Informing Innovations Through Deeper Insight on Strategic Priorities and Expansive Ideas

Recent national Extension initiatives and reports provide insight into innovation trends and issues. In response to questions from participants in eXtension Impact Collaborative events, we adapted two business frameworks to provide deeper insight about innovation. The adapted frameworks are helpful for identifying strategic areas of focus for innovation and prompting expanded thinking about potential types of innovation

Performing the paradox: collaboration as intervention in Eis o Homem

After the economic crisis of 2008, Portugal, like other European countries, underwent a readjustment programme based on neo-liberal principles. This programme widened the gap between rich and poor and elevated the economic over the social, the political and the affective. This paper analyses the devised performance Eis o Homem (Behold Man) as both an artistic and intellectual intervention in this context of crisis. It suggests that collaboration between artists on an explicitly non-hierarchical basis functioned as a coping mechanism for both the artists involved and the audience. The material generated during rehearsals contrasted the powerful reality of life as lived by Portuguese citizens during this period with the Real, that, as Slavoj Zizek has argued, masked this reality with social discourses that emphasized that there was no alternative to the dominance of the market. It concludes that such forms of theatrical collaboration, which explicitly contemplate the right to dissensus, can lead to complex, transformative responses to social situations and to dialogically-informed performances

Lepton flavor conserving Z -> l^+ l^-$ decays in the general two Higgs doublet model

We calculate the new physics effects to the branching ratios of the lepton flavor conserving decays Z -> l^+ l^- in the framework of the general two Higgs Doublet model. We predict the upper limits for the couplings |\bar{\xi}^{D}_{N,\mu\tau}| and |\bar{\xi}^{D}_{N,\tau\tau}| as 3\times 10^2 GeV and 1\times 10^2 GeV, respectively.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figure

Social media, protest cultures and political subjectivities of the Arab spring

This article draws on phenomenological perspectives to present a case against resisting the objectification of cultures of protest and dissent. The generative, self-organizing properties of protest cultures, especially as mobilized through social media, are frequently argued to elude both authoritarian political structures and academic discourse, leading to new political subjectivities or ‘imaginaries’. Stemming from a normative commitment not to over-determine such nascent subjectivities, this view has taken on a heightened resonance in relation to the recent popular uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa. The article argues that this view is based on an invalid assumption that authentic political subjectivities and cultures naturally emerge from an absence of constraint, whether political, journalistic or academic. The valorisation of amorphousness in protest cultures and social media enables affective and political projection, but overlooks politics in its institutional, professional and procedural forms

Architects of time: Labouring on digital futures

Drawing on critical analyses of the internet inspired by Gilles Deleuze and the Marxist autonomia movement, this paper suggests a way of understanding the impact of the internet and digital culture on identity and social forms through a consideration of the relationship between controls exercised through the internet, new subjectivities constituted through its use and new labour practices enabled by it. Following Castells, we can see that the distinction between user, consumer and producer is becoming blurred and free labour is being provided by users to corporations. The relationship between digital technologies and sense of community, through their relationship to the future, is considered for its dangers and potentials. It is proposed that the internet may be a useful tool for highlighting and enabling social connections if certain dangers can be traversed. Notably, current remedies for the lack of trust on the internet are questioned with an alternative, drawing on Zygmunt Bauman and Georg Simmel, proposed which is built on community through a vision of a ‘shared network’

Weak magnetic dipole moments in two-Higgs-doublet models

We investigate the effects of the new scalars in a two-Higgs-doublet model on the weak magnetic dipole moments of the fermions at the $Z$ peak. Proportionality of the Yukawa couplings to the fermion masses, and to $\tan{\beta}$, makes such effects more important for the third family, and potentially relevant. For the $\tau$ lepton, the new diagrams are suppressed by $v_\tau = 2 \sin^2 \theta_W - 1/2$, or by powers of $m_\tau/M_Z$, but may still be comparable to the SM electroweak contributions. In contrast, we find that the new contributions for the bottom quark may be much larger than the SM electroweak contributions. These new effects may even compete with the gluonic contribution, if the extra scalars are light and $\tan \beta$ is large. We also comment on the problem of the gauge dependence of the vertex, arising when the $Z$ is off mass shell. We compute the contributions from the new scalars to the magnetic dipole moments for top-quark production at the NLC, and for bottom and $\tau$ production at LEP2. In the case of the top, we find that the SM electroweak and gluonic contributions to the $Z t {\bar t}$ vertex are comparable. The new contributions may be of the same order of magnitude as the standard-model ones, but not much larger.Comment: 17 pages, LaTex, 8 figures available upon reques

Design and Characterisation of a Randomized Food Intervention That Mimics Exposure to a Typical UK Diet to Provide Urine Samples for Identification and Validation of Metabolite Biomarkers of Food Intake

Poor dietary choices are major risk factors for obesity and non-communicable diseases, which places an increasing burden on healthcare systems worldwide. To monitor the effectiveness of healthy eating guidelines and strategies, there is a need for objective measures of dietary intake in community settings. Metabolites derived from specific foods present in urine samples can provide objective biomarkers of food intake (BFIs). Whilst the majority of biomarker discovery/validation studies have investigated potential biomarkers for single foods only, this study considered the whole diet by using menus that delivered a wide range of foods in meals that emulated conventional UK eating patterns. Fifty-one healthy participants (range 19–77 years; 57% female) followed a uniquely designed, randomized controlled dietary intervention, and provided spot urine samples suitable for discovery of BFIs within a real-world context. Free-living participants prepared and consumed all foods and drinks in their own homes and were asked to follow the protocols for meal consumption and home urine sample collection. This study also assessed the robustness, and impact on data quality, of a minimally invasive urine collection protocol. Overall the study design was well-accepted by participants and concluded successfully without any drop outs. Compliance for urine collection, adherence to menu plans, and observance of recommended meal timings, was shown to be very high. Metabolome analysis using mass spectrometry coupled with data mining demonstrated that the study protocol was well-suited for BFI discovery and validation. Novel, putative biomarkers for an extended range of foods were identified including legumes, curry, strongly-heated products, and artificially sweetened, low calorie beverages. In conclusion, aspects of this study design would help to overcome several current challenges in the development of BFI technology. One specific attribute was the examination of BFI generalizability across related food groups and across different preparations and cooking methods of foods. Furthermore, the collection of urine samples at multiple time points helped to determine which spot sample was optimal for identification and validation of BFIs in free-living individuals. A further valuable design feature centered on the comprehensiveness of the menu design which allowed the testing of biomarker specificity within a biobank of urine samples