Collective Work Research Articles

What Constitutes Substantive Representation, and Where Should We Evaluate It?

This short article introduces a novel framework for conceiving of the substantive representation of marginalized groups – in this case, racially minoritized women in the UK House of Commons. I outline a rubric of eight facets of substantive representation. These evaluate the degree to which claims that constitute a group are also substantively representative of that group. In doing so, I contribute a much-needed framework for distinguishing between representative claims which speak on behalf of a group versus those which merely speak about, or even against, that group. I argue that substantive representation must be considered intersectionally, reflecting the multiple structures positioning those represented. Furthermore, all facets of substantive representation can rarely be contributed by a single parliamentary speech, individual, or narrow group of legislators such as descriptive representatives. Therefore, I suggest that empirical studies of substantive representation should include a greater evaluation of the collective work of institutions as a whole.

Action recognition based on multimode fusion for VR online platform.

The current popular online communication platforms can convey information only in the form of text, voice, pictures, and other electronic means. The richness and reliability of information is not comparable to traditional face-to-face communication. The use of virtual reality (VR) technology for online communication is a viable alternative to face-to-face communication. In the current VR online communication platform, users are in a virtual world in the form of avatars, which can achieve "face-to-face" communication to a certain extent. However, the actions of the avatar do not follow the user, which makes the communication process less realistic. Decision-makers need to make decisions based on the behavior of VR users, but there are no effective methods for action data collection in VR environments. In our work, three modalities of nine actions from VR users are collected using a virtual reality head-mounted display (VR HMD) built-in sensors, RGB cameras and human pose estimation. Using these data and advanced multimodal fusion action recognition networks, we obtained a high accuracy action recognition model. In addition, we take advantage of the VR HMD to collect 3D position data and design a 2D key point augmentation scheme for VR users. Using the augmented 2D key point data and VR HMD sensor data, we can train action recognition models with high accuracy and strong stability. In data collection and experimental work, we focus our research on classroom scenes, and the results can be extended to other scenes.

Digital methods as ‘experimental a priori’ – how to navigate vague empirical situations as an operationalist pragmatist

Digitalisation and computation presents us with a vague empirical world that unsettles established links between measurements and values. As more and more actors use digital media to produce data about aspects of the world they deem important, new possibilities for inscribing their lives emerge. The practical work with digital methods thus often involves the production of social visibilities that are misfits in the context of established data practices. In this paper I argue that this dissonance carries the distinct critical potential to design data experiments that (a) uses the act of operationalisation as an engine for creating intersubjective clarity about the meaning of existing concepts and (b) takes advantage of algorithmic techniques to provoke a reassessment of some of the core assumptions that shape the way we pose empirical problems are normally framed. Drawing on the work of Kant, Peirce, Dewey and C.I. Lewis I propose to think of this critical potential as the possibility to practice what I term 'experimental a priori' and I use qualitative vignettes from two years of data experiments with GEHL architects to illustrate what this entails in practice. Faced with the task of using traces from Facebook as an empirical source to produce a map of urban political diversity, the architects found themselves in a need to revisit inherited assumptions about the ontology of urban space and the way it can even be formulated as a problem of diversity. While I describe this as a form of obstructive data practice that is afforded by digital methods, I also argue that it cannot be realised without deliberate design interventions. I therefore end the paper by outlining five design principles that can productively guide collective work with digital methods. These principles contribute to recent work within digital STS on the recalibration of problem spaces and the design of data sprints. However, the concept of ‘experimental a priori’ can also serve as a philosophical foundation for knowledge production within computational humanities more broadly.

Water is life, particularly for women

The health and non-health impacts of water collection and other water-related work should be monitored and considered in policies and programs to improve women’s lives.

