Death in Life and Life in Death: Forms and Fates of the Human

This chapter traces the origins, meanings and characteristics of “the human” in recent time – its forms. The chapter contends that, instead of being immutable, “the human” has taken different forms, been ascribed different meanings, and exhibited different characteristics over time. Our approach to “the human” contributes to this volume on digital existence, which confronts existential questions centered on being and technology, with historical and anthropological awareness. We aim to show, through Foucault’s (1971 ) insistence upon the forms of subjectivity as opposed to its substance, how understandings of “the human” are subject to change and transformation. Exploring these diverse understandings helps us to capture how human beings have related to each other and the world, and understood themselves at different points in time. This exploration also shows how human beings’ relationships have developed in conjunction with new configurations of politics and technology

Death, After-Death and the Human in the Internet Era: Remembering, Not Forgetting Professor Michael C. Kearl (1949-2015)

Today, humans have remains that are other than physical, generated within and supported by new information communications technologies (ICTs). As with human remains of the past, these are variously attended to or ignored. In this article, which serves as the introduction to this special issue, we examine the reality, meaning and use of enduring digital remains of humans. We are specifically interested in the evolving practices of remembering and forgetting associated with them. These previously posited considerations of ‘human remains’ and ‘what remains of the human’ are useful for exploring the relationship between the Internet, the body, remembering and forgetting. This article is a first step towards understanding how new technological developments are shaping and revealing our contemporary view of life, death and what it means to be human

A Small Molecule Screen to Identify a Potential Treatment for MTDPS3

Mitochondrial DNA Depletion Syndrome 3 (MTDPS3) is the most common mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) depletion syndrome. MTDPS3 is an autosomal recessive disorder caused by a mutation in the deoxyguanosine kinase (DGUOK) gene in which a reduction in mtDNA nucleotides results in decreased levels of Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP). The DGUOK phenotypes vary; however, liver dysfunction tends to be consistent for all pediatric patients. Liver transplants can be beneficial; however, it’s only a palliative treatment at best, and the affected population rarely reaches adulthood. This thesis describes a high-throughput drug screen to identify a potential therapy for MTDPS3. MTDPS3 mutant hepatocytes derived from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) were utilized in the drug screen of the South Carolina Compound Collection (SC3) library. From the primary screen of 10,000 compounds, 63 compounds increased ATP levels at a sample number of one. The primary hits were used to perform biological replicates with the knockout cells, and six can increase ATP levels consistently. Two of the six compounds increased ATP production at eight different drug concentrations. My results show six small molecules with the therapeutic potential to treat an MTDPS3 phenotype in-vitro

Active architecture for pervasive contextual services

Pervasive services may be defined as services that are available to any client (anytime, anywhere). Here we focus on the software and network infrastructure required to support pervasive contextual services operating over a wide area. One of the key requirements is a matching service capable of assimilating and filtering information from various sources and determining matches relevant to those services. We consider some of the challenges in engineering a globally distributed matching service that is scalable, manageable, and able to evolve incrementally as usage patterns, data formats, services, network topologies and deployment technologies change. We outline an approach based on the use of a peer-to-peer architecture to distribute user events and data, and to support the deployment and evolution of the infrastructure itself

Active architecture for pervasive contextual services

International Workshop on Middleware for Pervasive and Ad-hoc Computing MPAC 2003), ACM/IFIP/USENIX International Middleware Conference (Middleware 2003), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil This work was supported by the FP5 Gloss project IST2000-26070, with partners at Trinity College Dublin and Université Joseph Fourier, and by EPSRC grants GR/M78403/GR/M76225, Supporting Internet Computation in Arbitrary Geographical Locations, and GR/R45154, Bulk Storage of XML Documents.Pervasive services may be defined as services that are available "to any client (anytime, anywhere)". Here we focus on the software and network infrastructure required to support pervasive contextual services operating over a wide area. One of the key requirements is a matching service capable of as-similating and filtering information from various sources and determining matches relevant to those services. We consider some of the challenges in engineering a globally distributed matching service that is scalable, manageable, and able to evolve incrementally as usage patterns, data formats, services, network topologies and deployment technologies change. We outline an approach based on the use of a peer-to-peer architecture to distribute user events and data, and to support the deployment and evolution of the infrastructure itself.Peer reviewe

