Growing up and growing old with television: peripheral viewers and the centrality of care

This essay draws on feminist work on the ethics of care to both (re)establish an alliance between the very young and the very old and to begin to challenge the normative models of subjectivity and spectatorship that circulate within film and television studies. Through textual experiences of time and space and the operations of care, we emphasize the reciprocity and interdependence between generations. This recognition, we argue, offers a new mode of engagement with the challenges of ‘growing up’ and ‘growing old’ on and with television. In our alignment of older and younger audiences we challenge the normative chain of associations where ageing is represented as growth, and growth is associated with development. For the child, this model appears unproblematic even inevitable: ageing = growth = development. In contrast, ageing for older individuals is associated not with growth and development but with decline. A positive alignment between childhood and old age may offer an understanding of this motion (between the status, capacity and experience of child and older adult) as continuous, as an oscillation that is often made evident in the interdependence between child and adult. This, we believe, is mirrored in certain textual and experiential characteristics of television, and we explore it through close textual analysis of children’s programmes Katie Morag, Old Jack’s Boat and Mr Alzheimer’s and Me. These are programmes that not only offer representations of caring intergenerational relationships (of grandchild and grandparent) but express, in their seaside locations, an ebb and flow that is mapped onto experiences of both television and of intergenerational care

Creative Temporal Costings: A Proto-Publics Research Project with Leeds Creative Timebank

A key defining characteristic of timebanking is that all activities are valued equally and in terms of time, with an hour contributed by a legal expert rendered equivalent to an hour of dog-walking. Leeds Creative Timebank (LCT), shares this principle, but is currently the only UK bank dedicated to the collaborative exchange of time among creative practitioners. The team is working on an experimental social design intervention that explores the practices of collaborative exchange as experienced by, and through a co-commissioned study undertaken with LCT, to investigate the value(s) of creative collaborative exchange in this emerging parallel economy. The authors employed methods that allow them to work within the ethos and economy of the LCT, with each investigator having an equal number of hour-long denominations deposited for them in the bank, to enable participation in the bank on the same basis as other members. The assembled ‘hours’ were invested in individuals’ participation in two workshops and the co-production of two outputs: a research report and a creative publication. This experimental method assemblage allowed to explore how collaboration supports the creation of multiple values from within LCT, while also affording members a position from which to develop critical approaches to collaborative exchange from without

Otro título: Muestra itinerante de videoarte español

Documentación: Texto en español e inglé

Quantum limit in resonant vacuum tunneling transducers

We propose an electromechanical transducer based on a resonant-tunneling configuration that, with respect to the standard tunneling transducers, allows larger tunneling currents while using the same bias voltage. The increased current leads to an increase of the shot noise and an increase of the momentum noise which determine the quantum limit in the system under monitoring. Experiments with micromachined masses at 4.2 K could show dominance of the momentum noise over the Brownian noise, allowing observation of the quantum-mechanical noise at the mesoscopic scale

Las topologías de las prácticas de datos: una introducción metodológica

This paper offers a methodological framework to research data practices in education critically. Data practices are understood in the generic sense of the word here, i.e., as the actions, performances, and the resulting consequences, of introducing data-producing technologies in everyday educational situations. The paper first distinguishes between data infrastructures, datafication and data points as three distinct, yet interrelated, phenomena. In order to investigate their concrete doings and specificities, the paper proposes a topological methodology that allows disentangling the relational nature and interwovenness of data practices. Based on this methodology, the paper proceeds with outlining a methodical toolbox that can be employed in studying data practices. Starting from nascent work on digital education platforms as a worked example, the toolbox allows researchers to investigate data practices as consisting of four unique topological dimensions: the Interface of a data practice, its actual Usage, its concrete Design, and its Ecological embeddedness - IUDE.Este artículo ofrece un marco metodológico para investigar de una manera crítica las prácticas relacionadas con los datos en la educación. Las prácticas de datos se entienden aquí en el sentido genérico del término, es decir, como las acciones, las actuaciones y las consecuencias derivadas de la introducción de tecnologías que producen datos en situaciones educativas cotidianas. El presente artículo distingue en primer lugar entre las infraestructuras de datos, la dataficación y los puntos de datos como tres fenómenos diferenciados, aunque interrelacionados. En aras de investigar sus actividades y especificidades concretas, el artículo propone una metodología topológica que permite desentrañar la naturaleza relacional y el entrelazamiento que caracterizan a las prácticas relacionadas con los datos. Basándose en esta metodología, el artículo se dedica a esbozar una caja de herramientas metodológica que se puede emplear a la hora de estudiar las prácticas de datos. Partiendo del trabajo incipiente desarrollado en torno a las plataformas de educación digital como ejemplo práctico, la caja de herramientas permite a los investigadores examinar las prácticas ligadas a datos entendiendo que éstas constan de cuatro dimensiones topológicas únicas: la interfaz de una práctica de datos; su uso real; su diseño concreto; y su integración ecológica —IUDE—.Research Council, KU Leuven (Award: C14/18/041

