bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Designing an Internet
Authors: Clark David D.
Published: August 2019

Why the Internet was designed to be the way it is, and how it could be different, now and in the future.

How do you design an internet? The architecture of the current Internet is the product of basic design decisions made early in its history. What would an internet look like if it were designed, today, from the ground up? In this book, MIT computer scientist David Clark explains how the Internet is actually put together, what requirements it was designed to meet, and why different design decisions would create different internets. He does not take today's Internet as a given but tries to learn from it, and from alternative proposals for what an internet might be, in order to draw some general conclusions about network architecture.

Clark discusses the history of the Internet, and how a range of potentially conflicting requirements—including longevity, security, availability, economic viability, management, and meeting the needs of society—shaped its character. He addresses both the technical aspects of the Internet and its broader social and economic contexts. He describes basic design approaches and explains, in terms accessible to nonspecialists, how networks are designed to carry out their functions. (An appendix offers a more technical discussion of network functions for readers who want the details.) He considers a range of alternative proposals for how to design an internet, examines in detail the key requirements a successful design must meet, and then imagines how to design a future internet from scratch. It's not that we should expect anyone to do this; but, perhaps, by conceiving a better future, we can push toward it.
The Inversion Factor
Authors: Bernardi Linda , Sarma Sanjay E. , Traub Kenneth
Published: August 2019

Why companies need to move away from a “product first” orientation to pursuing innovation based on customer need.

In the past, companies found success with a product-first orientation; they made a thing that did a thing. TheInversion Factor explains why the companies of today and tomorrow will have to abandon the product-first orientation. Rather than asking “How do the products we make meet customer needs?” companies should ask “How can technology help us reimagine and fill a need?” Zipcar, for example, instead of developing another vehicle for moving people from point A to point B, reimagined how people interacted with vehicles. Zipcar inverted the traditional car company mission.

The authors explain how the introduction of “smart” objects connected by the Internet of Things signals fundamental changes for business. The IoT, where real and digital coexist, is powering new ways to meet human needs. Companies that know this include giants like Amazon, Airbnb, Uber, Google, Tesla, and Apple, as well as less famous companies like Tile, Visenti, and Augury. The Inversion Factor offers a roadmap for businesses that want to follow in their footsteps.

The authors chart the evolution of three IoTs—the Internet of Things (devices connected to the Internet), the Intelligence of Things (devices that host software applications), and the Innovation of Things (devices that become experiences). Finally, they offer a blueprint for businesses making the transition to inversion and interviews with leaders of major companies and game-changing startups.
Taming the Sun
Authors: Sivaram Varun
Published: August 2019

How solar could spark a clean-energy transition through transformative innovation—creative financing, revolutionary technologies, and flexible energy systems.

Solar energy, once a niche application for a limited market, has become the cheapest and fastest-growing power source on earth. What's more, its potential is nearly limitless—every hour the sun beams down more energy than the world uses in a year. But in Taming the Sun, energy expert Varun Sivaram warns that the world is not yet equipped to harness erratic sunshine to meet most of its energy needs. And if solar's current surge peters out, prospects for replacing fossil fuels and averting catastrophic climate change will dim.

Innovation can brighten those prospects, Sivaram explains, drawing on firsthand experience and original research spanning science, business, and government. Financial innovation is already enticing deep-pocketed investors to fund solar projects around the world, from the sunniest deserts to the poorest villages. Technological innovation could replace today's solar panels with coatings as cheap as paint and employ artificial photosynthesis to store intermittent sunshine as convenient fuels. And systemic innovation could add flexibility to the world's power grids and other energy systems so they can dependably channel the sun's unreliable energy.

Unleashing all this innovation will require visionary public policy: funding researchers developing next-generation solar technologies, refashioning energy systems and economic markets, and putting together a diverse clean energy portfolio. Although solar can't power the planet by itself, it can be the centerpiece of a global clean energy revolution.

A Council on Foreign Relations Book
Food
Authors: Parasecoli Fabio
Published: August 2019

A consumer's guide to the food system, from local to global: our part as citizens in the interconnected networks, institutions, and organizations that enable our food choices.

Everybody eats. We may even consider ourselves experts on the topic, or at least Instagram experts. But are we aware that the shrimp in our freezer may be farmed and frozen in Vietnam, the grapes in our fruit bowl shipped from Chile, and the coffee in our coffee maker grown in Nicaragua, roasted in Germany, and distributed in Canada? Whether we know it or not, every time we shop for food, cook, and eat, we connect ourselves to complex supply networks, institutions, and organizations that enable our food choices. Even locavores may not know the whole story of the produce they buy at the farmers market. In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, food writer and scholar Fabio Parasecoli offers a consumer's guide to the food system, from local to global.

