1,166 research outputs found
Tasting in mundane practices: Ethnographic interventions in social science theory
This thesis presents an ethnographic investigation into practices of tasting. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in various Western Europe settings in which people sensually engaged with food and drinks, the chapters show how tasting is done by research subjects in sensory science laboratories; guests in a restaurant; medical professionals and patients in a hospital; and people gathered for a wine tasting event, daily dinner or a meal in a convent. The ethnographic materials are used to engage with what so far social science literatures on tasting tend to take for granted: that tasting is a 'physiological response' to a food object, leading on to a 'multi-sensory experience' of its qualities, that do not just emerge from the food but are co-shaped by 'the context' and that give rise to sensorial 'knowledge'. By investigating specificities, articulating alternatives, showing construction processes, and typecasting particular practices, the chapters unpack each of these assumptions. What emerges is an alternative, composite understanding of tasting as variously done in varied mundane practices
Abandoning questionnaires. Improving quality of life in daily nephrology practice
Care-concepts have proliferated over the past couple of years, and have been used tostudy all kinds of practices, situations and sites. This begs the question: What is gained bystudying practices in terms of care? The paper addresses this question by using a specificcare-approach, which is the study of daily life dealings (Mol et al., 2010). It mobilises thisapproach to investigate a particular object, namely a good provision of haemodialysistreatment in nephrology practice. It does so in a given place, a dialysis unit in Austria.Based on ethnographic fieldwork with a focus on how patients' quality of life was improved,the paper reports how, in this dialysis unit, a quality of life questionnaire was introducedbut soon abandoned. It first analyses how the prominent ideal that quality of life is to bemeasured with a questionnaire arrived in the goings-on in the unit. It then teases out howconnecting and disconnecting patients to dialysis machines, and seeing them during thedaily round enacted knowing, improving and quality of life in other ways than the prominentpractice. It argues that questionnaires, forms, protocols, and the prominent practice theyare part of may not only be made to fit into daily clinical practices or that daily life dealingsare other to prominent practices. Daily clinical practices may also be the basis upon whichquestionnaires, forms, protocols, and the prominent practice they are part of are evaluated,abandoned, and forgotten. Recommending further investigation into the conditions ofpossibilities for alternative enactments of a good provision of health care to thrive, thepaper concludes that what has been gained by using this specific care-approach to studythis particular object are insights into daily life practices that have so far been othered innephrology practice and STS
Isolated critical point from Lovelock gravity
For any K(=2k+1)th-order Lovelock gravity with fine-tuned Lovelock couplings,
we demonstrate the existence of a special isolated critical point characterized
by non-standard critical exponents in the phase diagram of hyperbolic vacuum
black holes. In the Gibbs free energy this corresponds to a place wherefrom two
swallowtails emerge, giving rise to two first-order phase transitions between
small and large black holes. We believe that this is a first example of a
critical point with non-standard critical exponents obtained in a geometric
theory of gravity.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure
Critiques from within. A modest proposal for reclaiming critique for responsible innovation
How can critique in responsible innovation (RI) become generative? The anything-but-neutral relations between science, technology and society, at the core of science and technology studies, have led to the development of different repertoires of critique. None of them fitted the configurations in the biomedical practices we came to study. There, biomedical experts presented us with an analysis of the power relations perpetuated through the mainstream practices in their fields and had built socio-material alternatives to the common forms of practicing biomedicine. The paper suggests conceptualising critical observations voiced by experts embedded into socio-material alternatives as ‘critique from within’ yielding collateral goods and bads. Rather than asking how to foster responsibility conditions in RI, the paper suggests modestly reclaiming critique by articulating already existing forms of responsibility practices developed by experts themselves and analysing the ambivalent effects they engender
Talking Pleasures, Writing Dialects. Outlining Research on Schmecka