Status, taste and distinction in consumer culture: acknowledging the symbolic dimensions of inequality

The relationship between social position and health has been the focus of extensive public health debate. In the UK and elsewhere, most researchers have focused on physical aspects of health, using indicators such as mortality and morbidity to draw a picture of profound and widening social inequalities. This paper draws attention to the (neglected) influence of contemporary culture on wellbeing, arguing that the social meanings created within consumer culture possess symbolic force that can add to wider inequalities. The possession of greater material and cultural resources by people of higher social status enables them to label their preferred forms of consumption and lifestyle as desirable and legitimate, thus conveying messages about superior taste and social distinction. Symbolic rather than material forms of inequality are implicated here, with consequences for the psychological wellbeing of disadvantaged people. This paper argues that analyses of inequality need broadening to include such considerations. However, there are implications for efforts to address health inequalities because this analysis suggests that if some forms of social inequality are removed, elements within society would be motivated to invent new forms to replace them. Therefore, this article suggests processes whereby people can develop the self-awareness needed to resist the glossy illusions of the good life represented by modern consumer capitalism

Projeto Green Park (Parque de diversão que gera energia limpa)

VII Seminário de Extensão Universitária da UNILA (SEUNI); VIII Encontro de Iniciação Científica e IV Encontro de Iniciação em Desenvolvimento Tecnológico e Inovação (EICTI 2019) e Seminário de Atividades Formativas da UNILA (SAFOR)A microbiologia pode ser aplicada em diferentes áreas da engenharia, inclusive na produção de matéria-prima para novos dispositivos (bio)eletrônicos. O atual projeto busca estabelecer uma linha de produção utilizando a nanocelulose bacteriana (NCB),para o desenvolvimento de materiais com aplicação na área de nanotecnologia, uma vez que produtos microbiológicos apontam para um desenvolvimento sustentável de dispositivos eletrônicos. A partir dos resultados obtidos, pode-se dizer que no presente projeto estabeleceu-se uma linha de produção de NCB, acumulou-se conhecimento necessário para o desenvolvimento de um compósito sustentável com potencial aplicação eletrônica. Além disto, no período a produção de um artigo de revisão para divulgação científica foi realizadoAgradecimento ao suporte financeiro realizado pelo Programa Institucional de Bolsas de Extensão - Fundação Araucária (PIBEX – FA

Socialising Big Data: From concept to practice

The working paper is a report on an ESRC-fundedproject, Socialising Big Data, that sought to address problematic conceptions of Big Data in popular discourse such as the ‘data deluge’ and the tendency to reduce the term to definitions such as the oft-cited‘3 Vs’. Instead, building on how social scientists have conceived of things, methods and data as having social and cultural lives, the project sought to identify the normative, political and technical imperatives and choices that come to shape Big Data at various momentsin its social lives. Recognising that Big Data involves distributed practices across a range of fields, the project experimentedwith collaboratories as a method for bringing together and engaging with practitioners acrossthree different domains –genomics, national statistics and waste management. In this way it explored how relations between data are also simultaneously relations between people and that it is through such relations that a shared literacyand social framework for Big Datacan be forged

The celebrity entrepreneur on television: profile, politics and power

This article examines the rise of the ‘celebrity entrepreneur’ on television through the emergence of the ‘business entertainment format’ and considers the ways in which regular television exposure can be converted into political influence. Within television studies there has been a preoccupation in recent years with how lifestyle and reality formats work to transform ‘ordinary’ people into celebrities. As a result, the contribution of vocationally skilled business professionals to factual entertainment programming has gone almost unnoticed. This article draws on interviews with key media industry professionals and begins by looking at the construction of entrepreneurs as different types of television personalities and how discourses of work, skill and knowledge function in business shows. It then outlines how entrepreneurs can utilize their newly acquired televisual skills to cultivate a wider media profile and secure various forms of political access and influence. Integral to this is the centrality of public relations and media management agencies in shaping media discourses and developing the individual as a ‘brand identity’ that can be used to endorse a range of products or ideas. This has led to policy makers and politicians attempting to mobilize the media profile of celebrity entrepreneurs to reach out and connect with the public on business and enterprise-related issues

Shifting new media: from content to consultancy, from heterarchy to hierarchy

This is a detailed case history of one of London’s iconic new media companies, AMX Studios. Some of the changes in this firm, we assume, are not untypical for other firms in this sector. Particularly we want to draw attention to two transformations. The first change in AMX and in London’s new media industry more generally refers to the field of industrial relations. What can be observed is a shift from a rather heterarchical towards a more hierarchical organized new media industry, a shift from short-term project networks to long-term client dependency. The second change refers to new media products and services. We want to argue for a shift from cool content production towards consultancy and interactive communications solutions