Parasecoli describes a system made up of open-ended, shifting, and unstable networks rather than well-defined chains; considers healthy food and the contradictory advice about it consumers receive; discusses food waste and the implications for sustainability; explores food technologies (and “culinary luddism”); and examines hunger and food insecurity in both developing and developed countries. Parasecoli reminds us that we are not only consumers but also citizens, and as citizens we have more power to improve the food system than we do by our individual food choices.
The Science of Breaking Bad
Authors: Trumbore Dave , Nelson Donna J.
Published: August 2019

All the science in Breaking Bad—from explosive experiments to acid-based evidence destruction—explained and analyzed for authenticity.

Breaking Bad's (anti)hero Walter White (played by Emmy-winner Bryan Cranston) is a scientist, a high school chemistry teacher who displays a plaque that recognizes his “contributions to research awarded the Nobel Prize.” During the course of five seasons, Walt practices a lot of ad hoc chemistry—from experiments that explode to acid-based evidence destruction to an amazing repertoire of methodologies for illicit meth making. But how much of Walt's science is actually scientific? In The Science of “Breaking Bad,” Dave Trumbore and Donna Nelson explain, analyze, and evaluate the show's portrayal of science, from the pilot's opening credits to the final moments of the series finale. The intent is not, of course, to provide a how-to manual for wannabe meth moguls but to decode the show's most head-turning, jaw-dropping moments. Trumbore, a science and entertainment writer, and Nelson, a professor of chemistry and Breaking Bad's science advisor, are the perfect scientific tour guides.

Trumbore and Nelson cover the show's portrayal of chemistry, biology, physics, and subdivisions of each area including toxicology and electromagnetism. They explain, among other things, Walt's DIY battery making; the dangers of Mylar balloons; the feasibility of using hydrofluoric acid to dissolve bodies; and the chemistry of methamphetamine itself. Nelson adds interesting behind-the-scenes anecdotes and describes her work with the show's creator and writers. Marius Stan, who played Bogdan on the show (and who is a PhD scientist himself) contributes a foreword. This is a book for every science buff who appreciated the show's scientific moments and every diehard Breaking Bad fan who wondered just how smart Walt really was.
When Innovation Moves at Digital Speed
Authors: MIT Sloan Management Review
Published: August 2019

Practical advice from experts on how to create, manage, measure, and improve innovation in and for today's digital markets

All organizations grapple with what digitalization means for their business and, in particular, how digital forces will drive their approaches to innovation. But very few organizations have clearly defined the scale, speed, and scope of their engagement with the digital world. These essays, from the pages of the preeminent journal MIT Sloan Management Review, offer practical advice from experts on how to create, facilitate, and manage innovation in and for today's digital markets.

The essays emphasize the power of intersections, where different mindsets and skills collide. These connections can be external—LEGO, for example, has engaged more than 100,000 adult fans in user communities—or internal, as when “brokers,” “connectors,” and “energizers” act within organizations. Contributors stress the value of action over analysis, citing examples that affirm the power of trial-and-error experimentation. They demonstrate that innovation success requires thinking beyond technology. Innovation is not created by white-coated scientists in a lab; it is not the job of the few but of the many. And finally, the contributors warn that the greatest enemy lies within; innovators often encounter fierce internal resistance. They consider innovations in the innovation process itself, describing the promise and pitfalls of “design thinking” and offering advice on how to manage the tension between new and existing business models.

Innovation is not a magical act practiced by a select few with rare gifts. Innovation is a discipline that can be measured, managed, and improved. When Innovation Moves at Digital Speed provides practical guidance for innovation success.

Contributors Daniel Amaral, Jamie Anderson, Scott D. Anthony, Yun Mi Antorini, Michael Arena, Tormod Askildsen, Michael Ballé, Thomas Bartman, Jennie Björk, Marcel Bogers, Anna Brattström, Clayton M. Christensen, Edivandro Carlos Conforto, Rob Cross, Charles Dhanaraj, Thomas Fink, Nicolai J. Foss, Johan Frishammar, Johann Harnoss, Srivardhini K. Jha, Lâle Kesebi, Rishikesha T. Krishnan, Martin Kupp, Sean Looram, Mats Magnusson, Ann Majchrzak, Arvind Malhotra, James Morgan, Albert M. Muñiz, Jr., Ramiro Palma, Ishwardutt Parulkar, Eric Rebentisch, Jörg Reckhenrich, Martin Reeves, Anders Richtnér, Dave Rochlin, Duncan Simester, Jonathan Sims, Joseph V. Sinfield, Durward K. Sobek II, Freddy Solis, Kristian J. Sund, Mary Uhl-Bien, Derek van Bever, J. Andrei Villarroel, Amy Webb
Gyorgy Kepes
Authors: Blakinger John R.
Published: August 2019

How Gyorgy Kepes, the last disciple of Bauhaus modernism, became the single most significant artist within a network of scientific experts and elites.

Gyorgy Kepes (1906–2001) was the last disciple of Bauhaus modernism, an acolyte of László Moholy-Nagy and a self-styled revolutionary artist. But by midcentury, transplanted to America, Kepes found he was trapped in the military-industrial-aesthetic complex. In this first book-length study of Kepes, John Blakinger argues that Kepes, by opening the research laboratory to the arts, established a new paradigm for creative practice: the artist as technocrat. First at Chicago's New Bauhaus and then for many years at MIT, Kepes pioneered interdisciplinary collaboration between the arts and sciences—what he termed “interthinking” and “interseeing.” Kepes and his colleagues—ranging from metallurgists to mathematicians—became part of an important but little-explored constellation: the Cold War avant-garde.

