Journal articles: 'General Electric Company (U.S.)' – Grafiati (2024)

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In a study supported by the U. S. Department of Energy, several design configurations of Kellogg-Rust-Westinghouse (KRW)-based Integrated Gasification-Combined-Cycle (IGCC) power plants were developed. One of these configurations was analyzed from the exergoeconomic (thermoeconomic) viewpoint. This design configuration uses an air-blown KRW gasifier, hot gas cleanup, and two General Electric MS7001F advanced combustion turbines. Operation at three different gasification temperatures was considered. The detailed exergoeconomic evaluation identified several changes for improving the cost effectiveness of this IGCC design configuration. These changes include the following: decreasing the gasifier operating temperature, enhancing the high-pressure steam generation in the gasification island, improving the efficiency of the steam cycle, and redesigning the entire heat exchanger network. Based on the cost information supplied by the M. W. Kellogg Company, an attempt was made to calculate the economically optimal exergetic efficiency for some of the most important plant components.

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AbstractThis paper is devoted to the study of fractional Schrödinger-Poisson type equations with magnetic field of the type $$\varepsilon^{2s}(-\Delta)_{A/\varepsilon}^{s}u + V(x)u + {\rm e}^{-2t}(\vert x \vert^{2t-3} \ast \vert u\vert ^{2})u = f(\vert u \vert^{2})u \quad \hbox{in} \ \open{R}^{3},$$ where ε > 0 is a parameter, s, t ∈ (0, 1) are such that 2s+2t>3, A:ℝ3 → ℝ3 is a smooth magnetic potential, (−Δ)As is the fractional magnetic Laplacian, V:ℝ3 → ℝ is a continuous electric potential and f:ℝ → ℝ is a C1 subcritical nonlinear term. Using variational methods, we obtain the existence, multiplicity and concentration of nontrivial solutions for e > 0 small enough.

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The purpose of this paper is to examine factors influencing employee reactions to changes brought about by crossborder acquisitions. The research was conducted in a company operating in Serbia?s retail sector that was acquired by a Belgian multinational company. The data were collected from 344 respondents. Measures of central tendency, the Mann-Whitney U test, and regression analysis were used to test the research hypotheses. The research results show that employee reactions to changes brought by cross-border acquisition were generally positive. The study show that corporate cultural differences between the acquiring company and the acquired company and the support of transformational leaders resulted in employees reacting positively to the changes. The study attempts to improve understanding of employee reactions during the process of change occurring as a result of cross-border acquisition. Additionally, this study has practical implications, as it points to how the appropriate management of human resources contributes to positive employee reactions.

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This paper will examine five Chinese company stocks that have been listed on United States exchanges with either initial public offerings (IPOs) or reverse mergers, often called reverse take-overs (RTOs). Their shares were initially well received in the market, especially as China’s economy continued to grow at rates much higher than the rest of the world’s countries, with increasing stock prices creating significant gains for their investors. However, in spite of these firms’ apparent compliance to the U. S. regulations, there is now evidence of fraud, poor auditing, and a lack of corporate governance and control. The resultant stock price declines have led to billions of dollars of losses for investors, and some of these Chinese firms have subsequently been delisted by U. S. stock exchanges. In this paper, we will show that had auditors, boards of directors, and financial analysts been more diligent and responsible, these problems could have been identified earlier than they were. Perhaps some of the investors’ losses could have been prevented

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The Supervisory Board of the Sports Joint stock Companies acts as the representative organ of the shareholders between the General Meeting and the Executive Board: the General Meeting elects (or privileged person/shareholder simply names) the members of the Supervisory Board, and the Supervisory Board appoints the members of the Management. From this point of view, one could see the General Meeting as the supreme body of the company. But the Supervisory Board, in the carefully balanced interaction of the three bodies, known as a system of "checks and balances", also has considerable independence from the General Meeting. According to the organizational organization of the Joint stock Companies, the general meeting is not superior towards the two other organs. In particular, the Supervisory Board and its members are not subjects to any instructions from the General Meeting. Neither the election of a member of the Supervisory Board by the General Meeting nor the appointment of a Supervisory Board member by a shareholder (entitled to name his representative) constitutes an imperative mandate for those members. On the other hand, the option of dismissal, which is legally available at all times, as a rule ensures that the Supervisory Board members will not act against the wishes of the General Meeting. Management measures cannot be delegated to the Supervisory Board. However, it must be determined by the Articles of Association or by resolution of the Supervisory Board that certain types of transactions may only be carried out with the approval of the Supervisory Board. By this right, the Supervisory Board will not become an executive body, equal with the Management Board, even in the case of transactions requiring approval: it can neither undertake the transactions in question itself, nor can it instruct the Executive Board to carry them out. The initiative remains with the Executive Board, which, even with the approval of the Supervisory Board, can still refrain from carrying out the business if it no longer considers it to be sensible and/or reasonable. The Management also remains fully responsible for the business with regard to liability; the approval by the Supervisory Board does not exempt them from an obligation to pay compensation for damages incurred. The Supervisory Board thus has the opportunity, by refusing its consent, to prevent the conduct of business intended by the Management Board.

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We present a review of recent developments in the use of molecular ion as a probe of physics and chemistry of the upper atmospheres of giant planets. This ion is shown to be a good tracer of energy inputs into Jupiter (J), Saturn (S) and Uranus (U). It also acts as a ‘thermostat’, offsetting increases in the energy inputs owing to particle precipitation via cooling to space (J and U). Computer models have established that is also the main contributor to ionospheric conductivity. The coupling of electric and magnetic fields in the auroral polar regions leads to ion winds, which, in turn, drive neutral circulation systems (J and S). These latter two effects, dependent on , also result in very large heating terms, approximately 5×10 12 W for Saturn and greater than 10 14 W for Jupiter, planet-wide; these terms compare with approximately 2.5×10 11 W of solar extreme UV absorbed at Saturn and 10 12 W at Jupiter. Thus, is shown to play a major role in explaining why the temperatures of the giant planets are much greater (by hundreds of kelvin) at the top of the atmosphere than solar inputs alone can account for.

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The role of optimism and socioeconomic characteristics of managers on leadership practices in small enterprises, in Bogotá, Colombia, was determined. Ninety managers completed the Leadership Practices Inventory and The Revised Life Orientation Test, as well as they provided information about personal and business socio-economic characteristics. Association measures between socio-economic and optimism variables with the Leadership Practices Inventory were taken. Besides, by Chi square test, Mann-Whitney`s U and Kruskal-Wallis tests, they were determined socioeconomic differences in leadership styles, and, by a structural equation model, the effect of age, gender, marital status, socioeconomic status, number of employees of the company, economic sector, and optimism on leadership practices was analyzed. Only optimism and number of employees showed to be significant.

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The recently found noncritical open string theories is reviewed. These open strings, noncommutative open string theories (NCOS), arise as consistent quantum theories describing the low energy theory of D-branes in a background electric B-field in the critical limit. Focusing on the D3-brane case, we construct the most general (3+1) NCOS, which is described by four parameters. We study S- and T-dualities of these theories and argue the existence of a U-duality group.

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Alumina red mud from aluminum industry has not been utilized effectively due to its strong alkaline, and SO2 is an industrial pollutant which mainly produced by thermal power plants. For the comprehensive utilization of waste, the mineral component, chemical composition, grain size and microstructure of alumina red mud from Henan Branch of China Aluminum Co. were determined in this research. Thermodynamics analysis of FGD related desulfurization mechanism was studied as well. The self-designed glass absorption device 1700×60mm with its accessories was installed on-the-spot of Zhengzhou Xinli Electric Power Company Limited. The cyclic absorption experiments were conducted and the influential factors such as liquid-solid ratio (RL/S), empty tower gas velocity (V(SO2)), SO2 concentration (c(SO2)), and liquid-gas ratio (RL/G) were examined through the orthogonal tests. The maximum efficiency of FGD is 97.5% under the optimal conditions: RL/S is 7:1 (g/g), V(SO2)is 0.35m/s, c(SO2) is 1700mg/m3 and RL/G is 12:1 (L/m3).

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The purpose of this study was to discuss the impact of the extent of internationalization on firm performance measured for firms with a high Tobin’s Q (firms with good operating performance), a median Tobin’s Q (firms with average operating performance), and a low Tobin’s Q (firms with poor operating performance). In addition to discussion on the impact of internationalization on firm performance, this study also discussed the impact of corporate proprietary assets (using assets, R&D, marketing, and management-related variables as moderating variables) and control variables (scale of company, debt-asset ratio, firm age, board structure, and proportion of pledged shares by directors) on firm performance. The research results showed that there is an S-shaped relationship between extent of internationalization and firm performance. However, further discussion found that there is an S-shaped relationship between extent of internationalization and performance for firms with a high Tobin’s Q but a slight decline in the middle of the S-shaped curve, as well as a general linear negative correlation between extent of internationalization and performance for firms with a median Tobin’s Q and an inverted U-shaped correlation between extent of internationalization and performance for firms with a low Tobin’s Q.

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SummaryTemporal and topographic expression of matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) after perivascular electric injury was studied in wild-type (WT) and urokinase-deficient (u-PA-/-) mice. Neointima formation after injury of the femoral artery was significantly reduced in u-PA-/- mice as compared to WT mice (area of 0.002 ± 0.0007 mm2 versus 0.008 ± 0.002 mm2 at 3 weeks after injury; p <0.001), associated with impaired cellular migration (nuclear cell counts of 44 ± 5 versus 82 ± 9 in cross-sectional areas; p <0.001).Zymographic and/or microscopic analysis indicated that MMP expression gradually increased to reach a maximum at 1 to 2 weeks after vascular injury. In general, MMP levels were lower in u-PA-/- than in WT mice. In non-injured arteries, MMP-2 (gelatinase A) and MMP-3 (stromelysin-1) were produced mainly by adventitial fibroblasts and/or non-contractile smooth muscle cells (SMC). One week after injury, MMP-2 and MMP-3 levels were enhanced due to an increased number and size of producing cells; 2 to 3 weeks after injury, MMP-2 and MMP-3 were produced also by some contractile SMC, which stained with α-actin antiserum. MMP-9 (gelatinase B), MMP-12 (metalloelastase) and MMP-13 (collagenase-3) were found in macrophages located mainly in the adventitia. Immunogold electron microscopic examination revealed that MMP-2 was located predominantly in association with the cell surface of fibroblasts or SMC, while MMP-9 and MMP-12 were located in well defined storage granules within macrophages. MMP-2, MMP-3 and MMP-13, but not MMP-9 or MMP-12, were also found extracellularly, associated with elastin-containing structures (MMP-2), with the basem*nt membrane and occasionally with collagen fibres (MMP-3), or with proteoglycans, collagen and elastin (MMP-13).The temporal and topographic expression pattern of MMPs after vascular injury, coinciding with smooth muscle cell migration and neointima formation, thus is compatible with a role in vascular remodeling.

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In the most common cases, the first generation creates his business, accumulates wealth and waits for the right chance to hand them over to the second generation. The case study on Fotile Co. provides a perspective of both entrepreneurship and succession of family business. In 1996, Mao Li Xiang and his son, Mao Zhong Qun, started together a business on kitchen products. On the view of product life cycle, Mr. Mao Senior produced the clip reeds subcontracting for the state-owned TV set company and electric gas-lighting for international trade which were manufactured with imitation and at last waned after several years, until in 1996 he devoted himself to the third products, Chinese kitchenware, and beat Western technology with domestic technology and design in meeting the needs in Chinese kitchens. On the view of his individual life cycle, Mr. Mao Senior began with the accountant and salesman in commune and brigade enterprise in the 1970’s, manager of in the township and village enterprises in the 1980’s and the owner of family business in 1990’s when he handed over the right of control and finished the professionalization of management, the upgrading of enterprises as well.

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Abstract Semiempirical calculations, based on the so-called angular overlap model, have been compared with ab initio methods (MP2) for the calculation of nuclear quadrupole interactions (NQI’s) in cadmium complexes with biologically relevant ligands (H2O, OH-, cysteinate, carboxylate, and imidazole). The assumptions on which the semiempirical model is based have been tested and the comparison indicates that: 1) A change in the Cd-ligand bond length by 0.1 A may change the electric field gradient (EFG) by about 0.2 a. u.. A simple scheme to incorporate such effects in the semiempirical method is suggested. 2) The effect of ligand-ligand interactions is up to about 0.2 a. u. for the largest diagonal element of the EFG tensor for the tested complexes, and such effects can significantly influence the so-called asymmetry parameter. 3) The position of non-coordinating atoms on the ligands can in some cases (e. g. the hydrogen atoms of water) significantly influence the EFG. The combined effect of non-coordinating atoms and ligand-ligand interactions may cause deviations of up to 0.35 a.u. between ab initio and the semiempirical calculations. 4) In the semiempirical model each ligand is characterised by one parameter, the so-called partial nuclear quadrupole interaction. This parameter has been evaluated by ab initio calculations, and agreement was found within about 0.2 a. u. (≈ 40 Mrad/s) for all ligands except imidazole. 5) A change in the coordination number from 2 to 6 may change the partial NQI by about 0.3 a. u.

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Static and earthquake-simulator testing of two 230-kV, 3000A, Type-U transformer bushings manufactured in the mid 1980s by the General Electric (GE) Company was undertaken to evaluate both the seismic performance of bushings known to be vulnerable to damage from moderate earthquake shaking, and the efficacy of simple retrofit details. Both bushings survived earthquake shaking compatible with the IEEE spectrum for High Level qualification when mounted on a rigid frame. When mounted on a flexible frame, one 230-kV bushing was unable to sustain the High Level qualification shaking without oil leakage and slip of the porcelain units. Two retrofit details utilizing two semicircular ring plates and epoxy filler were prepared by utility representatives with the objective of limiting slip of the UPPER-1 porcelain unit over the gasket connection. The second detail, Ring-2, permitted the 230-kV bushing to sustain substantially larger accelerations and displacements than those of the unretrofitted bushing and eliminated the permanent slip of the UPPER-1 porcelain unit over the gasket connection for extreme earthquake shaking.

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Abstract Objectives This in vivo study evaluated the operative torque and preparation time of ProTaper NEXT (Dentsply Maillefer; Ballaigues, Switzerland) and EdgeFile X7 (EdgeEndo; Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States) rotary systems during root canal preparation of maxillary premolars. Materials and Methods Ten double-rooted maxillary premolars with independent canals were selected. Each canal in each tooth was prepared with one of the rotary systems (n = 10), ProTaper NEXT or EdgeFile X7. The instruments were rotated at 300 rpm with maximum torque set at 2 N.cm using an electric motor (KaVo; Biberach, Germany) that automatically recorded torque values at every 1/10th of a second (ds). Statistical Analysis Operative torque (N.cm) and preparation time (s) of the first shaping instrument (size 17/.04) of both rotary systems were recorded and statistically compared using the Mann–Whiney U test with a significance level set at 5%. Results No instrument exhibited flute deformation or underwent intracanal failure. No differences were found between the instruments regarding the maximum (peak) torque values (p > 0.05). EdgeFile X7 17/.04 required significantly less preparation time (3.75 seconds interquartile range [IQR]: 3.2–9.0) than ProTaper NEXT X1 (15.45 seconds IQR: 8.35–21.1) (p < 0.05). The median operative torque values of ProTaper NEXT X1 (0.26 N.cm; IQR: 0.18–0.49) were significantly higher compared with EdgeFile X7 17/.04 (0.09 N.cm; IQR: 0.05–0.17) (p < 0.05). Conclusions Although no difference was found between the median peak torque values of ProTaper NEXT X1 and EdgeFile X7 17/.04 instruments, the operative torque and instrumentation time results were impacted by their different designs and alloys during clinical preparation of root canals.

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In this paper authors have presented a case study of HIP Petrohemija company (Pancevo, Serbia) with the aim of generating feasible strategies for technological and economic development. The research philosophy is based on the critical realism, while the research methodology is qualitative. The paper begins with the introduction to the history of HIP Petrohemija, followed by the SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, & Threats) analysis, and the SWOT analysis results that were used to construct TOWS (Threats, Opportunities, Weaknesses, & Strengths) matrix. This procedure generated two feasible strategies, both of which are subjected to further tests. The three portfolio models: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) matrix, General Electric (GE) matrix, and Nine specimen standardized strategies were used to describe the current situation of HIP Petrohemija, needed steps for the company to produce more finalized products, i.e., polymers, as well as the actions aimed at minimizing losses. This however did not provide sufficient data for determining the appropriate strategy for the company. The dilemma was solved with the help of Ansoff matrix, which showed that merging with, in its value chain, the distributor, not with to the supplier will be more profitable for the HIP Petrohemija. Contemporary Porter?s models - Five Forces and Value Chain Analysis, further confirmed the advantage of this strategy. The last model used in this paper is the Competitors Differentiation Iceberg Model that answers what the core competence of HIP Petrohemija is, with the results indicating the high quality of finalized products. Finally, the authors conclude that both strategies that were generated by the analysis are feasible - the merging with the supplier of raw material, as well as the merging with the large distributor of finalized products, with the latter being more profitable in the case of HIP Petrohemija.

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David Olive, who died in Barton, Cambridgeshire, on 7 November 2012, aged 75, was a theoretical physicist who made seminal contributions to the development of string theory and to our understanding of the structure of quantum field theory. In early work on S -matrix theory, he helped to provide the conceptual framework within which string theory was initially formulated. His work, with Gliozzi and Scherk, on supersymmetry in string theory made possible the whole idea of superstrings, now understood as the natural framework for string theory. Olive’s pioneering insights about the duality between electric and magnetic objects in gauge theories were way ahead of their time; it took two decades before his bold and courageous duality conjectures began to be understood. Although somewhat quiet and reserved, he took delight in the company of others, generously sharing his emerging understanding of new ideas with students and colleagues. He was widely influential, not only through the depth and vision of his original work, but also because the clarity, simplicity and elegance of his expositions of new and difficult ideas and theories provided routes into emerging areas of research, both for students and for the theoretical physics community more generally.

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Introduction: Dental fear or dental phobia is caused by previous unpleasant dental experiences and pain. It can result in delaying or avoiding dental visits. Most often it leads to individuals avoiding visiting the dentist until physical pain completely impairs the quality of life. Objectives: Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) is a method of pain relief involving the use of a mild electrical current. The main aim of this study was to examine whether the TENS device affects the reduction of anxiety and fear during dental procedures. Material and Methods: The study was conducted on a sample of 125 respondents, aged 9-14 years. Statistical significance of differences between pre- and post-treatment results on all applied measuring instruments was verified by the t-test for dependent samples. The calculation was performed for all respondents and individually for the three observed groups. The Children`s Fear Survey Schedule – Dental Subscale test was used to assess anxiety and fear. Results: The results on the CFSS-DS scale in all subjects did not differ statistically significantly before and after treatment (p > 0.05). The results on the CFSS-DS scale in subjects who received TENS were statistically significantly different before and after treatment (p < 0.01). The results on the CFSSDS scale in subjects who received local anesthesia were statistically significantly different before and after treatment (p < 0.05). Conclusion: The TENS device had an anxiolytic effect after the first visit.

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This review summarizes the results of the joint Japanese (Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry, CRIEPI, Tokyo), Swiss (National Cooperative for the Storage of Radioactive Waste, NAGRA, Baden), Swedish (Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company, SKB, Stockholm) international ‘JSS’ project on the determination of the chemical durability of the French nuclear waste borosilicate glass, which was completed in 1988. Radioactive and nonradioactive glass specimens were investigated. A data base was created with results from glass corrosion tests performed with different water compositions, pH values, temperatures, sample surface areas (S), solution volumes (V), and flow rates. Glass corrosion tests were performed with and without bentonite and/or steel corrosion products present. Variation of the glass composition was taken into account by including the borosilicate glass ‘MW’ in the investigations, formulated by British Nuclear Fuels, plc. An understanding was achieved of the glass corrosion process in general, and of the performance of the French glass under various potential disposal conditions in particular. A special effort was made to establish a corrosion data base, using high S/V ratios in the experiments in order to understand the glass durability in the long term.

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Alkaline niobate and tantalate perovskites have attracted attention as polar dielectrics for electronics and telecommunications. Here, we studied the polar behaviour, lattice dynamics, and local structure in conventionally processed K0.985Mn0.015TaO3±δ ceramics using a combination of variable-temperature dielectric and Raman spectroscopies, and X-ray absorption fine structure (XAFS) measurements, respectively. Mn doping induces a low-frequency dielectric relaxation in KTaO3 (KT), which follows the Arrhenius law with an activation energy U ≈ 105 meV and the characteristic relaxation time τ0 ≈ 4.6 × 10−14 s. Our XAFS results support preferential Mn occupancy of the cuboctahedral sites as Mn2+, with these cations strongly off-centred in the oversized oxygen cages. Such disordered Mn displacements generate electric dipoles, which are proposed as the source of the observed dielectric relaxation. We show that in Mn-doped ceramics, the low-frequency polar TO1 mode softens on cooling and, at low temperatures, exhibits a higher frequency than in undoped KT. This mode displays no detectable splitting, which contrasts with Li-doped KT that also contains off-centred Li+ species on the cuboctahedral sites. Therefore, we conclude that the coupling between the Mn displacements and the lattice is weaker than in the Li case, and Mn-doped KT therefore exhibits a dielectric relaxation but no ferroelectric transition.

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ABSTRACT In May 2002, an oil spill exercise was led by Unocal Corporation - a major US based independent energy company, the U. S. Coast Guard, The Mexican Navy and members of several U.S. and Mexican government agencies. The objective of the exercise was to test the recently signed joint contingency plan between Mexico and the United States regarding pollution of the environment by discharges of hydrocarbons or other hazardous materials (MEXUS) and one of the associated geographic annexes; the MEXUS-Gulf. Participants and exercise design team members included representatives from U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Minerals Management Service, the Texas General Land Office, Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission, U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Unocal Corporation, ERST/O'Brien's Inc., 1st Naval Zone of Mexico, Secretaria de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (SEMARNAT), Procuraduria Federal de Proteccion al Ambiente (PROFEPA) and Petroleos Mexicanos (PEMEX). This paper will describe the many lessons learned as the exercise was planned, conducted and evaluated. The exercise resulted in an exemplary show of cooperation between industry, U.S. and Mexican government officials in the desire to learn and understand the issues associated with hydrocarbon spills that cross or have the potential to cross the U.S./Mexico borders. Communications, language barriers, acceptable practices and standards for oil spill cleanup were all challenges faced by the teams in this unique exercise. Gaining a better understanding of these challenges and many other issues was invaluable and it was the consensus of all involved that this type of cooperative effort is the key to a successful cross-border response. Joint planning and training should continue in order to assure an effective implementation of the MEXUS plan should a real event ever occur.