Cetaceans in the Mediterranean Sea: Encounter Rate, Dominant Species, and Diversity Hotspots

We investigated the presence and diversity of cetaceans in the Mediterranean Sea, analysing the data collected by 32 different research units, over a period of 15 years (2004–2018), and shared on the common web-GIS platform named Intercet. We used the encounter rate, the species prevalence, and the Shannon diversity index as parameters for data analysis. The results show that cetacean diversity, in the context of the Mediterranean basin, is generally quite low when compared with the eastern Atlantic, as few species, namely the striped dolphin, the bottlenose dolphin, the fin whale, and the sperm whale, dominate over all the others. However, some areas, such as the Alboran Sea or the north-western Mediterranean Sea, which includes the Pelagos Sanctuary (the Specially Protected Area of Mediterranean Interest located in the northern portion of the western basin), show higher levels of diversity and should be considered hotspots to be preserved. Primary production and seabed profile seem to be the two main drivers influencing the presence and distribution of cetaceans, with the highest levels of diversity observed in areas characterized by high levels of primary production and high bathymetric variability and gradient. This collective work underlines the importance of data sharing to deepen our knowledge on marine fauna at the scale of the whole Mediterranean Sea and encourages greater efforts in the networking process, also to accomplish the requirements of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive, with particular reference to Descriptor 1: biological diversity is maintained.

La sensation sonore dans la littérature d’Ancien Régime : enjeux topiques

La préface de l’ouvrage collectif intitulé Le paysage sonore dans la littérature d’Ancien régime, ou du son comme topos de scènes narratives réfléchit à l’intégration de multiples sons et bruits dans la langue des écrivains en se demandant si le son serait seulement un supplément dans une scène narrative, s’il aurait une fonction uniquement pragmatique ou ornementale, ou s’il ne pourrait être entendu comme véhicule d’un argument voire comme motif à part entière de l’histoire racontée. Cet avant-propos mène alors la démonstration à partir, entre autres illustrations, des articles du volume qu’il présente dans le même temps. Le corpus ample et varié des textes interrogés montre que la récurrence de configurations narratives sonores confronte l’oreille du lecteur à de véritables « stéréotypes sonores ». Selon la définition accordée à la notion de topos, la représentation du sonore, articulée au narratif, à la rhétorique et à la poétique, devient sans doute alors un lieu commun du discours.

Publishing Trends in Russia, the Top Projects and Authors of 2022

The author analyses participation of the Russian State Library (RSL) in the International Fair of Intellectual Literature non/fictio№ 24, which took place on December 1—5, 2022. The paper presents the review of new scientific publications of the RSL “Pashkov Dom” Publishing House. The top list of the non/fictio№ 24 includes two new publications of the RSL “Pashkov Dom”: the book devoted to L.M. Koval “The Keeper of the History of Leninka” (2021) and “The Art of Valery Pokatov: Pages of Life and Creative Work” (2021).In 2022, the Russian State Library celebrated the 160th anniversary of the opening of the Moscow Public Museum and the Rumyantsev Museum. The anniversary stand of the RSL presented publications on the history of the library, catalogues of the collections and exhibitions, issues of the journals “Observatory of Culture”, “Bibliotekovedenie” (Library Science), etc. The leaders of sales were the collection of articles “‘This very first seal was beautiful: round, dimensional, pureʼ. The book culture of the era of Peter the Great” (2022), the publication of the comedy by A.S. Griboyedov “Woe from Wit” (2022), the album-catalogue by S.P. Utva “Gifts of the Imperial House to the Moscow Public Museum and Rumyantsev Museum” (2022).Of particular note is the monograph “Essays on the Development of Bibliographic Activity of the Russian State Library” (2022) and the second edition of the collective work “Scientific Research in Libraries: Subject Themes, Organization, Presentation of Results” (2023).The article summarizes the publishing trends in Russia formulated by the experts on December 2, 2022 at the discussion “Digitalization of book production and the future of the industry, skills of forming a comprehensive publishing project” in the framework of non/fictio№ 24.The significant event of 2022 was the 17th season of the “Big Book” National Literary Award, established by the Centre for the Support of Russian Literature. The solemn ceremony of awarding the prize winners took place on December 8, 2022 at the Pashkov House of the Russian State Library.