Blakinger traces Kepes's career in the United States through a series of episodes: Kepes's work with the military on camouflage techniques; his development of a visual design pedagogy, as seen in the exhibition The New Landscape and his book The New Landscape in Art and Science; his encyclopedic Vision + Value series; his unpublished magnum opus, the Light Book; the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS), an art-science research institute established by Kepes at MIT in 1967; and the Center's proposals for massive environmental installations that would animate the urban landscape. CAVS was entangled in the antiwar politics of the late 1960s, as many students and faculty protested MIT's partnerships with defense contractors—some of whom had ties to the Center. In attempting to “undream” the Bauhaus into existence in the postwar world, Kepes faced profound resistance.

Generously illustrated, drawing on the vast archive of Kepes's papers at Stanford and MIT's CAVS Special Collection, this book supplies a missing chapter in our understanding of midcentury modern and Cold War visual culture.
Hume's Problem Solved
Authors: Schurz Gerhard
Published: August 2019

A new approach to Hume's problem of induction that justifies the optimality of induction at the level of meta-induction.

Hume's problem of justifying induction has been among epistemology's greatest challenges for centuries. In this book, Gerhard Schurz proposes a new approach to Hume's problem. Acknowledging the force of Hume's arguments against the possibility of a noncircular justification of the reliability of induction, Schurz demonstrates instead the possibility of a noncircular justification of the optimality of induction, or, more precisely, of meta-induction (the application of induction to competing prediction models). Drawing on discoveries in computational learning theory, Schurz demonstrates that a regret-based learning strategy, attractivity-weighted meta-induction, is predictively optimal in all possible worlds among all prediction methods accessible to the epistemic agent. Moreover, the a priori justification of meta-induction generates a noncircular a posteriori justification of object induction. Taken together, these two results provide a noncircular solution to Hume's problem.

Schurz discusses the philosophical debate on the problem of induction, addressing all major attempts at a solution to Hume's problem and describing their shortcomings; presents a series of theorems, accompanied by a description of computer simulations illustrating the content of these theorems (with proofs presented in a mathematical appendix); and defends, refines, and applies core insights regarding the optimality of meta-induction, explaining applications in neighboring disciplines including forecasting sciences, cognitive science, social epistemology, and generalized evolution theory. Finally, Schurz generalizes the method of optimality-based justification to a new strategy of justification in epistemology, arguing that optimality justifications can avoid the problems of justificatory circularity and regress.
Walter Benjamin Reimagined
Authors: Cannon Frances
Published: August 2019

An illuminated tour of Walter Benjamin's ideas; a graphic translation; an encyclopedia of fragments.

Walter Benjamin was a man of letters, an art critic, an essayist, a translator, a philosopher, a collector, and an urban flâneur. In his writings, he ambles, samples, and explores. With Walter Benjamin Reimagined, Frances Cannon offers a visual and literary response to Benjamin's work. With detailed and dreamlike pen-and-ink drawings and hand-lettered text, Cannon gives readers an illuminated tour of Walter Benjamin's thoughts—a graphic translation, an encyclopedia of fragments.

Cannon has not created a guide to Benjamin's greatest ideas—this is not an illustrated Walter Benjamin cheat sheet—but rather a beautifully rendered work of graphic literature. Cannon doesn't plod through thickets of minutiae; she strolls—a flâneuse herself—using Benjamin's words and her own drawings to construct a creative topography of Benjamin's writing. Phrases from “Unpacking My Library,” for example, are accompanied by images of flying papers, stray books, stacked books—books “not yet touched by the mild boredom of order”—and a bearded mage. Cannon takes the reader through different periods of Benjamin's writing: “Artifacts of Youth,” nostalgic musings on his childhood; “Fragments of a Critical Eye,” early writings, political observations, and cultural criticism; “Athenaeum of Imagination,” meditations on philosophy and psychology; “A Stroll through the Arcades,” Benjamin's unfinished magnum opus; and “A Collection of Dreams and Stories,” experimental and fantastical writings.

With drawings and text, Cannon offers a phantasmagorical tribute to Benjamin's wandering eye.
Sexual Consent
Authors: Popova Milena
Published: August 2019

An introduction to issues of sexual consent, covering key strands of feminist thought, how sexual consent is negotiated in practice, the influence of popular culture, and more.

The #MeToo movement has focused public attention on the issue of sexual consent. People of all genders, from all walks of life, have stepped forward to tell their stories of sexual harassment and violation. In a predictable backlash, others have taken to mass media to inquire plaintively if “flirting” is now forbidden. This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series offers a nuanced introduction to sexual consent by a writer who is both a scholar and an activist on this issue.

