A hauntology of participatory speculation

In this paper I conduct a hauntological analysis of participatory speculation, within the context of a study into understanding the potential for increasing recognition of LGBT+ young people’s experiences of hate crime and hate incidents. Hauntology provides a means to further situate accounts of speculation in Participatory Design by sensitising us to the interplay of the virtual and the actual that enables us to expand our sense of the possible. Through understanding how participatory speculation is shaped by absent presences, this paper contributes to the discussion of post-solutionist practices in PD that foster care and responsibility across multiple sites and forms of participation in the face of issues that resist resolution. I conclude by considering by translating speculation into shared spaces of wonder, Participatory Design can foster ethical commitments that stay with the trouble

Re-determination of the Pseudobinary System Li2O-MoO3

The quasi-binary phase diagram lithium oxide - molybdenum(VI) oxide was investigated by differential scanning calorimetry and X-ray diffraction. The four intermediate phases Li4MoO5, Li2MoO4, Li4Mo5O17, and Li2Mo4O13 show incongruent melting. The system has one eutectic point at 50.5 mol% MoO3 and 49.5 mol% LiO0.5 with a eutectic temperature of 524.6 deg C. At this point the melt is in equilibrium with Li2MoO4 and Li4Mo5O17.Comment: excerpt from a published article, with 3 figures and 1 tabl

Troubling Vulnerability: Designing with LGBT Young People's Ambivalence Towards Hate Crime Reporting

HCI is increasingly working with ?vulnerable? people yet there is a danger that the label of vulnerability can alienate and stigmatize the people such work aims to support. We report our study investigating the application of interaction design to increase rates of hate crime reporting amongst Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender young people. During design-led workshops participants expressed ambivalence towards reporting. While recognizing their exposure to hate crime they simultaneously rejected ascription as victim as implied in the act of reporting. We used visual communication design to depict the young people?s ambivalent identities and contribute insights on how these fail and succeed to account for the intersectional, fluid and emergent nature of LGBT identities through the design research process. We argue that by producing ambiguous designed texts, alongside conventional qualitative data, we ?trouble? our design research narratives as a tactic to disrupt static and reductive understandings of vulnerability within HCI

Information and information systems for looked after children

The Data Analysis Network helps local authority social services departments to improve the ways in which they define, gather, analyse and make use of information in order to achieve better outcomes for children in need, particularly those who are looked after. The Network consists of 6 unitary authorities in Wales with a part-time co-ordinator under the direction of the Centre for Child and Family Research

Transitioning from civil war to government: leadership in post-conflict reconstruction in South Sudan and Mozambique

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, June 2017This study examines leadership and statebuilding in the very specific context of the transition of a rebel group to a governing entity of a post-conflict state by comparing the cases of Mozambique and South Sudan. Drawing on theories of political leadership, statebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction, and recent studies on political legitimacy, this study provides insight into the processes by which leaders interact with and build the institutions of state that both enable their governance and that may ultimately constrain their authority, and the impact of external actors on these processes. This study focuses particularly on the critical interaction between political leaders and the institution of the rebel group turned political party that they lead in the fragile post-conflict period. This study traces how FRELIMO in Mozambique and the SPLM in South Sudan built sufficient political legitimacy in order to be considered the natural party of governance upon independence in each country. It also compares how RENAMO in Mozambique sought to make the transition from rebels to politicians. It then closely examines how leaders’ and parties’ political legitimacy was built or lost in subsequent years and the impact of this on building the critical institutions of state and ultimately on the stability of that state. Both cases highlight, for different reasons, that leaders matter particularly when institutions are weak. This report contends that a critical causal mechanism in a successful transition from fighting a war to governing a country is establishing and maintaining legitimacy – both internally with the governed population and externally with key international partners. How leaders balance internally derived and externally derived legitimacy often proves to be important. External actors are often fundamental in bestowing legitimacy on armed groups, even when there are other groups claiming to represent the interests of the population. While externally derived legitimacy is important in getting these parties into power, sources of internal legitimacy, derived from their own populations by parties and leaders, are critical in shaping their ability to offer stable government. Each case demonstrates that legitimacy must be maintained in order to maintain stability.XL201