Networked Human, Network’s Human: Humans in Networks Inter-Asia

This special issue explores the conceptions of the human that emerge out of the form and the design of information and communications technologies (ICTs). Geographically, our focus compares two countries with a relatively high level of ICT penetration—South Korea and Singapore—and two countries with a relatively low level—India and Vietnam. In each country we see how different forms of the human emerge, in part out of the ways in which technological infrastructure develop and intertwine with social order. In this introduction we reflect on the long genealogy of “human” and “humanity” and the more recent history of ICTs in Asia

New Simple Procedure for the Computation of the Multimode Admittance or Impedance Matrix of Planar Waveguide Junctions

Much effort has been devoted in the past to the development of electromagnetic simulation algorithms for wave- guide junctions that could at the same time include higher-order mode interactions and lead to computationally efficient codes. Even though this is indeed a classical subject, there is still a strong interest in this area as waveguide systems become increas- ingly complex, and ever shorter development and manufacturing times are required. In this paper a simple method is described for the evaluation of the multimode network representation of planar waveguide junctions in terms of admittance or impedance parameters. The key feature of the method is that it starts from the wanted final results, the equivalent network representation, in order to obtain an analytic expression for the evaluation of the relevant matrix elements. The procedure is based on general network theory and is equivalent to ideally measuring directly the value of the admittance or impedance elements. In this paper the evaluation procedure is fully described. Measured results of actual hardware are then compared with simulations indicating that the codes developed are indeed very accurate as well as computationally very efficient.Agencia Espacial Europe

Low-Energy Shape Resonances of a Nucleobase in Water

When high-energy radiation passes through aqueous material, low-energy electrons are produced which cause DNA damage. Electronic states of anionic nucleobases have been suggested as an entrance channel to capture the electron. However, identifying these electronic resonances have been restricted to gas-phase electron-nucleobase studies and offer limited insight into the resonances available within the aqueous environment of DNA. Here, resonance and detachment energies of the micro-hydrated uracil pyrimidine nucleobase anion are determined by two-dimensional photoelectron spectroscopy and are shown to extrapolate linearly with cluster size. This extrapolation allows the corresponding resonance and detachment energies to be determined for uracil in aqueous solution as well as the reorganization energy associated with electron capture. Two shape resonances are clearly identified that can capture low-energy electrons and subsequently form the radical anion by solvent stabilization and internal conversion to the ground electronic state. The resonances and their dynamics probed here are the nucleobase-centered doorway states for low-energy electron capture and damage in DNA

Introduction:Mortality in Design

Digital design for mortals. Precisely what is unsettling about modern technological construction is that, instead of holding together earth and sky, mortals and divinities, it penetrates the earth to extract resources, pushes beyond the sky with rockets and satellites, attempts to suppress mortality with medicine and drugs, and precisely in this attempt to control the body, rejects the art of dying, and thereby and in the very process the remembering of the divinities that is the most intimate part of human suffering. More than ten years old now, Carl Mitcham’s reflection on the performance of vernacular architecture (the building of his own house in fact) is a powerful statement about the tendency of modern technology to suppress human mortality and with it the expression of the human spirit. Precisely what is unsettling about modern technological construction is that, instead of holding together earth and sky, mortals and divinities, it penetrates the earth to extract resources, pushes beyond the sky with rockets and satellites, attempts to suppress mortality with medicine and drugs, and precisely in this attempt to control the body, rejects the art of dying, and thereby and in the very process the remembering of the divinities that is the most intimate part of human suffering