It has become clear from discussions of the recent high-profile cases of Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, and others that there is no clear agreement over what constitutes consent or non-consent and how they are expressed and perceived in sexual situations. This book presents key strands of feminist thought on the subject of sexual consent from across academic and activist communities and covers the history of research on consent in such fields as psychology and feminist legal studies. It discusses how sexual consent is negotiated in practice, from “No means no” to “Yes means yes,” and describes what factors might limit individual agency in such negotiations. It examines how popular culture, including pornography, romance fiction, and sex advice manuals, shapes our ideas of consent; explores the communities at the forefront of consent activism; and considers what meaningful social change in this area might look like. Going beyond the conventional cisgender, heterosexual norm, the book lists additional resources for those seeking to improve their practice of consent, survivors of sexual violence, and readers who want to understand contemporary debates on this issue in more depth.
A Grammatical View of Logic Programming
Authors: Deransart Pierre , Maluszyński Jan
Published: August 2019

This book describes a complementary approach that views logic programs as grammars and shows how this new presentation of the foundations of logic programming, based on the notion of proof trees, can enrich the field.

Within the field of logic programming there have been numerous attempts to transform grammars into logic programs. This book describes a complementary approach that views logic programs as grammars and shows how this new presentation of the foundations of logic programming, based on the notion of proof trees, can enrich the field. The authors' approach facilitates discussion of grammatical aspects of, and introduces new kinds of semantics for, definite programs. They survey relevant grammatical formalisms and provide a comprehensive introduction to the well-known attribute grammars and van Wijngaarden grammars. A formal comparison of definite programs to these grammars allows the authors to identify interesting grammatical concepts. The book also includes a presentation of verification methods for definite programs derived from verification methods for attribute grammars, and an analysis of the occur-check problem as an example of how the grammatical view of logic programming can be applied.

Contents Preliminaries • Foundations • Grammatical Extensions of Logic Programs • Attribute Grammars • Attribute Grammars and Logic Programming • Proof Methods • Study of Declarative Properties • The Occur-check Problem
NETL
Authors: Fahlman Scott
Published: August 2019

The system presented in this book consists of two more-or-less independent parts. The first is the system's parallel network memory scheme; the second part of the knowledge-base system presented here is NETL, "a vocabulary of conventions and processing algorithms—in some sense, a language—for representing various kinds of knowledge as nodes and links in the network...."

"Consider for a moment the layers of structure and meaning that are attached to concepts like lawsuit, birthday party, fire, mother, walrus, cabbage, or king.... If I tell you that a house burned down, and that the fire started at a child's birthday party, you will think immediately of the candles on the cake and perhaps of the many paper decorations. You will not, In all probability, find yourself thinking about playing pin-the- tall-on-the-donkey or about the color of the cake's icing or about the fact that birthdays come once a year. These concepts are there when you need them, but they do not seem to slow down the search for a link between fires and birthday parties." The human mind can do many remarkable things. One of the most remarkable Is its ability to store an enormous quantity and variety of knowledge and to locate and retrieve whatever part of it is relevant in a particular context quickly and in most cases almost without effort. "If we are ever to create an artificial intelligence with human-like abilities," Fahlman writes, "we will have to endow it with a comparable knowledge-handling facility; current knowledge-base systems fall far short of this goal. This report describes an approach to the problem of representing and using realworld knowledge in a computer." The system developed by Fahlman and presented in this book consists of two more-or-less independent parts. The first is the system's parallel network memory scheme: "Knowledge Is stored as a pattern of interconnections of very simple parallel processing elements: node units that can store a dozen or so distinct marker-bits, and link units that can propagate those markers from node to node, in parallel through the network. Using these marker-bit movements, the parallel network system can perform searches and many common deductions very quickly." The second (and more traditional) part of the knowledge-base system presented here is NETL, "a vocabulary of conventions and processing algorithms—in some sense, a language—for representing various kinds of knowledge as nodes and links in the network.... NETL incorporates a number of representational techniques—new ideas and new combinations of old ideas-which allow it to represent certain real-world concepts more precisely and more efficiently than earlier systems.... NETL has been designed to operate efficiently on the parallel network machine described above, and to exploit this machine's special abilities. Most of the ideas in NETL are applicable to knowledge-base systems on serial machines as well."
The Syntactic Process
Authors: Steedman Mark
Published: August 2019

This book covers topics in formal linguistics, intonational phonology, computational linguistics, and experimental psycholinguistics, presenting them as an integrated theory of the language faculty.

In this book Mark Steedman argues that the surface syntax of natural languages maps spoken and written forms directly to a compositional semantic representation that includes predicate-argument structure, quantification, and information structure without constructing any intervening structural representation. His purpose is to construct a principled theory of natural grammar that is directly compatible with both explanatory linguistic accounts of a number of problematic syntactic phenomena and a straightforward computational account of the way sentences are mapped onto representations of meaning. The radical nature of Steedman's proposal stems from his claim that much of the apparent complexity of syntax, prosody, and processing follows from the lexical specification of the grammar and from the involvement of a small number of universal rule-types for combining predicates and arguments. These syntactic operations are related to the combinators of Combinatory Logic, engendering a much freer definition of derivational constituency than is traditionally assumed. This property allows Combinatory Categorial Grammar to capture elegantly the structure and interpretation of coordination and intonation contour in English as well as some well-known interactions between word order, coordination, and relativization across a number of other languages. It also allows more direct compatibility with incremental semantic interpretation during parsing.

