Critically assessing digital documents: materiality and the interpretative role of software

As a contribution to the ongoing tradition of critically assessing documents for research, this paper aims to highlight materiality as a key factor in the co-shaping of knowledge derived from digital documents. The paper first builds upon prior debates in document studies with work from the fields of Science and Technology Studies, and Communication Studies, to establish the role of document materiality in the interpretative process. By first establishing digital documents’ material reality as electrical signal, the paper then discusses the interpretative role of software, in both the representation of that signal for human interpretation and the production of the document through software tools. Finally, the paper considers the implications for persistence and access to digital documents posed by their material reality and the private archival contexts in which they often reside

The cellular and molecular carcinogenic effects of radon exposure: a review.

Journal ArticleResearch Support, Non-U.S. Gov'tReviewOpen access articleRadon-222 is a naturally occurring radioactive gas that is responsible for approximately half of the human annual background radiation exposure globally. Chronic exposure to radon and its decay products is estimated to be the second leading cause of lung cancer behind smoking, and links to other forms of neoplasms have been postulated. Ionizing radiation emitted during the radioactive decay of radon and its progeny can induce a variety of cytogenetic effects that can be biologically damaging and result in an increased risk of carcinogenesis. Suggested effects produced as a result of alpha particle exposure from radon include mutations, chromosome aberrations, generation of reactive oxygen species, modification of the cell cycle, up or down regulation of cytokines and the increased production of proteins associated with cell-cycle regulation and carcinogenesis. A number of potential biomarkers of exposure, including translocations at codon 249 of TP53 in addition to HPRT mutations, have been suggested although, in conclusion, the evidence for such hotspots is insufficient. There is also substantial evidence of bystander effects, which may provide complications when calculating risk estimates as a result of exposure, particularly at low doses where cellular responses often appear to deviate from the linear, no-threshold hypothesis. At low doses, effects may also be dependent on cellular conditions as opposed to dose. The cellular and molecular carcinogenic effects of radon exposure have been observed to be both numerous and complex and the elevated chronic exposure of man may therefore pose a significant public health risk that may extend beyond the association with lung carcinogenesis

Representations of environmental protest on the ground and in the cloud: The NOTAP protests in activist practice and social visual media

This article advances knowledge on activist technosocial practice by studying the realities and representations of on-the-ground environmental resistance and their intersections with visual representations of protest on Twitter. It does so by focusing on the case of resistance to the Trans Adriatic Pipeline, commonly known as TAP, in southern Italy, and on mixed methods for data collection, including ethnographic observations, semi-structured interviews and an AIassisted visual ethnography of a large collection of computationally collected and categorised images posted on Twitter. By comparing online and offline representations of protest, the study demonstrated that only a partial overlapping existed between them, thus adding a nuance to the digital criminological literature premised on the existence of blurred boundaries between online and offline experiences of injustice. Themes overlapped in their representations of protest, with images of on-theground visual resistance being used on Twitter to extend and amplify the contestation of everyday spaces and to support offline and online initiatives to stop the pipeline. Differences in the recurring themes were instead reconnected to the inherent secrecy of some of the protest’s strategies and to the typical ways in which Twitter tends to be used by social movements

The Effects of Gas on Morphological Transformation in Mergers: Implications for Bulge and Disk Demographics

Transformation of disks into spheroids via mergers is a well-accepted element of galaxy formation models. However, recent simulations have shown that bulge formation is suppressed in increasingly gas-rich mergers. We investigate the global implications of these results in a cosmological framework, using independent approaches: empirical halo-occupation models (where galaxies are populated in halos according to observations) and semi-analytic models. In both, ignoring the effects of gas in mergers leads to the over-production of spheroids: low and intermediate-mass galaxies are predicted to be bulge-dominated (B/T~0.5 at <10^10 M_sun), with almost no bulgeless systems), even if they have avoided major mergers. Including the different physical behavior of gas in mergers immediately leads to a dramatic change: bulge formation is suppressed in low-mass galaxies, observed to be gas-rich (giving B/T~0.1 at <10^10 M_sun, with a number of bulgeless galaxies in good agreement with observations). Simulations and analytic models which neglect the similarity-breaking behavior of gas have difficulty reproducing the strong observed morphology-mass relation. However, the observed dependence of gas fractions on mass, combined with suppression of bulge formation in gas-rich mergers, naturally leads to the observed trends. Discrepancies between observations and models that ignore the role of gas increase with redshift; in models that treat gas properly, galaxies are predicted to be less bulge-dominated at high redshifts, in agreement with the observations. We discuss implications for the global bulge mass density and future observational tests.Comment: 14 pages, 11 figures, accepted to MNRAS (matched published version). A routine to return the galaxy merger rates discussed here is available at http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~phopkins/Site/mergercalc.htm

Representing environmental harm and resistance on Twitter: The case of the TAP pipeline

This research explores a new methodological path for doing green cultural criminological research via social media. It provides original case-study data and aims to stimulate further empirical and theoretical debate. In particular, the study explores how Twitter users have represented the harms related to an ongoing pipeline project in Italy (referred to as TAP), and the resistance to those harms. To these ends, it offers a virtual and visual ethnography of Twitter posts and posted images

The status of GEO 600

The GEO 600 laser interferometer with 600m armlength is part of a worldwide network of gravitational wave detectors. GEO 600 is unique in having advanced multiple pendulum suspensions with a monolithic last stage and in employing a signal recycled optical design. This paper describes the recent commissioning of the interferometer and its operation in signal recycled mode

Encrypting Human Rights: The intertwining of resistant voices in the UK state surveillance debate

As a contribution to ongoing surveillance debates, this paper reveals the intertwining of diverse interests and voices which speak in resistance to UK state surveillance. Through a computational topic modelling based mixed methods analysis of the submissions made to the draft Investigatory Powers Bill consultation, the paper demonstrates the diversity and intersection of discourses within different actor groups, including civil society and the technology industry. We demonstrate that encryption is a key issue for these groups, and conflated with a human rights discourse. This serves to unite seemingly disparate interests by imbuing encryption with a responsibility for the protection of human rights, but also threatens to legitimate corporate interests and distract from their own data-driven activities of surveillance capitalism