, while solutions of the full scalar-gravity model have to be constructed numerically. We demonstrate that these black holes support galilean scalar hair up to a maximal value of the scalar-tensor coupling that depends on the value of the charge and can be up to roughly twice as large as that for uncharged solutions. The Hawking temperature $T_{\rm H}$ of the hairy black holes at maximal scalar-tensor coupling decreases continuously with the increase of the charge and reaches $T_{\rm H}=0$ for the highest possible charge that these solutions can carry. However, in this limit, the scalar-tensor coupling needs to vanish. The limiting solution hence corresponds to the extremal RN solution, which does not support regular galilaen scalar hair due to its AdS$_2\times S^2$ near-horizon geometry.Comment: 11 pages including 5 figures; v2: comments on conserved Noether current added, references added; matches version accepted for publication in Phys. Lett.