Principles to operationalize equity in cancer research and health outcomes: lessons learned from the cancer prevention and control research network

Reflecting their commitment to advancing health equity, the Cancer Prevention and Control Research Network (CPCRN) established a Health Equity Workgroup to identify and distill guiding principles rooted in health equity, community-engaged participatory research (CBPR), social determinants of health, and racial equity frameworks to guide its collective work. The Health Equity Workgroup utilized a multi-phase, participatory consensus-building approach to: (1) identify recurrent themes in health and racial equity frameworks; (2) capture perspectives on and experiences with health equity research among CPCRN members through an online survey; (3) engage in activities to discuss and refine the guiding principles; and (4) collect case examples of operationalizing equity principles in cancer research. Representatives from all CPCRN centers endorsed nine core principles to guide the Network’s strategic plan: (1) Engage in power-sharing and capacity building with partners; (2) Address community priorities through community engagement and co-creation of research; (3) Explore and address the systems and structural root causes of cancer disparities; (4) Build a system of accountability between research and community partners; (5) Establish transparent relationships with community partners; (6) Prioritize the sustainability of research benefits for community partners; (7) Center racial equity in cancer prevention and control research; (8) Engage in equitable data collection, analysis, interpretation, and dissemination practices; and (9) Integrate knowledge translation, implementation, and dissemination into research plans. Dissemination products, such as toolkits and technical assistance workshops, reflecting these principles will foster knowledge transfer to intentionally integrate health and racial equity principles in cancer prevention and control research.

Decoding chromatin organization in the nuclear environment.

Chromatin structure tightly controls genome function within the nucleus. The nuclear environment is complex, featuring tension exerted by various force-generating proteins and molecular crowding modulated by different ionic concentrations. Disentangling these factors to understand how they affect chromatin structure would reveal the mechanism underlying the accessibility and organization of chromatin with an important connection to transcriptional activity and epigenetic regulation of genes. Nevertheless, it is unclear how chromatin adapts its structure to different nuclear environments. Here, we computationally characterize chromatin structures under tension, crowding, and ionic environments using a near-atomistic resolution chromatin model. Our simulations show that DNA unwrapping causes chromatin to break into a series of trimeric and tetrameric nucleosome clutches under tension. This irregularity further facilitates the formation of interdigitated chromatin structures via the trans interactions among multiple chains under a crowded environment, such as interphase heterochromatin and mitotic chromatin. Finally, our simulation shows that monovalent and divalent ions can further modulate chromatin structures, consistent with experiments. Since the nucleus features various environments at different cell cycle stages, our collective work can facilitate understanding the package of genetic materials in various cellular contexts and the genomic adaptation to an ever-changing external environment.

Method for the Rapid Creation of Bridge Database Systems and Practices in Developing Countries

In recent years, Japan has assisted in technique and capacity development for bridge maintenance and management in developing countries worldwide. Such projects are aimed at formulating maintenance and management plans, which include bridge inspection and repair techniques. However, because the current conditions of the bridges to be managed are not well understood, most developing countries have no effective data available for formulating bridge maintenance and management plans. To this end, the authors introduce a bridge database system that uses smartphones to collect bridge inventory data and implements a brief bridge inspection to help formulate bridge maintenance and management plans as a part of technical-assistance projects supported by the Japan International Cooperation Agency in Kenya, Madagascar, and Tajikistan. Furthermore, a bridge database system that includes bridge inventory and inspection records can be established automatically during data collection and inspection work without any additional effort. This system is expected to contribute toward establishing a bridge database system in countries that have no inventory data or inspection records.

Delivering a Diagnosis of Parkinson's Disease and Parkinsonism with Wisdom and Sensitivity.

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a chronic, progressive, complex movement disorder. In addition to the motor manifestations, changes in mood and cognition frequently occur. It is understandable that receiving this diagnosis can be difficult for patients and their significant others. For the clinician, delivering a PD diagnosis can be challenging and requires a comprehensive patient assessment followed by a thoughtful treatment plan. How this diagnosis is conveyed can have a long-term impact on patient outcomes such as treatment adherence, participation in decision making, understanding of PD, and satisfaction with care. Because a PD diagnosis is often complicated by uncertainty about the diagnosis itself as well as future prognosis, a sensitive patient-centered approach to care, balanced with realistic expectations, is recommended. Full disclosure, honesty, and empathy on the part of the entire healthcare team are required. This includes relevant information tailored to the patient's unique needs at the time of diagnosis as well as referrals to appropriate rehabilitation and support services. Consistent, timely follow-up of all interventions is essential. It is essential that a diagnosis of PD is properly delivered to optimize understanding of PD, treatment adherence, participation in decision making, and satisfaction with care. In this article, we provide guidance on delivery of this diagnosis based on a growing body of evidence and our >35-year collective clinical experience and work developing and utilizing pertinent, creative educational tools and comprehensive, sensitive support programs for newly diagnosed patients and their significant others. Although most of the evidence we present pertains to PD, our experience suggests it could also apply to other forms of Parkinsonism and other chronic or progressive movement disorders.