Novel genes for insect resistance in transgenic plants

From a cDNA library of potato tuber, cDNAs for the potato carboxypeptidase inhibitors were isolated and characterised by DNA sequencing. One full length clone of each type was used to make plant expression constructs, and these constructs used to transform tobacco. An insect bioassay, conducted using the self crossed progeny from the highest expressing transgenic line, revealed that the expression of potato carboxypeptidase inhibitor in tobacco increased the susceptibility of the plants to attack by Heliothm virescens .A cDNA library of whole Manduca sexta larvae was constructed in XZAP II. Oligos were designed to fit the strongly conserved region of insect haemolymph Q-ypsin inhibitor protein sequences and to a region of published protein sequence from Manduca haemolymph trypsin inhibitor A ( MHTl A ) and these were used to PGR a fragment of a MHTI A cDNA. This fragment was used to screen the cDNA library and a number of clones for MHTI A were isolated, along with cDNAs for a previously unknown related protein. These cDNAs were characterised by DNA sequencing. One of the MHTI A cDNAs was used to make plant and E. coli expression constructs and these were sent, for subsequent bioassays of the resultant transgenic plants and of bacterially expressed protein, to Horticulture Research International. While these assays were seriously flawed, there were strong indications from both the plant and the artificial diet bioassays that MHTI expression did enhance insect resistance. A cDNA library of whole Diabrotica undecimpunctata larvae was constructed in XZAP II. Oligos were designed to fit each of the three strongly conserved regions of protein sequence of mammalian and nematode microsomal aminopeptidases. These were used to PGR fragments from both Manduca and Diabrotica cDNA templates. These PGR products were characterised by DNA sequencing and the Diabrotica PGR products used to screen the cDNA library. Two cDNAs were isolated, neither of which were full length, but which were of sufficient length for protein expressed from them to be likely to be functional as an aminopeptidase. E. coli expression constructs were made from each cDNA and bacterial expression was demonstrated. Pilot work on the feasibility of using antibodies as anti-insect proteins was conducted and the antibodies shown to be reasonably resistant to Diabrotica gut proteases. It was also demonstrated that antibodies could be produced that were active at the extreme pHs (3.5- 11) found in insect guts. While many questions have been left unanswered, this project has successfully demonstrated the viability of such novel approaches to the enhancement of insect resistance in plants by genetic engineering

Improving hearing aids through listening tests in a virtual sound environment

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Ultra-short echo time cardiovascular magnetic resonance of atherosclerotic carotid plaque.

BACKGROUND: Multi-contrast weighted cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) allows detailed plaque characterisation and assessment of plaque vulnerability. The aim of this preliminary study was to show the potential of Ultra-short Echo Time (UTE) subtraction MR in detecting calcification. METHODS: 14 ex-vivo human carotid arteries were scanned using CMR and CT, prior to histological slide preparation. Two images were acquired using a double-echo 3D UTE pulse, one with a long TE and the second with an ultra-short TE, with the same TR. An UTE subtraction (DeltaUTE) image containing only ultra-short T2 (and T2*) signals was obtained by post-processing subtraction of the 2 UTE images. The DeltaUTE image was compared to the conventional 3D T1-weighted sequence and CT scan of the carotid arteries. RESULTS: In atheromatous carotid arteries, there was a 71% agreement between the high signal intensity areas on DeltaUTE images and CT scan. The same areas were represented as low signal intensity on T1W and areas of void on histology, indicating focal calcification. However, in 15% of all the scans there were some incongruent regions of high intensity on DeltaUTE that did not correspond with a high intensity signal on CT, and histology confirmed the absence of calcification. CONCLUSIONS: We have demonstrated that the UTE sequence has potential to identify calcified plaque. Further work is needed to fully understand the UTE findings

ForumSphere.com

We live in the Age of Information & Technology where social media has become an integral part of our society. Social media platforms such as Facebook help bring people and ideas together in one place. However, currently there is no centralized hub on the internet that is geared towards individual college campuses. Our goal is to create an environment that promotes structured and productive discussion between students, alumni, and staff. A platform like ours is needed to bring a campus closer if the community is willing and able to help one another. There are other platforms that focus on social media as a place for communities to grow and help one another. Good examples include Reddit.com and Piazza.com. Reddit however has a much larger scope in terms of the audience that they reach and Piazza is solely focused on bringing a single classroom together for discussions and problem solving. Our platform aims to build an online community for college campuses, starting with Cal Poly. We believe in the power of crowd sourcing and if we get this platform in the hands of most Cal Poly’s students and staff it will blossom into a thriving organic community that is focused on getting students the answers they need while providing a sense of belonging to everyone. Since our project is heavily focused on making an environment that promotes user interaction we spent a large portion of our time on iterative user-testing to insure that our website is intuitive and fun to use

Differential protein expression in maize (Zea mays) in response to insect attack

Maize (Zea mays) is a major food stable in sub-Saharan Africa. However, yields are constrained by insect pests. Insect feeding induces a number of changes in genes encoding different proteins and the plant’s response can either be direct or indirect, or both. In this study, maize plants were infested with two insects with different feeding strategies (Spodoptera littoralis, chewing insect and Busseola fusca, stem borer) to investigate differential protein expression using the Proteomics technique. Infestation of S. littoralis (3rd instar larvae) resulted in 14 spots being up-regulated and 7 being down-regulated. Similarly, infestation of maize with B. fusca (3rd instar larvae) resulted in 12 spots being up-regulated and 9 spots being down-regulated. Interestingly, of those up-regulated only 9 were common to both insects, with only 4 common to both in terms of down regulation. Infestation of maize with S. littoralis resulted in a greater number of spots being up-regulated and less being down-regulated compared to maize infested with B. fusca. Unfortunately, we were unable to identify the proteins represented by these spots.Key words: Busseola fusca, down-regulation, expression, proteomics, Spodoptera littoralis, up-regulation