Cuerpo, género y vejez en las viviendas colaborativas para personas mayores

Esta investigación es un acercamiento a las formas de estructurar los cuidados en el incipiente fenómeno de las viviendas colaborativas de personas mayores (senior cohousing) en el Estado Español. Desde el enfoque de la arquitectura feminista se ha realizado una etnografía en base a entrevistas a personas mayores implicadas en procesos de desarrollo de viviendas colaborativas. También nos hemos basado en la observación del Centro Convivencial para personas Mayores Trabensol y el centro socio-cultural La Casa de Lx Abuelx de la Fundación 26 de Diciembre para mayores gays. Mediante este estudio cualitativo se analizan las diferentes implicaciones que estas nuevas organizaciones espaciales domésticas conllevan en relación con los cuidados, los dispositivos comunitarios y la vida cotidiana en las viviendas colaborativas. Además hemos prestado atención a como las estructuras de género operan en el espacio, doméstico en este caso, y la vivencia y socialización que se desarrolla en el mismo.

Pollock is…Crouching in My Pants” : Claes Oldenburg’s Ray Gun as Feminist Critique of the Abstract Expressionist Ego

The “seminal” piece of Claes Oldenburg’s Ray Gun art is Empire (Papa) Ray Gun (1959), a paper maché sculpted gun resembling an erect phallus and swollen testicles. After Empire (Papa) Ray Gun, Oldenburg defined Ray Gun art as anything with a right angle—a form representing the angle at which a handgun’s barrel and handle meet and/or where the erect penis and hanging testicles meet. The forms and tenants of Ray Gun continued into Oldenburg’s later installations, performances, and soft and monumental sculptures.

Feminist Disability Theory: Domestic Violence Against Women with a Disability

Women with a disability continue to experience social oppression and domestic violence as a consequence of gender and disability dimensions. Current explanations of domestic violence and disability inadequately explain several features that lead women who have a disability to experience violent situations. This article incorporates both disability and material feminist theory as an alternative explanation to the dominant approaches (psychological and sociological traditions) of conceptualising domestic violence. This paper is informed by a study which was concerned with examining the nature and perceptions of violence against women with a physical impairment. The emerging analytical framework integrating material feminist interpretations and disability theory provided a basis for exploring gender and disability dimensions. Insight was also provided by the women who identified as having a disability in the study and who explained domestic violence in terms of a gendered and disabling experience. The article argues that material feminist interpretations and disability theory, with their emphasis on gender relations, disablism and poverty, should be used as an alternative tool for exploring the nature and consequences of violence against women with a disability.

Communication Architecture Design for Real-Time Networked Control Systems

Networked control over data networks has received increasing attention in recent years. Among many problems in networked control systems (NCSs) is the need to reduce control latency and jitter and to deal with packet dropouts. This paper introduces our recent progress on a queuing communication architecture for real-time NCS applications, and simple strategies for dealing with packet dropouts. Case studies for a middle-scale process or multiple small-scale processes are presented for TCP/IP based real-time NCSs. Variations of network architecture design are modelled, simulated, and analysed for evaluation of control latency and jitter performance. It is shown that a simple bandwidth upgrade or adding hierarchy does not necessarily bring benefits for performance improvement of control latency and jitter. A co-design of network and control is necessary to maximise the real-time control performance of NCSs