This text is written in English so that it may reach an international academic audience. However, if all academic research comes to be outlined in English we are to lose a lot. Here, we argue this by presenting the case of schmecka. Drawing on fieldwork done in the Austrian region of Vorarlberg, we suggest that the word schmecka differs from the factual ‘flavour perception’ investigated in physiology; from the culturally informed ‘sensory experiences’ explored by anthropologists and even from the sociological ‘tasting in practice’. For one, schmecka is shared between modest good food and assembled eaters; two, it draws together the English ‘tasting’ and ‘smelling’; and three, it has positive overtones. This means that using schmecka is not just judicious when writing about ‘others’, here the people of Vorarlberg. It also, more interestingly, allows ‘us’ to write in another way: one that foregrounds valuing rather than facting
Critiques from within. A modest proposal for reclaiming critique for responsible innovation
How can critique in responsible innovation (RI) become generative? The anything-but-neutral relations between science, technology and society, at the core of science and technology studies, have led to the development of different repertoires of critique. None of them fitted the configurations in the biomedical practices we came to study. There, biomedical experts presented us with an analysis of the power relations perpetuated through the mainstream practices in their fields and had built socio-material alternatives to the common forms of practicing biomedicine. The paper suggests conceptualising critical observations voiced by experts embedded into socio-material alternatives as ‘critique from within’ yielding collateral goods and bads. Rather than asking how to foster responsibility conditions in RI, the paper suggests modestly reclaiming critique by articulating already existing forms of responsibility practices developed by experts themselves and analysing the ambivalent effects they engender
Gauge and Yukawa mediated supersymmetry breaking in the triplet seesaw scenario
We propose a novel supersymmetric unified scenario of the triplet seesaw
mechanism where the exchange of the heavy triplets generates both neutrino
masses and soft supersymmetry breaking terms. Our framework is very predictive
since it relates neutrino mass parameters, lepton flavour violation in the
slepton sector, sparticle and Higgs spectra and electroweak symmetry breakdown.
The phenomenological viability and experimental signatures in lepton flavor
violating processes are discussed.Comment: 11 pages, 3 eps figs. Comments and references added. Final version to
be published in Phys. Rev. Let
Localization and extinction of bacterial populations under inhomogeneous growth conditions
The transition from localized to systemic spreading of bacteria, viruses and
other agents is a fundamental problem that spans medicine, ecology, biology and
agriculture science. We have conducted experiments and simulations in a simple
one-dimensional system to determine the spreading of bacterial populations that
occurs for an inhomogeneous environment under the influence of external
convection. Our system consists of a long channel with growth inhibited by
uniform UV illumination except in a small ``oasis'', which is shielded from the
UV light. To mimic blood flow or other flow past a localized infection, the
oasis is moved with a constant velocity through the UV-illuminated ``desert''.
The experiments are modeled with a convective reaction-diffusion equation. In
both the experiment and model, localized or extinct populations are found to
develop, depending on conditions, from an initially localized population. The
model also yields states where the population grows everywhere. Further, the
model reveals that the transitions between localized, extended, and extinct
states are continuous and non-hysteretic. However, it does not capture the
oscillations of the localized population that are observed in the experiment.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figure
Are medical educators following General Medical Council guidelines on obesity education: if not why not?
BackgroundAlthough the United Kingdom's (UK's) General Medical Council (GMC) recommends that graduating medical students are competent to discuss obesity and behaviour change with patients, it is difficult to integrate this education into existing curricula, and clinicians report being unprepared to support patients needing obesity management in practice. We therefore aimed to identify factors influencing the integration of obesity management education within medical schools.MethodsTwenty-seven UK and Irish medical school educators participated in semi-structured interviews. Grounded theory principles informed data collection and analysis. Themes emerging directly from the dataset illustrated key challenges for educators and informed several suggested solutions.ResultsFactors influencing obesity management education included: 1) Diverse and opportunistic learning and teaching, 2) Variable support for including obesity education within undergraduate medical programmes, and 3) Student engagement in obesity management education. Findings suggest several practical solutions to identified challenges including clarifying recommended educational agendas; improving access to content-specific guidelines; and implementing student engagement strategies.ConclusionsStudents' educational experiences differ due to diverse interpretations of GMC guidelines, educators' perceptions of available support for, and student interest in obesity management education. Findings inform the development of potential solutions to these challenges which may be tested further empirically
- …