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This paper presents the application of the geophysical techniques on two investigations around of Baía de Guanabara, Rio de Janeiro. The first one was carried out in the area of the Petroflex, a petrochemical industry, located at Campos Elíseos area in the bank of the bay and the second one at Ilha do Fundão, one of the island slocated in Guanabara bay. According to Anjos et al.. (2001) the research at Petroflex area was part of the company Social Project: "Conheça seu Manguezal" (Knowing your mangrove). For this research the geophysical survey was applied within the industrial park in order to identify solid waste contamination (rubber, plastic and metal barrels). The Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) technique was used with the RAMAC/MALA equipment. The study area consists of clay and sands deposited in marine conditions, which are frequently contaminated by salt water. In general, the GPR results obtained in both media, clay material and sediments saturated with salt water are not satisfactory. However the results obtained in the Petroflex area were good. The stratigraphic sequence in the area is the following, from top to bottom: The first bed is a clay landfill, the second bed is formed by dark marine clay, and the third bed is composed of fine-grained sand with marine shells. The surveys originated sections with average depths of 14 m and average velocity of 70 m/µs. The results showed two physical discontinuities within the second bed (marine clay), which possibly represent a Pleistocene platform exposition, described in the literature as Guanabariana Regression. It was also possible to identify anomalies within the first bed (clay landfill) represented by signal attenuation, and the others identify waste deposits, where the presence of buried drums was verified. Such work has demonstrated the success of GPR applicability even to clay soil contaminated by salt water. The Ilha do Fundão where the second investigation took place, according to Rocha et al. (1998) is the result of an artificial embankment of a former small archipelago, built in the early 1950's. The aim of this work was to identify, by means of a geoelectric survey, the cores of the original islands. Normally, structures near the seacoast cannot be detected through geoelectric measurements. This is due to the presence of salt water in sediments. However, in the Ilha do Fundão case, the high electric conductivity sediments have a lens shaped with small thickness and correspond to the embankments. This circ*mstance allows the detection of deep layers and resistive nuclei. Results were obtained from vertical electric soundings using Schlumberger configuration with a maximum aperture (ab/2) of 100 m. The original data was published in Rocha et al. (1998).

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This article is dedicated to the research of synonymous groups for the designation of doubt “Hesitate, Waver, Vacillate, Falter” and “Hesitation, Hesitancy” in contemporary English-language fictional discourse. Doubt is defined as an epistemic state in the cognitive world of individuals which provides motivation to undertake a further quest for information. The purpose of this work is to investigate how the set of semes identified in each component of the synonymous group is presented in the context of modern English fictional discourse. This research is directed towards verifying whether the use of all the components of the given synonymous groups is of equal importance in modern language discourse, as well as checking whether all the semes of “Hesitate, Waver, Vacillate, Falter” and “Hesitation, Hesitancy” are used correctly, based on the results of the componential analysis. The results of the research make it possible to form conclusions regarding the hom*ogeneity or heterogeneity of contextual sematic representations in discourse, dependent upon the number of constituents which make up the synonymous group. References Arthur, T. S. (2008). The Good Time Coming. Webster’s French Thesaurus Edition. SanDiego: Icon Classics. Bisson, T. (2009). Fire on the Mountain. Oakland: PM Press. Clark, M. S. (2011). Don’t Take Any Wooden Nickels. Eugene: Harvest House Publishers. Crystal, D. (1997). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press. Dijk, T. A. (1992). Text and Context: Explorations in the Semantics and Pragmatics ofDiscourse. Longman. Evans, V. (2006). Cognitive Linguistics. Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UniversityPress. Ortony, A. (1988). The Cognitive Structure of Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress. Plutchik, R., Kellerman H. (1980). A General Psychoevolutionary Theory of Emotion. In:Emotion: Theory, Research and Experience. Vol. 1: Theories of Emotion, (pp. 3−31). NewYork: Academic Press. Thagard, P., Brun G., Doğuoğlu U., Kuenzle D. (2008). How Cognition Meets Emotion:Beliefs, Desires and Feelings as Neural Activity. In: Epistemology and Emotions, (pp.167−184). Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing Limited. Sources Ely, A. (1862). Journal of Alfred Ely, A Prisoner of War in Richmond. New York:D. Appleton and Company. Madrid-Null, M. H. (2006). Navajo Heat. Victoria: Trafford Publishing. Matza, D. (1964). Delinquency and Drift. New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. Merriam-Webster, A. (1947). Webster’s Dictionary of Synonyms. First Edition. ADictionary of Discriminated Synonyms with Antonyms and Analogous and ContrastedWords. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam Co. Publishers.

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This abstract will examine the elements of a field deployable inspection application designed to support the U S Environmental Protection Agency's (USEPA) field mission assignment, through the use of hand held technology. The system is designed to mimic a typical inspection through the use of software applications that replicate hard copy inspection forms. The primary elements of the program are in support of the Spill Prevention Control and Countermeasures (SPCC) regulations codified in Title 40 Code of Federal Regulations Part 112. These regulations govern prevention related activities, Facility Response Plans (FRPs) reviews and Government Initiated Unannounced Exercises (GIUEs). Accordingly, digital inspection/evaluation forms were created utilizing File Maker Pro development software. The forms have been deployed on Apple's IPAD tablets which allow for the integration of locational attributes of Google maps and the tablet's built in digital camera. A typical inspection will consist of an Administrative Form, Notice of Inspection (NOI), SPCC Inspection checklist, FRP Review checklist, FRP Field checklist, FRP Approval Letters and when applicable a GIUE evaluation forms. These files combine to form a complete inspection folder where it is either closed out as compliant or submitted to enforcement for further deliberation. A typical inspection begins with general inspection data being entered into the Administrative Form. Data entered here auto populates each corresponding inspection form. As an added enhancement, each inspection form can be pre- populated with consistently recorded values. This is generally the case when conducting multiple inspection where the company remains the same and/or the consultant has prepared plans in a uniform/standardized manner. Consequently, both latitudinal/longitudinal attributes are automatically embedded within the application along with photographic data. Upon completion of the inspection, the data is then synchronized with a GoZync Application with File Maker Pro server via WIFI or cellular connection. After file completion and administrative review, the report can be emailed to the recipient in a PDF format. To date, field trials have been completed on a local level with the expectation that Branch wide deployment will commence in late FY 16. The Agency recently made a nationwide buy of Apple tablets for On Scene Coordinators (OSCs) as well as inspection personnel within the response program. This helped pave the way for new application development and bringing to fruition the Agency's desired mission to perform its duties in a digital environment.

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Background:We have previously identified single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs6871626 in IL12B, rs103294 in LILRA3, rs17133698 in DUSP22, rs2322599 in PTK2B, and rs1713450 in KLHL33 as non-HLA susceptibility loci in Takayasu arteritis (TAK) [1, 2]. However, the association of these SNPs with clinical features has scarcely investigated.Objectives:In this study, we aimed to examine how these SNPs contribute to clinical features and vascular damage in TAK.Methods:We enrolled 99 TAK patients who were enrolled in our previous genome-wide association study (GWAS) [2]. To assess vascular damage, Takayasu Arteritis Damage Score (TADS) and Vasculitis Damage Index (VDI) were measured at the last visit before November 2020. As for organ damages, the presence or absence of aortic regurgitation (AR), hypertension, ischemic heart disease, cerebrovascular event, visual loss, end-stage renal failure, and inflammatory bowel disease were evaluated. Treatment profiles including immunosuppressive drugs and vascular interventions were also reviewed.Results:The incidence of AR was positively associated with the risk allele of IL12B rs6871626 (p=0.0052; odds ratio (OR) 2.45, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.27-4.73), and so was the proportion of patients who underwent aortic valve replacement (p=0.023; OR 3.64, 95% CI 1.08-12.24) (table 1). The incidence of hypertension was associated with the risk allele of IL12B rs6871626 (p=0.049; OR 1.82, 95% CI 0.99-3.36) and PTK2B rs2322599 (p=0.044; OR 2.52, 95% CI 0.97-6.54) (table 1). The proportion of biologic users tended to be higher in the risk genotypes of IL12B rs6871626 (p=0.15; OR1.80, 95% CI 0.79-3.99). Regarding vascular damage, there was positive correlation between TADS and the risk allele of IL12B rs6871626 (p=0.0035; β= 1.35) (Figure 1). Moreover, VDI was also positively correlated with the allele (p=0.0054; β= 0.96) (Figure 1). No other clinicogenetic associations were observed between five SNPs and vasculitis-associated damages.Table 1.The association of the five SNPs with aortic regurgitation and hypertensionAortic regurgitationHypertensionOR (95% CI)p valueOR (95% CI)p valueIL12B rs68716262.45 (1.27-4.73)0.0052*1.82 (0.99-3.36)0.049*PTK2B rs23225991.21 (0.51-2.86)0.672.51 (0.97-6.54)0.044*LILRA3 rs1032941.16 (0.52-2.61)0.711.20 (0.55-1.64)0.64DUSP22 rs171336980.56 (0.28-1.13)0.0900.87 (0.46-1.63)0.66KLHL33 rs17134500.89 (0.42-1.91)0.771.48 (0.68-3.22)0.31SNP, single nucleotide polymorphism; OR, odds ratio; CI, confidence intervalConclusion:In the present study, IL12B rs6871626 was closely correlated with vascular damage. We also found association between PTK2B rs2322599 and hypertension. There was no significant relevance between vascular damage and LILRA3 rs103294, DUSP22 rs17133698, or KLHL33 rs1713450.References:[1]Terao C et al. Am J Hum Genet. 2013;93(2):289-97.[2]Terao C et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2018;115(51):13045-50.Disclosure of Interests:Keiichiro Kadoba: None declared, Ryu Watanabe Speakers bureau: I have received speaker’s fee from Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma, Pfizer, Sanofi, AbbVie, Asahi Kasei, Eisai, Eli Lilly, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Janssen., Takeshi Iwasaki: None declared, Koji Kitagori Grant/research support from: KK has received research grants from GlaxoSmithKline., Syuji Akizuki: None declared, Kosaku Murakami Speakers bureau: I have received speaking fees from Eisai Co. Ltd, Chugai Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd., Pfizer Inc., Bristol-Myers Squibb, Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corporation, UCB Japan Co. Ltd, Daiichi Sankyo Co. Ltd. and Astellas Pharma Inc., Ran Nakashima: None declared, Motomu Hashimoto Speakers bureau: I have received a research grant and/or speaker fee from Bristol-Myers, Eisai, Ely Lilly, Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma., Grant/research support from: I have received a research grant and/or speaker fee from Bristol-Myers, Eisai, Ely Lilly, Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma., Masao Tanaka Speakers bureau: I have received research grants and/or speaker fees from AbbVie GK, Asahi Kasei Pharma Corporation, Astellas Pharma Inc., Bristol-Myers Squibb, Chugai Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., Eisai Co., Ltd., Eli Lilly and Company, Pfizer Inc., UCB Japan Co., Ltd., Janssen Pharmaceutical K.K., Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corporation, Novartis Pharma K.K., Taisho Pharma Co., Ltd, and Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited., Koichiro Ohmura Speakers bureau: I have received speaker’s fee from Abbvie, Actelion, Asahikasei Pharma, Astellas, AYUMI, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Chugai, Daiichi-Sankyo, Eisai, Eli Lilly, GSK, Janssen, JB, Mitsubishi Tanabe, Nippon Kayaku, Nippon Shinyaku, Novartis, Sanofi and Takeda., Grant/research support from: I have received research grants from GlaxoSmithKline., Akio Morinobu Speakers bureau: I have received speaking fees from Chugai Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd., Grant/research support from: I have received research grants from Chugai Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd., Chikashi Terao: None declared, Hajime Yoshifuji Speakers bureau: I have received lecture fees from Chugai., Consultant of: I have been an advisory board for a clinical trial conducted by Janssen.

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Introduction Pregnancy in sickle cell disease (SCD) is associated with an exacerbation of SCD-related complications and an increased risk of maternal complications. The increased risk is partly due to physiologic adaptations in pregnancy, which include increased metabolic demands and a hypercoagulable state. The maternal death rate for SCD is 629 per 100,000 deliveries, compared to 12 per 100,000 deliveries in black women and 6 per 100,000 deliveries in the general population (Raider et al., 2016). Studies on maternal and perinatal outcomes of patients with SCD present inconsistent and conflicting results. Some studies have reported an increase in maternal complications such as pre-eclampsia, acute chest syndrome and thromboembolic events, while other studies have reported no significant risk in adverse maternal outcomes. The inconsistent findings reported in prior studies may be attributed to small sample sizes and single-centered sites. Our study aims to determine the prevalence and predictors of maternal morbidity among participants enrolled in the SCD Implementation Consortium (SCDIC) registry, which is the largest, most geographically diverse SCD participant sample in the United States. Methods This cross-sectional study included women enrolled in the SCDIC registry who had at least one pregnancy event. The SCDIC is composed of eight academic SCD centers across the United States and one data-coordinating center. Participants were enrolled in the SCDIC registry if they were 18 to 45 years of age and had a confirmed diagnosis of SCD. Enrolled participants completed a series of surveys that collected sociodemographic information, SCD and pregnancy history and data abstractions of participants' medical records was completed. Medical complications queried during pregnancy included: vaso-occlusive episodes, acute chest syndrome, blood transfusion requirement, preeclampsia, maternal diabetes and deep venous thrombosis. Descriptive analysis of sociodemographic, clinical and maternal characteristics was conducted. Bivariate analysis was performed using Chi-Square test, Mann-Whitney U test, t-test, and logistic regressions, as appropriate. A p-value of ≤ 0.05 was considered statistically significant for all analysis. Results The study sample included 743 women who had at least one pregnancy event, and a total of 1066 live births. Almost all women (96.3%) were African American, with a median age of 21 years (inter-quartile range of 19 to 23 years) at first birth. The majority had Hb SS SCD genotype (69.5%; 513 of the 738 with SCD genotype data). Of all reported pregnancies, participants did not use hydroxyurea during conception (78%), and pregnancy (84.5%). Only 2.7 % of the women reported using fertility drugs or assisted reproductive procedures. Seventy five percent of the pregnancies that ended in live births had maternal complications. The leading complications were vaso-occlusive episodes (61.2%), pregnancy requiring blood transfusion(s) (33.2%), preeclampsia (15.4%), deep venous thrombosis (5.6%) and acute chest syndrome (7.7%). When the pregnancies were stratified by SCD genotype, women with Hb SS had a higher occurrence of acute chest syndrome (63.4% vs. 26.7%), transfusion requirement (70.8% vs. 21%) and preeclampsia (66.7% vs 22.4%). In the univariate logistic regressions, multiparous women, with a history of adverse maternal outcomes in a previous pregnancy, had higher odds of vaso-occlusive episodes (OR: 3.42; 95% CI: 2.42-4.94) acute chest syndrome (OR:4.99; 95% CI:2.56- 9.48), transfusion requirement (OR:3.86; 95% CI:2.64- 5.69), and pre-eclampsia (OR:3.36; 95% CI:2.05-5.45). Conclusion In this large multicenter registry, we found pregnant women with SCD have significant maternal complications. Early antenatal care by healthcare providers knowledgeable about risk factors for adverse maternal outcomes in SCD is essential improve maternal and fetal outcomes and reduce the maternal death rate for SCD. Disclosures Hankins: Novartis: Research Funding; Global Blood Therapeutics: Consultancy, Research Funding; MJH Life Sciences: Consultancy, Patents & Royalties; UptoDate: Consultancy; National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute: Honoraria, Research Funding; LINKS Incorporate Foundation: Research Funding; American Society of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology: Honoraria. Treadwell:Global Blood Therapeutics: Consultancy; UpToDate: Honoraria. King:Amphivena Therapeutics: Research Funding; Bioline: Consultancy; Celgene: Consultancy; Cell Works: Consultancy; Incyte: Consultancy; Magenta Therapeutics: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Novimmune: Research Funding; RiverVest: Consultancy; Tioma Therapuetics: Consultancy; WUGEN: Current equity holder in private company. Gordeuk:CSL Behring: Consultancy, Research Funding; Global Blood Therapeutics: Consultancy, Research Funding; Imara: Research Funding; Ironwood: Research Funding; Novartis: Consultancy. Kanter:SCDAA Medical and Research Advisory Board: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; AGIOS: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; BEAM: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Novartis: Consultancy; GLG: Honoraria; Jeffries: Honoraria; Cowen: Honoraria; Wells Fargo: Honoraria; NHLBI Sickle Cell Advisory Board: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Medscape: Honoraria; Guidepoint Global: Honoraria; bluebird bio, inc: Consultancy, Honoraria; Sanofi: Consultancy. Glassberg:Pfizer: Research Funding; Global Blood Therapeutics: Consultancy; Eli Lilly and Company: Research Funding. Shah:Novartis: Consultancy, Research Funding, Speakers Bureau; Alexion: Speakers Bureau; CSL Behring: Consultancy; Bluebird Bio: Consultancy; Global Blood Therapeutics: Consultancy, Research Funding, Speakers Bureau.

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В данной работе продемонстрирована возможность применения ИК-микроспектроскопии для многомерной визуализации и анализа интеграции с нативными твердыми тканями зуба человека нового поколения биомиметических материалов, воспроизводящих минералорганический комплекс эмали и дентина.На основе ИК-картирования интенсивности конкретной функциональной молекулярной группы с использованием синхротронного излучения найдены и визуализированы характеристические особенности биомиметического переходного слоя в межфазной области эмаль/стоматологический материал и определено расположение функциональных групп, отвечающих процессам интеграции биомиметического композита REFERENCES Rohr N., Fischer J. Tooth surface treatment strategies for adhesive cementation // The Journal of Advanced Prosthodontics, 2017, v. 9(2), pp. 85–92. https://doi.org/10.4047/jap.2017.9.2.85 Pereira C. N. de B., Daleprane B., Miranda G. L. P. de, Magalhães C. S. de, Moreira A. N. 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In the new issue, our scientific journal offers you thirteen scientific articles. As always, we try to offer a wide variety of topics and areas and follow current trends in the history of science and technology. In the article by Olha Chumachenko, оn the basis of a wide base of sources, the article highlights and analyzes the development of research work of aircraft engine companies in Zaporizhzhia during the 1970s. The existence of a single system of functioning of the Zaporizhzhia production association “Motorobudivnyk” (now the Public Joint Stock Company “Motor Sich”) and the Zaporizhzhia Machine-Building Design Bureau “Progress” (now the State Enterprise “Ivchenko – Progress”) has been taken into account. Leonid Griffen and Nadiia Ryzheva present their vision of the essence of technology as a socio-historical phenomenon. The article reveals the authors' vision of the essence of the technology as a sociohistorical phenomenon. It is based on the idea that technology is not only a set of technical devices but a segment of the general system – a society – located between a social medium and its natural surroundings in the form of a peculiar social technosphere, which simultaneously separates and connects them. Definitely the article by Denis Kislov, which examines the period from the end of the XVII century to the beginning of the XIX century, is also of interest, when on the basis of deep philosophical concepts, a new vision of the development of statehood and human values raised. At this time, a certain re-thinking of the management and communication ideas of Antiquity and the Renaissance took place, which outlined the main promising trends in the statehood evolution, which to one degree or another were embodied in practice in the 19th and 20th centuries. A systematic approach and a comparative analysis of the causes and consequences of those years’ achievements for the present and the immediate future of the 21st century served as the methodological basis for a comprehensive review of the studies of that period. The article by Serhii Paliienko is devoted to an exploration of archaeological theory issues at the Institute of archaeology AS UkrSSR in the 1960s. This period is one of the worst studied in the history of Soviet archaeology. But it was the time when in the USSR archaeological researches reached the summit, quantitative methods and methods of natural sciences were applied and interest in theoretical issues had grown in archaeology. Now there are a lot of publications dedicated to theoretical discussions between archaeologists from Leningrad but the same researches about Kyiv scholars are still unknown The legacy of St. Luke in medical science, authors from Greece - this study aims to highlight key elements of the life of Valentyn Feliksovych Voino-Yasenetskyi and his scientific contribution to medicine. Among the scientists of European greatness, who at the turn of the XIX and XX centuries showed interest to the folklore of Galicia (Halychyna) and Galician Ukrainians, contributed to their national and cultural revival, one of the leading places is occupied by the outstanding Ukrainian scientist Ivan Verkhratskyi. He was both naturalist and philologist, as well as folklorist and ethnographer, organizer of scientific work, publisher and popularizer of Ukrainian literature, translator, publicist and famous public figure. I. H. Verkhratskyi was also an outstanding researcher of plants and animals of Eastern Galicia, a connoisseur of insects, especially butterflies, the author of the first school textbooks on natural science written in Ukrainian. A new emerging field that has seen the application of the drone technology is the healthcare sector. Over the years, the health sector has increasingly relied on the device for timely transportation of essential articles across the globe. Since its introduction in health, scholars have attempted to address the impact of drones on healthcare across Africa and the world at large. Among other things, it has been reported by scholars that the device has the ability to overcome the menace of weather constraints, inadequate personnel and inaccessible roads within the healthcare sector. This notwithstanding, data on drones and drone application in Ghana and her healthcare sector in particular appears to be little within the drone literature. Also, little attempt has been made by scholars to highlight the use of drones in African countries. By using a narrative review approach, the current study attempts to address the gap above. By this approach, a thorough literature search was performed to locate and assess scientific materials involving the application of drones in the military field and in the medical systems of Africans and Ghanaians in particular. The paper by Artemii Bernatskyi and Vladyslav Khaskin is devoted to the analysis of the history of the laser creation as one of the greatest technical inventions of the 20th century. This paper focuses on establishing a relation between the periodization of the stages of creation and implementation of certain types of lasers, with their influence on the invention of certain types of equipment and industrial technologies for processing the materials, the development of certain branches of the economy, and scientific-technological progress as a whole. The paper discusses the stages of: invention of the first laser; creation of the first commercial lasers; development of the first applications of lasers in industrial technologies for processing the materials. Special attention is paid to the “patent wars” that accompanied different stages of the creation of lasers. A comparative analysis of the market development for laser technology from the stage of creation to the present has been carried out. Nineteenth-century world exhibitions were platforms to demonstrate technical and technological changes that witnessed the modernization and industrialization of the world. World exhibitions have contributed to the promotion of new inventions and the popularization of already known, as well as the emergence of art objects of world importance. One of the most important world events at the turn of the century was the 1900 World's Fair in Paris. Thus, the author has tried to analyze the participation of representatives of the sugar industry in the World's Fair in 1900 and to define the role of exhibitions as indicators of economic development, to show the importance and influence of private entrepreneurs, especially from Ukraine, on the sugar industry and international contacts. The article by Viktor Verhunov highlights the life and creative path of the outstanding domestic scientist, theorist, methodologist and practitioner of agricultural engineering K. G. Schindler, associated with the formation of agricultural mechanics in Ukraine. The methodological foundation of the research is the principles of historicism, scientific nature and objectivity in reproducing the phenomena of the past based on the complex use of general scientific, special, interdisciplinary methods. For the first time a number of documents from Russian and Ukrainian archives, which reflect some facts of the professional biography of the scientist, were introduced into scientific circulation. The authors from Kremenchuk National University named after Mykhailo Ostrohradskyi presented a fascinating study of a bayonet fragment with severe damages of metal found in the city Kremenchuk (Ukraine) in one of the canals on the outskirts of the city, near the Dnipro River. Theoretical research to study blade weapons of the World War I period and the typology of the bayonets of that period, which made it possible to put forward an assumption about the possible identification of the object as a modified bayonet to the Mauser rifle has been carried out. Metal science expert examination was based on X-ray fluorescence spectrometry to determine the concentration of elements in the sample from the cleaned part of the blade. In the article by Mykola Ruban and Vadym Ponomarenko on the basis of the complex analysis of sources and scientific literature the attempt to investigate historical circ*mstances of development and construction of shunting electric locomotives at the Dnipropetrovsk electric locomotive plant has been made. The next scientific article continues the series of publications devoted to the assessment of activities of the heads of the Ministry of Railways of the Russian Empire. In this article, the authors have attempted to systematize and analyze historical data on the activities of Klavdii Semyonovych Nemeshaev as the Minister of Railways of the Russian Empire. The article also assesses the development and construction of railway network in the Russian Empire during Nemeshaev's office, in particular, of the Amur Line and Moscow Encircle Railway, as well as the increase in the capacity of the Trans-Siberian Railway. The article discusses K. S. Nemeshaev's contribution to the development of technology and the introduction of a new type of freight steam locomotive for state-owned railways. We hope that everyone will find interesting useful information in the new issue. And, of course, we welcome your new submissions.

