Social networking sites and participatory reluctance: A case study of Gaydar, user resistance and interface rejection

This article conceptualises ‘participatory reluctance’ as a particular orientation to social media that problematises binarised notions of connection and disconnection in social networking sites. It qualitatively examines how the concept has functioned within gay men’s social networking service, Gaydar, among 18- to 28-year-old users of the site in Brisbane, Australia. Participatory reluctance is shown to be a central aspect of the culture of this space, fostered among the studied demographic by the convergence of the growing global push for marriage equality and increasing normalisation of the kinds of gay male identities commonly adopted among this group, with three key factors rooted primarily in Gaydar’s design: (1) young users’ perceptions of the site as a space for procuring casual sex; (2) their perceptions of the imagined user as embodying existing stereotypes of gay masculinity, and; (3) a lack of genuine alternatives in terms of niche digital spaces for gay men’s social networking.

Moving from theory to praxis on the fly: Introducing a salutogenic method to expedite mental health care provision in disaster situations

Not a lot is known about most mental illness. Its triggers can rarely be established and nor can its aetiological dynamics, so it is hardly surprising that the accepted treatments for most mental illnesses are really strategies to manage the most overt symptoms. But with such a dearth of knowledge, how can worthy decisions be made about psychiatric interventions, especially given time and budgetary restrictions? This paper introduces a method, extrapolated from Salutogenics; the psycho-social theory of health introduced by Antonovsky in 1987. This method takes a normative stance (that psychiatric health care is for the betterment of psychiatric patients), and applies it to any context where there is a dearth of workable knowledge. In lieu of guiding evidence, the method identifies reasonable alternatives on the fly, enabling rational decisions to be made quickly with limited resources.

Disciplining the screen through education: The Royal Commission into the moving picture industry in Australia

In this article, we investigate the complex relationship between concerns about children and young people’s exposure to cinema in 1920s Australia and the use of film in education. In part, the Royal Commission into the Moving Picture Industry in Australia aimed to ‘ascertain the effect and the extent of the power of film upon juveniles’ and Commissioners spoke to educationalists, psychologists, medical professions, police officers and parents to gain insight into the impacts of movies on children. Numerous issues were canvassed in the Commission hearings such as exposure to sexual content, ‘excesses’ in film content, children’s inability to concentrate at school following cinema attendance and the influence of cinema on youth crime. While the Commission ultimately suggested it was parents’ role to police children’s engagements with cinema, it did make recommendations for restricting children’s access to films with inappropriate themes. Meanwhile, the Commission was very positive about film’s educational role stating that ‘the advantage to be gained by the use of the cinematograph as an adjunct to educational methods should be assisted in every possible way by the Commonwealth’. We draw on the Commission’s minutes of evidence, the Commission report and newspaper articles form the 1920s to the 1940s to argue that the Commission provides valuable insight into the beginnings of the use of screen content in formal schooling, both as a resource across the curriculum and as a specific focus of education through film appreciation and, later, broader forms of media education. The article argues debates about screen entertainment and education rehearsed in the Commission are reflected today as parents, concerned citizens and educators ponder the dangers and potential of new media technologies and media content used by children and young people such as video games, social media and interactive content.

Revisiting the Task-Capability interface model for incorporating human factors into car-following models

Human factors such as distraction, fatigue, alcohol and drug use are generally ignored in car-following (CF) models. Such ignorance overestimates driver capability and leads to most CF models’ inability in realistically explaining human driving behaviors. This paper proposes a novel car-following modeling framework by introducing the difficulty of driving task measured as the dynamic interaction between driving task demand and driver capability. Task difficulty is formulated based on the famous Task Capability Interface (TCI) model, which explains the motivations behind driver’s decision making. The proposed method is applied to enhance two popular CF models: Gipps’ model and IDM, and named as TDGipps and TDIDM respectively. The behavioral soundness of TDGipps and TDIDM are discussed and their stabilities are analyzed. Moreover, the enhanced models are calibrated with the vehicle trajectory data, and validated to explain both regular and human factor influenced CF behavior (which is distraction caused by hand-held mobile phone conversation in this paper). Both the models show better performance than their predecessors, especially in presence of human factors.

Moving from evaluation to trial: The case of cloud ERP adoption in SMEs

This study proposes that the adoption process of complex-wide systems (e.g. cloud ERP) should be observed as multi-stage actions. Two theoretical lenses were utilised for this study with critical adoption factors identified through the theory of planned behaviour and the progression of each adoption factor observed through Ettlie's (1980) multi-stage adoption model. Together with a survey method, this study has employed data gathered from 162 decision-makers of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Using both linear and non-linear approaches for the data analysis, the study findings have shown that the level of importance for adoption factors changes across different adoption stages.