The book covers topics in formal linguistics, intonational phonology, computational linguistics, and experimental psycholinguistics, presenting them as an integrated theory of the language faculty in a form accessible to readers from any of those fields.

Bradford Books imprint
Raising the Stakes
Authors: Taylor T. L.
Published: August 2019

How a form of play becomes a sport: players, agents, referees, leagues, tournaments, sponsorships, and spectators, and the culture of professional computer game play.

Competitive video and computer game play is nothing new: the documentary King of Kong memorably portrays a Donkey Kong player's attempts to achieve the all-time highest score; the television show Starcade (1982–1984) featured competitions among arcade game players; and first-person shooter games of the 1990s became multiplayer through network play. A new development in the world of digital gaming, however, is the emergence of professional computer game play, complete with star players, team owners, tournaments, sponsorships, and spectators. In Raising the Stakes, T. L. Taylor explores the emerging scene of professional computer gaming and the accompanying efforts to make a sport out of this form of play.

In the course of her explorations, Taylor travels to tournaments, including the World Cyber Games Grand Finals (which considers itself the computer gaming equivalent of the Olympics), and interviews participants from players to broadcasters. She examines pro-gaming, with its highly paid players, play-by-play broadcasts, and mass audience; discusses whether or not e-sports should even be considered sports; traces the player's path from amateur to professional (and how a hobby becomes work); and describes the importance of leagues, teams, owners, organizers, referees, sponsors, and fans in shaping the structure and culture of pro-gaming.

Taylor connects professional computer gaming to broader issues: our notions of play, work, and sport; the nature of spectatorship; the influence of money on sports. And she examines the ongoing struggle over the gendered construction of play through the lens of male-dominated pro-gaming. Ultimately, the evolution of professional computer gaming illuminates the contemporary struggle to convert playful passions into serious play.
Japan's Dietary Transition and Its Impacts
Authors: Smil Vaclav , Kobayashi Kazuhiko
Published: August 2019

An examination of the transformation of the Japanese diet from subsistence to abundance and an assessment of the consequences for health, longevity, and the environment.

In a little more than a century, the Japanese diet has undergone a dramatic transformation. In 1900, a plant-based, near-subsistence diet was prevalent, with virtually no consumption of animal protein. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, Japan's consumption of meat, fish, and dairy had increased markedly (although it remained below that of high-income Western countries). This dietary transition was a key aspect of the modernization that made Japan the world's second largest economic power by the end of the twentieth century, and it has helped Japan achieve an enviable demographic primacy, with the world's highest life expectancy and a population that is generally healthier (and thinner) than that of other modern affluent countries. In this book, Vaclav Smil and Kazuhiko Kobayashi examine Japan's gradual but profound dietary change and investigate its consequences for health, longevity, and the environment.

Smil and Kobayashi point out that the gains in the quality of Japan's diet have exacted a price in terms of land use changes, water requirements, and marine resource depletion; and because Japan imports so much of its food, this price is paid globally as well as domestically. The book's systematic analysis of these diverse consequences offers the most detailed account of Japan's dietary transition available in English.
Developer's Dilemma
Authors: O'Donnell Casey
Published: August 2019

An examination of work, the organization of work, and the market forces that surround it, through the lens of the collaborative practice of game development.

Rank-and-file game developers bring videogames from concept to product, and yet their work is almost invisible, hidden behind the famous names of publishers, executives, or console manufacturers. In this book, Casey O'Donnell examines the creative collaborative practice of typical game developers. His investigation of why game developers work the way they do sheds light on our understanding of work, the organization of work, and the market forces that shape (and are shaped by) media industries. O'Donnell shows that the ability to play with the underlying systems—technical, conceptual, and social—is at the core of creative and collaborative practice, which is central to the New Economy. When access to underlying systems is undermined, so too is creative collaborative process.

Drawing on extensive fieldwork in game studios in the United States and India, O'Donnell stakes out new territory empirically, conceptually, and methodologically. Mimicking the structure of videogames, the book is divided into worlds, within which are levels; and each world ends with a boss fight, a “rant” about lessons learned and tools mastered. O'Donnell describes the process of videogame development from pre-production through production, considering such aspects as experimental systems, “socially mandatory” overtime, and the perpetual startup machine that exhausts young, initially enthusiastic workers. He links work practice to broader systems of publishing, manufacturing, and distribution; introduces the concept of a privileged “actor-intra-internetwork”; and describes patent and copyright enforcement by industry and the state.
The Aesthetics of Imagination in Design
Authors: Folkmann Mads Nygaard
Published: August 2019

A theoretically informed investigation that relates the philosophies of aesthetics and imagination to understanding design practice.