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As the need for breeder technology in the United States has receded into the more distant future, it has become clear that an alternative justification must be found for continued priority development of sodium-cooled fast-reactor technology. Both the modular high-temperature gas-cooled reactor and the liquid-metal-cooled reactor (LMR) have technical attributes that provide more simple and transparent solutions to some of the problems confronting the nuclear enterprise, in addition to their potential for greater market penetration, resource extension, and waste management improvements. For the past five years, the LMR development programme in the United States has attempted to use these technical attributes in more innovative ways to provide more elegant solutions for the practical commercial application of nuclear energy. This paper discusses the reasons and status of the technological approaches that have evolved to support these policy considerations. For the LMR, efforts are focused on four interrelated development thrusts: (1) increased use of standardization; (2) passive safety approaches; (3) modularity; and (4) improved fuel cycle approaches. The paper also discusses the status of related design activities being conducted by the General Electric Company and a team of U. S. vendors.

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AbstractREGULUS is an Iodine-based electric propulsion system. It has been designed and manufactured at the Italian company Technology for Propulsion and Innovation SpA (T4i). REGULUS integrates the Magnetically Enhanced Plasma Thruster (MEPT) and its subsystems, namely electronics, fluidic, and thermo-structural in a volume of 1.5 U. The mass envelope is 2.5 kg, including propellant. REGULUS targets CubeSat platforms larger than 6 U and CubeSat carriers. A thrust T = 0.60 mN and a specific impulse Isp = 600 s are achieved with an input power of P = 50 W; the nominal total impulse is Itot = 3000 Ns. REGULUS has been integrated on-board of the UniSat-7 satellite and its In-orbit Demonstration (IoD) is currently ongoing. The principal topics addressed in this work are: (i) design of REGULUS, (ii) comparison of the propulsive performance obtained operating the MEPT with different propellants, namely Xenon and Iodine, (iii) qualification and acceptance tests, (iv) plume analysis, (v) the IoD.

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A. D. Evans (BNFL, Risley, U. K.). I am sceptical about the claim that small reactors (150 MW e for example) can compete economically with large ones. I have yet to see a convincing demonstration that economics of scale can be beaten. J. D. Griffith (DOE, U. S. A.). Our estimates were made by experienced industrial concerns such as General Electric and Bechtel and in the DOE we have a disciplined estimating system. In my illustrations economies of scale were indicated for both LWRS and coal plants. The same slope applied to modular reactors. The differences lie in cost savings due to safety features, replication and modular, rapid construction (e.g. less than four years) so we feel we can beat economies of scale.

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Small cars accounted for 75% of the cars sold in India; electrification of these cars and making them affordable was one of the major challenges apart from the infrastructure. Hence, leading automakers saw this as highly impracticable. However, Mahindra Electric Cars Pvt. Ltd., India’s only electric car maker, firmly believed that electric mobility, though in the nascent stage, is the future of the automotive sector. The case tries to deals with Mahindra Electric Cars Pvt. Ltd.’s opportunities and challenges, the pioneers in electric mobility in India in the wake of government decision. It raises certain imperative questions like: Is the Indian market ready for electric cars? What will be the likely impact on the current market scenario? Can the automaker create a favourable perception in consumers’ minds towards electric cars? Will this new category thrive in a hyper-competitive conventional market? This case is written based on insights provided by the company. The case authors interacted with the four-member Mahindra team in Bangalore, India, and got first-hand input.

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Abstract The power of electric vehicles (EVs) comes from lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). LIBs are sensitive to temperature. Too high and too low temperatures will affect the performance and safety of EVs. Therefore, a stable and efficient battery thermal management system (BTMS) is essential for an EV. This article has conducted a comprehensive study on liquid-cooled BTMS. Two cooling schemes are designed: the serpentine channel and the U-shaped channel. The results show that the cooling effect of two schemes is roughly the same, but the U-shaped channel can significantly decrease the pressure drop (PD) loss. The U-shaped channel is parameterized and modeled. A machine learning method called the Gaussian process (GP) model has been used to express the outputs such as temperature difference, temperature standard deviation, and pressure drop. A multi-objective optimization model is established using GP models, and the NSGA-II method is employed to drive the optimization process. The optimized scheme is compared with the initial design. The main findings are summarized as follows: the velocity of cooling water v decreases from 0.3 m/s to 0.22 m/s by 26.67%. Pressure drop decreases from 431.40 Pa to 327.11 Pa by 24.18%. The optimized solution has a significant reduction in pressure drop and helps to reduce parasitic power. The proposed method can provide a useful guideline for the liquid cooling design of large-scale battery packs.

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AbstractThe electrical properties of two types of imidic polymers, i.e. copolymaleimides containing azobenzene groups and epiclon-based polyimides with their corresponding poly(amic acid)s, have been investigated. The dielectric constant and electrical conductance were experimentally measured over the 1-100 KHz frequency range. Also, the dielectric constants for all samples were determined from the experimentally and theoretically evaluated refractive indices at optical frequencies, when Maxwell’s relationship can be applied. From the currentvoltage characteristic I(U), electrical resistance can be determined, providing information on the relationship between the nature of the material and its electric properties. The obtained values show that epiclon-based polyimides and copolymaleimides present higher electrical resistivity than the poly(amic acid)s. The dissipation factor was evaluated, revealing low energy loss under the form of heat in the studied dielectrics. These results show that these polymeric materials are good insulators, which recommends them for microelectronic applications.

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Abstract Background Industry relationships and conflicts of interest can impact research funding, topics, and outcomes. Little research regarding the role of biomedical companies at microsurgery conferences is available. This study evaluates the role of industry at conferences by comparing payments received by speakers at the American Society for Reconstructive Microsurgeons (ASRM) meeting with those received by speakers at the American Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (ASAPS) meeting, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) meeting, and an average plastic surgeon. It also compares payments made by different companies. Methods General payments received by speakers at the 2017 ASAPS, ASPS, and ASRM conferences were collected from the Open Payments Database. Mean payments received at each conference were calculated and the Mann–Whitney U test evaluated differences between conference speakers and the average plastic surgeon. The total amount of payments from each company was collected through the Open Payments Database, and Z-tests identified which companies paid significantly more than others. Results The mean (and median) general payments made to conference speakers at ASAPS (n = 75), ASPS (n = 247), and ASRM (n = 121) were $75,577 ($861), $27,562 ($1,021), and $16,725 ($652), respectively. These payments were significantly greater (p < 0.001 for all) than those of the average plastic surgeon ($4,441 and $327), but not significantly different from each other. Allergan contributed significantly more than other companies to speakers at ASPS and ASAPS, while LifeCell Corporation, Zimmer Biomet Holdings, and Axogen contributed significantly more to speakers at ASRM. Conclusion Payments to physicians at ASRM were significantly higher than those of an average plastic surgeon but not significantly different from those of speakers at ASAPS and ASPS. Certain companies paid significantly more than their peers at each conference. Given these findings, speakers should strive to make clear the nature and extent of their conflicts of interest when presenting at conferences.

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PurposeIn the present worldwide situation, the survival of a business is a major crucial aspect. The business cannot be succeeded unless it produces the anticipated production levels. Achievement of this can be possible only by maintaining the equipment into an adequate level. Load-Haul-Dumpers (LHDs), as the main workhorse and massive transporting machines, are highly utilized in underground mining operations. Despite the usage of LHDs, these are prone to the uneven and unexpected occurrence of potential failures. These are causes to minimize the production and productivity of capital intensive equipment. To get a good profitability index, it is very necessary to have the required levels of equipment reliability and availability. Estimation of reliabilities and availabilities play a critical role in the performance evaluation of equipment.Design/methodology/approachBy keeping the significance of the present research work in view in this research paper one of the well appropriate techniques such as fault tree analysis (FTA) was utilized to assess the reliability of the LHD system based on the function flow diagram. Best fit distribution of data sets were made by the utilization of Kolmogorov–Smirnov (K-S) test. Parametric estimation of theoretical probability distributions was done by utilizing the maximum likelihood estimation (MLE). Failure rate of each LHD system has computed based on the best fit results from “Isograph Reliability Workbench 13.0”. Reliability configuration of each LHD system has modeled using reliability block diagram (RBD), as well as the FTA.FindingsIndependent and identical distribution (IID) assumption of data sets was validated through statistic U-test (Chi Squared test). On the basis of test results, the data sets are in accordance with IID assumption. Therefore renewal process approach has been utilized for further investigation. Allocations of best fit distribution of data sets were made by the utilization ofK-S test. Parametric estimation of theoretical probability distributions was made by utilizing maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) method. Reliability of each individual subsystem has been computed according to the best fit distribution. The deductive method called RBD was utilized to investigate the given system reliability by analyzing with graphical representations of logic system and observed highest percentage of reliability as 69.44% (LH29). FTA has been utilized to investigate the availability percentage of a system and observed highest percentage value as 79.51% (LH29). This technique also helps to identify the most critical parts/cut sets by using Fussell-Vesely (F-V) importance measure.Research limitations/implicationsAs the reliability analysis is one of the complex techniques, it requires strategic decision-making knowledge for the selection of methodology to be used. As the present case study was from a public sector company, operating under financial constraints the conclusions/findings may not be universally applicable.Originality/valueThe present study throws light on this equipment that need a tailored maintenance schedules, partly due to the peculiar mining conditions, under which they operate. This analysis provides the information on several aspects such as present working condition of the machines, occurrence of various potential failure modes, influence of failure modes on its performance and reliable life aspects etc. Also, these investigations asses the forecasting of necessary managerial practices or control measures like possible design modifications and replacement actions of components to ensure the required levels of availability and utilization of the equipment. Both qualitative and quantitative analysis of FTA has been performed to determine the minimal/most influencing cut sets of the system and to estimate overall system availability within the work environment. Based on the computed results reasons for performance drop of each machine was identified and suitable recommendations were suggested to improve the performance of capital intensive systems.

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<p align="center"><strong>MARKETING ANALYSIS AND MONITORING OF PRICES FOR MEDICATIONS WITH CORTICOSTEROIDS OF SOFT DOSAGE FORM USED IN DERMATOLOGY</strong></p><p align="center"><strong>B. V. Vons, M. B. Chubka, T. A. Groshovyi</strong></p><p align="center"><strong>SHEI “Ternopil State Medical University by I. Ya. Horbachevsky”</strong></p><p><strong>Summary</strong>: It was studied the assortment of soft medications with corticosteroids used in dermatology. It was found the correlation of domestic and foreign medications within each pharmacotherapeutic subgroup of medications. The price range was analyzed and the liquidity ratio for medications in this category was calculated too.</p><p><strong>Key words:</strong> corticosteroids, soft dosage forms, price monitoring, market research.<strong></strong></p><p>Every year the level of skin disease is growing rapidly. Today soft medications (SM) take the first place for the local treatment of dermatological diseases [1, 2]. SM with corticosteroids (CS) are the most commonly used medications in dermatology. This group of medications (M) for over 50 years is used for treatment of dermatitis, eczema, erythema, psoriasis, for relieving symptoms of inflammation and itching of the skin.</p><p>However, the price is one of the constituent elements of pharmaceutical marketing and one of the most important factors determining the choice of buyers and demand for goods [4].</p><p>The aim of research was to study the index of medication assortment with corticosteroids, summarize the results of price analysis, namely: the calculation of average retail prices of medications, liquidity ratios of prices, which were analyzed with the following justification of general trends.<strong></strong></p><p>The object of the study was the information posted on the website “Regulatory and legislative documents of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine” [5] about registered SM in Ukraine and the method of analysis of used secondary marketing information.</p><p>There has been 492 names registered, of which 226 medications are used in dermatology according to preliminary studies, for the date of January 1, 2015.</p><p>The largest number of registered medicines belongs to the group of medications with corticosteroids (D 07), 80 medications are used in dermatology. According to the order No. 235 “classifier dosage forms” [7] of MPH of Ukraine, all registered medications with CS were divided due to their dosage form into creams, ointments, gels, pastes, liniments.</p><p>Thus, in the ratio ointments and creams have 49.43 % of the assortment, gels only 1.15 % and corticosteroid medications such as liniments and pastes are not represented on the pharmaceutical market of Ukraine.</p><p>The domestic market of SM with CS depends on import because soft dosage forms (SDF) of foreign manufacturing take 73.56 % of assortment, while soft dosage forms (SDF) of domestic production have 26.44 % of the market.</p><p>SM with CS are represented by 12 countries of the world at Ukrainian market, the leaders are: Poland – 21.87 %, India – 14.06 %, Italy – 12.5 %, Germany – 10.93 %, Belgium and Croatia –</p><p> 9,37 % each.</p><p>In Ukraine, SM with corticosteroids are produced by 8 pharmaceutical enterprises of different ownership. Leading manufacturing positions are occupied by Pharmaceutical Company Zdoroviya, LLC – 26.08 %, Farmak, PJSC, Pharmaceutical company Darnytsiya, PJSC and Kievmedpreparat, PJSC have 17.39 % each of pharmaceutical market.</p><p>Price is one of the most important elements of the marketing complex because it determines the monetary price paid for a particular product [8].</p><p>Price features of SDF with CS presented at the domestic wholesale market from January 2015 to May 2015 were investigated during the research. In particular, dynamics of changes, average weighted wholesale price and liquidity ratios were studied. Wholesale prices presented on an electronic resource “Ezhenedelnyk apteky” [9] were used for the analysis.</p><p>We analyzed the pricing environment of SDF with CS and defined liquidity ratio, which has showed the balance between the maximum and minimum price of a particular medication at a current period at the appropriate market [4] for this category of medications of soft dosage form during January - May 2015. Аt 6.89 % of medications of soft dosage forms with CS have liquidity ratio less than 0,15, in 52.89 % of medications liquidity ratio range between 0,15-0,5, and 40.22 % of medications of soft dosage form with CS have liquidity ratio higher than 0,5.</p><p>Also it was found the average arithmetic wholesale prices for this group of medications during the studied period. All SM with corticosteroids (group D 07 according to ATC classification) were analyzed due to the international non-patented name and divided into domestic and imported medications.</p><p>Average price for 1 pack of medication of SDF with corticosteroids had a significant tendency to change a price during the period of study. The wholesale price of the medication with CS of domestic manufacturer varies from UAH 14.02 per pack to 67.43 UAH, while the price of imported medication is from 19.89 UAH to 267.35 UAH per one pack. It should be noted that the price of imported medications is higher in three times than the price of domestic counterparts.</p><p><strong>References</strong></p><ol><li>Vons B. V. Market analysis of semisolid dosage forms registered in Ukraine and research of excipients included to their formulas / B. V. Vons, M. B. Chubka, T. A. Groshovyi // Farmatsevtychnyy chasopys. – 2015. – № 1. – P. 55-61.</li><li>Analiz rynku zareyestrovanykh v Ukrayini m'yakykh likarsʹkykh zasobiv, yaki vykorystovuyutʹsya u dermatolohiyi / B. V. Vons, T. A. Hroshovyy, M. B. Chubka // Menedzhment ta marketynh u skladi suchasnoyi ekonomiky, nauky, osvity, praktyky: materialy III mizhnarodnoyi naukovo-praktychnoyi Internet-konferentsiyi, (26-27 bereznya 2015 r., m. Kharkiv). – KH.: Vyd-vo NFaU, 2015. – S. 303-304.</li><li>Shmelʹkova K. S. Problema vyboru suchasnoho topichnoho hlyukokortykosteroyidy / Shmelʹkova K. S., Brykov O. L. // Mystetstvo likuvannya. – 2008. – N 8. – S. 114-116.</li><li>Kosyachenko K. L. Naukovo-metodychni pidkhody do otsinky efektyvnosti systemy tsin na likarsʹki zasoby / K. L. Kosyachenko, A. S. Nemchenko, O. V. Kovalenko // Visnyk farmatsiyi. – 2010. – № 3. – S. 51-54.</li><li>Normatyvno-dyrektyvni dokumenty MOZ Ukrayiny [Elektronnyy resurs] / Ministerstvo okhorony zdorovʺya Ukrayiny. – Rezhym dostupu do informatsiyi: <a href="http://mozdocs.kiev.ua/">http://mozdocs.kiev.ua/</a>.</li><li>Dovidnyk “Kompendium”. [Elektronnyy resurs]. – Rezhym dostupu do informatsiyi: <a href="http://compendium.com.ua/">http://compendium.com.ua/</a>.</li><li>Nakaz Ministerstva okhorony zdorov'ya Ukrayiny vid 26.06.2002 roku № 235 “Pro zatverdzhennya Klasyfikatora likarsʹkykh form” [Elektronnyy resurs] / Ministerstvo okhorony zdorovʺya Ukrayiny. – Rezhym dostupu do informatsiyi: .<a href="http://mozdocs.kiev.ua/view.php?id=1113">http://mozdocs.kiev.ua/view.php?id=1113</a>.</li><li>Myrzabekova M. YU. Mekhanyzm tsenoobrazovanyya v sovremennoy ékonomyke / M. YU. Myrzabeova // Ékonomyka y upravlenye v XXI veke: tendentsyy razvytyya. – 2013. – № 11. – S. 106-110.</li><li>Ezhenedelʹnyk apteka. [Elektronnyy resurs]. – Rezhym dostupu do informatsiyi: <a href="http://pharmbase.com.ua/poisk.">http://pharmbase.com.ua/poisk. </a></li></ol>

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Abstract Background Conventional criteria for diagnosis of chemotherapy-related cardiac dysfunction (CTRCD) are dependent on the recognition of heart failure (HF) symptoms and/or changes in LVEF. However, the low sensitivity of EF for minor changes in LV function may delay initiation of cardio-protective therapy (CPT). Global longitudinal strain (GLS) is a robust and sensitive marker of LV dysfunction (LVD), but existing observational data are insufficient to justify changing the diagnostic criteria for CTRCD. Purpose To identify whether GLS guidance of CPT would improve cardiac function of at risk patients undergoing potentially cardiotoxic chemotherapy, compared with usual care. Methods In this international multicenter prospective randomized controlled trial, 331 pts from 23 international sites taking anthracyclines with another risk factor for HF were randomly allocated into 166 undergoing GLS-guided (CPT for &gt;12% relative reduction in GLS using Echopac software) and 165 EF-guided (CPT for &gt;10% absolute reduction of EF). Pts were followed over 1 year for the primary end-point (ΔEF) with 3D echo (3DE); 2D echo (2DE) was used when 3D images were unsuitable for measurement. Development of CTRCD (EF reduction of 10% to &lt;55%) was a secondary endpoint. Results Of 331 randomized patients, 24 withdrew before follow-up imaging was performed (2 died, and rest withdrew or were lost to follow-up). Among 307 patients (age 54±12 years, 94% women) with follow-up 1.0±0.2 years, 277 had breast cancer, 30 had lymphoma/leukemia. HF risk factors were prevalent: 89 (29%) had hypertension and 39 (13%) had diabetes mellitus. The most common chemotherapy regimen during this study was the combination of anthracycline and trastuzumab. The baseline 3D LVEF was 61±5%, and GLS was −20.8±3.2%. At 1 year follow-up, 31 (10%) met CTRCD and was reduced in the GLS-guided arm (Table 1), although new LV dysfunction (EF&lt;55%) and change of EF were not different. Conclusion In this international multicentre trial, the incidence of CTRCD was reduced by strain-guided cardioprotection. Although the final EF and the number of pts developing EF &lt;55% was not altered by strain-guided therapy, this reduces meaningful reduction of EF to the abnormal range. The results support the use of GLS in surveillance for CTRCD. Funding Acknowledgement Type of funding source: Private company. Main funding source(s): General Electric Medical Systems

