Who do they think they're talking to? framings of the audience by social media users

This paper examines the understandings and meanings of personal information sharing online using a predominantly symbolic interactionist analytic perspective and focusing on writers’ conceptions of their relationships with their audiences. It draws on an analysis of in-depth interviews with 23 personal bloggers. They were found to have limited interest in gathering information about their audiences, appearing to assume that readers are sympathetic. A comprehensive and grounded typology of imagined relationships with audiences was devised. Although the blogs of those interviewed were all public, some appear to frame their blogging practice as primarily self-directed, with their potential audiences playing a marginal role. These factors provide one explanation for some forms of potentially risky self-exposure that have been observed among social media user

Transition trauma

If you have been at the same university for a number of years you may find it hard to remember how it felt when you started teaching there. If you were lucky, after being told where the expenses forms are, how many library books you could sign out and the like, a colleague who had taught the courses you were going to teach in the coming year would take you aside, sit you down with the existing teaching materials, explain how the lectures that have been prepared before relate to the syllabus and how the coming year was likely to unfold. Unfortunately, this kind of easing-in process does not always occur. If there is a core of experienced staff who have taught across a variety of units in a programme and have the leisure and motivation to pass their knowledge onwards to new staff, continuity can be assured informally but this can go awry where a single member of staff is responsible for teaching a particular set of units for a number of years and then leaves or retires, or if a number of staff leave from a small team. The purpose of this piece is to outline (based in part on my own experience) some scenarios where as a result newly-arrived lecturers' experiences can be more difficult than they need to be, the student experience can be compromised by confusing inconsistencies in how they are taught, and a great deal of accumulated knowledge from lecturers who were long-serving in a department can fall between the cracks and be lost. Having identified some of these problem areas, I have some suggestions for how they can be addressed

Meeting their potential: the role of education and technology in overcoming disadvantage and disaffection in young people

This report is a review of literature, policy and reported practice, exploring the potential of technology to mitigate disaffection and disadvantage in education and raise attainment of those young people who are under-achieving in school or other educational settings

Urea recycling in beef cattle fed prairie hay- based diets

Maximizing utilization of native rangeland is an important aspect of the cow/calf phase of beef production. Native rangeland is often of poor quality (less than 7% crude protein). Protein content of the rangeland is important because nitrogen is a key growth factor used by ruminal microbes. Without adequate nitrogen, the ruminal ecosystem will not operate at peak efficiency, which subsequently reduces the supply of nutrients to the animal. Historically, producers have provided supplemental nutrients to their cattle to achieve maximum performance. Both supplemental protein and energy have been provided to cattle consuming low-quality forage with varying levels of success. Typically, supplemental energy without adequate protein reduces fiber digestion by cattle. On the other hand, supplemental protein consistently improves overall performance

HARPS3 for a Roboticized Isaac Newton Telescope

We present a description of a new instrument development, HARPS3, planned to be installed on an upgraded and roboticized Isaac Newton Telescope by end-2018. HARPS3 will be a high resolution (R = 115,000) echelle spectrograph with a wavelength range from 380-690 nm. It is being built as part of the Terra Hunting Experiment - a future 10 year radial velocity measurement programme to discover Earth-like exoplanets. The instrument design is based on the successful HARPS spectrograph on the 3.6m ESO telescope and HARPS-N on the TNG telescope. The main changes to the design in HARPS3 will be: a customised fibre adapter at the Cassegrain focus providing a stabilised beam feed and on-sky fibre diameter ~ 1.4 arcsec, the implementation of a new continuous flow cryostat to keep the CCD temperature very stable, detailed characterisation of the HARPS3 CCD to map the effective pixel positions and thus provide an improved accuracy wavelength solution, an optimised integrated polarimeter and the instrument integrated into a robotic operation. The robotic operation will optimise our programme which requires our target stars to be measured on a nightly basis. We present an overview of the entire project, including a description of our anticipated robotic operation.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures, SPIE conference proceeding

North: Volume Two

North Volume Two reflects our belief in photography as a relevant tool for exploring our ever-changing world. Whether in Preston, Liverpool, Berlin or Guangzhou the image-makers create a conversation with contemporary life as they endeavour to make their surroundings legible. In this second edition we continue North in the streets and spaces of the city. From contested sites of demolition, to new imaginaries formulated in the studio and in domestic, digital and social space, the volume is testament to how the urban endures as one of photography’s perennial objects of study. Like the first edition, We aim to highlight our commitment to everyday life as a meaningful arena for research and cultural production

Late style and speaking out: J A Symonds's In the Key of Blue

This article examines In the Key of Blue (1893)—an essay collection by John Addington Symonds—as a case study in queer public utterance during the early 1890s. Viewed through the critical lens of late style, as theorised by Edward Said, the evolution of this project, from compilation through to reader reception, reveals Symonds's determination to “speak out” on the subject of homosexuality. Paradoxically, In the Key of Blue was thus a timely and untimely work: it belonged to a brief period of increased visibility and expressiveness when dealing with male same-sex desire, spearheaded by a younger generation of Decadent writers, but it also cut against the grain of nineteenth-century social taboo and legal repression. Symonds's essay collection brought together new and previously unpublished work with examples of his writing for the periodical press. These new combinations, appearing together for the first time, served to facilitate new readings and new inferences, bringing homosexual themes to the fore. This article traces the dialogic structure of In the Key of Blue , its strategies for articulating homosexual desire, and examines the response of reviewers, from the hostile to celebratory

Births from embryos with highly elevated levels of mitochondrial DNA

Measurement of mtDNA copy number might not provide any advantage in embryo prioritization and could lead to a deselection of blastocysts that would result in healthy pregnancies and births. Furthermore, the quantification of mitochondrial functional output in a model of cellular stress might suggest that mitochondria are not clear targets for biomarker identification as it relates to blastocyst viability. Any suggested link between mtDNA levels, mitochondria or their output with blastocyst transfer outcome requires further validation