List Cultures

We live in an age of lists, from magazine features to online clickbait. This book situates the list in a long tradition, asking key questions about the list as a cultural and communicative form. What, Liam Cole Young asks, can this seemingly innocuous form tell us about historical and contemporary media environments and logistical networks? Connecting German theories of cultural techniques to Anglo-American approaches that address similar issues, List Cultures makes a major contribution to debates about New Materialism and the post-human turn

\u27What\u27s in a List?\u27 Cultural Techniques, Logistics, Poeisis

This research explores the list as a cultural and communicative form. Inspired by the ubiquity of rankings, bullet points and registries in contemporary ‘list culture,’ and by Jack Goody’s famous question ‘What’s in a list?’ (1977), I ask: how can this seemingly innocuous form be studied? What does its analysis tell us about historical and contemporary media environments and logistical networks? What can studying this unconventional object bring to media studies? I offer four intersecting arguments. The first proposes that media studies benefits from the incorporation of approaches and concepts that I group together as ‘media materialism.’ Approaches such as media archaeology, associated theories of cultural techniques, actor-network theory and logistical media studies give a more accurate account of media environments because they address more than the institutions, texts and audiences that are the traditional foci of North American media studies. The second argument presents the list as an example of what media materialism makes available. I position listing as a cultural technique that processes distinctions foundational to concepts and categories of social and imaginative life. The third argument proposes that lists cannot be easily dismissed or endorsed. Their complicated and often contradictory operations demand a precise tracing of how they function. The fourth argues that lists endure in our thoughts, texts, and programs because they negotiate tensions and paradoxes that have beguiled humans for centuries, e.g. between entropy and order or wonder and horror. These arguments are developed in four chapters. The first traces the list as a format that structures knowledge in popular music. The second maps listing as a cultural technique of administration in Nazi Germany. I show the Nazi census to be a limit case of a way of seeing and doing, what I term a ‘logistical worldview,’ that can be traced to fifteenth century double-entry bookkeeping. The third explores algorithmic lists of code and protocol in digital culture. These function not only administratively but also in ways that reveal a poetic capacity. The latter is the focus of the final chapter, which uses the words of Jorge Luis Borges and the images of Chris Marker to show the list as an imaginative form that clears a space for Heideggerian poeisis

Development of an ultra-precision grinding technique for the production of structured micro-patches on ceramics and tool steel

Ultra-precision grinding using super abrasives such as diamond and Cubic Boron Nitride (CBN) is ideally suited to the production of artefacts in hard or brittle materials such as ceramics or hard metals. These materials are well suited to the production of moulds. Conventional ultra-precision machining techniques such as diamond turning or micro milling are of limited use in the production of these moulds due to long processing times and incompatibility with certain materials. Moulds incorporating a variety of functional surface structures are used in the production of low cost items such as optics and micro-fluidics. Ultra-precision grinding utilising wheels dressed with specialised surface geometries presents an attractive alternative method for the production of structured surfaces. This method has the advantage of being low cost and easy to adapt to a variety of applications. Developing on previous work a series of radial grooves at regular intervals were dressed onto grinding wheels and then used in two perpendicular passes. The technique has been used to create a series of micro-patches on Macor® ceramic to a depth of 15μm with side lengths of approximately 200μm to 300μm. The results of the operation have been compared against the ideal model to determine the fidelity of structure transfer and assess the quality of the finished surface and the impact of process control factors

Implementing a Fitness and Nutrition Program for Special Olympics Athletes

Introduction: Only 17-30% of individuals with ID meet the recommendations for daily exercise Populations of individuals with ID have higher BMI, lower cardiovascular fitness and lower muscle strength compared to the general population Individuals with ID also have many dietary challenges necessitating nutritional education and interventions One study following four athletes with ID, showed that pairing athletes with and without (unified sports) resulted in a positive change in social self-concept for athletes with ID Given the above, we: Created a 6-week pilot training and nutrition program for Special Olympics Vermont (SOVT). Paired athletes with ID with college athletes without ID to promote wellness during the athlete’s off season.https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/comphp_gallery/1229/thumbnail.jp

Manufacturing knowledge reuse for product design

In today’s world there is ever increasing pressure to bring products to market in a quicker and more time-ly fashion that fulfill customers’ needs and are delivered on budget. One way to aid such acceleration of the design and development process is to effectively share and reuse manufacturing knowledge in an ef-fort to bring about product based interoperability. This paper reports upon the work being carried out in the SAMULET research programme that addresses such factors. It focuses upon (i) how the sources of in-formation and knowledge were recognized, (ii) the definition and categorisation of knowledge and (iii) the potential routes for the reuse of manufacturing knowledge. The research approach is currently being developed to help augment a supportive information and knowledge sharing environment and bring about a more integrated development process within a high tech aerospace company

Evidence in disease and non-disease contexts that nonsense mutations cause altered splicing via motif disruption

Transcripts containing premature termination codons (PTCs) can be subject to nonsense-associated alternative splicing (NAS). Two models have been evoked to explain this, scanning and splice motif disruption. The latter postulates that exonic cis motifs, such as exonic splice enhancers (ESEs), are disrupted by nonsense mutations. We employ genome-wide transcriptomic and k-mer enrichment methods to scrutinize this model. First, we show that ESEs are prone to disruptive nonsense mutations owing to their purine richness and paucity of TGA, TAA and TAG. The motif model correctly predicts that NAS rates should be low (we estimate 5–30%) and approximately in line with estimates for the rate at which random point mutations disrupt splicing (8–20%). Further, we find that, as expected, NAS-associated PTCs are predictable from nucleotide-based machine learning approaches to predict splice disruption and, at least for pathogenic variants, are enriched in ESEs. Finally, we find that both in and out of frame mutations to TAA, TGA or TAG are associated with exon skipping. While a higher relative frequency of such skip-inducing mutations in-frame than out of frame lends some credence to the scanning model, these results reinforce the importance of considering splice motif modulation to understand the etiology of PTC-associated disease

The Power of 8: Encouraging Collaborative DIY Futures

"The Power of 8" was an experimental futures project, collaboratively driven by an ad hoc team of eight people from different walks of life. The aim was to explore new pathways for creating democratic futures by building a public discourse around the aspirations of ordinary people. The team of eight comprised a Designer/Speculator, an Educator, an Interaction Designer, a Permaculturist, a Policy Researcher, an Urbanist, a retired Civil Servant, and a Biomedical Scientist. Through a series of three intensive workshops, and later a wider public engagement phase, we adopted a narrative approach to building a collective view, representing possible futures of Brentford in London, England. This paper describes the strategies we used – including maps, montage and storytelling – to develop concepts, visualise proposals and materialise ‘future artefacts’ during the project