Elizabeth Hallam, Anatomy Museum: Death and the Body Displayed

Elizabeth Hallam, Anatomy Museum: Death and the Body Displayed, London: Reaktion Books, 2016, hardback £35.00, pp. viii+44

Matrix elements and duality for type 2 unitary representations of the Lie superalgebra gl(m|n)

The characteristic identity formalism discussed in our recent articles is further utilized to derive matrix elements of type 2 unitary irreducible $gl(m|n)$ modules. In particular, we give matrix element formulae for all gl(m|n) generators, including the non-elementary generators, together with their phases on finite dimensional type 2 unitary irreducible representations. Remarkably, we find that the type 2 unitary matrix element equations coincide with the type 1 unitary matrix element equations for non-vanishing matrix elements up to a phase.Comment: 24 pages. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1311.424

What's Left of Rights? Arendt and political ontology in the anthropocene

My project in this paper is to make a perverse, post-human, and even queer return to Arendt’s thinking on the ontological foundation of rights, to ask: What is left of rights? Could the challenge of encompassing and representing non-human entities re-energize the political pursuits that have hinged on rights thinking? Post-humanist proponents of critical race theory, indigenous studies, disability and queer studies have thoroughly problematized the givenness of the liberal rights-bearing subject, and the attributes of sovereignty, autonomy, motility, reason, self-possession, intention, speech, and efficacy that have qualified it, defining the parameters of the human in the process by disqualifying bodies (the woman, the slave, the refugee, the disabled) deemed different. But they have, largely, stopped short of inquiring into a concept of rights that embraces a radically non-human subject, limiting themselves instead to arguing either for a continual expansion of the domain of the human beyond its foundational exclusions, or for an abandonment of rights altogether. But how might conceptualizing rights away from inherited presumptions about how a rights-bearing subject acts, manifests, or appears help us reclaim what was politically generative about the project of rights in the first place? Ultimately, do rights retain any validity if they do not also embrace the non-human? How might performance help us imagine non-human rights—help us figure, speak with and for, non-humans in the domain of the political? And what insight might we gain from revisiting Arendt in the light of post-humanist thought

Reduced Wigner coefficients for Lie superalgebra gl(m|n) corresponding to unitary representations and beyond

In this paper fundamental Wigner coefficients are determined algebraically by considering the eigenvalues of certain generalized Casimir invariants. Here this method is applied in the context of both type 1 and type 2 unitary representations of the Lie superalgebra gl(mjn). Extensions to the non-unitary case are investigated. A symmetry relation between two classes of Wigner coefficients is given in terms of a ratio of dimensions.Comment: 17 page

What is a robot companion - friend, assistant or butler?

The study presented in this paper explored people's perceptions and attitudes towards the idea of a future robot companion for the home. A human-centred approach was adopted using questionnaires and human-robot interaction trials to derive data from 28 adults. Results indicated that a large proportion of participants were in favour of a robot companion and saw the potential role as being an assistant, machine or servant. Few wanted a robot companion to be a friend. Household tasks were preferred to child/animal care tasks. Humanlike communication was desirable for a robot companion, whereas humanlike behaviour and appearance were less essential. Results are discussed in relation to future research directions for the development of robot companions

Close encounters : spatial distances between people and a robot of mechanistic appearance

Peer reviewe

Population administration service satisfaction in Lima Puluh Kota District, West Sumatera

Assessment of public satisfaction with an agency's performance that organizes public services needs to be assessed by involving all service attributes because service attributes cannot stand alone, and performance improvement cannot be made separately. Assessment of service attributes is one way to track consumer ratings so that service providers can understand the causes of service problems. This study uses the Importance Performance Analysis (IPA) method. From this study, it was found that the priority that needs to be improved to improve public satisfaction with population administration services is to increase the discipline of officers in serving the community, certainty of service costs, and speed of service