Study of surface evolution in the wheel-rail interface

This paper aims to trace surface evolution in the wheel-rail interface using data obtained from a twin-disc testing machine and the surface replication technique. Changes in the surface profile of the rail testing disc are explicitly analysed according to the wear mechanism, which helps elaborate a better understanding of the attrition of asperities during the wearing-in process of surface modification. The surface profile amplitude was seen to decrease during the initial running-in phase of the experiment cycle, and after reaching a saturation value, the profile amplitude then increased. Ultimately the results show that grinding will roughen the rail surface and the wheel-rail contact conditions will then remove this surface damage to some saturation value of the profile height. The variation in the rail surface profile beyond this point is then only dependant on the contact conditions which exist between the wheel and rail during normal operation.

Performance of soft-hard-soft (SHS) cement based composite subjected to blast loading with consideration of interface properties

This paper presents a combined experimental and numerical study on the damage and performance of a soft-hard-soft (SHS) multi-layer cement based composite subjected to blast loading which can be used for protective structures and infrastructures to resist extreme loadings, and the composite consists of three layers of construction materials including asphalt concrete (AC) on the top, high strength concrete (HSC) in the middle, and engineered cementitious composites (ECC) at the bottom. To better characterize the material properties under dynamic loading, interface properties of the composite were investigated through direct shear test and also used to validate the interface model. Strain rate effects of the asphalt concrete were also studied and both compressive and tensile dynamic increase factor (DIF) curves were improved based on split Hopkinson pressure bar (SHPB) test. A full-scale field blast test investigated the blast behavior of the composite materials. The numerical model was established by taking into account the strain rate effect of all concrete materials. Furthermore, the interface properties were also considered into the model. The numerical simulation using nonlinear finite element software LS-DYNA agrees closely with the experimental data. Both the numerical and field blast test indicated that the SHS composite exhibited high resistance against blast loading.

Removal of organic content from diesel exhaust particles alters cellular responses of primary human bronchial epithelial cells cultured at an air-liquid interface

Background Exposure to air pollutants, including diesel particulate matter, has been linked to adverse respiratory health effects. Inhaled diesel particulate matter contains adsorbed organic compounds. It is not clear whether the adsorbed organics or the residual components are more deleterious to airway cells. Using a physiologically relevant model, we investigated the role of diesel organic content on mediating cellular responses of primary human bronchial epithelial cells (HBECs) cultured at an air-liquid interface (ALI). Methods Primary HBECs were cultured and differentiated at ALI for at least 28 days. To determine which component is most harmful, we compared primary HBEC responses elicited by residual (with organics removed) diesel emissions (DE) to those elicited by neat (unmodified) DE for 30 and 60 minutes at ALI, with cigarette smoke condensate (CSC) as the positive control, and filtered air as negative control. Cell viability (WST-1 cell proliferation assay), inflammation (TNF-α, IL-6 and IL-8 ELISA) and changes in gene expression (qRT-PCR for HO-1, CYP1A1, TNF-α and IL-8 mRNA) were measured. Results Immunofluorescence and cytological staining confirmed the mucociliary phenotype of primary HBECs differentiated at ALI. Neat DE caused a comparable reduction in cell viability at 30 or 60 min exposures, whereas residual DE caused a greater reduction at 60 min. When corrected for cell viability, cytokine protein secretion for TNF-α, IL-6 and IL-8 were maximal with residual DE at 60 min. mRNA expression for HO-1, CYP1A1, TNF-α and IL-8 was not significantly different between exposures. Conclusion This study provides new insights into epithelial cell responses to diesel emissions using a physiologically relevant aerosol exposure model. Both the organic content and residual components of diesel emissions play an important role in determining bronchial epithelial cell response in vitro. Future studies should be directed at testing potentially useful interventions against the adverse health effects of air pollution exposure.

Moving on (part 2): Power and the child in curriculum history

This paper is the second in a two-part series that maps continuities and ruptures in conceptions of power and traces their effects in educational discourse on 'the child'. It delineates two post-Newtonian intellectual trajectories through which concepts of 'power' arrived at the theorization of 'the child': the paradoxical bio-physical inscriptions of human-ness that accompanied mechanistic worldviews and the explanations for social motion in political philosophy. The intersection of pedagogical theories with 'the child' and 'power' is further traced from the latter 1800s to the present, where a Foucaultian analytics of power-as-effects is reconsidered in regard to histories of motion. The analysis culminates in an examination of post-Newtonian (dis)continuities in the theorization of power, suggesting some productive paradoxes that inhabit turn of the 21st-century conceptualizations of the social.

Moving on (part 1): The physics of power and curriculum history

This is the first of two papers that map (dis)continuities in notions of power from Aristotle to Newton to Foucault. They trace the ways in which bio-physical conceptions of power became paraphrased in social science and deployed in educational discourse on the child and curriculum from post-Newtonian times to the present. The analyses suggest that, amid ruptures in the definition, role, location and meaning given 'power' historically in various 'physical' and 'social' cosmologies, the naming of 'power' has been dependent on 'physics', on the theorization of motion across 'Western' sciences. This first paper examines some (dis)continuities in regard to histories of motion and power from Aristotelian 'natural science' to Newtonian mechanics.

