Making Sense of Sensors: Discovery Through Craft Practice With an Open-Ended Sensor Material

This paper explores the process by which designers come to terms with an unfamiliar and ambiguous sensor material. Drawing on craft practice and material-driven interaction design, we developed a simple yet flexible sensor technology based on the movement of conductive elements within a magnetic field. Variations in materials and structure give rise to objects which produce a complex time-varying signal in response to physical interaction. Sonifying the signal yields nuanced and intuitive action-sound correspondences which nonetheless defy easy categorisation in terms of conventional types of sensors. We reflect on a craft-based exploration of the material by one of the authors, then report on two workshops with groups of designers of varying background. Through examining the objects produced and the experience of the participants, we explore the tension between tacit and explicit understanding of unfamiliar materials and the ways that material thinking can create new design opportunities

Creating and curating an archive: Bury St Edmunds and its Anglo-Saxon past

This contribution explores the mechanisms by which the Benedictine foundation of Bury St Edmunds sought to legitimise and preserve their spurious pre-Conquest privileges and holdings throughout the Middle Ages. The archive is extraordinary in terms of the large number of surviving registers and cartularies which contain copies of Anglo-Saxon charters, many of which are wholly or partly in Old English. The essay charts the changing use to which these ancient documents were put in response to threats to the foundation's continued enjoyment of its liberties. The focus throughout the essay is to demonstrate how pragmatic considerations at every stage affects the development of the archive and the ways in which these linguistically challenging texts were presented, re-presented, and represented during the Abbey’s history

TDP-43 condensation properties specify its RNA-binding and regulatory repertoire

Mutations causing amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) often affect the condensation properties of RNA-binding proteins (RBPs). However, the role of RBP condensation in the specificity and function of protein-RNA complexes remains unclear. We created a series of TDP-43 C-terminal domain (CTD) variants that exhibited a gradient of low to high condensation propensity, as observed in vitro and by nuclear mobility and foci formation. Notably, a capacity for condensation was required for efficient TDP-43 assembly on subsets of RNA-binding regions, which contain unusually long clusters of motifs of characteristic types and density. These “binding-region condensates” are promoted by homomeric CTD-driven interactions and required for efficient regulation of a subset of bound transcripts, including autoregulation of TDP-43 mRNA. We establish that RBP condensation can occur in a binding-region-specific manner to selectively modulate transcriptome-wide RNA regulation, which has implications for remodeling RNA networks in the context of signaling, disease, and evolution

Gildas

International audienceGildas est le premier auteur britannique à témoigner des événements postérieurs au départ des légions romaines. C'est par l'analyse de ses modèles, principalement bibliques, et de ses buts que son récit historique allusif, si frustrant, peut être compris et interprété comme un témoignage de premier plan