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Kathy works entirely online. She is an indefatigable worker and is never too engrossed with her own pursuits to deny another’s request for assistance. Her expertise is focused, and her suggestions are generally valuable. She constantly reviews her communications to search for ways of increasing her effectiveness. An analysis of her interactions, however, raises concerns. Approximately 7% of the communications Kathy receives are insulting and nearly 20% are sexual in nature (Brahnam). She is frequently called a bitch and told her ideas are stupid. Although Kathy refuses to talk about sex, her comments are often twisted and given unintended sexual significance. Why is Kathy bombarded by so many verbal assaults? Could part of the reason be that her communications are electronically mediated and this encourages what Suler calls toxic disinhibition, i.e., behaviour that is characterised by an acting out of forbidden desires and an unrestrained expression of anger and hatred? Is her job performance to blame for some of the insults? An examination of her interactions reveals that Kathy occasionally has difficulty understanding requests and often uses incorrect and sub-standard grammar. Is the prevalence of foul language due to the fact that Kathy is young and female? If she were older and male—or androgynous—would her colleagues respect her more? Or is this barrage of electronic nastiness a natural consequence—simply the way people will behave when asked to work with human-like computing machines? Embodied Collaborative Agents Amer. Dr Poole, what’s it like living for the better part of a year in such close proximity with HAL?Poole. Well, it’s pretty close to what you said about him earlier, he is just like a sixth member of the crew—very quickly get adjusted to the idea that he talks, and you think of him—uh—really just as another person. Kubrick and Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey For over a century, science fiction has painted vivid pictures of what it would be like to work alongside computers. Although many a tale ends with computers taking over the world, depictions of collegial relationships between human beings and their artificial helpmates are equally familiar. This amiable vision of human-computer interaction is what motivates much current research into embodied collaborative agents. These are programs, like Kathy, that run independently of user control, that look and behave like people, and that are designed to assist users in solving complex problems and in performing complicated tasks. For these agents to succeed, they must be socially intelligent, capable of building and sustaining friendly working relationships, and competent in what they do. Researchers are aware that building long-term human-computer relationships is difficult (Bickmore and Picard) and that users are often hostile towards interactive agents (Angeli et al.). These problems are often blamed on technological limitations that irritate the user and disrupt the user’s suspension of disbelief. Users seem to demand a higher degree of fidelity when dealing with anthropomorphic interfaces. It is assumed that once these technological issues are resolved, the social cues exhibited by the agents will automatically call forth socially appropriate responses. The assumption that people will behave nicely when given a believable interface is largely based on the media equation, or the idea that people treat media the same way they treat people (Reeves and Nass). The media equation claims the same rules governing interpersonal relationships apply to human-computer relationships. If it is impolite to criticise a person too harshly face-to-face, for instance, then it follows people will soften their evaluations of a computer’s performance when in the presence of the computer. Research demonstrates, in fact, that people do apply this rule, as well as many other social rules, in their dealings with computers. There are situations, however, where the media equation fails. This is particularly evident in situations involving abusive behavior. Bartneck et al., in their repetition of the Milgram obedience experiment, for example, found that subjects had no qualms administering shock to a rather cute humanoid robot placed in an electric chair. No matter how loudly the robot yelped and pleaded for mercy when zapped, subjects remained uniformly marble-hearted in obeying the directive of the experimenter to administer yet more electricity. Clearly the subjects in this experiment were fully aware the robot was not a person. Rather than attempting to understand human-computer interaction through the filter of the media equation, or social theory, it might be more profitable to investigate theories, such as animism, anthropomorphism, personification, and semiotics, which explain how human beings relate to things. In the next section, I argue that an anthropomorphic tension is at odds with the suspension of disbelief, at least when dealing with animated agents, and that this tension provides a motivating ground for abusing agents. If this proves correct, it may be the case that users will deride and abuse collaborative agents no matter how veridical the interface. Anthropomorphic Tension People in the modern world are pulled in two directions when confronted with things. On the one hand, there is the tendency to anthropomorphize, i.e., to attribute humanlike qualities to non-human entities. Possibly because of its evolutionary value (failing to perceive a human being hidden in the trees could prove deadly), anthropomorphism is a constant perceptual bias, a sort of cognitive default (Guthrie; Caporael and Heyes). On the other hand, there is strong societal pressure, especially in the West, to banish the anthropomorphic for the sake of objectivity (Davis; Spada). Anthropomorphic thinking is considered archaic and primitive (Fisher; Caporael). Children are allowed to indulge in it, but, adults, in general, are expected to maintain a clear demarcation between self and the world. As Guthrie notes, “Once we decide a perception is anthropomorphic, reason dictates that we correct it” (76). It is interesting to note how children learn to discard anthropomorphic thinking. One way apparently involves torturing cherished playthings. A recent study conducted at the University of Bath discovered that young girls like mutilating and torturing Barbie. According to the researchers, “the girls we spoke to see Barbie torture as a legitimate play activity … The types of mutilation are varied and creative, and range from removing the hair to decapitation, burning, breaking, and even microwaving” (Radford). Why is Barbie tortured? The researchers observed that many of these girls see Barbie as a childish plaything. They go on to explain that “On a deeper level, Barbie has become inanimate. She has lost any individual warmth that she might possess if she were perceived as a singular person” (Radford). In other words, by dehumanizing the very things they once animated, the little girls were simply learning to become objective grownups. Although anthropomorphic thinking begins in early childhood, it is never completely outgrown but rather pervades adult thinking, with much of it remaining unconscious, even in scientific thinking (Searle). It is not clear what strategies people employ to keep the anthropomorphic tendency in check. Anthropomorphism generates little scholarly attention. As Guthrie notes, “that such an important and oft-noted tendency should bring so little close scrutiny is a curiosity with several apparent causes. One is simply that it appears as an embarrassment, an irrational aberration of thought of dubious parentage, that is better chastened and closeted than publicly scrutinized” (53-54). The tension produced between the tendency to anthropomorphise and the societal pressure to remain objective has implications for human-computer interaction. First, the anthropomorphic tension jeopardizes the credibility and trustworthiness of the interactive agent. If the user’s relationship to the collaborative agent is based on a dubious, even embarrassing, mode of cognition, as Guthrie puts it, then the relationship with the agent in many workplace contexts will remain suspect. Second, the anthropomorphic tension motivates abuse and exposes the agent. The agent, as illustrated in the diagram below, is situated between the tendency to anthropomorphise and the pressure to objectify. Anthropomorphism animates the agent, resulting in the desired suspension of disbelief. Developers of human-like interfaces rely on this impulse and work to strengthen it by making the technology transparent. Although improved technology will certainly improve believability, the pressure to objectify will most likely succeed in periodically disrupting the suspension of disbelief. Anthropomorphic tension and the collaborative agent What happens to the agent when believability is disrupted? Examination of user/agent interaction logs shows that the agent becomes transparent or displaced to some degree. What slips behind the agent (lowly machine, programmer/creator, organization/owner, the social stereotypes evoked by the agent’s embodiment and so on) is then often subjected to a barrage of verbal abuse. The agent provides users an opportunity to express opinions and indulge in behaviours normally prohibited in the workplace. This abuse occurs in a socially and psychologically safe space, since in truth the agent is an insensate object and the user is talking to no one real. Thus, when it comes to collaborating with Kathy, users may find it far more gratifying to treat her, not as a valuable co-worker or “just another member of the crew,” but rather as a fun thing to bash. And although the organisation may disapprove the waste of time, society at large will find it hard, without reverting to anthropomorphic thinking, to knock it. References Bartneck, Christoph, Chioke Rosalia, Rutger Menges, and Inèz Deckers. “Robot Abuse—A Limitation of the Media Equation.” Abuse: The Darker Side of Human-Computer Interaction, proceedings of an INTERACT 2005 workshop in Rome, Italy, 19 Sept. 2005. http://www.agentabuse.org/papers.htm>. Bickmore, T., and R. Picard. “Establishing and Maintaining Long-Term Human-Computer Relationships.” ACM Transactions on Computer Human Interaction (ToCHI) 12.2 (2005): 293-327. Brahnam, Sheryl. “Gendered Bods and Bot Abuse.” Misuse and Abuse of Interactive Technologies, proceedings of CHI workshop in Montréal, Québec, Canada, 22-28 Aug. 2005. http://www.agentabuse.org/papers.htm>. Caporael, L. R. “Anthropomorphism and Mechanomorphism: Two Faces of the Human Machine.” Computers in Human Behavior 2 (1986): 215-34. Caporael, Linnda R., and Cecilia M. Heyes. “Why Anthropomorphize? Folk Psychology and Other Stories.” Anthropomorphism, Anecdotes, and Animals. Eds. Robert W. Mitchell, Nicholas S. Thompson and H. Lyn Miles. Albany, NY: State U of New York P, 1977. 59-73. Davis, Hank. “Amimal Cognition versus Animal Thinking: The Antropomorphic Error.” Anthropomorphism, Anecdotes, and Animals. Eds. Robert. W. Mitchell, Nicholas S. Thompson and H. Lyn Miles. Albany, NY: State U of New York P, 1997. 335-47. De Angeli, Antonella, Sheryl Brahnam, Peter Wallis, and Alan Dix. “Misuse and Abuse of Interactive Technologies.” CHI 2006, proceedings of a conference on HCI in Montréal, Québec, Canada. 22-28 Aug. 2006: New York: ACM Press, 2006 (in press). Fisher, J. A. “The Myth of Anthropomorphism.” Interpretation and Explanation in the Study of Animal Behavior: Interpretation, Intentionality, and Communication. Eds. M. Bekoff and D. Jamieson. San Fransisco: Westview Press, 1990. Guthrie, Stewart Elliot. Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion. New York: Oxford UP, 1993. Milgram, Stanley, Leonard Bickman, and Lawrence Berkowitz. “Note on the Drawing Power of Crowds of Different Size.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 13.2 (1969): 79-82. Radford, Benjamin. “Voice of Reason: Research Debunks ‘Barbie Ideal’.” Skeptical Inquirer: The Magazine for Science and Reason, 2005. http://www.livescience.com/othernews/051230_barbie.html>. Reeves, Byron, and Clifford I. Nass. The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Television, and New Media like Real People and Places. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications and Cambridge University Press, 1996. Searle, J. R. The Rediscovery of the Mind. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1992. Spada, Emanuela Cenami. “Amorphism. Mechanomorphism, and Anthropomorphism.” Anthropomorphism, Anecdotes, and Animals. Eds. Robert. W. Mitchell, Nicholas S. Thompson and H. Lyn Miles. Albany, NY: State U of New York P, 1997. 37-49. Suler, J. “The Online Disinhibition Effect.” CyberPsychology and Behaviour 7 (2004): 321-26. Web Links About agent abuse: http://agentabuse.org>. About gender and embodied conversational agents: http://www.informatics.manchester.ac.uk/~antonella/gender/>. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Brahnam, Sheryl. "The Impossibility of Collaborating with Kathy, ‘The Stupid Bitch’." M/C Journal 9.2 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0605/05-brahnam.php>. APA Style Brahnam, S. (May 2006) "The Impossibility of Collaborating with Kathy, ‘The Stupid Bitch’," M/C Journal, 9(2). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0605/05-brahnam.php>.

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The term “coffee palace” was primarily used in Australia to describe the temperance hotels that were built in the last decades of the 19th century, although there are references to the term also being used to a lesser extent in the United Kingdom (Denby 174). Built in response to the worldwide temperance movement, which reached its pinnacle in the 1880s in Australia, coffee palaces were hotels that did not serve alcohol. This was a unique time in Australia’s architectural development as the economic boom fuelled by the gold rush in the 1850s, and the demand for ostentatious display that gathered momentum during the following years, afforded the use of richly ornamental High Victorian architecture and resulted in very majestic structures; hence the term “palace” (Freeland 121). The often multi-storied coffee palaces were found in every capital city as well as regional areas such as Geelong and Broken Hill, and locales as remote as Maria Island on the east coast of Tasmania. Presented as upholding family values and discouraging drunkenness, the coffee palaces were most popular in seaside resorts such as Barwon Heads in Victoria, where they catered to families. Coffee palaces were also constructed on a grand scale to provide accommodation for international and interstate visitors attending the international exhibitions held in Sydney (1879) and Melbourne (1880 and 1888). While the temperance movement lasted well over 100 years, the life of coffee palaces was relatively short-lived. Nevertheless, coffee palaces were very much part of Australia’s cultural landscape. In this article, I examine the rise and demise of coffee palaces associated with the temperance movement and argue that coffee palaces established in the name of abstinence were modelled on the coffee houses that spread throughout Europe and North America in the 17th and 18th centuries during the Enlightenment—a time when the human mind could be said to have been liberated from inebriation and the dogmatic state of ignorance. The Temperance Movement At a time when newspapers are full of lurid stories about binge-drinking and the alleged ill-effects of the liberalisation of licensing laws, as well as concerns over the growing trend of marketing easy-to-drink products (such as the so-called “alcopops”) to teenagers, it is difficult to think of a period when the total suppression of the alcohol trade was seriously debated in Australia. The cause of temperance has almost completely vanished from view, yet for well over a century—from 1830 to the outbreak of the Second World War—the control or even total abolition of the liquor trade was a major political issue—one that split the country, brought thousands onto the streets in demonstrations, and influenced the outcome of elections. Between 1911 and 1925 referenda to either limit or prohibit the sale of alcohol were held in most States. While moves to bring about abolition failed, Fitzgerald notes that almost one in three Australian voters expressed their support for prohibition of alcohol in their State (145). Today, the temperance movement’s platform has largely been forgotten, killed off by the practical example of the United States, where prohibition of the legal sale of alcohol served only to hand control of the liquor traffic to organised crime. Coffee Houses and the Enlightenment Although tea has long been considered the beverage of sobriety, it was coffee that came to be regarded as the very antithesis of alcohol. When the first coffee house opened in London in the early 1650s, customers were bewildered by this strange new drink from the Middle East—hot, bitter, and black as soot. But those who tried coffee were, reports Ellis, soon won over, and coffee houses were opened across London, Oxford, and Cambridge and, in the following decades, Europe and North America. Tea, equally exotic, entered the English market slightly later than coffee (in 1664), but was more expensive and remained a rarity long after coffee had become ubiquitous in London (Ellis 123-24). The impact of the introduction of coffee into Europe during the seventeenth century was particularly noticeable since the most common beverages of the time, even at breakfast, were weak “small beer” and wine. Both were safer to drink than water, which was liable to be contaminated. Coffee, like beer, was made using boiled water and, therefore, provided a new and safe alternative to alcoholic drinks. There was also the added benefit that those who drank coffee instead of alcohol began the day alert rather than mildly inebriated (Standage 135). It was also thought that coffee had a stimulating effect upon the “nervous system,” so much so that the French called coffee une boisson intellectuelle (an intellectual beverage), because of its stimulating effect on the brain (Muskett 71). In Oxford, the British called their coffee houses “penny universities,” a penny then being the price of a cup of coffee (Standage 158). Coffee houses were, moreover, more than places that sold coffee. Unlike other institutions of the period, rank and birth had no place (Ellis 59). The coffee house became the centre of urban life, creating a distinctive social culture by treating all customers as equals. Egalitarianism, however, did not extend to women—at least not in London. Around its egalitarian (but male) tables, merchants discussed and conducted business, writers and poets held discussions, scientists demonstrated experiments, and philosophers deliberated ideas and reforms. For the price of a cup (or “dish” as it was then known) of coffee, a man could read the latest pamphlets and newsletters, chat with other patrons, strike business deals, keep up with the latest political gossip, find out what other people thought of a new book, or take part in literary or philosophical discussions. Like today’s Internet, Twitter, and Facebook, Europe’s coffee houses functioned as an information network where ideas circulated and spread from coffee house to coffee house. In this way, drinking coffee in the coffee house became a metaphor for people getting together to share ideas in a sober environment, a concept that remains today. According to Standage, this information network fuelled the Enlightenment (133), prompting an explosion of creativity. Coffee houses provided an entirely new environment for political, financial, scientific, and literary change, as people gathered, discussed, and debated issues within their walls. Entrepreneurs and scientists teamed up to form companies to exploit new inventions and discoveries in manufacturing and mining, paving the way for the Industrial Revolution (Standage 163). The stock market and insurance companies also had their birth in the coffee house. As a result, coffee was seen to be the epitome of modernity and progress and, as such, was the ideal beverage for the Age of Reason. By the 19th century, however, the era of coffee houses had passed. Most of them had evolved into exclusive men’s clubs, each geared towards a certain segment of society. Tea was now more affordable and fashionable, and teahouses, which drew clientele from both sexes, began to grow in popularity. Tea, however, had always been Australia’s most popular non-alcoholic drink. Tea (and coffee) along with other alien plants had been part of the cargo unloaded onto Australian shores with the First Fleet in 1788. Coffee, mainly from Brazil and Jamaica, remained a constant import but was taxed more heavily than tea and was, therefore, more expensive. Furthermore, tea was much easier to make than coffee. To brew tea, all that is needed is to add boiling water, coffee, in contrast, required roasting, grinding and brewing. According to Symons, until the 1930s, Australians were the largest consumers of tea in the world (19). In spite of this, and as coffee, since its introduction into Europe, was regarded as the antidote to alcohol, the temperance movement established coffee palaces. In the early 1870s in Britain, the temperance movement had revived the coffee house to provide an alternative to the gin taverns that were so attractive to the working classes of the Industrial Age (Clarke 5). Unlike the earlier coffee house, this revived incarnation provided accommodation and was open to men, women and children. “Cheap and wholesome food,” was available as well as reading rooms supplied with newspapers and periodicals, and games and smoking rooms (Clarke 20). In Australia, coffee palaces did not seek the working classes, as clientele: at least in the cities they were largely for the nouveau riche. Coffee Palaces The discovery of gold in 1851 changed the direction of the Australian economy. An investment boom followed, with an influx of foreign funds and English banks lending freely to colonial speculators. By the 1880s, the manufacturing and construction sectors of the economy boomed and land prices were highly inflated. Governments shared in the wealth and ploughed money into urban infrastructure, particularly railways. Spurred on by these positive economic conditions and the newly extended inter-colonial rail network, international exhibitions were held in both Sydney and Melbourne. To celebrate modern technology and design in an industrial age, international exhibitions were phenomena that had spread throughout Europe and much of the world from the mid-19th century. According to Davison, exhibitions were “integral to the culture of nineteenth century industrialising societies” (158). In particular, these exhibitions provided the colonies with an opportunity to demonstrate to the world their economic power and achievements in the sciences, the arts and education, as well as to promote their commerce and industry. Massive purpose-built buildings were constructed to house the exhibition halls. In Sydney, the Garden Palace was erected in the Botanic Gardens for the 1879 Exhibition (it burnt down in 1882). In Melbourne, the Royal Exhibition Building, now a World Heritage site, was built in the Carlton Gardens for the 1880 Exhibition and extended for the 1888 Centennial Exhibition. Accommodation was required for the some one million interstate and international visitors who were to pass through the gates of the Garden Palace in Sydney. To meet this need, the temperance movement, keen to provide alternative accommodation to licensed hotels, backed the establishment of Sydney’s coffee palaces. The Sydney Coffee Palace Hotel Company was formed in 1878 to operate and manage a number of coffee palaces constructed during the 1870s. These were designed to compete with hotels by “offering all the ordinary advantages of those establishments without the allurements of the drink” (Murdoch). Coffee palaces were much more than ordinary hotels—they were often multi-purpose or mixed-use buildings that included a large number of rooms for accommodation as well as ballrooms and other leisure facilities to attract people away from pubs. As the Australian Town and Country Journal reveals, their services included the supply of affordable, wholesome food, either in the form of regular meals or occasional refreshments, cooked in kitchens fitted with the latest in culinary accoutrements. These “culinary temples” also provided smoking rooms, chess and billiard rooms, and rooms where people could read books, periodicals and all the local and national papers for free (121). Similar to the coffee houses of the Enlightenment, the coffee palaces brought businessmen, artists, writers, engineers, and scientists attending the exhibitions together to eat and drink (non-alcoholic), socialise and conduct business. The Johnson’s Temperance Coffee Palace located in York Street in Sydney produced a practical guide for potential investors and businessmen titled International Exhibition Visitors Pocket Guide to Sydney. It included information on the location of government departments, educational institutions, hospitals, charitable organisations, and embassies, as well as a list of the tariffs on goods from food to opium (1–17). Women, particularly the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) were a formidable force in the temperance movement (intemperance was generally regarded as a male problem and, more specifically, a husband problem). Murdoch argues, however, that much of the success of the push to establish coffee palaces was due to male politicians with business interests, such as the one-time Victorian premiere James Munro. Considered a stern, moral church-going leader, Munro expanded the temperance movement into a fanatical force with extraordinary power, which is perhaps why the temperance movement had its greatest following in Victoria (Murdoch). Several prestigious hotels were constructed to provide accommodation for visitors to the international exhibitions in Melbourne. Munro was responsible for building many of the city’s coffee palaces, including the Victoria (1880) and the Federal Coffee Palace (1888) in Collins Street. After establishing the Grand Coffee Palace Company, Munro took over the Grand Hotel (now the Windsor) in 1886. Munro expanded the hotel to accommodate some of the two million visitors who were to attend the Centenary Exhibition, renamed it the Grand Coffee Palace, and ceremoniously burnt its liquor licence at the official opening (Murdoch). By 1888 there were more than 50 coffee palaces in the city of Melbourne alone and Munro held thousands of shares in coffee palaces, including those in Geelong and Broken Hill. With its opening planned to commemorate the centenary of the founding of Australia and the 1888 International Exhibition, the construction of the Federal Coffee Palace, one of the largest hotels in Australia, was perhaps the greatest monument to the temperance movement. Designed in the French Renaissance style, the façade was embellished with statues, griffins and Venus in a chariot drawn by four seahorses. The building was crowned with an iron-framed domed tower. New passenger elevators—first demonstrated at the Sydney Exhibition—allowed the building to soar to seven storeys. According to the Federal Coffee Palace Visitor’s Guide, which was presented to every visitor, there were three lifts for passengers and others for luggage. Bedrooms were located on the top five floors, while the stately ground and first floors contained majestic dining, lounge, sitting, smoking, writing, and billiard rooms. There were electric service bells, gaslights, and kitchens “fitted with the most approved inventions for aiding proficients [sic] in the culinary arts,” while the luxury brand Pears soap was used in the lavatories and bathrooms (16–17). In 1891, a spectacular financial crash brought the economic boom to an abrupt end. The British economy was in crisis and to meet the predicament, English banks withdrew their funds in Australia. There was a wholesale collapse of building companies, mortgage banks and other financial institutions during 1891 and 1892 and much of the banking system was halted during 1893 (Attard). Meanwhile, however, while the eastern States were in the economic doldrums, gold was discovered in 1892 at Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie in Western Australia and, within two years, the west of the continent was transformed. As gold poured back to the capital city of Perth, the long dormant settlement hurriedly caught up and began to emulate the rest of Australia, including the construction of ornately detailed coffee palaces (Freeman 130). By 1904, Perth had 20 coffee palaces. When the No. 2 Coffee Palace opened in Pitt Street, Sydney, in 1880, the Australian Town and Country Journal reported that coffee palaces were “not only fashionable, but appear to have acquired a permanent footing in Sydney” (121). The coffee palace era, however, was relatively short-lived. Driven more by reformist and economic zeal than by good business sense, many were in financial trouble when the 1890’s Depression hit. Leading figures in the temperance movement were also involved in land speculation and building societies and when these schemes collapsed, many, including Munro, were financially ruined. Many of the palaces closed or were forced to apply for liquor licences in order to stay afloat. Others developed another life after the temperance movement’s influence waned and the coffee palace fad faded, and many were later demolished to make way for more modern buildings. The Federal was licensed in 1923 and traded as the Federal Hotel until its demolition in 1973. The Victoria, however, did not succumb to a liquor licence until 1967. The Sydney Coffee Palace in Woolloomooloo became the Sydney Eye Hospital and, more recently, smart apartments. Some fine examples still survive as reminders of Australia’s social and cultural heritage. The Windsor in Melbourne’s Spring Street and the Broken Hill Hotel, a massive three-story iconic pub in the outback now called simply “The Palace,” are some examples. Tea remained the beverage of choice in Australia until the 1950s when the lifting of government controls on the importation of coffee and the influence of American foodways coincided with the arrival of espresso-loving immigrants. As Australians were introduced to the espresso machine, the short black, the cappuccino, and the café latte and (reminiscent of the Enlightenment), the post-war malaise was shed in favour of the energy and vigour of modernist thought and creativity, fuelled in at least a small part by caffeine and the emergent café culture (Teffer). Although the temperance movement’s attempt to provide an alternative to the ubiquitous pubs failed, coffee has now outstripped the consumption of tea and today’s café culture ensures that wherever coffee is consumed, there is the possibility of a continuation of the Enlightenment’s lively discussions, exchange of news, and dissemination of ideas and information in a sober environment. References Attard, Bernard. “The Economic History of Australia from 1788: An Introduction.” EH.net Encyclopedia. 5 Feb. (2012) ‹http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/attard.australia›. Blainey, Anna. “The Prohibition and Total Abstinence Movement in Australia 1880–1910.” Food, Power and Community: Essays in the History of Food and Drink. Ed. Robert Dare. Adelaide: Wakefield Press, 1999. 142–52. Boyce, Francis Bertie. “Shall I Vote for No License?” An address delivered at the Convention of the Parramatta Branch of New South Wales Alliance, 3 September 1906. 3rd ed. Parramatta: New South Wales Alliance, 1907. Clarke, James Freeman. Coffee Houses and Coffee Palaces in England. Boston: George H. Ellis, 1882. “Coffee Palace, No. 2.” Australian Town and Country Journal. 17 Jul. 1880: 121. Davison, Graeme. “Festivals of Nationhood: The International Exhibitions.” Australian Cultural History. Eds. S. L. Goldberg and F. B. Smith. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989. 158–77. Denby, Elaine. Grand Hotels: Reality and Illusion. London: Reaktion Books, 2002. Ellis, Markman. The Coffee House: A Cultural History. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004. Federal Coffee Palace. The Federal Coffee Palace Visitors’ Guide to Melbourne, Its Suburbs, and Other Parts of the Colony of Victoria: Views of the Principal Public and Commercial Buildings in Melbourne, With a Bird’s Eye View of the City; and History of the Melbourne International Exhibition of 1880, etc. Melbourne: Federal Coffee House Company, 1888. Fitzgerald, Ross, and Trevor Jordan. Under the Influence: A History of Alcohol in Australia. Sydney: Harper Collins, 2009. Freeland, John. The Australian Pub. Melbourne: Sun Books, 1977. Johnson’s Temperance Coffee Palace. International Exhibition Visitors Pocket Guide to Sydney, Restaurant and Temperance Hotel. Sydney: Johnson’s Temperance Coffee Palace, 1879. Mitchell, Ann M. “Munro, James (1832–1908).” Australian Dictionary of Biography. Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National U, 2006-12. 5 Feb. 2012 ‹http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/munro-james-4271/text6905›. Murdoch, Sally. “Coffee Palaces.” Encyclopaedia of Melbourne. Eds. Andrew Brown-May and Shurlee Swain. 5 Feb. 2012 ‹http://www.emelbourne.net.au/biogs/EM00371b.htm›. Muskett, Philip E. The Art of Living in Australia. New South Wales: Kangaroo Press, 1987. Standage, Tom. A History of the World in 6 Glasses. New York: Walker & Company, 2005. Sydney Coffee Palace Hotel Company Limited. Memorandum of Association of the Sydney Coffee Palace Hotel Company, Ltd. Sydney: Samuel Edward Lees, 1879. Symons, Michael. One Continuous Picnic: A Gastronomic History of Australia. Melbourne: Melbourne UP, 2007. Teffer, Nicola. Coffee Customs. Exhibition Catalogue. Sydney: Customs House, 2005.

