Mucus and ciliated cells of human lung : splitting strategies for particle methods and 3D stokes flows

Lung walls are covered by a film of mucus, whose motility is fundamental for a healthy behavior. Indeed, mucus traps inhaled aerosols (bacteria, dust, ...), and moves from smallest to largest airways, until it reaches esophagus where is it swallowed or expectorated. A lot of biological parameters are responsible for mucus motion [6], such as the vibrations of ciliated cells covering lung walls (cilia height, frequency, ...), mucus/air interaction, water saturation in mucin network, mucus thickness

Numerical and experimental investigation of mucociliary clearance breakdown in cystic fibrosis

The human tracheobronchial tree surface is covered with mucus. A healthy mucus is a heterogeneous material flowing toward the esophagus and a major defense actor against local pathogen proliferation and pollutant deposition. An alteration of mucus or its environment such as in cystic fibrosis dramatically impacts the mucociliary clearance. In the present study, we investigate the mechanical organization and the physics of such mucus in human lungs by means of a joint experimental and numerical work. In particular, we focus on the influence of the shear-thinning mucus mobilized by a ciliated epithelium for mucociliary clearance. The proposed robust numerical method is able to manage variations of more than 5 orders of magnitude in the shear rate and viscosity. It leads to a cartography that allows to discuss major issues on defective mucociliary clearance in cystic fibrosis. Furthermore, the computational rheological analysis based on measurements shows that cystic fibrosis shear-thinning mucus tends to aggregate in regions of lower clearance. Yet, a rarefaction of periciliary fluid has a greater impact than the mucus shear-thinning effects

Review essay: Propositions for posthuman teaching and research: a diffractive re-view of three books

Review essay: Propositions for posthuman teaching and research: a diffractive re-view of three books Snaza, N. & Weaver, J.A. (eds). 2015. Posthumanism and Educational Research. New York and London: Routledge. ISBN: 978-1-138-78235-8. Hbk, 203 pp. Taylor, C.A. & Hughes, C. (eds). 2016. Posthuman Research Practices in Education. Basingstoke, England: Palgrave MacMillan. ISBN: 978-1-137-45307-5. Hbk, 272 pp. Vannini, P. (ed). 2015. Non-Representational Methodologies: Re-Envisioning Research. New York and London: Routledge. ISBN: 978-0-415-71301-6. Hbk, 194 pp

‘This is Not a Photograph of Zuko’ : how agential realism disrupts child-centred notions of agency in digital play research

AbstractThe way in which individualised child agency is already ‘given’ ontologically in digital play research profoundly affects epistemology: how data is produced, analysed and interpreted. Co-created as part of a large-scale international study is a photograph ‘of’ South African six-year-old Zuko playing with Lego bricks. The agential realist diffractive reading of the photo as phenomenon traces transdisciplinary what is already at play materially and discursively in its specificity. Benefitting from recent work by feminist philosopher and quantum physicist Karen Barad and other agential realists, this article foregrounds the distinct contribution agential realism can make in children’s geographies. Moving away from either zooming in objects, or subjects when analysing data disrupts the adult-human gaze and brings into focus the apparatuses that measure and the relational spacetime entanglements objects are always already part of. Doing justice to the complexity of reality reconfigures digital play and agency as intra-actively relational — essential for reimagining more equitable futures in resource-constrained environments.Abstract The way in which individualised child agency is already ‘given’ ontologically in digital play research profoundly affects epistemology: how data is produced, analysed and interpreted. Co-created as part of a large-scale international study is a photograph ‘of’ South African six-year-old Zuko playing with Lego bricks. The agential realist diffractive reading of the photo as phenomenon traces transdisciplinary what is already at play materially and discursively in its specificity. Benefitting from recent work by feminist philosopher and quantum physicist Karen Barad and other agential realists, this article foregrounds the distinct contribution agential realism can make in children’s geographies. Moving away from either zooming in objects, or subjects when analysing data disrupts the adult-human gaze and brings into focus the apparatuses that measure and the relational spacetime entanglements objects are always already part of. Doing justice to the complexity of reality reconfigures digital play and agency as intra-actively relational — essential for reimagining more equitable futures in resource-constrained environments

Introduction : Making Kin : Postqualitative, New Materialist and Critical Posthumanist Research

AbstractThis chapter responds to arguments claiming that posthumanists are unaware of their own location and make universalising claims about ‘the’ human while silent about past and present non-western or Indigenous scholarship, children’s philosophising and their way of life. They are thereby perpetuating coloniality and ontoepistemic injustice. Focusing on the implications for research practices, three examples from practice are woven through, making existing connections explicit between the so-called ‘missing peoples’ of posthumanism: Indigenous peoples and young children. This chapter’s multilayered text investigates posthuman relationality and the ‘missing peoples’ of critical posthumanism in the context of ontoepistemic injustice. My proposal is that young children’s animistic philosophising helps to disrupt the western humanist colonising binaries such as those between science and religion, matter and meaning, heaven and earth, alive and dead, human and nonhuman. Doing justice to age-less animistic thinking has unsettling implications for postqualitative research, not only in education and the critical posthumanities, but across disciplines in higher education. Abstract This chapter responds to arguments claiming that posthumanists are unaware of their own location and make universalising claims about ‘the’ human while silent about past and present non-western or Indigenous scholarship, children’s philosophising and their way of life. They are thereby perpetuating coloniality and ontoepistemic injustice. Focusing on the implications for research practices, three examples from practice are woven through, making existing connections explicit between the so-called ‘missing peoples’ of posthumanism: Indigenous peoples and young children. This chapter’s multilayered text investigates posthuman relationality and the ‘missing peoples’ of critical posthumanism in the context of ontoepistemic injustice. My proposal is that young children’s animistic philosophising helps to disrupt the western humanist colonising binaries such as those between science and religion, matter and meaning, heaven and earth, alive and dead, human and nonhuman. Doing justice to age-less animistic thinking has unsettling implications for postqualitative research, not only in education and the critical posthumanities, but across disciplines in higher education

Posthuman child: Implications for pedagogy and educational research?