In The Aesthetics of Imagination in Design, Mads Folkmann investigates design in both material and immaterial terms. Design objects, Folkmann argues, will always be dual phenomena—material and immaterial, sensual and conceptual, actual and possible. Drawing on formal theories of aesthetics and the phenomenology of imagination, he seeks to answer fundamental questions about what design is and how it works that are often ignored in academic research.

Folkmann considers three conditions in design: the possible, the aesthetic, and the imagination. Imagination is a central formative power behind the creation and the life of design objects; aesthetics describes the sensual, conceptual, and contextual codes through which design objects communicate; the concept of the possible—the enabling of new uses, conceptions, and perceptions—lies behind imagination and aesthetics. The possible, Folkmann argues, is contained as a structure of meaning within the objects of design, which act as part of our interface with the world. Taking a largely phenomenological perspective that reflects both continental and American pragmatist approaches, Folkmann also makes use of discourses that range from practice-focused accounts of design methodology to cultural studies. Throughout, he offers concrete examples to illustrate theoretical points. Folkmann's philosophically informed account shows design—in all its manifestations, from physical products to principles of organization—to be an essential medium for the articulation and transformation of culture.
The Digital Plenitude
Authors: Bolter Jay David
Published: August 2019

How the creative abundance of today's media culture was made possible by the decline of elitism in the arts and the rise of digital media.

Media culture today encompasses a universe of forms—websites, video games, blogs, books, films, television and radio programs, magazines, and more—and a multitude of practices that include making, remixing, sharing, and critiquing. This multiplicity is so vast that it cannot be comprehended as a whole. In this book, Jay David Bolter traces the roots of our media multiverse to two developments in the second half of the twentieth century: the decline of elite art and the rise of digital media. Bolter explains that we no longer have a collective belief in “Culture with a capital C.” The hierarchies that ranked, for example, classical music as more important than pop, literary novels as more worthy than comic books, and television and movies as unserious have broken down. The art formerly known as high takes its place in the media plenitude. The elite culture of the twentieth century has left its mark on our current media landscape in the form of what Bolter calls “popular modernism.” Meanwhile, new forms of digital media have emerged and magnified these changes, offering new platforms for communication and expression.

Bolter outlines a series of dichotomies that characterize our current media culture: catharsis and flow, the continuous rhythm of digital experience; remix (fueled by the internet's vast resources for sampling and mixing) and originality; history (not replayable) and simulation (endlessly replayable); and social media and coherent politics.
Design, When Everybody Designs
Authors: Manzini Ezio
Published: August 2019

The role of design, both expert and nonexpert, in the ongoing wave of social innovation toward sustainability.

In a changing world everyone designs: each individual person and each collective subject, from enterprises to institutions, from communities to cities and regions, must define and enhance a life project. Sometimes these projects generate unprecedented solutions; sometimes they converge on common goals and realize larger transformations. As Ezio Manzini describes in this book, we are witnessing a wave of social innovations as these changes unfold—an expansive open co-design process in which new solutions are suggested and new meanings are created.

Manzini distinguishes between diffuse design (performed by everybody) and expert design (performed by those who have been trained as designers) and describes how they interact. He maps what design experts can do to trigger and support meaningful social changes, focusing on emerging forms of collaboration. These range from community-supported agriculture in China to digital platforms for medical care in Canada; from interactive storytelling in India to collaborative housing in Milan. These cases illustrate how expert designers can support these collaborations—making their existence more probable, their practice easier, their diffusion and their convergence in larger projects more effective. Manzini draws the first comprehensive picture of design for social innovation: the most dynamic field of action for both expert and nonexpert designers in the coming decades.
The cerebellum is involved in processing of predictions and prediction errors in a fear conditioning paradigm
Authors: Ernst Thomas Michael , Brol Anna Evelina , Gratz Marcel , Ritter Christoph , Bingel Ulrike , Schlamann Marc , Maderwald Stefan , Quick Harald H , Merz Christian Josef , Timmann Dagmar
Published: August 2019

Prediction errors are thought to drive associative fear learning. Surprisingly little is known about the possible contribution of the cerebellum. To address this question, healthy participants underwent a differential fear conditioning paradigm during 7T magnetic resonance imaging. An event-related design allowed us to separate cerebellar fMRI signals related to the visual conditioned stimulus (CS) from signals related to the subsequent unconditioned stimulus (US; an aversive electric shock). We found significant activation of cerebellar lobules Crus I and VI bilaterally related to the CS+ compared to the CS-. Most importantly, significant activation of lobules Crus I and VI was also present during the unexpected omission of the US in unreinforced CS+ acquisition trials. This activation disappeared during extinction when US omission became expected. These findings provide evidence that the cerebellum has to be added to the neural network processing predictions and prediction errors in the emotional domain.
Cyclodipeptides from Pseudomonas aeruginosa modulate the maize (Zea mays L.) root system and promote S6 ribosomal protein kinase activation
Authors: Corona-Sánchez Iván , Peña-Uribe Cesar Arturo , González-López Omar , Villegas Javier , Campos-Garcia Jesus , Reyes de la Cruz Homero
Published: August 2019