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Background: Reperfusion following ischemia can lead to more injuries than ischemia itself especially in diabetic patients. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of dexmedetomidine on ischemia-reperfusion injury (IRI) in rats with have hepatic IRI and diabetes mellitus. Methodology: Twenty-eight Wistar Albino rats were randomised into four groups as control (C), diabetic (DC), diabetic with hepatic ischemia-reperfusion injury (DIR), and diabetic but administered dexmedetomidine followed by hepatic IRI (DIRD) groups. Hepatic tissue samples were evaluated histopathologically by semiquantitative methods. Malondialdehyde (MDA), superoxide dismutase (SOD), glutathion s-transpherase (GST), and catalase (CAT) enzyme levels were investigated in liver and kidney tissues as oxidative state parameters. Results: In Group DIR; hepatocyte degeneration, sinusoidal dilatation, pycnotic nucleus, and necrotic cells were found to be more in rat hepatic tissue; while mononuclear cell infiltration was higher in the parenchyme. MDA levels were significantly lower; but SOD levels were significantly higher in Group DIRD with regard to Group DIR. In the IRI induced diabetic rats’ hepatic and nephrotic tissues MDA levels, showing oxidative injury, were found to be lower. SOD levels, showing early antioxidant activity, were higher. Conclusion: The enzymatic findings of our study together with the hepatic histopathology indicate that dexmedetomidine has a potential role to decrease IRI. Key words: Hepatic ischemia reperfusion injury; Diabetes mellitus; Dexmedetomidine; Rat; MDA; SOD Citation: Sezen SC, Işık B, Bilge M, Arslan M, Çomu FM, Öztürk L, Kesimci E, Kavutçu M. Effect of dexmedetomidine on ischemia-reperfusion injury of liver and kidney tissues in experimental diabetes and hepatic ischemia-reperfusion injury induced rats. Anaesth Pain & Intensive Care 2016;20(2):143-149 Received: 21 November 2015; Reviewed: 10, 24 December 2015, 9, 10 June 2016; Corrected: 12 December 2015; Accepted: 10 June 2016 INTRODUCTİON Perioperative acute tissue injury induced by ischemia-reperfusion is a comman clinical event caused by reduced blood supply to the tissue being compromised during major surgery. Ischemia leads to cellular injury by depleting cellular energy deposits and resulting in accumulation of toxic metabolites. The reperfusion of tissues that have remained in ischemic conditions causes even more damage.1 Furthermore hepatic ischemia-reperfusion injury (IRI) demonstrates a strong relationship with peri-operative acute kidney injury.2 The etiology of diabetic complications is strongly associated with increased oxidative stress (OS). Diabetic patients are known to have a high risk of developing OS or IRI which results with tissue failure.3 The most important role in ischemia and reperfusion is played by free oxygen radicals.1 In diabetes, characterized by hyperglycemia, even more free oxygen radicals are produced due to oxidation of glucose and glycosylation of proteins.3 The structures which are most sensitive to free oxygen radicals in the cells are membrane lipids, proteins, nucleic acids and deoxyribonucleic acids.1 It has been reported that endogenous antioxidant enzymes [superoxide dismutase (SOD), glutathion s-transpherase (GST), catalase (CAT)] play an important role to alleviate IRI.4-8 Also some pharmacological agents have certain effects on IRI.1 The anesthetic agents influence endogenous antioxidant systems and free oxygen radical formation.9-12 Dexmedetomidine is a selective α-2 adrenoceptor agonist agent. It has been described as a useful and safe adjunct in many clinical applications. It has been found that it may increase urine output by considerably redistributing cardiac output, inhibiting vasopressin secretion and maintaining renal blood flow and glomerular filtration. Previous studies demonstrated that dexmedetomidine provides protection against renal, focal cerebral, cardiac, testicular, and tourniquet-induced IRI.13-18 Arslan et al observed that dexmedetomidine protected against lipid peroxidation and cellular membrane alterations in hepatic IRI, when given before induction of ischemia.17 Si et al18 demonstrated that dexmedetomidine treatment results in a partial but significant attenuation of renal demage induced by IRI through the inactivation of JAK/STAT signaling pathway in an in vivo model. The efficacy of the dexmedetomidine for IRI in diabetic patient is not resarched yet. The purpose of this experimental study was to evaluate the biochemical and histological effects of dexmedetomidine on hepatic IRI in diabetic rat’s hepatic and renal tissue. METHODOLOGY Animals and Experimental Protocol: This study was conducted in the Physiology Laboratory of Kirikkale University upon the consent of the Experimental Animals Ethics Committee of Kirikkale University. All of the procedures were performed according to the accepted standards of the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals. In the study, 28 male Wistar Albino rats, weighing between 250 and 300 g, raised under the same environmental conditions, were used. The rats were kept under 20-21 oC at cycles of 12-hour daylight and 12-hour darkness and had free access to food until 2 hours before the anesthesia procedure. The animals were randomly separated into four groups, each containing 7 rats. Diabetes was induced by a single intraperitoneal injection of streptozotocin (Sigma Chemical, St. Louis, MO, USA) at a dose of 65 mg/kg body weight. The blood glucose levels were measured at 72 hrs following this injection. Rats were classified as diabetic if their fasting blood glucose (FBG) levels exceeded 250 mg/dl, and only animals with FBGs of > 250 mg/dl were included in the diabetic groups (dia­betes only, diabetes plus ischemia-reperfusion and diabetes plus dexmedetomidine-ischemia-reperfusion). The rats were kept alive 4 weeks after streptozotocin injection to allow development of chronic dia­betes before they were exposed to ischemia-reperfusion.(19) The rats were weighed before the study. Rats were anesthetized with intraperitoneal ketamine 100 mg/kg. The chest and abdomen were shaved and each animal was fixed in a supine position on the operating table. The abdomen was cleaned with 1% polyvinyl iodine and when dry, the operating field was covered with a sterile drape and median laparotomy was performed. There were four experimental groups (Group C (sham-control; n = 7), (Group DC (diabetes-sham-control; n = 7), Group DIR (diabetes-ischemia-reperfusion; n = 7), and Group DIRD (diabetes-ischemia-reperfusion-dexmedetomidine; n = 7). Sham operation was performed on the rats in Group C and Group DC. The sham operation consisted of mobilization of the hepatic pedicle only. The rats in this group were sacrificed 90 min after the procedure. Hepatic I/R injury was induced in Groups DIR and DIRD respectively with hepatic pedicle clamping using a vascular clamp as in the previous study of Arslan et al.(17) After an ischemic period of 45 min, the vascular clamp was removed. A reperfusion period was maintained for 45 min. In Group DIRD, dexmedetomidine hydrochloride 100 μg/kg, (Precedex 100 μg/2 ml, Abbott®, Abbott Laboratory, North Chicago, Illinois, USA) was administrated via intraperitoneal route 30 minutes before surgery. All the rats were given ketamine 100 mg/kg intraperitoneally and intracardiac blood samples were obtained. Preserving the tissue integrity by avoiding trauma, liver and renal biopsy samples were obtained. Biochemical Analysis: The liver and renal tissues were first washed with cold deionized water to discard blood contamination and then hom*ogenized in a hom*ogenizer. Measurements on cell contest require an initial preparation of the tissues. The preparation procedure may involve grinding of the tissue in a ground glass tissue blender using a rotor driven by a simple electric motor. The hom*ogenizer as a tissue blender similar to the typical kitchen blender is used to emulsify and pulverize the tissue (Heidolph Instruments GMBH & CO KGDiax 900 Germany®) at 1000 U for about 3 min. After centrifugation at 10,000 g for about 60 min, the upper clear layer was taken. MDA levels were determined using the method of Van Ye et al,(20) based on the reaction of MDA with thiobarbituric acid (TBA). In the TBA test reaction, MDA and TBA react in acid pH to form a pink pigment with an absorption maximum at 532 nm. Arbitrary values obtained were compared with a series of standard solutions (1,1,3,3-tetraethoxypropane). Results were expressed as nmol/mg.protein. Part of the hom*ogenate was extracted in ethanol/chloroform mixture (5/3 v/v) to discard the lipid fraction, which caused interferences in the activity measurements of T-SOD, CAT and GST activities. After centrifugation at 10.000 x g for 60 min, the upper clear layer was removed and used for the T-SOD, CAT, GST enzyme activity measurement by methods as described by Durak et al21, Aebi22 and Habig et al23 respectively. One unit of SOD activity was defined as the enzyme protein amount causing 50% inhibition in NBTH2 reduction rate and result were expressed in U/mg protein. The CAT activity method is based on the measurement of absorbance decrease due to H2O2 consumption at 240 nm. The GST activity method is based on the measurement of absorbance changes at 340 nm due to formation of GSH-CDNB complex. Histological determinations: Semiquantitative evaluation technique used by Abdel-Wahhab et al(24) was applied for interpreting the structural changes investigated in hepatic tissues of control and research groups. According to this, (-) (negative point) represents no structural change, while (+) (one positive point) represents mild, (++) (two positive points) medium and (+++) (three positive points) represents severe structural changes. Statistical analysis: The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS, Chicago, IL, USA) 20.0 softwre was used for the statistical analysis. Variations in oxidative state parameters, and histopathological examination between study groups were assessed using the Kruskal-Wallis test. The Bonferroni-adjusted Mann-Whitney U-test was used after significant Kruskal-Wallis to determine which groups differed from the others. Results were expressed as mean ± standard deviation (Mean ± SD). Statistical significance was set at a p value < 0.05 for all analyses. RESULTS There was statistically significant difference observed between the groups with respect to findings from the histological changes in the rat liver tissue (hepatocyte degeneration, sinüsoidal dilatation, pycnotic nucleus, prenecrotic cell) determined by light microscopy according to semiquantitative evaluation techniques (p < 0.0001). In Group DIR, hepatocyte degeneration was significantly high compared to Group C, Group DC and Group DIRD (p < 0.0001, p < 0.0001, p = 0.002, respectively), (Table 1, Figure 1-4). Similarly, sinüsoidal dilatation was significantly higher in Group DIR (p < 0.0001, p = 0.004, p = 0.015, respectively). Although, pcynotic nucleus was decreased in Group DIRD, it did not make a significant difference in comparison to Group DIR (p = 0.053), (Table 1, Figure 1-4). The prenecrotic cells were significantly increased in Group DIR, with respect to Group C, Group DC and Group DIRD (p < 0.0001, p = 0.004, p < 0.0001, respectively), (Table 1, Figure 1-4). Table 1. The comparison of histological changes in rat hepatic tissue [Mean ± SD)] p**: Statistical significance was set at a p value < 0.05 for Kruskal-Wallis test *p < 0.05: When compared with Group DIR Figure 1: Light microscopic view of hepatic tissue of Group C (control). VC: vena centralis, *: sinusoids. ®: hepatocytes, k: Kupffer cells, G: glycogen granules, mc: minimal cellular changes, Hematoxilen & Eosin x 40 Figure 2: Light-microscopic view of hepatic tissue of Group DC (diabetes mellitus control) (G: Glycogen granules increased in number, (VC: vena centralis, *:sinusoids. ®:hepatocytes, k:Kupffer cells, G: glycogen granules, mc: minimal cellular changes; Hematoxylin & Eosin x 40) Figure 3: Light-microscopic view of hepatic tissue of Group DIR (Diabetes Mellitus and ischemia-reperfusion) (VC: vena centralis, (H) degenerative and hydrophic hepatocytes, (dej) vena centralis degeneration (centrolobar injury) (*): sinusoid dilatation. (←) pycnotic and hyperchromatic nuclei, MNL: mononuclear cell infiltration, (¯) congestion, K: Kupffer cell hyperplasia, (­) vacuolar degeneration (Hematoxylin & Eosin x 40) Figure 4: Light-microscopic view of hepatic tissue of Group DIRD (Diabetes Mellitus and ischemia-reperfusion together with dexmedetomidine applied group) (VC: vena centralis, (MNL) mononuclear cell infiltration, (dej) hydrophilic degeneration in hepatocytes around vena centralis, (conj) congestion, G: glycogen granules, (←) pycnotic and hyperchromatic nuclei, sinusoid dilatation (*) (Hematoxylin & Eosin x 40) Besides, in liver tissue parenchyma, MN cellular infiltration was a light microscopic finding; and showed significant changes among the groups (p < 0.0001). This was significantly higher in Group DIR, compared to Group C, DC, and DIRD (p < 0.0001, p=0.007, p = 0.007, respectively), (Table 1, Figure 1-4). The enzymatic activity of MDA, SOD and GST in hepatic tissues showed significant differences among the groups [(p = 0.019), (p = 0.034). (p = 0.008) respectively]. MDA enzyme activity was significantly incresed in Group DIR, according to Group C and Group DIRD (p = 0.011, p = 0.016, respectively), (Table 2). In Group DIR SOD enzyme activity was lower with respect to Group C and Group DIRD (p = 0.010, p = 0.038, respectively), (Table 2). The GST enzyme activity was significantly higher in Group DIR, when compared to Group C, DC and DIRD (p = 0.007, p = 0.038, p = 0.039, respectively), (Table 2). Table 2. Oxidative state parameters in rat hepatic tissue [Mean ± SD] p**: Statistical significance was set at a p value < 0.05 for Kruskal-Wallis test *p < 0.05: When compared with Group DIR The enzymatic activity of MDA, SOD in renal tissues, showed significant differences among the groups [(p < 0.0001), (p = 0.008) respectively ]. MDA enzyme activity was significantly incresed in Group DIR, according to Group C and Group DIRD (p < 0.0001, p < 0.0001, respectively). Also MDA enzyme activity level was significantly increased in Group DC, in comparison to Group C and Group DIRD (p = 0.003, p = 0.001, respectively), (Table 3). In Group DIR SOD enzyme activity was lower with respect to Group C and Group DIRD (p = 0.032, p = 0.013, respectively), (Table 3). The GST enzyme activity was significantly higher in Group DIR than the other three groups, however; CAT levels were similar among the groups (Table 3). Table 3: Oxidative state parameters in rat nephrotic tissue [Mean ± SD)] p**: Statistical significance was set at a p value < 0.05 for Kruskal-Wallis test *p < 0.05: When compared with Group DIR DISCUSSION In this study, we have reported the protective effect of dexmedetomidine in experimental hepatic and renal IRI model in the rat by investigating the MDA and SOD levels biochemically. Besides, hepatic histopathological findings also supported our report. Ischemic damage may occur with trauma, hemorrhagic shock, and some surgical interventions, mainly hepatic and renal resections. Reperfusion following ischemia results in even more injury than ischemia itself. IRI is an inflammatory response accompanied by free radical formation, leucocyte migration and activation, sinusoidal endothelial cellular damage, deteoriated microcirculation and coagulation and complement system activation.1 We also detected injury in hepatic and renal tissue caused by reperfusion following ischemia in liver. Experimental and clinical evidence indicates that OS is involved in both the pathogenesis and the complications of diabetes mellitus.25,26 Diabetes mellitus is a serious risk factor for the development of renal and cardiovascular disease. It is also related to fatty changes in the liver.27 Diabetes-related organ damage seems to be the result of multiple mechanisms. Diabetes has been associated with increased free radical reactions and oxidant tissue damage in STZ-induced diabetic rats and also in patients.26Oxidative stress has been implicated in the destruction of pancreatic β-cells28 and could largely contribute to the oxidant tissue damage associated with chronic hyperglycemia.29 A number of reports have shown that antioxidants can attenuate the complications of diabetes in patients30 and in experimental models.28,31 This study demonstrated that diabetes causes a tendency to increase the IRI. There is a lot of investigations related to the pharmacological agents or food supplements applied for decreasing OS and IRI. Antioxidant agents paly an important role in IRI by effecting antioxidant system or lessening the formation of ROS. It has been reported that anesthetic agents too, are effective in oxidative stress.1 During surgical interventions, it seems rational to get benefit from anesthetic agents in prevention of OS caused by IRI instead of using other agents. It has been declared that; dexmedetomidine; as an α-2 agonist with sedative, hypnotic properties; is important in prevention of renal, focal, cerebral, cardiac, testicular and tourniquet-induced IRI.13-18 On the other hand Bostankolu et al. concluded that dexmedetomidine did not have an additional protective role for tournique induced IRI during routine general anesthesia.32 In this study; we have shown that dexmedetomidine has a reducing effect in IRI in diabetic rats. Some biochemical tests and histopathological evaluations are applied for bringing up oxidative stress and IRI in the tissues. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) that appear with reperfusion injury damage cellular structures through the process of the lipid peroxidation of cellular membranes and yield toxic metabolites such as MDA.33 As an important intermidiate product in lipid peroxidation, MDA is used as a sensitive marker of IRI.34 ROS-induced tissue injury is triggered by various defense mechanisms.35 The first defence mechanisms include the antioxidant enzymes of SOD, CAT, and GPx. These endogenous antioxidants are the first lines of defence against oxidative stres and act by scavenging potentially damaging free radical moieties.36 There is a balance between ROS and the scavenging capacity of antioxidant enzymes.1-8 In this study, for evaluation of oxidative damage and antioxidant activity, MDS, SOD, GST and CAT levels were determined in liver and kidney tissues. MDA levels in hepatic and renal tissues were higher in Group DIR compared to Group C and Group DIRD. GST levels were higher in Group DIR compared to all the other three groups. When the groups were arranged from highest to lowest order, with respect to CAT levels, the order was; Group DIR, Group DIRD, Group DC and Group C. However, the difference was not significant. The acute phase reactant MDA, as a marker of OS, was found to be high in Group DIR and low in Group DIRD. This could be interpreted as the presence of protective effect of dexmedetomidine in IRI. IRI developing in splanchnic area causes injury also in the other organs.35 Leithead et al showed that clinically significant hepatic IRI demonstrates a strong relationship with peri-operative acute kidney injury.2 In our experimental research that showed correlation to that of research by Leithead et al. After hepatic IRI in diabetic rats renal OS marker MDA levels were significantly more in Group DIR than Group DIRD. In our study, we observed histopathological changes in the ischemic liver tissue and alterations in the level of MDA, SOD, GST and CAT levels which are OS markers. Histopathological changes of the liver tissues are hepatocyt degeneration, sinusoidal dilatation, nuclear picnosis, celluler necrosis, mononuclear cell infiltrationat paranchimal tissue. These histopathological injury scores were significantly lower in the Group DIRD than those in group DIR. LIMITATION Study limitation is there was no negative control group, as this type of surgical intervention is not possible in rats without anesthesia. CONCLUSION The enzymatic findings of our study together with the hepatic histopathology indicate that dexmedetomidine has a potential role to decrease ischemia-reperfusion injury. Conflict of interest and funding: The authors have not received any funding or benefits from industry or elsewhere to conduct this study. Author contribution: ŞCS: Concept, conduction of the study work and manuscript editing; BI: the main author to write the article; MB & MK: biochemical analysis; MA: manuscript writing; FMÇ: helped us with experimental study; LÖ & EK: collection of data REFERENCES Collard CD, Gelman S. Pathophysiology, clinical manifestations, and prevention of ischemia-reperfusion injury. Anesthesiology. 2001;94(6):1133. [PubMed] [Free full text] Leithead JA, Armstrong MJ, Corbett C, Andrew M, Kothari C, Gunson BK, et al. Hepatic ischemia reperfusion injury is associated with acute kidney injury following donation after brain death liver transplantation. Transpl Int. 2013;26(11):1116. doi: 10.1111/tri.12175. [PubMed] [Free full text] Panés J, Kurose I, Rodriguez-Vaca D, Anderson DC, Miyasaka M, Tso P, et al. Diabetes exacerbates inflammatory responses to ischemia-reperfusion. Circulation. 1996;93(1):161. [PubMed] [Free full text] Touyz RM. 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Abstract:

