Processing (Post)humanism, Mediating Desire: Technology in the Works of Three Border Playwrights

New electronic technology, such as personal video cameras, videotape players, and the internet, has increasingly sparked interest from Northern Mexican border authors across genres. In Juan Ríos’s Generación Atari, Francisco J. López´s Cibernauta: cómo vivir atrapado en la red, and Bárbara Colio’s Teoría y práctica de la muerte de una cucaracha (sin dolor) and La habitación, technological innovations play a key role in the development of the central emotional conflicts. The four dramatic works relate new technology to an increased social openness regarding more diverse expressions of sexuality, yet they also portray existing hierarchies, fraught relationships, and tragic events that signal the limits and interruptions involved in the technological mediation of desire. Rather than any wholesale condemnation or celebration of technology, these works pose human-machine relations as an open question to be shared with and pondered by the audience

Classification of Southern Ocean krill and icefish echoes using random forests

Acknowledgements The authors thank the crews, fishers, and scientists who conducted the various surveys from which data were obtained. This work was supported by the Government of South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands. Additional logistical support provided by The South Atlantic Environmental Research Institute, with thanks to Paul Brickle. PF receives funding from the MASTS pooling initiative (TheMarine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland), and their support is gratefully acknowledged. MASTS is funded by the Scottish Funding Council (grant reference HR09011) and contributing institutions. SF is funded by the Natural Environment Research Council, and data were provided from the British Antarctic Survey Ecosystems Long-term Monitoring and Surveys programme as part of the BAS Polar Science for Planet Earth Programme. The authors also thank the anonymous referees for their helpful suggestions on an earlier version of this manuscript.Peer reviewedPostprin

Service Quality and Customer Satisfaction in Chinese Fast Food Sector: A Proposal for CFFRSERV Scale

This study investigates customer’s perception of Chinese fast food restaurant service quality and its relationship with customer satisfaction. Employing modified DINESERV scale, the study uses both quantitative and qualitative research approaches. Qualitative data collection consisted of face-to-face interviews and group discussion. A questionnaire was developed using three sources: interview responses of the customers, the restaurant’s survey and the literature. A total of 205 completed questionnaires were used in the analysis. The new measurement scale, Chinese Fast Food Restaurants Service Quality Scale (CFFRSERV), contained 28 items across six dimensions: assurance and empathy, food, cleanliness, responsiveness, reliability and tangibles. The findings from the study revealed that service quality variables have positive influence on customer satisfaction except reliability dimension. The findings provided a useful tool for service quality improvement in Chinese fast food restaurants. Validating the scale in other restaurants in various cities in China is an area for further research

Your Guess is as Good as Mine: Finding Your Way on Board a Cruise Ship

Wayfinding on board a large cruise ship might be mistakenly thought to be easy and straightforward, and this may well account for the absence of literature on this topic. This paper will address this gap by exploring and exposing the influences that shape our everyday practices while cruising, itself a moving experience, carrying us by consent across the seas to distant shores. The need to address on-site experiences is not as Pearce (2011) points out, always fully investigated in post-holiday satisfaction surveys, and so this exploration of how passengers react and respond to their cruise ship surroundings exposes the scale, and sometimes overwhelming enormity, of some of these vessels now selling a mass tourism product

Assessing consistency of fish survey data : uncertainties in the estimation of mackerel icefish (Champsocephalus gunnari) abundance at South Georgia

Acknowledgments The authors wish to thank the crews, fishermen and scientists who conducted the various surveys from which data were obtained, and Mark Belchier and Simeon Hill for their contributions. This work was supported by the Government of South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands. Additional logistical support provided by The South Atlantic Environmental Research Institute with thanks to Paul Brickle. Thanks to Stephen Smith of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) for help in constructing bootstrap confidence limits. Paul Fernandes receives funding from the MASTS pooling initiative (The Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland), and their support is gratefully acknowledged. MASTS is funded by the Scottish Funding Council (grant reference HR09011) and contributing institutions. We also wish to thank two anonymous referees for their helpful suggestions on earlier versions of this manuscript.Peer reviewedPostprin

The successful Ghana election of 2008: a convenient myth?

Ghana's 2008 election has been hailed by national and international observers as a model for Africa. The perception of success has prevailed despite persistent concerns about an inflated voters' register and electoral fraud perpetrated by the two major parties, the NPP and NDC, in their strongholds in the Ashanti and Volta Regions respectively. Electoral malpractice in Ghana's virtual two-party system could acquire a decisive importance as a ‘third force’, representing an even more important factor than the smaller opposition parties. Unfortunate diplomatic and technocratic biases in election monitoring, combined with a reluctance on the part of the responsible authorities to investigate what appears to be a long history of fraudulent voting, amounts to a dangerous time bomb of unresolved conflict which could detonate in future elections

Oral ketamine vs placebo in patients with cancer-related neuropathic pain

Ketamine hydrochloride is used as an adjuvant treatment for cancer-related neuropathic pain, but evidence of its effectiveness is limited.1 Findings of a large trial investigating the use of ketamine for general cancer pain were negative, but the population studied did not specifically have neuropathic pain. A randomized trial of oral ketamine for cancer-related neuropathic pain has been called for, and the present trial addresses that need

PolyFS Visualizer

One of the most important operating system topics, file systems, control how we store and access data and form a key point in a computer scientists understanding of the underlying mechanisms of a computer. However, file systems, with their abstract concepts and lack of concrete learning aids, is a confusing subjects for students. Historically at Cal Poly, the CPE 453 Introduction to Operating Systems has been on of the most failed classes in the computing majors, leading to the need for better teaching and learning tools. Tools allowing students to gain concrete examples of abstract concepts could be used to better prepare students for industry. The PolyFS Visualizer is a block level file system visualization service built for the PolyFS and TinyFS file systems design specifications currently used by some of professors teaching CPE 453. The service allows students to easily view the blocks of their file system and see metadata, the blocks binary content and the interlinked structure. Students can either compile their file system code with a provided block emulation library to build their disk on a remote server and make use of a visualization website or place the file mounted as their file system directly into the visualization service to view it locally. This allows students to easily view, debug and explore their implementation of a file system to understand how different design decisions affect its operation. The implementation includes three main components: a disk emulation library in C for compilation with students code, a node JS back-end to handle students file systems and block operations and a read only visualization service. We have conducted two surveys of students in order to determine the usefulness of the PolyFS Visualizer. Students responded that the use of the PolyFS visualizer helps with the PolyFS file system design project and has several ideas for future features and expansions