Sonic souvenirs: exploring the paradoxes of recorded sound for family remembering

Many studies have explored social processes and technologies associated with sharing photos. In contrast, we explore the role of sound as a medium for social reminiscing. We involved 10 families in recording 'sonic souvenirs' of their holidays. They shared and discussed their collections on their return. We compared these sounds with their photo taking activities and reminiscences. Both sounds and pictures triggered active collaborative reminiscing, and attempts to capture iconic representations of events. However sounds differed from photos in that they were more varied, familial and creative. Further, they often expressed the negative or mundane in order to be 'true to life', and were harder to interpret than photos. Finally we saw little use of pure explanatory narrative. We reflect on the relations between sound and family memory and propose new designs on the basis of our findings, to better support the sharing and manipulation of social sounds

FM radio: family interplay with sonic mementos

Digital mementos are increasingly problematic, as people acquire large amounts of digital belongings that are hard to access and often forgotten. Based on fieldwork with 10 families, we designed a new type of embodied digital memento, the FM Radio. It allows families to access and play sonic mementos of their previous holidays. We describe our underlying design motivation where recordings are presented as a series of channels on an old fashioned radio. User feedback suggests that the device met our design goals: being playful and intriguing, easy to use and social. It facilitated family interaction, and allowed ready access to mementos, thus sharing many of the properties of physical mementos that we intended to trigger

Memory as Concept and Design in Digital Recording Devices

This thesis focuses on scientists and technologies brought together around the desire to improve fallible human memory. Based on extended ethnographic fieldwork, it considers interdisciplinary collaborations among experts who design recording and archiving technologies that seek to maintain, extend, and commemorate life. How are everyday experiences translated as information, and for what purpose? How are our habits of drinking tea, talking on the phone, driving to work, and reminiscing with old photographs, turned into something that can be stored, analyzed and acted upon? How might information be used in real time to supplement the living in a recursive feedback loop? By addressing these questions, I reveal how these memory banks are inherently tied to logics of capital, of stock and storage, and to logics of the technological where, when it comes to memory, more is more. The first sections that make up this dissertation shift in scale from the micro to the macro: from historical national endeavors that turned ordinary citizens into a sensors and collectors of the mundane, to contemporary computational projects designed to store, organize and retrieve vast amounts of information. The second half of this dissertation focuses on two extreme cases of lifelogging that make use of prototypical recording technologies: Gordon Bell, who is on a quest to record his life for the sake of increased objectivity, productivity, and digital posterity, and Mrs. B, a woman who suffers from amnesia and records her life in the hopes of leading a normal life in which she can share the past with loved ones. Through these case studies, I show how new recording technologies are both a symptom of, and a cure for, anxieties about time. By focusing on the design of new objects and by addressing contemporary debates on the intentions that govern the making of recording machines, I examine how technologies take shape, and how they inform understandings of memory and the self as well as notions of human disability and enhancement. In short, I show that the past, as well as the present and the future, are always discursively, practically, and technologically informed

Penser le blog : de la technique à la pratique de la médiatisation de soi

Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal

Should therapeutic hypothermia be offered to babies with mild neonatal encephalopathy in the first 6 h after birth?

Infants with moderate to severe neonatal encephalopathy (NE) benefit significantly from therapeutic hypothermia, with reduced risk of death or disability. However, the need for therapeutic hypothermia for infants with milder NE remains unclear. It has been suggested that these infants should not be offered therapeutic hypothermia as they may not be at risk for adverse neurodevelopmental outcome and that the balance of risk against potential benefit is unknown. Several key questions need to be answered including first, whether one can define NE in the first 6 h after birth so as to accurately distinguish infants with brain injury who may be at risk for adverse neurodevelopmental consequences. Second, will treatment of infants with mild NE with therapeutic hypothermia improve or even worsen neurological outcomes? Although alternate treatment protocols for mild NE may be feasible, the use of the current approach combined with rigorous avoidance of hyperthermia and initiation of hypothermia as early as possible after birth may promote optimal outcomes. Animal experimental data support the potential for greater benefit for mild HIE compared with moderate to severe HIE. This review will summarize current knowledge of mild NE and the challenges to a trial in this population

Investigation of the Gas-Phase Photolysis and Temperature-Dependent OH Reaction Kinetics of 4‑Hydroxy-2-butanone

International audienc

Should therapeutic hypothermia be offered to babies With mild neonatal encephalopathy in the first 6 hours after birth?

Infants with moderate to severe neonatal encephalopathy (NE) benefit significantly from therapeutic hypothermia, with reduced risk of death or disability. However, the need for therapeutic hypothermia for infants with milder NE remains unclear. It has been suggested that these infants should not be offered therapeutic hypothermia as they may not be at risk for adverse neurodevelopmental outcome and that the balance of risk against potential benefit is unknown. Several key questions need to be answered including first, whether one can define NE in the first 6 h after birth so as to accurately distinguish infants with brain injury who may be at risk for adverse neurodevelopmental consequences. Second, will treatment of infants with mild NE with therapeutic hypothermia improve or even worsen neurological outcomes? Although alternate treatment protocols for mild NE may be feasible, the use of the current approach combined with rigorous avoidance of hyperthermia and initiation of hypothermia as early as possible after birth may promote optimal outcomes. Animal experimental data support the potential for greater benefit for mild HIE compared with moderate to severe HIE. This review will summarize current knowledge of mild NE and the challenges to a trial in this population