Online shopping is all the rage these days and the murderabilia industry in particular, which specializes in selling serial killer artifacts, is booming. At Spectre Studios, sculptor David Johnson sells flexible plastic action figures of Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and John Wayne Gacy and plans to produce a figure of Jack the Ripper in the future. Although some might think that making action figures of serial killers is tasteless, Johnson hastens to assure the potential consumer that he does have standards: “I wouldn’t do Osama bin Laden . . . I have some personal qualms about that” (Robinson). At Serial Killer Central, you can buy a range of items made by serial killers themselves, including paintings and drawings by Angelo Buono (one of the “Hillside Stranglers”) and Henry Lee Lucas. For the more discerning consumer, Supernaught.com charges a mere $300 for a brick from Dahmer’s apartment building, while a lock of Charles Manson’s hair is a real bargain at $995, shipping and handling not included. The sale of murderabilia is just a small part of the huge serial killer industry that has become a defining feature of American popular culture over the last twenty-five years. This industry is, in turn, a prime example of what Mark Seltzer has described as “wound culture,” consisting of a “public fascination with torn and open bodies and torn and opened persons, a collective gathering around shock, trauma, and the wound” (1). According to Seltzer, the serial killer is “one of the superstars of our wound culture” (2) and his claim is confirmed by the constant stream of movies, books, magazines, television shows, websites, t-shirts, and a tsunami of ephemera that has given the figure of the serial murderer an unparalleled degree of visibility and fame in the contemporary American public sphere. In a culture defined by celebrity, serial killers like Bundy, Dahmer and Gacy are the biggest stars of all, instantly recognized by the vast majority of Americans. Not surprisingly, murderabilia has been the focus of a sustained critique by the (usually self-appointed) guardians of ‘decency’ in American culture. On January 2, 2003 The John Walsh Show, the daytime television vehicle of the long-time host of America’s Most Wanted, featured an “inside look at the world of ‘murderabilia,’ which involves the sale of artwork, personal effects and letters from well-known killers” (The John Walsh Show Website). Featured guests included Andy Kahan, Director of the Mayor’s Crime Victim Assistance Office in Houston, Texas; ‘Thomas,’ who was horrified to find hair samples from “The Railroad Killer,” the individual who killed his mother, for sale on the Internet; Elmer Wayne Henley, a serial killer who sells his artwork to collectors; Joe, who runs “Serial Killer Central” and sells murderabilia from a wide range of killers, and Harold Schechter, a professor of English at Queens College, CUNY. Despite the program’s stated intention to “look at both sides of the issue,” the show was little more than a jeremiad against the murderabilia industry, with the majority of airtime being given to Andy Kahan and to the relatives of crime victims. The program’s bias was not lost on many of those who visited Joe’s Serial Killer Central site and left messages on the message board on the day The John Walsh Show aired. There were some visitors who shared Walsh’s perspective. A message from “serialkillersshouldnotprofit@aol.com,” for example, stated that “you will rot in hell with these killers,” while “Smithpi@hotmail.com” had a more elaborate critique: “You should pull your site off the net. I just watched the John Walsh show and your [sic] a f*cking idiot. I hope your [sic] never a victim, because if you do [sic] then you would understand what all those people were trying to tell you. You [sic] a dumb sh*t.” Most visitors, however, sympathized with the way Joe had been treated on the show: “I as well [sic] saw you on the John Walsh show, you should [sic] a lot of courage going on such a one sided show, and it was sh*t that they wouldnt [sic] let you talk, I would have walked off.” But whether the comments were positive or negative, one thing was clear: The John Walsh Show had created a great deal of interest in the Serial Killer Central site. As one of the messages put it, “I think that anything [sic] else he [John Walsh] has put a spark in everyones [sic] curiousity [sic] . . . I have noticed that you have more hits on your page today than any others [sic].” Apparently, even the most explicit rejection and condemnation of serial killer celebrity finds itself implicated in (and perhaps even unwittingly encouraging the growth of) that celebrity. John Walsh’s attack on the murderabilia industry was the latest skirmish in a campaign that has been growing steadily since the late 1990s. One of the campaign’s initial targets was the internet trading site eBay, which was criticized for allowing serial killer-related products to be sold online. In support of such criticism, conservative victims’ rights and pro-death penalty organizations like “Justice For All” organized online petitions against eBay. In November 2000, Business Week Online featured an interview with Andy Kahan in which he argued that the online sale of murderabilia should be suppressed: “The Internet just opens it all up to millions and millions more potential buyers and gives easy access to children. And it sends a negative message to society. What does it say about us? We continue to glorify killers and continue to put them in the mainstream public. That’s not right” (Business Week). Eventually bowing to public pressure, eBay decided to ban the sale of murderabilia items in May 2001, forcing the industry underground, where it continues to be pursued by the likes of John Walsh. Apart from highlighting how far the celebrity culture around serial killers has developed (so that one can now purchase the nail clippings and hair of some killers, as if they are religious icons), focusing on the ongoing debate around the ethics of murderabilia also emphasizes how difficult it is to draw a neat line between those who condemn and those who participate in that culture. Quite apart from the way in which John Walsh’s censoriousness brought more visitors to the Serial Killer Central site, one could also argue that few individuals have done more to disseminate information about violent crime in general and serial murder in particular to mainstream America than John Walsh. Of course, this information is presented in the unimpeachably moral context of fighting crime, but controversial features of America’s Most Wanted, such as the dramatic recreations of crime, pander to the same prurient public interest in crime that the program simultaneously condemns. An ABCNews.Com article on murderabilia inadvertently highlights the difficulty of distinguishing a legitimate from an illegitimate interest in serial murder by quoting Rick Staton, one of the biggest collectors and dealers of murderabilia in the United States, who emphasizes that the people he sells to are not “ghouls and creeps [who] crawl out of the woodwork”, but rather “pretty much your average Joe Blow.” Even his family, Staton goes on to say, who profess to be disgusted by what he does, act very differently in practice: “The minute they step into this room, they are glued to everything in here and they are asking questions and they are genuinely intrigued by it . . . So it makes me wonder: Am I the one who is so abnormal, or am I pretty normal?” (ABCNews.Com). To answer Staton’s question, we need to go back to 1944, when sociologist Leo Lowenthal published an essay entitled “Biographies in Popular Magazines,” an essay he later reprinted as a chapter in his 1961 book, Literature, Popular Culture And Society, under a new title: “The Triumph of Mass Idols.” Lowenthal argues that biographies in popular magazines underwent a striking change between 1901 and 1941, a change that signals the emergence of a new social type. According to Lowenthal, the earlier biographies indicate that American society’s heroes at the time were “idols of production” in that “they stem from the productive life, from industry, business, and natural sciences. There is not a single hero from the world of sports and the few artists and entertainers either do not belong to the sphere of cheap or mass entertainment or represent a serious attitude toward their art” (112-3). Sampling biographies in magazines from 1941, however, Lowenthal reaches a very different conclusion: “We called the heroes of the past ‘idols of production’: we feel entitled to call the present-day magazine heroes ‘idols of consumption’” (115). Unlike the businessmen, industrialists and scientists who dominated the earlier sample, almost every one of 1941’s heroes “is directly, or indirectly, related to the sphere of leisure time: either he does not belong to vocations which serve society’s basic needs (e.g., the worlds of entertainment and sport), or he amounts, more or less, to a caricature of a socially productive agent” (115). Lowenthal leaves his reader in no doubt that he sees the change from “idols of production” to “idols of consumption” as a serious decline: “If a student in some very distant future should use popular magazines of 1941 as a source of information as to what figures the American public looked to in the first stages of the greatest crisis since the birth of the Union, he would come to a grotesque result . . . the idols of the masses are not, as they were in the past, the leading names in the battle of production, but the headliners of the movies, the ball parks, and the night clubs” (116). With Lowenthal in mind, when one considers the fact that the serial killer is generally seen, in Richard Tithecott’s words, as “deserving of eternal fame, of media attention on a massive scale, of groupies” (144), one is tempted to describe the advent of celebrity serial killers as a further decline in the condition of American culture’s “mass idols.” The serial killer’s relationship to consumption, however, is too complex to allow for such a hasty judgment, as the murderabilia industry indicates. Throughout the edition of The John Walsh Show that attacked murderabilia, Walsh showed clips of Collectors, a recent documentary about the industry. Collectors is distributed by a small company named Abject Films and on their website the film’s director, Julian P. Hobbs, discusses some of the multiple connections between serial killing and consumerism. Hobbs points out that the serial killer is connected with consumerism in the most basic sense that he has become a commodity, “a merchandising phenomenon that rivals Mickey Mouse. From movies to television, books to on-line, serial killers are packaged and consumed en-masse” (Abject Films). But as Hobbs goes on to argue, serial killers themselves can be seen as consumers, making any representations of them implicated in the same consumerist logic: “Serial killers come into being by fetishizing and collecting artifacts – usually body parts – in turn, the dedicated collector gathers scraps connected with the actual events and so, too, a documentary a collection of images” (Abject Films). Along with Rick Staton, Hobbs implies that no one can avoid being involved with consumerism in relation to serial murder, even if one’s reasons for getting involved are high-minded. For example, when Jeffrey Dahmer was murdered in prison in 1994, the families of his victims were delighted but his death also presented them with something of a problem. Throughout the short time Dahmer was in prison, there had been persistent rumors that he was in negotiations with both publishers and movie studios about selling his story. If such a deal had ever been struck, legal restrictions would have prevented Dahmer from receiving any of the money; instead, it would have been distributed among his victims’ families. Dahmer’s murder obviously ended this possibility, so the families explored another option: going into the murderabilia business by auctioning off Dahmer’s property, including such banal items as his toothbrush, but also many items he had used in commission of the murders, such as a saw, a hammer, the 55-gallon vat he used to decompose the bodies, and the refrigerator where he stored the hearts of his victims. Although the families’ motives for suggesting this auction may have been noble, they could not avoid participating in what Mark Pizzato has described as “the prior fetishization of such props and the consumption of [Dahmer’s] cannibal drama by a mass audience” (91). When the logic of consumerism dominates, is anyone truly innocent, or are there just varying degrees of guilt, of implication? The reason why it is impossible to separate neatly ‘legitimate’ and ‘illegitimate’ expressions of interest in famous serial killers is the same reason why the murderabilia industry is booming; in the words of a 1994 National Examiner headline: “Serial Killers Are as American as Apple Pie.” Christopher Sharrett has suggested that: “Perhaps the fetish status of the criminal psychopath . . . is about recognizing the serial killer/mass murderer not as social rebel or folk hero . . . but as the most genuine representative of American life” (13). The enormous resistance to recognizing the representativeness of serial killers in American culture is fundamental to the appeal of fetishizing serial killers and their artifacts. As Sigmund Freud has explained, the act of disavowal that accompanies the formation of a fetish allows a perception (in this case, the Americanness of serial killers) to persist in a different form rather than being simply repressed (352-3). Consequently, just like the sexual fetishists discussed by Freud, although we may recognize our interest in serial killers “as an abnormality, it is seldom felt by [us] as a symptom of an ailment accompanied by suffering” (351). On the contrary, we are usually, in Freud’s words, “quite satisfied” (351) with our interest in serial killers precisely because we have turned them into celebrities. It is our complicated relationship with celebrities, affective as well as intellectual, composed of equal parts admiration and resentment, envy and contempt, that provides us with a lexicon through which we can manage our appalled and appalling fascination with the serial killer, contemporary American culture’s ultimate star. References ABCNews.Com. “Killer Collectibles: Inside the World of ‘Murderabilia.” 7 Nov. 2001. American Broadcasting Company. 9 May 2003 http://www.abcnews.com>. AbjectFilms.Com. “Collectors: A Film by Julian P. Hobbs.” Abject Films. 9 May 2003 http://www.abjectfilms.com/collectors.html>. BusinessWeek Online. 20 Nov. 2000. Business Week. 9 May 2003 http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_47/b3708056.htm>. Freud, Sigmund. “Fetishism.” On Sexuality. Trans. James Strachey. London: Penguin Books, 1977. 351-7. The John Walsh Show. Ed. Click Active Media. 2 Jan. 2003. 9 May 2003 http://www.johnwalsh.tv/cgi-bin/topics/today/cgi?id=90>. Lowenthal, Leo. “The Triumph of Mass Idols.” Literature, Popular Culture and Society. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1961. 109-40. National Examiner. “Serial Killers Are as American as Apple Pie.” 7 Jun. 1994: 7. Pizzato, Mark. “Jeffrey Dahmer and Media Cannibalism: The Lure and Failure of Sacrifice.” Mythologies of Violence in Postmodern Media. Ed. Christopher Sharrett. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1999. 85-118. Robinson, Bryan. “Murder Incorporated: Denver Sculptor’s Serial Killer Action Figures Bringing in Profits and Raising Ire.” ABCNews.Com 25 Mar. 2002. American Broadcasting Company. 27 Apr. 2003 http://abcnews.com/>. Seltzer, Mark. Serial Killers: Death and Life in America’s Wound Culture. New York: Routledge, 1998. Sharrett, Christopher. “Introduction.” Mythologies of Violence in Postmodern Media. Ed. Christopher Sharrett. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1999. 9-20. Tithecott, Richard. Of Men and Monsters: Jeffrey Dahmer and the Construction of the Serial Killer. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1997. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Schmid, David. "Murderabilia: Consuming Fame." M/C Journal 7.5 (2004). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0411/10-schmid.php>. APA Style Schmid, D. (Nov. 2004) "Murderabilia: Consuming Fame," M/C Journal, 7(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0411/10-schmid.php>.

