No description available.

A fascination for electronics development platforms was the starting point for this project. Brought forward from open source initiatives, these exist of modular hardware toolkits and software. This modularity allows people to use them in different configurations to support a variety of contexts and purposes. In this way it enables them to bring just about any idea to life. There is an emerging trend on the web, where people modify or hack into products, trying to change or extends their products to fit their needs. As technology is becoming cheaper and embedded in everyday products, it allows products to become more flexible, and be more sensitive towards these trends. My project has been an investigation in developing a method for design, which promotes modular product systems, rather than closed, fixed products. Open-ended design is an approach which supports an exploration space for end-users. Focused on laymen users, allows them to investigate what functionality and behaviour is needed for their own interests and niche purposes. The open-ended design framework was used to design Myriad: a flexible, modular camera system to complement GoPro cameras. Myriad exists of a growing library of modules, sensors and a mobile app which combined create unique camera functionality and behaviours.

Based on my analysis, I found that there are a variety of ways in which individuals interact with and emotionally engage with their Roomba iRobots, via participation in a brand community or through forms of anthropomorphism such as treating it as a pet or human. I explain that there is a spectrum regarding the extent to which individuals anthropomorphize their Roomba and emotionally engage with the device. The thesis concludes with the finding that some individuals emotionally engage with their Roomba in a significant way, while others desire a disconnection from their device. I end with the suggestion that sociologists continue to consider the implications of people’s increasing interactions with technological objects and further investigate different areas of human-robot emotional connection.

There is no abstract available for this thesis.

Microtask marketplaces provide shortcuts for automating tasks that are otherwise intractable for computers. Creative tasks fall squarely within this definition, and microtask marketplaces have been heavily leveraged to this end. Brainstorming is often an implicit component of these solutions. This thesis provides the first foundational study of brainstorming in microtask marketplaces, aimed at solving the open problems in brainstorming task design to make this process more accessible and effective. This is achieved by establishing techniques for coding brainstorming data at scale, models for quantifying desirable outcomes of brainstorming, and a qualitative deconstruction of brainstorming strategies employed in this environment. Idea forests are introduced as a data structure to enable the disambiguation of ideas in large corpuses, providing natural measures of two metrics of primary interest in brainstorming research: quantity and novelty. They are constructed via a tree-traversal algorithm, restricting the subset of the corpus which the coder must be aware of when making decisions. A simulation approach is introduced to assess the validity of hypothesis outcomes derived from idea forest metrics. The introduction of idea forests enables the core contribution of this thesis, a set of quantitative models for brainstorming outcomes. This thesis extracts several actionable conclusions from the parameters of these models: the rate of unique idea generation is subject to decay over time; individuals have a significant effect on the rate of idea generation, with productive workers generating dozens more unique ideas; and individuals generate their most novel ideas late in a brainstorming session, after the first 18 responses. Furthermore, a replication of findings by Nijstad and Stroebe is conducted, finding that workers take more time to generate ideas when changing semantic categories and are more likely to remain within a category than expected by chance. Finally, a taxonomy of strategies employed by brainstormers is presented. In particular, this thesis discusses the phenomena of scoping brainstorming problems, providing partial solutions, and riffing on previous solutions.

Individuals defend and rationalize social systems in order to maintain the belief that the world in which they live is fair and good. This justification often involves seeing intergroup inequality as legitimate and holding negative attitudes toward lower status groups. Although research on system justification is plentiful, the effects of perceived threat to the system on intergroup interaction behavior and dynamics have remained unexamined. With ethnic diversity increasing in North America, it is imperative that we understand the factors that promote more positive (and negative) intergroup interactions. Across three studies I examined individuals’ reactions to system threatening information versus low threat in the context of an intragroup or intergroup interaction. In general, priming dominant group members with system threat (versus low threat) led to less negative intergroup interaction behavior. Specifically, being primed with system unfairness led dominant group members in Study 1 to express more positive other-directed remarks during a written exchange with an ostensible outgroup member. Study 2, conducted with a different minority group than Study 1, found that dominant group members feel more guilt when interacting with minority group members versus members of their own group in the face of system threat. Finally, a face-to-face intergroup interaction study replicated the positive behavioral effects of salient system threat found in Study 1, this time manifest in increased nonverbal friendliness and self-disclosure for both pair members. These findings suggest that system threat instantiated in an interaction setting leads dominant group members toward exhibiting more positive behavior to minority group members that benefits both parties involved, rather than toward derogation. Implications for social change initiatives are discussed.

Influenza A virus is well known for its severe clinical consequences. Structurally, this virus is made up of a lipid bilayer embedded with HA, NA and M2 proteins and a core containing eight viral ribonucleoprotein (RNP) complexes. In a typical RNP complex, the nucleoprotein binds with RNA in a non specific manner. The nucleoprotein plays a vital role in transcription, replication, and packaging of RNA during infection. This study aims that NP of A/PR/8/34(H1N1) virus and A/NY/55/2004(H3N2) virus interact with different host proteins depending on cell lines and virus strains. Monoclonal antibodies targeting the nucleoprotein of these viruses have been used for immunoprecipitation and the interacting proteins were identified by mass spectrometry. Tow proteins from the cytoplasm (elongation factor 1 sigma, and Mov10 protein) and 3 proteins from the nucleus (heat shock protein70, hnRNP K protein, and anti alpha actinin 4) were found in all the viral infected cells, and were chosen for validation study. This study will help to understand the virus-host interactions in a better way and may open the gateway for the synthesis of new antiviral drugs which can block these interactions, hence controlling the infection.

No description available.

No description available.

The distinctiveness of this thesis lies in its use of Group and Researcher Reflection. It is a responsive and experiential study, which has two main aims: to explore the phenomenon, experience in the everyday environment, and to develop an appropriate method. The study centres round Group Reflection, which consists of a small group of local residents (in Ushaw Moor, Co Durham), who met regularly over a year, to reflect together. They met to explicate and explore their experience, particularly heightened experience, of their everyday environment, and together to recognise themes, and so reveal, develop and share their understanding. The group collected their themes under three general headings: nature, buildings and people. A report summarising this Group Reflection was produced with the group. The whole of the Group Reflection forms the basis for subsequent Researcher Reflection. This seeks alternative orderings and interpretation of the material explicated, themes and experiences, and considers their relationship to the wider literature on environmental experience. A number of alternative themes, or gatherings, are suggested: looking language, social concept, ordering regimes, person-environment engagement. Then, the concepts experience, place and dwelling are explored in the context of everyday environment, and a number of speculations are made about the possible changing nature of dwelling. The study is inspired by Phenomenology, and therefore seeks to allow the phenomenon to speak of itself: through those who have direct experience of it, and it hopes to take into account the essential entanglement of what is studied with those who study. Finally, it seeks to encourage readers to continue the reflective journey into their own exploration of experience in the everyday environment.