Supramolecular control of the magnetic anisotropy in two-dimensional high-spin Fe arrays at a metal interface

Magnetic atoms at surfaces are a rich model system for solid-state magnetic bits exhibiting either classical(1,2) or quantum(3,4) behaviour. Individual atoms, however, are difficult to arrange in regular patterns(1-5). Moreover, their magnetic properties are dominated by interaction with the substrate, which, as in the case of Kondo systems, often leads to a decrease or quench of their local magnetic moment(6,7). Here, we show that the supramolecular assembly of Fe and 1,4-benzenedicarboxylic acid molecules on a Cu surface results in ordered arrays of high-spin mononuclear Fe centres on a 1.5nm square grid. Lateral coordination with the molecular ligands yields unsaturated yet stable coordination bonds, which enable chemical modification of the electronic and magnetic properties of the Fe atoms independently from the substrate. The easy magnetization direction of the Fe centres can be switched by oxygen adsorption, thus opening a way to control the magnetic anisotropy in supramolecular layers akin to that used in metallic thin films.

In situ investigation of explosive crystallization in a-Ge: Experimental determination of the interface response function using dynamic transmission electron microscopy

The crystallization of amorphous semiconductors is a strongly exothermic process. Once initiated the release of latent heat can be sufficient to drive a self-sustaining crystallization front through the material in a manner that has been described as explosive. Here, we perform a quantitative in situ study of explosive crystallization in amorphous germanium using dynamic transmission electron microscopy. Direct observations of the speed of the explosive crystallization front as it evolves along a laser-imprinted temperature gradient are used to experimentally determine the complete interface response function (i.e., the temperature-dependent front propagation speed) for this process, which reaches a peak of 16 m/s. Fitting to the Frenkel-Wilson kinetic law demonstrates that the diffusivity of the material locally/immediately in advance of the explosive crystallization front is inconsistent with those of a liquid phase. This result suggests a modification to the liquid-mediated mechanism commonly used to describe this process that replaces the phase change at the leading amorphous-liquid interface with a change in bonding character (from covalent to metallic) occurring in the hot amorphous material.

Stability of Dimeric Interface in Banana Lectin: Insight from Molecular Dynamics Simulations

Banana lectin (Banlec) is a homodimeric non-glycosylated protein. It exhibits the b-prism I structure. High-temperature molecular dynamics simulations have been utilized to monitor and understand early stages of thermally induced unfolding of Banlec. The present study elucidates the behavior of the dimeric protein at four different temperatures and compares the structural and conformational changes to that of the minimized crystal structure. The process of unfolding was monitored by following the radius of gyration, the rms deviation of each residue, change in relative solvent accessibility and the pattern of inter- and intra-subunit interactions. The overall study demonstrates that the Banlec dimer is a highly stable structure, and the stability is mostly contributed by interfacial interactions. It maintains its overall conformation during high-temperature (400–500 K) simulations, with only the unstructured loop regions acquiring greater momentum under such condition. Nevertheless, at still higher temperatures (600 K) the tertiary structure is gradually lost which later extends to loss of secondary structural elements. The pattern of hydrogen bonding within the subunit and at the interface across different stages has been analyzed and has provided rationale for its intrinsic high stability.

Functional correlation of bacterial LuxS with their quaternary associations: interface analysis of the structure networks

Background The genome of a wide variety of prokaryotes contains the luxS gene homologue, which encodes for the protein S-ribosylhomocysteinelyase (LuxS). This protein is responsible for the production of the quorum sensing molecule, AI-2 and has been implicated in a variety of functions such as flagellar motility, metabolic regulation, toxin production and even in pathogenicity. A high structural similarity is present in the LuxS structures determined from a few species. In this study, we have modelled the structures from several other species and have investigated their dimer interfaces. We have attempted to correlate the interface features of LuxS with the phenotypic nature of the organisms. Results The protein structure networks (PSN) are constructed and graph theoretical analysis is performed on the structures obtained from X-ray crystallography and on the modelled ones. The interfaces, which are known to contain the active site, are characterized from the PSNs of these homodimeric proteins. The key features presented by the protein interfaces are investigated for the classification of the proteins in relation to their function. From our analysis, structural interface motifs are identified for each class in our dataset, which showed distinctly different pattern at the interface of LuxS for the probiotics and some extremophiles. Our analysis also reveals potential sites of mutation and geometric patterns at the interface that was not evident from conventional sequence alignment studies. Conclusion The structure network approach employed in this study for the analysis of dimeric interfaces in LuxS has brought out certain structural details at the side-chain interaction level, which were elusive from the conventional structure comparison methods. The results from this study provide a better understanding of the relation between the luxS gene and its functional role in the prokaryotes. This study also makes it possible to explore the potential direction towards the design of inhibitors of LuxS and thus towards a wide range of antimicrobials.