Memetics and Filmmaker Habitus in the Indonesian Film Industry

Typically, film companies produce films that are ready for distribution to cinemas. Film work is the result of collective work. Starting from the involvement of producers, directors, screenwriters, cameramen, and editors, to artistic stylists (production team) through pre-production, production, and post-production processes. Although it is not uncommon to find that film works are not single and sterile works of replication or imitation, which refer to patterns and systems - including film production management and its entities - that have been previously established as a cultural industry. For this reason, the author uses the concept of Meme initiated by Richard Dawkins and synthesized with Pierre Bourdieu's sociological concept, namely: (Habitus x Capital) + Domain = Practice, as well as the cultural industry. The cause of film workers imitating previous works is the rationale for researching the film industry, especially in Indonesia. This research aims to prove that the phenomenon of memetics and habitus seneas occurs in the film industry in various countries, both developed and developing countries. To achieve this goal, the method applied in this research is the descriptive qualitative method. Data is obtained from documentation in the form of film works, especially the film Gundala, which involves the production team. The results of the analysis show that there are memetics and habitus of filmmakers in the film industry. This can be found in a number of production houses that carry out the practice, including Jagad BumiLangit, Falcon Pictures, and Screenplay. Almost every film work is imitative. The implications of this imitation can also be found in several cases of imitation of film works; in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, India, Japan, Europe, and America.

Questions of Description and Interpretation of Slavic Literatures of the 20th century (some aspects of the development of a monographic series)

The article gives information about the monographic series “Literature of the 20th century”, which is produced by the Department of Contemporary Literatures of Central and Southeastern Europe at the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. On the material of the author’s monographs by Victor A. Khorev “Polish Literature of the 20th century” (2009) and Galina Ya. Ilyina “Croatian Literature of the 20th century” (2015), as well as the collective work “Slovenian Literature of the 20th century” (ed. by Nadezhda N. Starikova, 2014), is presented a genre of “small” literary history, describing the most important stages in the Slavic peoples’ literary development during the last century. Each of the book in this series has created a canon of names and texts, reflecting the experience of specific Slavic literature of the 20th century, which allows Russian (and more broadly Russian-speaking) readers to be guided in its achievement.

Entkollektivierung: Zur Spannung von Individualität und Kollektivität in der Publikationsgeschichte der ‚Xenien‘

In recent years collaborations have increasingly gained attention amongst scholars in literary studies. Since they are a common, but often neglected phenomenon, the specific practices of writing together were the dominant focus of these studies. This paper outlines some of these practices that shaped the collaboration between Goethe and Schiller. It emphasizes at first the indirect character of the collaboration that led to the ‘Xenien’, published in Schiller’s ‘Musen-Almanach für das Jahr 1797’. Despite this remarkable cooperation that was mediated through letters and clean copies, the main interest of this paper is the afterlife of this collective that consisted at least of two authors and one work. While the practices of writing together end with the publication of the work, it is uncertain at which point the collective ceases to exist. The way Goethe and Schiller handled the intricate problem of integrating the collective work of the ‘Xenien’ in the individual editions of their complete works makes de-collectivating observable as a practice that is complementary to cooperative writing.

État des lieux des pratiques de nutrition parentérale dans quatre pharmacies à usage intérieur de centre hospitalier et universitaire de la région Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes

To carry out an assessment of parenteral nutrition (PN) practices in hospital pharmacies of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region in order to explore a harmonisation of practices and a collaboration between the different centres. Status of practices was carried out on the basis of an observational study inspired by the survey of the General Inspectorate of Social Affairs. It was carried out in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region in four university hospital pharmacies with a production unit of PN. It focused on the different stages of the PN process: prescription, formulation, compounding and quality control. It also covered the support processes such as the quality assurance system and the management of premises and equipment. Most preparations made in the region are individualized parenteral nutritional admixtures for paediatric and neonatal hospitalization departments. The production units of PN of each centre are located in premises in compliance with Good Preparation Practices. However, compounding equipment and raw materials used are heterogeneous in the four centres. All centres control the quality of their finished preparations. But, the performance of analytical control is disparate in terms of equipment and specifications. This assessment explains the similarities and differences in PN practices between various university hospitals in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region and thus makes possible to provide a collective regional work to harmonise practices.

