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

Nielsen-Olesen strings in Supersymmetric models

We investigate the behaviour of a model with two oppositely charged scalar fields. In the Bogomol'nyi limit this may be seen as the scalar sector of N=1 supersymmetric QED, and it has been shown that cosmic strings form. We examine numerically the model out of the Bogomol'nyi limit, and show that this remains the case. We then add supersymmetry-breaking mass terms to the supersymmetric model, and show that strings still survive. Finally we consider the extension to N=2 supersymmetry with supersymmetry-breaking mass terms, and show that this leads to the formation of stable cosmic strings, unlike in the unbroken case.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figues, uses revtex4; minor typos corrected; references adde

Physical and Biological Barriers to Viral Vector–mediated Delivery of Genes to the Airway Epithelium

A gene therapy for cystic fibrosis (CF) lung disease by intralumenal delivery of therapeutic transgenes into the lung is a logical treatment strategy if efficient gene transfer can be achieved without detrimental effects to the patient. Indeed, pioneering work in the late 1980s showed that genetically engineered viruses could deliver the CF corrective transgene to cultured cells from patients with CF. However, after many attempts to deliver the corrective gene to the lungs of patients with CF in vivo and with the luxury of 20/20 hindsight, it is realized that although logical, the strategy to accomplish this task did not appreciate the evolution of the lung to resist invasion by pathogens such as viruses. It is now apparent that several levels of barriers exist that restrict exogenous gene delivery to the airway epithelium by commonly used viral vectors. Components of the innate and cell-mediated immune system collectively limit both the access to and duration of gene transfer vectors to the airway epithelium.Alternative viral vectors that have evolved to circumvent these barriers will require further development if gene transfer is ever to be considered a therapy for CF lung disease

The paleosymbiosis hypothesis: host plants can be colonized by root symbionts that have been inactive for centuries to millenia

Paleoecologists have speculated that post-glacial migration of tree species could have been facilitated by mycorrhizal symbionts surviving glaciation as resistant propagules belowground. The general premise of this idea, which we call the “paleosymbiosis hypothesis”, is that host plants can access and be colonized by fungal root symbionts that have been inactive for millennia. Here, we explore the plausibility of this hypothesis by synthesizing relevant findings from a diverse literature. For example, the paleoecology literature provided evidence of modern roots penetrating paleosols containing ancient (> 6000 yr) fungal propagules, though these were of unknown condition. With respect to propagule longevity, the available evidence is of mixed quality, but includes convincing examples consistent with the paleosymbiosis hypothesis (i.e. > 1000 yr viable propagules). We describe symbiont traits and environmental conditions that should favour the development and preservation of an ancient propagule bank, and discuss the implications for our understanding of soil symbiont diversity and ecosystem functioning. We conclude that the paleosymbiosis hypothesis is plausible in locations where propagule deposition and preservation conditions are favourable (e.g. permafrost regions). We encourage future below-ground research to consider and explore the potential temporal origins of root symbioses