Background

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an opportunistic and pathogenic bacterium with the ability to produce cyclodipeptides (CDPs), which belong to a large family of molecules with important biological activities. Excessive amounts of CDPs produced by Pseudomonas strains can activate an auxin response in Arabidopsis thaliana and promote plant growth. Target of rapamycin (TOR) is an evolutionarily conserved eukaryotic protein kinase that coordinates cell growth and metabolic processes in response to environmental and nutritional signals. Target of rapamycin kinase phosphorylates various substrates, of which S6 ribosomal protein kinase (S6K) is particularly well known. The PI3K/Akt/mTOR/S6K signaling pathway has been studied extensively in mammals because of its association with fundamental biological processes including cell differentiation. However, evidences suggest that this pathway also has specific and conserved functions in plants and may thus be conserved, as are several of its components like TOR complex 1 and S6K proteins. In plants, TOR-S6K signaling has been shown to be modulated in response to plant growth promoters or stressors.

Methods

In this study, we evaluated the effects of P. aeruginosa CDPs on the growth and root development of maize plants (Zea mays L.) by adding different CDPs concentrations on culture plant media, as well as the effect on the phosphorylation of the maize S6K protein (ZmS6K) by protein electrophoresis and western blot.

Results

Our results showed that P. aeruginosa CDPs promoted maize growth and development, including modifications in the root system architecture, correlating with the increased ZmS6K phosphorylation and changes induced in electrophoretic mobility, suggesting post-translational modifications on ZmS6K. These findings suggest that the plant growth-promoting effect of the Pseudomonas genus, associated with the CDPs production, involves the TOR/S6K signaling pathway as a mechanism of plant growth and root development in plant–microorganism interaction.
The effect of modulating the quantity of enzymes in a model ethanol pathway on metabolic flux inSynechocystissp. PCC 6803
Authors: Bartasun Paulina , Prandi Nicole , Storch Marko , Aknin Yarin , Bennett Mark , Palma Arianna , Baldwin Geoff , Sakuragi Yumiko , Jones Patrik R. , Rowland John
Published: August 2019

Synthetic metabolism allows new metabolic capabilities to be introduced into strains for biotechnology applications. Such engineered metabolic pathways are unlikely to function optimally as initially designed and native metabolism may not efficiently support the introduced pathway without further intervention. To develop our understanding of optimal metabolic engineering strategies, a two-enzyme ethanol pathway consisting of pyruvate decarboxylase and acetaldehyde reductase was introduced intoSynechocystissp. PCC 6803. We characteriseda new set of ribosome binding site sequences inSynechocystissp. PCC 6803 providing a range of translation strengths for different genes under test. The effect of ribosome-bindingsite sequence, operon design and modifications to native metabolism on pathway flux was analysed by HPLC. The accumulation of all introduced proteins was also quantified using selected reaction monitoring mass spectrometry. Pathway productivity was more strongly dependent on the accumulation of pyruvate decarboxylase than acetaldehyde reductase. In fact, abolishment of reductase over-expression resulted in the greatest ethanol productivity, most likely because strains harbouringsingle-gene constructs accumulated more pyruvate decarboxylase than strains carrying any of the multi-gene constructs. Overall, several lessons were learned. Firstly, the expression level of the first gene in anyoperon influenced the expression level of subsequent genes, demonstrating that translational coupling can also occur in cyanobacteria. Longer operons resulted in lower protein abundance for proximally-encoded cistrons. And, implementation of metabolic engineering strategies that have previously been shown to enhance the growth or yield of pyruvate dependent products, through co-expression with pyruvate kinase and/or fructose-1,6-bisphosphatase/sedoheptulose-1,7-bisphosphatase, indicated that other factors had greater control over growth and metabolic flux under the tested conditions.
HiLDA: a statistical approach to investigate differences in mutational signatures
Authors: Yang Zhi , Pandey Priyatama , Shibata Darryl , Conti David V. , Marjoram Paul , Siegmund Kimberly D.
Published: August 2019

We propose a hierarchical latent Dirichlet allocation model (HiLDA) for characterizing somatic mutation data in cancer. The method allows us to infer mutational patterns and their relative frequencies in a set of tumor mutational catalogs and to compare the estimated frequencies between tumor sets. We apply our method to two datasets, one containing somatic mutations in colon cancer by the time of occurrence, before or after tumor initiation, and the second containing somatic mutations in esophageal cancer by sex, age, smoking status, and tumor site. In colon cancer, the relative frequencies of mutational patterns were found significantly associated with the time of occurrence of mutations. In esophageal cancer, the relative frequencies were significantly associated with the tumor site. Our novel method provides higher statistical power for detecting differences in mutational signatures.
Customer Relationship Management and Small and Medium Enterprises Performance: Pragmatic Evidence from Oyo State, Nigeria
Authors: Bukola Aremu Atinuke , Abosede Adeniran Grace , Adesola M. A.
Published: August 2019

Introduction: Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has been noted for survival strategy for business organizations especially in today's customer-oriented business world and intensely competitive environment.

