A journey through chronic illness

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Vwire: Digital Content Management through Spatial Arrangement - a Tool for Visual Argumentation in the Humanities

The Vwire project initiates an open source and extensible environment for producing, sharing and discussing visually ordered data sets in the humanities. Even those existing database tools that allow researchers to see multiple images simultaneously do not allow for the active and intuitive configuration of the images - like arranging snapshots on a table - that Vwire provides. Already implemented as an add-on module for Plone 4 (a mature and recently much improved Content Management System [CMS]), Vwire leverages existing technology and extends the visualization tools available to humanities researchers. We propose a test case using a small group of Teotihuacan stone masks, which are of archaeological and art historical importance, and we will elicit collaboration between experts from both fields to help refine and troubleshoot the existing tool

Memes in medical education

Memes are highly malleable forms of visual media that provide insight into the dominant discourses within a community. This essay presents the top meme posts on /r/medicalschool, a thread on Reddit, an anonymous news-aggregating site, which are the most discussed posts by users, who are predominantly medical students. Within this digital space, users attempt to make meaning of the process of professionalization and what their new roles have in store for them. Studying those memes’ accompanying comments, we find that the majority of posts center on perceptions of diminishing professional authority. These perceptions likely stem from an ontological insecurity due to significant financial burdens, debt, and risk involved in going to medical school

File Naming in Digital Media Research: Examples from the Humanities and Social Sciences

This paper identifies organizational challenges faced by Social Science and Humanities (SSH) scholars when dealing with digital data and media, and suggests improved file naming practices in order to maximize organization, making files easier to find, more useable, and more easily shared. We argue that such skills are not formally discussed in the literature and therefore many scholars do not recognize the problem until they cannot locate a specific file or are sharing files with colleagues. We asked SSH scholars to share their file naming strategies (or lack thereof ) and we use these narrative anecdotes to discuss common problems and suggest possible solutions for their general file naming needs

Interview with Deborah Winslow of the National Science Foundation

Chapter Abstract: In this chapter the editors interview Dr. Deborah Winslow about her work at the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the evolution of data management plans (DMPs) in Anthropology and the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE). She outlines what the NSF expects to see in a DMP and what not to include. The conversation moves into how anthropologists collaborate with “adjacent disciplines” and how the ideas and terms for data, and the expectations of data change. She emphasizes thinking about the kind of data you will collect and what you plan to do with those data later, in terms of requirements for sharing and ultimately archiving them. The conversation ends with a discussion about student research and formulating appropriate research questions. Book Summary: Summary: For more than two decades, anthropologists have wrestled with new digital technologies and their impacts on how their data are collected, managed, and ultimately presented. Anthropological Data in the Digital Age compiles a range of academics in anthropology and the information sciences, archivists, and librarians to offer in-depth discussions of the issues raised by digital scholarship. The volume covers the technical aspects of data management-retrieval, metadata, dissemination, presentation, and preservation-while at once engaging with case studies written by cultural anthropologists and archaeologists returning from the field to grapple with the implications of producing data digitally. Concluding with thoughts on the new considerations and ethics of digital data, Anthropological Data in the Digital Age is a multi-faceted meditation on anthropological practice in a technologically mediated world

Regional Management Units for Marine Turtles: A Novel Framework for Prioritizing Conservation and Research across Multiple Scales

Background: Resolving threats to widely distributed marine megafauna requires definition of the geographic distributions of both the threats as well as the population unit(s) of interest. In turn, because individual threats can operate on varying spatial scales, their impacts can affect different segments of a population of the same species. Therefore, integration of multiple tools and techniques - including site-based monitoring, genetic analyses, mark-recapture studies and telemetry - can facilitate robust definitions of population segments at multiple biological and spatial scales to address different management and research challenges. Methodology/Principal Findings: To address these issues for marine turtles, we collated all available studies on marine turtle biogeography, including nesting sites, population abundances and trends, population genetics, and satellite telemetry. We georeferenced this information to generate separate layers for nesting sites, genetic stocks, and core distributions of population segments of all marine turtle species. We then spatially integrated this information from fine-to coarse-spatial scales to develop nested envelope models, or Regional Management Units (RMUs), for marine turtles globally. Conclusions/Significance: The RMU framework is a solution to the challenge of how to organize marine turtles into units of protection above the level of nesting populations, but below the level of species, within regional entities that might be on independent evolutionary trajectories. Among many potential applications, RMUs provide a framework for identifying data gaps, assessing high diversity areas for multiple species and genetic stocks, and evaluating conservation status of marine turtles. Furthermore, RMUs allow for identification of geographic barriers to gene flow, and can provide valuable guidance to marine spatial planning initiatives that integrate spatial distributions of protected species and human activities. In addition, the RMU framework - including maps and supporting metadata - will be an iterative, user-driven tool made publicly available in an online application for comments, improvements, download and analysis

Thinking through the Photo Essay: Observations for Medical Anthropology

As photography becomes more prevalent in ethnographic research, scholars should more seriously consider the photo essay as a medium for sharing their work. In this Position Piece, we present guidelines for the creation of ethnographic photo essays for medical anthropology that do not simply combine image and text, but create a balance that allows words to provide context for the image(s) and images to reinforce or challenge the text. We feel there are three basic elements every photo essay must consider that are informed by the theory and practice of visual anthropology. While a solid background in visual anthropology is not necessary to produce a successful photo essay, being mindful of these three elements in relation to your work will help you develop a photo essay that combines the best of what both media offer your audience

Projecting climate change impacts from physics to fisheries: A view from three California Current fisheries

Motivated by a need for climate-informed living marine resource management, increased emphasis has been placed on regional end-to-end modeling frameworks designed to project climate impacts on marine ecosystems and evaluate the efficacy of potential management strategies under changing conditions. The ‘Future Seas’ project was initiated with a focus on three fisheries (Pacific sardine, swordfish, and albacore tuna) in the California Current System (CCS). This work leverages a suite of climate, ocean, ecosystem, and economic models to project physical, ecological, and socio-economic change, evaluate management strategies, and quantify uncertainty in model projections. Here we describe the components of the modeling framework, considerations underlying choices made in model development, engagement with stakeholders, and key physical, ecological, and socio-economic results to date, including projections to 2100. Our broad aims are to (i) synthesize a large body of climate and fisheries research that has been conducted, and continues, under the Future Seas umbrella, and (ii) provide insight and recommendations to those pursuing similar efforts for other applications and in other regions. In general, our results indicate that all three species will likely shift their distributions (predominantly poleward) in the future, which impacts accessibility to fishing fleets, spatial management, and quota allocation. For similar integrative climate-to-fisheries projections, we recommend attention is given to: recognizing potential biases arising from differences between the climate products used for ecological model fitting and those used for model projection; how sources of projection uncertainty are prioritized, incorporated, and communicated; and quantitatively linking scenarios – especially socio-economic scenarios – with climate and ecological projections