330 research outputs found

    Scraping the Social? Issues in live social research

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    What makes scraping methodologically interesting for social and cultural research? This paper seeks to contribute to debates about digital social research by exploring how a ‘medium-specific’ technique for online data capture may be rendered analytically productive for social research. As a device that is currently being imported into social research, scraping has the capacity to re-structure social research, and this in at least two ways. Firstly, as a technique that is not native to social research, scraping risks to introduce ‘alien’ methodological assumptions into social research (such as an pre-occupation with freshness). Secondly, to scrape is to risk importing into our inquiry categories that are prevalent in the social practices enabled by the media: scraping makes available already formatted data for social research. Scraped data, and online social data more generally, tend to come with ‘external’ analytics already built-in. This circumstance is often approached as a ‘problem’ with online data capture, but we propose it may be turned into virtue, insofar as data formats that have currency in the areas under scrutiny may serve as a source of social data themselves. Scraping, we propose, makes it possible to render traffic between the object and process of social research analytically productive. It enables a form of ‘real-time’ social research, in which the formats and life cycles of online data may lend structure to the analytic objects and findings of social research. By way of a conclusion, we demonstrate this point in an exercise of online issue profiling, and more particularly, by relying on Twitter to profile the issue of ‘austerity’. Here we distinguish between two forms of real-time research, those dedicated to monitoring live content (which terms are current?) and those concerned with analysing the liveliness of issues (which topics are happening?)

    EFFECTS OF CHANGE IN BODY POSTURE ON PLASMA AND SERUM ELECTROLYTES IN NORMAL SUBJECTS AND IN PRIMARY ALDOSTERONISM

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    We observed that change in body posture from the supine to the erect position in normal volunteers was associated with a rise in circulating potassium and a fall in sodium concentrations, irrespective of whether the electrolytes were measured in serum or plasma, or whether head-up tilt or ambulation was used. In patients with primary aldosteronism, the fall in serum sodium and rise in serum potassium with ambulation tended to obscure the characteristic electrolyte abnormalities of that syndrome. These changes in potassium and sodium could contribute to the rise in aldosterone secretion on orthostasis. The body posture of patients should be considered in the interpretation of plasma and serum electrolyte levels.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/75439/1/j.1365-2265.1981.tb02972.x.pd

    Life remade: critical animation in the digital age

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    Introduction to Special Issue of animation: an interdisciplinary journal. Animation and contemporary life are enmeshed like never before. A growing number of the media images we consume are in animated form (from fully animated features to CGI laden blockbusters and advertisements); recourse to common animation software and aesthetic approaches significantly blur the lines between previously distinct artistic and design practices (from video games, to special effects, to architecture and contemporary art); and through techniques of computational modelling and visualization, animation is increasingly fundamental to processes of knowledge production and the creation of various modes or elements of life. This appears therefore to be a particularly 'critical' moment to ponder animation's expanded cultural and political role. This special issue also provides an opportunity to consider animation's own powers of critique – the ways in which the digital animated image is increasingly being deployed explicitly as a means of intervening in social and political arenas ranging from human rights advocacy to ecological activism. And finally, we hope this collection of essays serves to further the already rich examination of the politics of more traditional forms of animation in the current digital age. This special issue thus builds upon recent scholarship that has already begun to contend with animation's expanded presence and its inherent political and critical significance..
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