Aim: This study sought to examine the influence of CRM on the performance of SMEs in Oyo State, Nigeria.

Study Design: Purposive sample technique was adopted to select 20 SME operators each from Ibadan, Oyo Town, Iseyin, Ogbomoso, and Saki, respectively totaling 100 participants as a sample size for the study. The data collection instruments for the study were structured questionnaires designed for the study. Data analysis was performed with the aid of mean, standard deviation, Pearson Product Moment Correlation Co-efficient (PPMCC) and Ordinary Least Square (OLS) method of estimation.

Results: The results revealed that CRM measured by customer orientation, service quality and personalized of services have a significant influence on SMEs’ performance. In conclusion, customer relationship management is an alternative paradigm to the survival of SMEs in today’s cut-throat competitive environment.

Conclusion: Based on the findings, the study recommended that SME operators should always treat their customers like Kings and Queens and their opinion should be sought before making a decision that is binding on them. Also, SME operators should be designed with a feasible customer relationship strategy that can identify potential and profitable customers to enable tailoring products and services to their needs.
Kinetic Approach to the Reduction of Ethylenediaminetetraacetatoferrate(III) Complex by Iodide Ion in Aqueous Acidic Medium
Authors: Nkole I. U. , Osunkwo C. R.
Published: August 2019

The kinetic approach to the reduction of ethylenediaminetetraacetatoferrate(III) complex (hereafter [Fe(III)EDTA]-) by iodide ion has been studied spectrophotometrically in an aqueous acidic medium. The study was carried out under pseudo-first order conditions of an excess of iodide ion concentration at 28 ± 1, ionic strength (I) = 0.43 coulomb2 mol dm-3 (KNO3) and [H+] = 5.0  10-2 mol dm-3. The [Fe(III)EDTA]- complex was reduced according to the reaction;

2[Fe(III)EDTA]- + 2I-  → 2[Fe(II)EDTA]2- + I2

The rate law is - d[Fe(III)EDTA-]/dt = (a + b[H+])[Fe(III)EDTA-][I-]

The rate of the reaction is first order in oxidant and reductant concentrations, and displayed positive Brønsted-Debye salt effect. On the basis of catalysis by added cation, Michaelis-Menten plots and the absence of intermediates, the outer-sphere electron transfer mechanism is proposed for the reaction.
Influence of Potassium Doses on the Development of Chrysanthemum Plants
Authors: Silva Laís Gertrudes Fontana , Souza Jairo Câmara de , Almeida Robson Ferreira de , Oliveira Evandro Chaves de , Leite Marta Cristina Teixeira , Berilli Sávio da Silva
Published: August 2019

Background: The chrysanthemum is one of the main flowers cultivated in the world, comprises the main merchandise of all floriculture. The difficulty in expanding the crop is related to the lack of technical information about its cultivation, mainly on the nutritional needs.

Aims: Evaluate the influence of potassium doses on the development of cutting chrysanthemum plants.

Place and Duration of Study: Horticulture Sector of the Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Espírito Santo - Campus Itapina, between May 2017 and August 2017.

Methodology: The experimental design was DIC (completely randomized design) with four treatments and twenty four replications considered useful plants within each plot. The treatments consisted of three diferent doses of potassium fertilization and one control: 0 kg.ha-1 of K2O (without any application of potassium); 60 kg.ha-1 of K2O (fertilizer used by producers in the region); 120 kg.ha-1 of K2O (recommended according to the amount of potassium in the soil analysis) and 240 kg.ha-1 of K2O (double the dose recommended by the soil analysis), being used as source potassium chloride.

Results: The height of the plant presented an increasing linear, the results show that the dose of 240 kg.ha-1 of K2O was adequate in order to supply potassium in the ideal amount for the growth of chrysanthemum plants. When the diameter of the stem was evaluated, a quadratic model was generated with a maximum of 7.05 mm diameter of the stem when applied 179 kg.ha-1 of K2O. An increase in the number of leaves per plant was observed, from 27 at 0 kg.ha-1 dose of K2O to 51.75 at 240 kg.ha-1 dose of K2O. When estimating the ideal dose with the equation Ŷ = 277.7146 + 4.1805*x -0.0136*x², the dose of 153.69 kg.ha-1 of K2O provided the largest leaf area, reaching the value of 598.97 cm². The SPAD (Chlorophyll content) the linear model better explained the data with coefficient of determination (R²) of 0.79. The highest volume of fresh matter found was 81.56 grams with the dose of 203.22 kg.ha-1 of K2O. Through the adjusted model was verified that the dose that maximized the dry matter of the plant with 16.17 grams, was the dose of 161.66 kg.ha-1 of K2O.

Conclusion: Doses between 150 and 240 kg.ha-1 of K2O provided positive results for the development of the plant, while doses under 150 kg.ha-1 presented unsatisfactory results.