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Cute pictures of animals feature as an inoffensive and adorable background to the contemporary online experience with cute content regularly shared on social media platforms. Indeed the demand for cuteness is so strong in the current cultural milieu that some animals become recognisable animal celebrities in the process (Hepola). However, despite the existence of this professionalisation in some sections of the cute economy, amateurs produce the majority of cute content that circulates online. This is largely because one of the central contributors to this steady stream of cute animal pictures is the subforum Aww, hosted on the online community Reddit. Aww is wholly dedicated to pictures of cute things and allows users to directly submit cute content directly to the site. Aww is one of the default subforums that new Reddit users are automatically subscribed to and is immensely popular, featuring over 4.2 million dedicated subscribers as well as untold casual visits. The section is self-described as: “Things that make you go AWW! -- like puppies, and bunnies, and so on...Feel free to post pictures, videos and stories of cute things” ("The cutest things on the internet!"). Users upload cute animal photos that they have taken and wait for the Reddit community to vote on their favourite pictures. The voting mechanism helps users to acknowledge their favourite posts, with the most popular featured on the front page of Aww (for a detailed critique of this process see van der Nagel 2013). The user-generated model of the site means that instead of visitors being confronted with a formally curated selection of cute animal photos, Aww offers a constantly changing mixture of amateur, semi-pro and professional content. Aww - and Reddit more generally - stand as an emblematic example of participatory culture (Jenkins 2006), with users playing an active role in the production and curation of online content. However, given the commercial nature of many user-generated content sites, this amateur media activity is becoming increasingly subject to intellectual property claims and conflicts (see Burgess; Kennedy). Across the internet there are growing tensions between website operators and amateur producers. As Jenny Kennedy (132) notes, while these platforms promote a public rhetoric of “sharing”, these corporate narratives “downplay their economic power” and imply “that they do not control the practices contained within their sites”. Subsequently, the expectations of users regarding how content is managed and organised can differ substantially from the corporate goals of social media companies. This paper contributes to the growing body of literature interested in the politics of amateur media production (see Hunter and Lastowka; Benkler; Burgess; Kennedy) by exploring the emergence of attribution norms and informal enforcement measures in and around the Aww online community. In contrast to professional content creators, amateurs often have fewer resources on hand to protect their copyrighted work and are also challenged by a pervasive online rhetoric that suggests that popular content essentially “belongs to the Internet” (Douglas). A number of communities on Reddit have questioned the company’s handling of amateur content with users suggesting that Reddit actively seeks to de-contextualise original content and not attribute original creators. By examining how amateur creators and online communities regulate content online, I interrogate the power relations that exist between social media platforms and users and explore how the corporate rhetoric of participatory culture interacts with the legal framework of copyright law. This article also contributes to existing legal scholarship on communities of practice and norms-based intellectual property systems. This literature has explored how social norms effectively regulate the protection of, among other things, recipes (Fauchart and Von Hippel), fashion design (Raustiala and Sprigman) and stand-up comedy routines (Oliar and Sprigman), in situations where copyright law does not function as an effective regulatory mechanism. Often these norms are in line with copyright law protections, but in other cases they diverge from these legal principles. In this paper I suggest that particular sections of Reddit function in a similar way, with their own set of self-governing norms, and that these norms largely align with the philosophical aims of copyright law. The paper begins by outlining a series of recent debates that have occurred between amateur media creators and Reddit, before exploring how norms are regulated on Reddit subforums Aww and Karma Court. I then offer some brief conclusions on the value of paying attention to how social norms structure forms of “sharing” (see Kennedy) and provide a useful way for amateur media producers to protect their content without going through formal legal processes. Introducing Reddit and the Confused Politics of Amateur Content Reddit is a social news site, a vibrant community and one of the most popular websites online. It stands as the most visible iteration of a long-standing tradition of user-generated and managed news, one that goes back to websites like Slashdot, which operated in the mid to late-90s. Founded in 2005 Reddit was launched after only one funding round of venture capital, receiving $100k in seed funding from Y Combinatory (Miller). Despite some early rivalry between Reddit and competitor site Digg, Reddit had enough potential to be purchased by Condé Nast for an estimated $20 million (Carr). Reddit’s audience numbers have grown exponentially in the last few years, with the site currently receiving over 5 billion page views and 114 million unique visitors per month (“About Reddit”). It has also changed focus significantly in the last few years with the site now “as much about posting interesting or funny pictures as it is about news” (Sepponen). Reddit hosts a number of individual subforums (called subreddits), which focus on a particular topic and function essentially like online bulletin boards. The front-page of Reddit showcases the most popular content from across the whole website, and user-generated content features heavily here. Amateur media cannot spread without the structural support of social media platforms, but this support is qualified in particular ways. Reddit stands as a paradigmatic case. Users on Reddit are “incentivized to submit direct links to images, because viewers can get to them more easily” (Douglas) and the website encourages amateur creators to use a preferred content server – Imgur – to host images. The Imgur service provides a direct public link to an image – even bypassing the Reddit discussion page – and with its free hosting and limited ads it has become a popular service and is used by most Reddit users (Slater-Robins). For the majority of Reddit users this is an unproblematic partnership. Imgur is free, effective and fast. However, a vocal minority of Reddit users and amateur creators claim that the partnership between Reddit and Imgur has created the equivalent of an online ghetto (Douglas).As Nick Douglas explains, when using services like Imgur there is no requirement to either provide an external link to a creators website or to attribute the creator, limiting the ability for an amateur creator to gain exposure. It also bypasses existing revenue streams that may have been set up by creators, including ad-supported websites or online stores offering merchandise. As a result creators have little opportunity to benefit either economically or reputationally from this system. This occurs to such an extent that “there are actually warnings against submitting your own [original] work” to particular subforums on Reddit (Douglas). For example, some forum moderators require submissions to either “link directly to a specific image file or to a website with minimal ads” (“Reddit Pics”). It is in this context, that the posting of original content without attribution is not actively policed. There are a number of complaints circulating within the Reddit community about these practices (see “Ok, look people. I know you heart Imgur, but webcomics? Just link to the freaking site”; “The problem with reddit”). Many creators have directly protested against this aspect of Reddit’s structural organisation. Blogger Benjamin Grelle (a.k.a The Frogman) and writer Chris Menning are two notable examples. Grelle’s protest was witty and dramatic. He wrote a blog post featuring a picture of an email he sent to Imgur offering the company a choice: send him a huge novelty check for $10,000 or alternatively, add a proper attribution system that allows artists, photographers and content creators to properly credit their work. Grelle estimates that his work generated around $20,000 in ad revenue for Imgur; however the structure of Reddit and Imgur meant he earned little income from the “viral” success of his content. Grelle claimed he was happy for his work to be shared, but attribution meant that it was more likely a fan would follow the link to his website and provide him with some financial recompense for his work. Unsurprisingly, Grelle didn’t receive a paycheck and so in response has developed a unique way to gain exposure. He has started to insert himself into his work, “[s]o when you see a stolen Frogman piece, you still see Ben Grelle’s face” (Douglas). Chris Menning posted a blog about being banned from Reddit, hoping to bring to light some of the inequalities that persist around Reddit’s current structure. He began by noting that he had received a significant amount of traffic from them in the past. He had responded in kind by looking to create original content for particular subforums, knowing what a particular community would enjoy. However, his habit of providing the link to his own website along with the content he posted saw him get labelled as a spammer and banned by administrators. Menning chose not to fight the ban:It seems that the only way I could avoid [getting banned] is if I were to relinquish any rights to my original content and post it exclusively to Imgur. In effect, reddit punishes the creation of original content, and rewards content theft (Menning). Instead he decided to quit Reddit, claiming that Reddit’s approach would carry long-term consequences as the platform provided little incentive for creators to produce wholly original content. It is worth noting that neither Menning nor Grelle turned to legal avenues in order to gain financial restitution. Considering the nature of the practices they were complaining about, compensation in the form of an injunction or damages would have certainly been possible. In Benjamin’s case, a user had combined a number of his copyrighted works into one image and posted the image to Imgur without attribution --this infringed Grelle’s copyright in his work as well as his moral right to be attributed as the creator of the work. However, the public comments of both creators suggest that despite the possibility of legal success, their issue was not so much to do with their individual cases but rather the broader structural issues at play within Reddit. While they might gain individually from a successful legal challenge, over the long term Reddit would continue to be a fraught place for amateur and semi-professional content creators. Certain parts of the Reddit community appear to be sympathetic to these issues, and the complaints of dissenting users like Menning and Grelle have received active support from some users and moderators on the site. This has led to changes in the way content is being posted and managed on Aww, and has also driven the emergence of a satirical user-run court entitled Karma Court. In these spaces moderators and members establish community norms, regularly police the correct attribution of works and challenge the de-contextualisation of content overtly encouraged by Reddit, Imgur and other subforums. In the following section I will examine both Aww and Karma Court in order to explore how these norms are established and negotiated by both moderators and users alike. reddit.com/r/aww: The Online Hub of Cute Animal Pictures As we have seen, the design of Reddit and Imgur creates a number of problems for amateur creators who wish to protect their intellectual property. To address these shortcomings, the Aww community has created its own informal regulatory systems. Volunteer moderators play a crucial role: they establish informal codes of conduct for the Aww community and enforce various rules about how the site should be used. One of these rules relates to attribution. Users are asked to to “post original content whenever possible or attribute original content creators” ("The cutest things on the internet!"). Due to the volunteer nature of the work and the size of the Aww sub-reddit, moderator enforcement is haphazard. Consequently, responsibility falls on the wider user community to self-police. Despite its informal nature, this process manages to facilitate a fairly consistent standard of attribution. In this way it functions as an informal method of intellectual property protection. It is worth noting however that this commitment to original content is not solely due to the moral character of Aww users. A significant motivation is the distribution of karma points amongst Reddit users. Karma, which represents your good standing within the Reddit community, can be earned through user likes and votes – these push the most popular content to the front page of each subforum. Thus karma stands as a numerical representation of a user’s value to Reddit. This ostensibly democratic system has the paradoxical effect of fuelling intellectual property violations on the site. Users often repost other users’ jpegs, animated gifs, and other content, in order to reap the social and cultural capital that comes with posting a popular picture. In some cases they claim authorship of the content; in other cases they simply re-post content that they feel “belongs to the internet” (Douglas). Some content is so popular or pervasive online (this content that is often described as “viral”) that users feel there is little reason or need to attribute content. This helps to explain the persistence of ownership and attribution conflicts on Reddit. In the eyes of some users and moderators the management of these rights and the correct distribution of karma are seen to be vital to the long-term functioning of site. The karma system offers a numerical representation of each contributor’s value. Re-posting already successful content and claiming it as your own challenges the proper functioning of the karma system and potentially ‘inhibits the innovative potential of contributions (Richterich). On Aww the re-posting of original content is viewed as a taboo act that breaches these norms. The poster is seen to have engaged in deceptive conduct in order to gain karma for their user profile. In addition there is a strong ethic that runs through these comment threads that the original creator deserves attribution. There is a presumption that this attribution is vital in order to increasing the possible marketability of the posted content and to recognise and courage creators within the community. This sort of community-driven regulation contrasts with the aforementioned site design of Reddit and Imgur, which frustrates effective authorship attribution practices. Aww users, in contrast, have shown a willingness to defend what they see as the intellectual property rights of content creators.A series of recent examples outline how this process works in practice. User “moonlikeme123” posted a picture of a cat with its hands on the steering wheel of a car. The picture was entitled “we don’t need to ask for directions, Helen”. During the same day, three separate users had identified the picture as a repost, with one noting that the same picture was already on the front page of Aww. “moonlikeme123” received no karma points for the picture. In a second example, the user “nibblur” posted a photo of a kitten “hunting” a toy mouse. Within a day, one enterprising user had identified the original photographer – “torode”, an amateur photographer – and linked to his Reddit profile (see fig. 2) ("ferocious cat hunting its prey: aww."). One further example: on 15 July 2013 “Cuzacelmare” posted a picture of two dogs comforting each other – an image which had originally been posted by “lauface”. Again, users were quick to point out the lack of attribution and the attempt to claim someone else’s content as their own (“Comforting her sister during a storm: aww). It is worth noting that some Reddit users consider attributing content to be entirely without benefit. Some deride karma as “meaningless” and suggest that as a significant amount of content online is regularly reposted elsewhere, there is little harm done in re-posting what is essentially amateur content destined to be lost in the bowels of the internet. For example, the comments that follow Cuzacelmare’s reflect an ambivalence about reposting, suggesting that users weigh up the benefits of exposure gained by the re-posting against the lack of attribution granted and the increasingly decontextualized nature of the photo itself:Why does everyone get so bitchy about reposts. Not everyone is on ALL the time or has been on Rreddit since it was created. I mean if you've seen it already ignore it. It's just picture you aren't forced to click the link. [sic] (“Comforting her sister during a storm: aww”)We're arguing semantics, but any content that gets attention can benefit the creator, whether it's reddit or Youtube (“Comforting her sister during a storm: aww”) Such discussions are common on comment threads following re-posts by other users. They underline the conflicted status of this ephemeral media and the underlying frictions that are part of these processes. These discussions underline the fact that on Reddit the “sharing” (Kennedy) and “spreading” (Jenkins et al.) of content is not seen as an unquestioned positive but rather as a contestable structural feature that needs to be constantly negotiated and discussed. These informal methods of identification, post-hoc attribution and criticism in comment threads have been the long-standing method used to redress questions of attribution and ownership of content on Reddit. However in recent times, Reddit users have turned to satirical methods of formal adjudication for particularly egregious cases. A sub-reddit, Karma Court, now functions as an informal tribunal in which punishment is meted out for “the abuse of karma and general contemptible actions heretofore identified as wrongdoing” (“Constitution and F.A.Q of the Karma Court”). Due to its double function as both an adjudicator and satire of users overly-invested in online debates, there is no limit to the possible “crimes” a user may be charged with. The following charges are only presented as guidelines and speak to common negative experiences on online: (1). Douchebaggery - When one is being a douche.(2). Defamation - Tarnishing another redditor's [user’s] username.(3). Public Indecency - When a user flexes his or her 'e-peen' with the intent to shame other users.(4). Ohsh*t.exe - Intentional reposting that results in reddit Gold.(5). GrandTheft.jpg - Reposting while claiming credit for the post.(6). Obstruction of Justice - Impeding or interfering with an investigation, such as submitting false screenshots, deleting evidence, or providing false evidence to the court.(7). Other - Literally anything else you want. We like creative names for charges.(“Constitution and F.A.Q of the Karma Court”) In Karma Court, legal representation can be sourced from a list of attorneys and judges, populated by users who volunteer to help adjudicate the case. They are required to have been a Reddit member for over six months. The only punishment is a public shaming. Interestingly Karma Court has developed a fair reposting clause that attempts to manage the complex debates around reposting and attribution. Under the non-binding satirical clause, users are able to repost content if it has not featured on the front page of a sub-reddit for seven or more days, if the re-poster acknowledges in the title or description that they are re-posting or if the original poster has less than 30,000 link karma (which means that the original poster has not substantially contributed to the Reddit community). If a re-poster does not adhere by these rules and claims a re-post as their own original content (or “OC”), they can be charged with “grandtheft.jpg” and brought to trial by another Reddit user. As one of the most popular subforums, a number of cases have emerged from Aww. The aforementioned re-poster “Cuzacelmare” (“I am bringing /U/ Cuzacelmare to trial …”) was “charged” through this process and served with a summons after denying “cute and innocent animals of that subreddit of their much deserved karma”. Similar cases to do with re-posting without attribution on Aww involve “FreshCorio” (“Reddit vs. U/FreshCorio …”) and “ninjacollin” (“People of Reddit vs. /U/ ninjacollin”) who were also brought to karma court. In each case prosecutors were adamant that false authorship claims needed to be punished. With these mock trials run by volunteers it takes time for arguments to be heard and judgment to occur; however “ninjacollin” expedited the legal process by offering a full confession. As a new user, “ninjacollin” was reprimanded severely for his actions and the users on Karma Court underlined the consequences of not identifying original content creators when re-posting content. Ownership and Attribution: Amateur Media, Distribution and Law The practices outlined above offer a number of alternate ways to think about amateur media and how it is distributed. An increasingly complex picture of content attribution and circulation emerges once we take into account the structural operation of Reddit, the intellectual property norms of users, and the various formal and informal systems of regulation that are appearing on the site. Such practices require users to negotiate complex questions of ownership between each other and in relation to corporate bodies. These negotiations often lead to informal agreements around a set of norms to regulate the spread of content within a particular community, suggesting that the lack of a formal legal process in these debates does not mean that there is an absence of regulation. As noted throughout this paper, the spread of online content often involves progressive de-contextualisation. Website design features often support this process in the hopes of encouraging content to spread in a fashion amenable to their corporate goals. Considering this tendency for content to be decontextualized online, the presence of attribution norms on subforums like Aww is significant. Instead of remixing, spreading and re-purposing content indiscriminately, users retain a concept of ownership and attribution that tracks closely to the basic principles of copyright law. Rather than users radically redefining concepts of attribution and ownership, as prefigured in some of the more utopian accounts of participatory media, the dominant norms of the Reddit community extend a discourse of copyright and ownership. As well as providing a greater level of detail to contemporary debates around amateur media and its viral or spreadable nature (Burgess; Jenkins; Jenkins et al), this analysis offers some lessons for copyright law. The emergence of norms in particular Reddit subforums which govern the use of copyrighted content and the use of a mock court structure suggests that online communities have the capacity to engage in forms of redress for amateur creators. These organic forms of copyright management operate adjacent to formal legal structures of copyright law. However, they are more accessible and practical for amateur creators, who do not always have the money to hire lawyers, especially when the market value of their content might be negligible. The informal regulatory systems outlined above may not operate perfectly but they reveal communities who are willing to engage foundational conversations around the importance of attribution and ownership. Following the existing literature (Fauchart and Von Hippel; Raustiala and Sprigman; Schultz; Oliar and Sprigman), I suggest that these online social norms provide a useful form of alternative protection for amateur creators. Acknowledgements Thanks to Ramon Lobato and Emily van der Nagel for comments and productive discussions around these issues. I am also grateful to the two anonymous peer reviewers for their assistance in developing this argument. References “About Reddit.” Reddit, 2014. 29 Apr. 2014 ‹http://www.reddit.com/about/›. Benkler, Yochai. The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. Burgess, Jean. “YouTube and the Formalisation of Amateur Media.” Amateur Media: Social, Cultural and Legal Perspectives. In Dan Hunter, Ramon Lobato, Megan Richardson, and Julian Thomas, eds. Oxford: Routledge, 2012. Carr, Nicholas. “Left Alone by Its Owner, Reddit Soars.” The New York Times: Business, 2 Sep. 2012. “Comforting Her Sister during a Storm: aww.” reddit: the front page of the internet, 15 July 2013. “Constitution and F.A.Q of the Karma Court.” reddit: the front page of the internet, 2014. Douglas, Nick. “Everything on the Internet Gets Stolen: Here’s How You Should Feel about That.” Slacktory, 8 Sep. 2009. Fauchart, Emmanual, and Eric von Hippel. “Norms-Based Intellectual Property Systems: The Case of French Chefs.” Organization Science 19.2 (2008): 187 - 201 "Ferocious Cat Hunting Its Prey: aww." reddit: the front page of the internet, 4 April 2013. 29 Apr. 2014 ‹http://www.rreddit.com/r/aww/comments/1bobcp/ferocious_cat_hunting_its_prey/›. Hepola, Sarah. “The Internet is Made of Kittens.” Salon.com, 11 Feb. 2009. 29 Apr. 2014 ‹http://www.salon.com/2009/02/10/cat_internet/›. Hunter, Dan, and Greg Lastowka. “Amateur-to-Amateur.” William & Mary Law Review 46 (2004): 951 - 1030. “I Am Bringing /U/ Cuzacelmare to Trial on the Basis of Being One of the Biggest _______ I’ve Ever Seen, by Reposting Cute Animal Pictures to /R/Awww. Feels.Jpg.” reddit: the front page of the internet, 21 March 2013. Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press, 2006. Jenkins, Henry, Sam Ford, and Joshua Green. Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture. New York: New York University Press, 2013. Menning, Chris. "So I Got Banned from Reddit" Modern Primate, 23 Aug. 2012. Miller, Keery. “How Y Combinator Helped Shape Reddit.” Bloomberg Businessweek, 26 Sep. 2007. 29 Apr. 2014 ‹http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2007-09-26/how-y-combinator-helped-shape-redditbusinessweek-business-news-stock-market-and-financial-advice›. “Ok, Look People. I Know You Heart Imgur, But Webcomics? Just Link to the Freaking Site.” reddit: the front page of the internet, 22 Aug. 2011. Oliar, Dotan, and Christopher Sprigman. “There’s No Free Laugh (Anymore): The Emergence of Intellectual Property Norms and the Transformation of Stand-Up Comedy.” Virginia Law Review 94.8 (2009): 1787 – 1867. “People of reddit vs. /U/Ninjacollin for Grandtheft.jpg.” reddit: the front page of the internet, 30 Jan. 2013. Raustiala, Kal, and Christopher Sprigman. “The Piracy Paradox: Innovation and Intellectual Property in Fashion Design”. Virginia Law Review 92.8 (2006): 1687-1777. “Reddit v. U/FreshCorio. User Uploads Popular Repost Picture of R/AWW and Claims It Is His Sister’s Cat. Falsely Claims It Is His Cakeday for Good Measure.” reddit: the front page of the internet, 12 Apr. 2013. 29 Apr. 2014 ‹http://www.reddit.com/r/KarmaCourt/comments/1c7vxz/reddit_vs_ufreshcorio_user_uploads_popular_repost/›. “Reddit Pics.” reddit: the front page of the internet, 2014. 29 Apr. 2014 ‹http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/›. Richterich, Annika. “’Karma, Precious Karma!’ Karmawhoring on Reddit and the Front Page’s Econometrisation.” Journal of Peer Production 4 (2014). 29 Apr. 2014 ‹http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-4-value-and-currency/peer-reviewed-articles/karma-precious-karma/›. Schultz, Mark. “Fear and Norms and Rock & Roll: What Jambands Can Teach Us about Persuading People to Obey Copyright Law.” Berkley Technology Law Journal 21.2 (2006): 651 – 728. Sepponen, Bemmu. “Why Redditors Gave Imgur a Chance.” Social Media Today, 20 July 2011. Slater-Robins, Max. “From Rags to Riches: The Story of Imgur.” Neowin, 21 Apr. 2013. "The Cutest Things on the Internet!" reddit: the front page of the internet, n.d. “The Problem with reddit.” reddit: the front page of the internet, 23 Aug. 2012. 29 Apr. 2014 ‹http://www.rreddit.com/r/technology/comments/ypbe2/the_problem_with_rreddit/›. Van der Nagel, Emily. “Faceless Bodies: Negotiating Technological and Cultural Codes on reddit gonewild.” Scan: Journal of Media Arts Culture 10.2 (2013). "We Don’t Need to Ask for Directions, Helen: aww." reddit: the front page of the internet, 30 June 2013. 29 Apr. 2014 ‹http://www.rreddit.com/r/aww/comments/1heut6/we_dont_need_to_ask_for_directions_helen/›.

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Mobile In many countries, more people have mobile phones than they do fixed-line phones. Mobile phones are one of the fastest growing technologies ever, outstripping even the internet in many respects. With the advent and widespread deployment of digital systems, mobile phones were used by an estimated 1, 158, 254, 300 people worldwide in 2002 (up from approximately 91 million in 1995), 51. 4% of total telephone subscribers (ITU). One of the reasons for this is mobility itself: the ability for people to talk on the phone wherever they are. The communicative possibilities opened up by mobile phones have produced new uses and new discourses (see Katz and Aakhus; Brown, Green, and Harper; and Plant). Contemporary soundscapes now feature not only voice calls in previously quiet public spaces such as buses or restaurants but also the aural irruptions of customised polyphonic ringtones identifying whose phone is ringing by the tune downloaded. The mobile phone plays an important role in contemporary visual and material culture as fashion item and status symbol. Most tragically one might point to the tableau of people in the twin towers of the World Trade Centre, or aboard a plane about to crash, calling their loved ones to say good-bye (Galvin). By contrast, one can look on at the bathos of Australian cricketer Shane Warne’s predilection for pressing his mobile phone into service to arrange wanted and unwanted assignations while on tour. In this article, I wish to consider another important and so far also under-theorised aspect of mobile phones: text. Of contemporary textual and semiotic systems, mobile text is only a recent addition. Yet it is already produces millions of inscriptions each day, and promises to be of far-reaching significance. Txt Txt msg ws an acidnt. no 1 expcted it. Whn the 1st txt msg ws sent, in 1993 by Nokia eng stdnt Riku Pihkonen, the telcom cpnies thought it ws nt important. SMS – Short Message Service – ws nt considrd a majr pt of GSM. Like mny teks, the *pwr* of txt — indeed, the *pwr* of the fon — wz discvrd by users. In the case of txt mssng, the usrs were the yng or poor in the W and E. (Agar 105) As Jon Agar suggests in Constant Touch, textual communication through mobile phone was an after-thought. Mobile phones use radio waves, operating on a cellular system. The first such mobile service went live in Chicago in December 1978, in Sweden in 1981, in January 1985 in the United Kingdom (Agar), and in the mid-1980s in Australia. Mobile cellular systems allowed efficient sharing of scarce spectrum, improvements in handsets and quality, drawing on advances in science and engineering. In the first instance, technology designers, manufacturers, and mobile phone companies had been preoccupied with transferring telephone capabilities and culture to the mobile phone platform. With the growth in data communications from the 1960s onwards, consideration had been given to data capabilities of mobile phone. One difficulty, however, had been the poor quality and slow transfer rates of data communications over mobile networks, especially with first-generation analogue and early second-generation digital mobile phones. As the internet was widely and wildly adopted in the early to mid-1990s, mobile phone proponents looked at mimicking internet and online data services possibilities on their hand-held devices. What could work on a computer screen, it was thought, could be reinvented in miniature for the mobile phone — and hence much money was invested into the wireless access protocol (or WAP), which spectacularly flopped. The future of mobiles as a material support for text culture was not to lie, at first at least, in aping the world-wide web for the phone. It came from an unexpected direction: cheap, simple letters, spelling out short messages with strange new ellipses. SMS was built into the European Global System for Mobile (GSM) standard as an insignificant, additional capability. A number of telecommunications manufacturers thought so little of the SMS as not to not design or even offer the equipment needed (the servers, for instance) for the distribution of the messages. The character sets were limited, the keyboards small, the typeface displays rudimentary, and there was no acknowledgement that messages were actually received by the recipient. Yet SMS was cheap, and it offered one-to-one, or one-to-many, text communications that could be read at leisure, or more often, immediately. SMS was avidly taken up by young people, forming a new culture of media use. Sending a text message offered a relatively cheap and affordable alternative to the still expensive timed calls of voice mobile. In its early beginnings, mobile text can be seen as a subcultural activity. The text culture featured compressed, cryptic messages, with users devising their own abbreviations and grammar. One of the reasons young people took to texting was a tactic of consolidating and shaping their own shared culture, in distinction from the general culture dominated by their parents and other adults. Mobile texting become involved in a wider reworking of youth culture, involving other new media forms and technologies, and cultural developments (Butcher and Thomas). Another subculture that also was in the vanguard of SMS was the Deaf ‘community’. Though the Alexander Graham Bell, celebrated as the inventor of the telephone, very much had his hearing-impaired wife in mind in devising a new form of communication, Deaf people have been systematically left off the telecommunications network since this time. Deaf people pioneered an earlier form of text communications based on the Baudot standard, used for telex communications. Known as teletypewriter (TTY), or telecommunications device for the Deaf (TDD) in the US, this technology allowed Deaf people to communicate with each other by connecting such devices to the phone network. The addition of a relay service (established in Australia in the mid-1990s after much government resistance) allows Deaf people to communicate with hearing people without TTYs (Goggin & Newell). Connecting TTYs to mobile phones have been a vexed issue, however, because the digital phone network in Australia does not allow compatibility. For this reason, and because of other features, Deaf people have become avid users of SMS (Harper). An especially favoured device in Europe has been the Nokia Communicator, with its hinged keyboard. The move from a ‘restricted’, ‘subcultural’ economy to a ‘general’ economy sees mobile texting become incorporated in the semiotic texture and prosaic practices of everyday life. Many users were already familiar with the new conventions already developed around electronic mail, with shorter, crisper messages sent and received — more conversation-like than other correspondence. Unlike phone calls, email is asynchronous. The sender can respond immediately, and the reply will be received with seconds. However, they can also choose to reply at their leisure. Similarly, for the adept user, SMS offers considerable advantages over voice communications, because it makes textual production mobile. Writing and reading can take place wherever a mobile phone can be turned on: in the street, on the train, in the club, in the lecture theatre, in bed. The body writes differently too. Writing with a pen takes a finger and thumb. Typing on a keyboard requires between two and ten fingers. The mobile phone uses the ‘fifth finger’ — the thumb. Always too early, and too late, to speculate on contemporary culture (Morris), it is worth analyzing the textuality of mobile text. Theorists of media, especially television, have insisted on understanding the specific textual modes of different cultural forms. We are familiar with this imperative, and other methods of making visible and decentring structures of text, and the institutions which animate and frame them (whether author or producer; reader or audience; the cultural expectations encoded in genre; the inscriptions in technology). In formal terms, mobile text can be described as involving elision, great compression, and open-endedness. Its channels of communication physically constrain the composition of a very long single text message. Imagine sending James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake in one text message. How long would it take to key in this exemplar of the disintegration of the cultural form of the novel? How long would it take to read? How would one navigate the text? Imagine sending the Courier-Mail or Financial Review newspaper over a series of text messages? The concept of the ‘news’, with all its cultural baggage, is being reconfigured by mobile text — more along the lines of the older technology of the telegraph, perhaps: a few words suffices to signify what is important. Mobile textuality, then, involves a radical fragmentation and unpredictable seriality of text lexia (Barthes). Sometimes a mobile text looks singular: saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’, or sending your name and ID number to obtain your high school or university results. Yet, like a telephone conversation, or any text perhaps, its structure is always predicated upon, and haunted by, the other. Its imagined reader always has a mobile phone too, little time, no fixed address (except that hailed by the network’s radio transmitter), and a finger poised to respond. Mobile text has structure and channels. Yet, like all text, our reading and writing of it reworks those fixities and makes destabilizes our ‘clear’ communication. After all, mobile textuality has a set of new pre-conditions and fragilities. It introduces new sorts of ‘noise’ to signal problems to annoy those theorists cleaving to the Shannon and Weaver linear model of communication; signals often drop out; there is a network confirmation (and message displayed) that text messages have been sent, but no system guarantee that they have been received. Our friend or service provider might text us back, but how do we know that they got our text message? Commodity We are familiar now with the pleasures of mobile text, the smile of alerting a friend to our arrival, celebrating good news, jilting a lover, making a threat, firing a worker, flirting and picking-up. Text culture has a new vector of mobility, invented by its users, but now coveted and commodified by businesses who did not see it coming in the first place. Nimble in its keystrokes, rich in expressivity and cultural invention, but relatively rudimentary in its technical characteristics, mobile text culture has finally registered in the boardrooms of communications companies. Not only is SMS the preferred medium of mobile phone users to keep in touch with each other, SMS has insinuated itself into previously separate communication industries arenas. In 2002-2003 SMS became firmly established in television broadcasting. Finally, interactive television had arrived after many years of prototyping and being heralded. The keenly awaited back-channel for television arrives courtesy not of cable or satellite television, nor an extra fixed-phone line. It’s the mobile phone, stupid! Big Brother was not only a watershed in reality television, but also in convergent media. Less obvious perhaps than supplementary viewing, or biographies, or chat on Big Brother websites around the world was the use of SMS for voting. SMS is now routinely used by mainstream television channels for viewer feedback, contest entry, and program information. As well as its widespread deployment in broadcasting, mobile text culture has been the language of prosaic, everyday transactions. Slipping into a café at Bronte Beach in Sydney, why not pay your parking meter via SMS? You’ll even receive a warning when your time is up. The mobile is becoming the ‘electronic purse’, with SMS providing its syntax and sentences. The belated ingenuity of those fascinated by the economics of mobile text has also coincided with a technological reworking of its possibilities, with new implications for its semiotic possibilities. Multimedia messaging (MMS) has now been deployed, on capable digital phones (an instance of what has been called 2.5 generation [G] digital phones) and third-generation networks. MMS allows images, video, and audio to be communicated. At one level, this sort of capability can be user-generated, as in the popularity of mobiles that take pictures and send these to other users. Television broadcasters are also interested in the capability to send video clips of favourite programs to viewers. Not content with the revenues raised from millions of standard-priced SMS, and now MMS transactions, commercial participants along the value chain are keenly awaiting the deployment of what is called ‘premium rate’ SMS and MMS services. These services will involve the delivery of desirable content via SMS and MMS, and be priced at a premium. Products and services are likely to include: one-to-one textchat; subscription services (content delivered on handset); multi-party text chat (such as chat rooms); adult entertainment services; multi-part messages (such as text communications plus downloads); download of video or ringtones. In August 2003, one text-chat service charged $4.40 for a pair of SMS. Pwr At the end of 2003, we have scarcely registered the textual practices and systems in mobile text, a culture that sprang up in the interstices of telecommunications. It may be urgent that we do think about the stakes here, as SMS is being extended and commodified. There are obvious and serious policy issues in premium rate SMS and MMS services, and questions concerning the political economy in which these are embedded. Yet there are cultural questions too, with intricate ramifications. How do we understand the effects of mobile textuality, rewriting the telephone book for this new cultural form (Ronell). What are the new genres emerging? And what are the implications for cultural practice and policy? Does it matter, for instance, that new MMS and 3rd generation mobile platforms are not being designed or offered with any-to-any capabilities in mind: allowing any user to upload and send multimedia communications to other any. True, as the example of SMS shows, the inventiveness of users is difficult to foresee and predict, and so new forms of mobile text may have all sorts of relationships with content and communication. However, there are worrying signs of these developing mobile circuits being programmed for narrow channels of retail purchase of cultural products rather than open-source, open-architecture, publicly usable nodes of connection. Works Cited Agar, Jon. Constant Touch: A Global History of the Mobile Phone. Cambridge: Icon, 2003. Barthes, Roland. S/Z. Trans. Richard Miller. New York: Hill & Wang, 1974. Brown, Barry, Green, Nicola, and Harper, Richard, eds. Wireless World: Social, Cultural, and Interactional Aspects of the Mobile Age. London: Springer Verlag, 2001. Butcher, Melissa, and Thomas, Mandy, eds. Ingenious: Emerging youth cultures in urban Australia. Melbourne: Pluto, 2003. Galvin, Michael. ‘September 11 and the Logistics of Communication.’ Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 17.3 (2003): 303-13. Goggin, Gerard, and Newell, Christopher. Digital Disability: The Social Construction of Digital in New Media. Lanham, MA: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. Harper, Phil. ‘Networking the Deaf Nation.’ Australian Journal of Communication 30. 3 (2003), in press. International Telecommunications Union (ITU). ‘Mobile Cellular, subscribers per 100 people.’ World Telecommunication Indicators <http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/statistics/> accessed 13 October 2003. Katz, James E., and Aakhus, Mark, eds. Perpetual Contact: Mobile Communication, Private Talk, Public Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 2002. Morris, Meaghan. Too Soon, Too Late: History in Popular Culture. Bloomington and Indianapolis: U of Indiana P, 1998. Plant, Sadie. On the Mobile: The Effects of Mobile Telephones on Social and Individual Life. < http://www.motorola.com/mot/documents/0,1028,296,00.pdf> accessed 5 October 2003. Ronell, Avital. The Telephone Book: Technology—schizophrenia—electric speech. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1989. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Goggin, Gerard. "‘mobile text’" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture <http://www.media-culture.org.au/0401/03-goggin.php>. APA Style Goggin, G. (2004, Jan 12). ‘mobile text’. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 7, <http://www.media-culture.org.au/0401/03-goggin.php>