Posthumanists propose an urgent and complete re-thinking of our relationships to other humans and the more-than-human. The Western culture/nature dichotomy is currently the ontological framework responsible for (adult) humans’ extractive and detached relationship to nature. The current ecological crisis forces us to re-examine the ontological foundations of how humans relate to one another and to the worlds we co-create. In this chapter, I re-turn to the question what the human is through the concept ‘child’, thereby pushing back at those scholars who simply include child in their critique of ‘the’ human. But child as a concept is complex and refers to chronological, fleshy child in spacetime, as well as the abstract notion that exists only because of its polar opposite, i.e., adult. Working with multiple temporalities and the awareness that earth dwellers – including children and more-thanhuman – are not all ‘on the same timeline’ is particularly generative for childhood studies: child(hood) is not something we (adults) leave behind. With reference to various examples from scholarship that resists erasures between past and future(s), the chapter asks ontological questions about the concept ‘child’ and discusses why it matters epistemologically, ethically and politically for teaching and research to move away from current representational paradigms in education science. (DIPF/Orig.

#Rhodes Must Fall: A posthumanist orientation to decolonising higher education Institutions

No abstract

Decentring the child human in qualitative research: a philosophical "toolbox"

Abstract Purpose Drawing on the philosophies of Donna Haraway, Rosi Braidotti, Karen Barad, Jane Bennett and Erin Manning, this paper explores five “doing concepts” as methodological tools for qualitative inquiry: “sensing the minor gesture,” “tracing a phenomenon,” “attuning to flows of energies,” “attending to thing-power” and “making-with.” These concepts function as an open-ended “tool box” that resists prescriptive methodologies, instead encouraging researchers to unlearn power-producing binaries – such as Human/environment, Big/small and Adult/child – embedded in humanist traditions. Design/methodology/approach Posthumanist and feminist new materialist perspectives challenge traditional notions of child subjectivity by emphasising the relational entanglements of human and more-than-human bodies. The concept of the “posthuman child” (Murris, 2016) resists fixed definitions, instead emerges iteratively through dynamic relationalities. However, this raises critical methodological questions: Does decentering the child necessarily imply a “flat ontology” that erases power relations? How do researchers engage with more-than-human actors – air, insects and microbes – without sidelining children’s agency in qualitative research? Findings A diffractive reading of David Wiesner’s Mr Wuffles! (2013) demonstrates how these concepts generate new ways of thinking, sensing and engaging with research materials. Rather than reinforcing static subjectivities, the toolbox enables a fluid, processual approach to research that decentres the Adult human perspective without erasing the child. By continuously interrogating the assumptions embedded in research apparatuses, this approach fosters a more nuanced, ethically responsive engagement with children and the more-than-human world. Originality/value This is a highly original contribution to the urgent question of what it means to decentre the (child)human.Abstract Purpose Drawing on the philosophies of Donna Haraway, Rosi Braidotti, Karen Barad, Jane Bennett and Erin Manning, this paper explores five “doing concepts” as methodological tools for qualitative inquiry: “sensing the minor gesture,” “tracing a phenomenon,” “attuning to flows of energies,” “attending to thing-power” and “making-with.” These concepts function as an open-ended “tool box” that resists prescriptive methodologies, instead encouraging researchers to unlearn power-producing binaries – such as Human/environment, Big/small and Adult/child – embedded in humanist traditions. Design/methodology/approach Posthumanist and feminist new materialist perspectives challenge traditional notions of child subjectivity by emphasising the relational entanglements of human and more-than-human bodies. The concept of the “posthuman child” (Murris, 2016) resists fixed definitions, instead emerges iteratively through dynamic relationalities. However, this raises critical methodological questions: Does decentering the child necessarily imply a “flat ontology” that erases power relations? How do researchers engage with more-than-human actors – air, insects and microbes – without sidelining children’s agency in qualitative research? Findings A diffractive reading of David Wiesner’s Mr Wuffles! (2013) demonstrates how these concepts generate new ways of thinking, sensing and engaging with research materials. Rather than reinforcing static subjectivities, the toolbox enables a fluid, processual approach to research that decentres the Adult human perspective without erasing the child. By continuously interrogating the assumptions embedded in research apparatuses, this approach fosters a more nuanced, ethically responsive engagement with children and the more-than-human world. Originality/value This is a highly original contribution to the urgent question of what it means to decentre the (child)human

Reconfiguring educational relationality in education: the educator as pregnant stingray

In my paper, I discuss student, teacher-centred and ‘post-postmodern’ educational relationality and use Karen Barad’s posthuman methodology of diffraction to produce an intra-active relationality by reading three familiar figurations through one another: the midwife, the stingray, and the pregnant body. The new educational theory and practice that is produced is the ‘superposition’ of the pregnant stingray – a reconfiguration of the educator that disrupts power producing binaries, such as teacher/learner, adult/child, individual/society. The reconfiguration of the pregnant stingray makes us think differently about difference, the knowing subject (as in/determinate and unbounded), and creates a more egalitarian intra-relationality ‘between’ learner and educator through the shift in subjectivit

Risking erasure? Posthumanist research practices and figurations of (the) child

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