This paper discusses the relevance of rhetorical concepts as powerful tools to address the workings and meaning of visual Bio-Design reflecting on biotechnology. It examines the visual rhetoric of... Show moreThis paper discusses the relevance of rhetorical concepts as powerful tools to address the workings and meaning of visual Bio-Design reflecting on biotechnology. It examines the visual rhetoric of two Bio-Design projects making for an effective agency of emotions on the one hand and intellectual considerations on science and ethics on the other hand. The paper applies common devices from classical rhetoric for the first time to these contemporary forms of visual design and combines rhetorical analysis with the art historical methodology of iconography and iconology. In so doing, the paper aims to produce meaning while acknowledging a common method of semiotics and literary studies as to personal subjectivity of the viewer as narrator. Show less
The main focus of this paper is to investigate the impact of publications read (saved) by the different users in Mendeley in order to explore the extent to which their readership counts correlate... Show moreThe main focus of this paper is to investigate the impact of publications read (saved) by the different users in Mendeley in order to explore the extent to which their readership counts correlate with their citation indicators. The potential of filtering highly cited papers by Mendeley readerships and its different users have been also explored. For the analysis of the users, we have considered the information of the top three Mendeley ‘users’ reported by the Mendeley. Our results show that publications with Mendeley readerships tend to have higher citation and journal citation scores than publications without readerships. ‘Biomedical & health sciences’ and ‘Mathematics and computer science’ are the fields with respectively the most and the least readership activity in Mendeley. PhD students have the highest density of readerships per publication and Lecturers and Librarians have the lowest across all the different fields. Our precision-recall analysis indicates that in general, for publications with at least one reader in Mendeley, the capacity of readerships of filtering highly cited publications is better than (or at least as good as) Journal Citation Scores. We discuss the important limitation of Mendeley of only reporting the top three readers and not all of them in the potential development of indicators based on Mendeley and its users. Show less
Alarmed by the sustainability of our health and social security systems, longevity has become a great societal challenge. In line with evolutionary logic we see a continuous increase of average... Show moreAlarmed by the sustainability of our health and social security systems, longevity has become a great societal challenge. In line with evolutionary logic we see a continuous increase of average life expectancy and maximal lifespan. Striving for a healthy old age, however, is an infelicitous expression as for human subjects the ageing process cannot be ultimately postponed. Not disregarding the huge variation in health trajectories, in old age we will all suffer from frailty and infirmity. As yet efforts of the biomedical arena are almost exclusively focused on stalling the ageing process and preventing dysfunction. Too little effort is spend on how to inspire and coach the great majority of people who still feel relatively well notwithstanding the presence of multiple age-related disorders. There is a strong rationale to separate the quest to live in good health for longer from actively and effectively negotiating the challenge of functional decline in old age. In particular, we emphasise a focus on adjusting the environment in order to correct the gene–environment mismatch that contributes to ill health. An additional strategy is to empower people to set ambitions and to realise appropriate goals, in spite of infirmity. Striving for vitality presents a striking opportunity to achieve subjective feelings of life satisfaction when ageing. Show less
La investigación histórica y lingüística de las lenguas andinas ha sido el objeto de un consenso relativamente general durante varias décadas. La presente contribución se propone dar un inventario... Show moreLa investigación histórica y lingüística de las lenguas andinas ha sido el objeto de un consenso relativamente general durante varias décadas. La presente contribución se propone dar un inventario de unas propuestas recientes de carácter radical, que ponen en cuestión los fundamentos de aquel consenso. Concluimos que algunas de las nuevas propuestas aportan ideas positivas e innovadoras, pero que también plantean nuevas interrogantes y cuestiones que parecían solucionadas. Show less
The analysis of user-generated content on the Web provides tools to better understand users' behavior and to the development of improved Web services. Here, we consider a large dataset of Google+... Show moreThe analysis of user-generated content on the Web provides tools to better understand users' behavior and to the development of improved Web services. Here, we consider a large dataset of Google+ status updates to evaluate linguistic features among members of distinct social groups. Our study reveals that groups hold linguistic particularities - such as a tendency to use professional vocabulary, suggesting that Google+ might be employed, by certain users, for professional activities, or that members do not dissociate from their jobs when interacting in this environment. To illustrate a possible application of our outcomes, we present a classification experiment aiming to infer users' social information through the analysis of their posts, with satisfactory preliminary results. Our findings help to understand not only collective peculiarities of online social media users, but also important characteristics of the textual genre post, being one of the first and most comprehensive studies on this topic. Show less
Las Casas, D.; Magno, G.; Landulfo Teixeira P. Cunha, E.; Gonçalves, M.A.; Cambraia, C.; Almeida, V. 2014
Google+ provides a feature that has been overlooked in social media studies: the possibility of users setting their gender information not only as female or male, but as other instead. In this... Show moreGoogle+ provides a feature that has been overlooked in social media studies: the possibility of users setting their gender information not only as female or male, but as other instead. In this paper, we discuss this particularity and, more broadly, the issue of non-binary gender roles in the Web. By analyzing a large dataset, we characterize some aspects of self presentation, word use, network information and country of residence among users who choose different alternatives in the field Gender. On the whole, our main contributions are to present preliminary results and to shed light into the topic considered here - namely, the implications of having a third gender option to present oneself in an online social networking service. Show less