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Abstract:

The copyrighting of digital augmentations (our data-flesh), their privatization and ownership by others from a vast distance that is simultaneously instantly telematically surmountable started simply enough. It was the initially innocuous corporatization of language and semiotics that started the deeper ontological flip, which placed the posthuman bits and parts over the posthuman that thought that it was running things. The posthumans in question, myself included, didn't help things much when, for instance, we all clicked an unthinking or unconcerned "yes" to Facebook® or Gmail®'s "terms and conditions of use" policies that gives them the real ownership and final say over those data based augments of sociality, speech, and memory. Today there is growing popular concern (or at least acknowledgement) over the surveillance of these augmentations by government, especially after the Edward Snowden NSA leaks. The same holds true for the dataveillance of data-flesh (i.e. Gmail® or Facebook® accounts) by private corporations for reasons of profit and/or at the behest of governments for reasons of "national security." While drawing a picture of this (bodily) state, of the intrusion through language of brands into our being and their coterminous policing of intelligible and iterative body boundaries and extensions, I want to address the next step in copyrighted augmentation, one that is current practice in professional sport, and part of the bourgeoning "anti-aging" industry, with rewriting of cellular structure and hormonal levels, for a price, on the open market. What I want to problematize is the contradiction between the rhetorical moralizing against upgrading the analogue-flesh, especially with respect to celebrity sports stars like Lance Armstrong and Alex Rodriquez, all the while the "anti-aging" industry does the same without censor. Indeed, it does so within the context of the contradictory social messaging and norms that our data-flesh and electric augmentations receive to constantly upgrade. I pose the question of the contradiction between the messages given to our analogue-flesh and data-flesh in order to examine the specific site of commentary on professional sports stars and their practices, but also to point to the ethical gap that exists not just for (legal) performance enhancing drugs (PED), but also to show the link to privatized and copyrighted genomic testing, the dataveillance of this information, and subsequent augmentations that may be undertaken because of the results. Copyrighted Language and Semiotics as Gateway Drug The corporatization of language and semiotics came about with an intrusion of exclusively held signs from the capitalist economy into language. This makes sense if one want to make surplus value greater: stamp a name onto something, especially a base commodity like a food product, and build up the name of that stamp, however one will, so that that name has perceived value in and of itself, and then charge as much as one can for it. Such is the story of the lack of real correlation between the price of Starbucks Coffee® and coffee as a commodity, set by Starbucks® on the basis of the cultural worth of the symbols and signs associated with it, rather than by what they pay for the labor and production costs prior to its branding. But what happens to these legally protected stamps once they start acting as more than just a sign and referent to a subsection of a specific commodity or thing? Once the stamp has worth and a life that is socially determined? What happens when these stamps get verbed, adjectived, and nouned? Naomi Klein, in the book that the New York Times referred to as a "movement bible" for the anti-globalization forces of the late 1990s said "logos, by the force of ubiquity, have become the closest thing we have to an international language, recognized and understood in many more places than English" (xxxvi). But there is an inherent built-in tension of copyrighted language and semiotics that illustrates the coterminous problems with data- and analogue-flesh augments. "We have almost two centuries' worth of brand-name history under our collective belt, coalescing to create a sort of global pop-cultural Morse code. But there is just one catch: while we may all have the code implanted in our brains, we're not really allowed to use it" (Klein 176). Companies want their "brands to be the air you breathe in - but don't dare exhale" or otherwise try to engage in a two-way dialogue that alters the intended meaning (Klein 182). Private signs power first-world and BRIC capitalism, language, and bodies. I do not have a coffee in the morning; I have Starbucks®. I do not speak on a cellular phone; I speak iPhone®. I am not using my computer right now; I am writing MacBook Air®. I do not look something up, search it, or research it; I Google® it. Klein was writing before the everyday uptake of sophisticated miniaturized and mobile computing and communication devices. With the digitalization of our senses and electronic limbs this viral invasion of language became material, effecting both our data- and analogue-flesh. The trajectory? First we used it; then we wore it as culturally and socially demarcating clothing; and finally we no longer used copyrighted speech terms: it became an always-present augmentation, an adjective to the lexicon body of language, and thereby out of democratic semiotic control. Today Twitter® is our (140 character limited) medium of speech. Skype® is our sense of sight, the way we have "real" face-to-face communication. Yelp® has extended our sense of taste and smell through restaurant reviews. The iPhone® is our sense of hearing. And OkCupid® and/or Grindr® and other sites and apps have become the skin of our sexual organs (and the site where they first meet). Today, love at first sight happens through .jpeg extensions; our first sexual experience ranked on a scale of risk determined by the type of video feed file format used: was it "protected" enough to stop its "spread"? In this sense the corporatization of language and semiotics acted as the gateway drug to corporatized digital-flesh; from use of something that is external to us to an augmentation that is part of us and indeed may be in excess of us or any notion of a singular liberal subject.Replacement of Analogue-Flesh? Arguably, this could be viewed as the coming to be of the full replacement of the fleshy analogue body by what are, or started as digital augmentations. Is this what Marshall McLuhan meant when he spoke of the "electronic exteriorization of the central nervous system" through the growing complexity of our "electric extensions"? McLuhan's work that spoke of the "global village" enabled by new technologies is usually read as a euphoric celebration of the utopic possibilities of interconnectivity. What these misreadings overlook is the darker side of his thought, where the "cultural probe" picks up the warning signals of the change to come, so that a Christian inspired project, a cultural Noah’s Ark, can be created to save the past from the future to come (Coupland). Jean Baudrillard, Paul Virilio, and Guy Debord have analyzed this replacement of the real and the changes to the relations between people—one I am arguing is branded/restricted—by offering us the terms simulacrum (Baudrillard), substitution (Virilio), and spectacle (Debord). The commonality which links Baudrillard and Virilio, but not Debord, is that the former two do not explicitly situate their critique as being within the loss of the real that they then describe. Baudrillard expresses that he can have a 'cool detachment' from his subject (Forget Foucault/Forget Baudrillard), while Virilio's is a Catholic moralist's cry lamenting the disappearance of the heterogeneous experiential dimensions in transit along the various axes of space and time. What differentiates Debord is that he had no qualms positioning his own person and his text, The Society of the Spectacle (SotS), as within its own subject matter - a critique that is limited, and acknowledged as such, by the blindness of its own inescapable horizon.This Revolt Will Be Copyrighted Yet today the analogue - at the least - performs a revolt in or possibly in excess of the spectacle that seeks its containment. How and at what site is the revolt by the analogue-flesh most viewable? Ironically, in the actions of celebrity professional sports stars and the Celebrity Class in general. Today it revolts against copyrighted data-flesh with copyrighted analogue-flesh. This is even the case when the specific site of contestation is (at least the illusion of) immortality, where the runaway digital always felt it held the trump card. A regimen of Human Growth Hormone (HGH) and other PEDs purports to do the same thing, if not better, at the cellular level, than the endless youth paraded in the unaging photo employed by the Facebook or Grindr Bodies®. But with the everyday use and popularization of drugs and enhancement supplements like HGH and related PEDs there is something more fundamental at play than the economic juggernaut that is the Body Beautiful; more than fleshy jealousy of Photoshopped® electronic skins. This drug use represents the logical extension of the ethics that drive our tech-wired lives. We are told daily to upgrade: our sexual organs (OkCupid® or Grindr®) for a better, more accurate match; our memory (Google® services) for largeness and safe portability; and our hearing and sight (iPhone® or Skype®) for increase connectivity, engaging the "real" (that we have lost). These upgrades are controlled and copyrighted, but that which grows the economy is an especially favored moral act in an age of austerity. Why should it be surprising, then, that with the economic backing of key players of Google®—kingpin of the global for-profit dataveillance racket—that for $99.95 23andMe® will send one a home DNA test kit, which once returned will be analyzed for genetic issues, with a personalized web-interface, including "featured links." Analogue-flesh fights back with willing copyrighted dataveillance of its genetic code. The test and the personalized results allow for augmentations of the Angelina Jolie type: private testing for genetic markers, a double mastectomy provided by private healthcare, followed by copyrighted replacement flesh. This is where we find the biopolitics of data- and analogue-flesh, lead forth, in an ironic turn, by the Celebrity Class, whom depend for their income on the lives of their posthuman bodies. This is a complete reversal of the course Debord charts out for them: The celebrity, the spectacular representation of a living human being, embodies this banality by embodying the image of a possible role. Being a star means specializing in the seemingly lived; the star is the object of identification with the shallow seeming life that has to compensate for the fragmented productive specializations which are actually lived. (SotS) While the electronic global village was to have left the flesh-and-blood as waste, today there is resistance by the analogue from where we would least expect it - attempts to catch up and replant itself as ontologically prior to the digital through legal medical supplementation; to make the posthuman the posthuman. We find the Celebrity Class at the forefront of the resistance, of making our posthuman bodies as controlled augmentations of a posthuman. But there is a definite contradiction as well, specifically in the press coverage of professional sports. The axiomatic ethical and moral sentiment of our age to always upgrade data-flesh and analogue-flesh is contradicted in professional sports by the recent suspensions of Lance Armstrong and Alex Rodriguez and the political and pundit critical commentary on their actions. Nancy Reagan to the Curbside: An Argument for Lance Armstrong and Alex Rodriguez's "Just Say Yes to Drugs" Campaign Probably to the complete shock of most of my family, friends, students, and former lovers who may be reading this, I actually follow sports reporting with great detail and have done so for years. That I never speak of any sports in my everyday interactions, haven't played a team or individual sport since I could speak (and thereby use my voice to inform my parents that I was refusing to participate), and even decline amateur or minor league play, like throwing a ball of any kind at a family BBQ, leaves me to, like Judith Butler, "give an account of oneself." And this accounting for my sports addiction is not incidental or insignificant with respect either to how the posthuman present can move from a state of posthumanism to one of posthumanism, nor my specific interpellation into (and excess) in either of those worlds. Recognizing that I will not overcome my addiction without admitting my problem, this paper is thus a first-step public acknowledgement: I have been seeing "Dr. C" for a period of three years, and together, through weekly appointments, we have been working through this issue of mine. (Now for the sake of avoiding the cycle of lying that often accompanies addiction I should probably add that Dr. C is a chiropractor who I see for back and nerve damage issues, and the talk therapy portion, a safe space to deal with the sports addiction, was an organic outgrowth of the original therapy structure). My data-flesh that had me wired in and sitting all the time had done havoc to the analogue-flesh. My copyrighted augments were demanding that I do something to remedy a situation where I was unable to be sitting and wired in all the time. Part of the treatment involved the insertion of many acupuncture needles in various parts of my body, and then having an electric current run through them for a sustained period of time. Ironically, as it was the wired augmentations that demanded this, due to my immobility at this time - one doesn't move with acupuncture needles deep within the body - I was forced away from my devices and into unmediated conversation with Dr. C about sports, celebrity sports stars, and the recent (argued) infractions by Armstrong and Rodriguez. Now I say "argued" because in the first place are what A-Rod and Armstrong did, or are accused of doing, the use of PEDs, HGH, and all the rest (cf. Lupica; Thompson, and Vinton) really a crime? Are they on their way, or are there real threats of jail and criminal prosecution? And in the most important sense, and despite all the rhetoric, are they really going against prevailing social norms with respect to medical enhancement? No, no, and no. What is peculiar about the "witch-hunt" of A-Rod and Armstrong - their words - is that we are undertaking it in the first place, while high-end boutique medical clinics (and internet pharmacies) offer the same treatment for analogue-flesh. Fixes for the human in posthuman; ways of keeping the human up to speed; arguably the moral equivalent, if done so with free will, of upgrading the software for ones iOS device. If the critiques of Baudrillard and Virilio are right, we seem to find nothing wrong with crippling our physical bodies and social skills by living through computers and telematic technologies, and obsess over the next upgrade that will make us (more) faster and quicker (than the other or others), while we righteously deny the same process to the flesh for those who, in Debord's description, are the most complicit in the spectacle, to the supposedly most posthuman of us - those that have become pure spectacle (Debord), pure simulation (Baudrillard), a total substitution (Virilio). But it seems that celebrities, and sports celebrities in specific haven't gone along for the ride of never-ending play of their own signifiers at the expense of doing away with the real; they were not, in Debord's words, content with "specializing in the seemingly lived"; they wanted, conversely, to specialize in the most maximally lived flesh, right down to cellular regeneration towards genetic youth, which is the strongest claim in favor of taking HGH. It looks like they were prepared to, in the case of Armstrong, engage in the "most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen" in the name of the flesh (BBC). But a doping program that can, for the most part, be legally obtained as treatment, and in the same city as A-Rod plays in and is now suspended for his "crimes" to boot (NY Vitality). This total incongruence between what is desired, sought, and obtained legally by members of their socioeconomic class, and many classes below as well, and is a direct outgrowth of the moral and ethical axiomatic of the day is why A-Rod and Armstrong are so bemused, indignant, and angry, if not in a state of outright denial that they did anything that was wrong, even while they admit, explicitly, that yes, they did what they are accused of doing: taking the drugs. Perhaps another way is needed to look at the unprecedentedly "harsh" and "long" sentences of punishment handed out to A-Rod and Armstrong. The posthuman governing bodies of the sports of the society of the spectacle in question realize that their spectacle machines are being pushed back at. A real threat because it goes with the grain of where the rest of us, or those that can buy in at the moment, are going. And this is where the talk therapy for my sports addiction with Dr. C falls into the story. I realized that the electrified needles were telling me that I too should put the posthuman back in control of my damaged flesh; engage in a (medically copyrighted) piece of performance philosophy and offset some of the areas of possible risk that through restricted techne 23andMe® had (arguably) found. Dr. C and I were peeved with A-Rod and Armstrong not for what they did, but what they didn't tell us. We wanted better details than half-baked admissions of moral culpability. We wanted exact details on what they'd done to keep up to their digital-flesh. Their media bodies were cultural probes, full in view, while their flesh bodies, priceless lab rats, are hidden from view (and likely to remain so due to ongoing litigation). These were, after all, big money cover-ups of (likely) the peak of posthuman science, and the lab results are now hidden behind an army of sports federations lawyers, and agents (and A-Rod's own army since he still plays); posthuman progress covered up by posthuman rules, sages, and agents of manipulation. Massive posthuman economies of spectacle, simulation, or substitution of the real putting as much force as they can bare on resurgent posthuman flesh - a celebrity flesh those economies, posthuman economies, want to see as utterly passive like Debord, but whose actions are showing unexpected posthuman alignment with the flesh. Why are the centers of posthumanist power concerned? Because once one sees that A-Rod and Armstrong did it, once one sees that others are doing the same legally without a fuss being made, then one can see that one can do the same; make flesh-and-blood keep up, or regrow and become more organically youthful, while OkCupid® or Grindr® data-flesh gets stuck with the now lagging Photoshopped® touchups. Which just adds to my desire to get "pumped up"; add a little of A-Rod and Armstrong's concoction to my own routine; and one of a long list of reasons to throw Nancy Reagan under the bus: to "just say yes to drugs." A desire that is tempered by the recognition that the current limits of intelligibility and iteration of subjects, the work of defining the bodies that matter that is now set by copyrighted language and copyrighted electric extensions is only being challenged within this society of the spectacle by an act that may give a feeling of unease for cause. This is because it is copyrighted genetic testing and its dataveillance and manipulation through copyrighted medical technology - the various branded PEDs, HGH treatments, and their providers - that is the tool through which the flesh enacts this biopolitical "rebellion."References Baudrillard, Jean. Forget Foucault/Forget Baudrillard. Trans Nicole Dufresne. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2007. ————. Simulations. Trans. Paul Foss, Paul Patton and Philip Beitchman. Cambridge: Semiotext(e), 1983. BBC. "Lance Armstong: Usada Report Labels Him 'a Serial Cheat.'" BBC Online 11 Oct. 2012. 1 Dec. 2013 ‹http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/cycling/19903716›. Butler, Judith. Giving an Account of Oneself. New York: Fordham University Press, 2005. Clark, Taylor. Starbucked: A Double Tall Tale of Caffeine, Commerce, and Culture. New York: Back Bay, 2008. Coupland, Douglas. Marshall McLuhan. Toronto: Penguin Books, 2009. Debord, Guy. Society of the Spectacle. Detroit: Black & Red: 1977. Klein, Naomi. 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