Activated Differences: A Qualitative Study of How and When Differences Make a Difference on Diverse Teams

Current studies of diversity in teams and organizations highlight the importance of examining activated, rather than just dormant, differences on a team. In this study, we contribute to organizational diversity theories by arguing that the activation of differences is a communicative process whereby how teams talk about their differences matters in how the activated differences affect team outcomes. Drawing on an in-depth qualitative study of real-life scientific teams, we examine the relationship between how team members activate and frame differences and how those communicative frames affect the team’s collective work. We find that how teams frame their differences affects the relationship between activated differences and team outcomes. We give practical and theoretical recommendations for the communicative management of differences on teams and in organizations.

Siberian Animal Style: Stylistic Features as Generic Indication

This paper is devoted to the problems of differentiation of stylistic variants in the common phenomenon of the so-called Scythian and Siberian animal styles, which is one of the main distinctive features of Eurasian nomadic art. The animal style is a concept of more scale than an artistic style proper which distinguishes with some formal characteristics and depends directly on generic traditions and ethnic and cultural roots of art. Together with the technical-technological methods these formal features could be evidential indications of the origin of works of art. The Siberian collection of Peter the Great includes some different groups of golden ornaments decorated in animal styles of different origins. The paper focuses on a compact group of items originating from various mostly unknown sites from different territories in Asia including the Oxus treasure, several items from the Siberian collection of Peter the Great from Southern Siberia, a few jewelry pieces from other collections of the world museums as well as items made of leather and felt coming from the First and the Second Pazyryk kurgans. A distinctive feature of this group of zoomorphic images are colored inlays that accentuate a hind-leg or a shoulder of the animal; such inlays have the form of an intricate figure made up of a circle and a curvilinear triangle abutting to it or elongated round brackets. Genetically, such an ornamental motif, which is not generally typical for Persian art, may be linked to a periphery area of the Iranian world and nomadic culture, while the group of sites can be dated back to the 4th–3rd centuries BC. The paper considers a bracelet from the Siberian collection of Peter the Great which is the only item in this category of jewelry type of bracelets. It represents a rare type of ornament with a multi-component structure. It consists of three open-work strips with zoomorphic compositions in an animal style similar to the above-mentioned stylistic group. All three parts of the bracelet are created in a unified style, but obviously in different individual manners. There is no doubt, that the zoomorphic images show three different authors’ hands, and were made by different artisans. So, there is evidence of collective work on the object when each artisan makes his own operation to create a unique jewel at a workshop. Some parts of the composition on the bracelet are similar in style to zoomorphic images from kurgan Issyk in Kazakhstan which perhaps were made in the same workshop. This fact confirms the assumption of the origin of some of Siberian jewelry.

Cooperativity of myosin II motors in the non-regulated and regulated thin filaments investigated with high-speed AFM.

Skeletal myosins II are non-processive molecular motors that work in ensembles to produce muscle contraction while binding to the actin filament. Although the molecular properties of myosin II are well known, there is still debate about the collective work of the motors: is there cooperativity between myosin motors while binding to the actin filaments? In this study, we use high-speed AFM to evaluate this issue. We observed that the initial binding of small arrays of myosin heads to the non-regulated actin filaments did not affect the cooperative probability of subsequent bindings and did not lead to an increase in the fractional occupancy of the actin binding sites. These results suggest that myosin motors are independent force generators when connected in small arrays, and that the binding of one myosin does not alter the kinetics of other myosins. In contrast, the probability of binding of myosin heads to regulated thin filaments under activating conditions (at high Ca2+ concentration in the presence of 2 μM ATP) was increased with the initial binding of one myosin, leading to a larger occupancy of available binding sites at the next half-helical pitch of the filament. The result suggests that myosin cooperativity is observed over five pseudo-repeats and defined by the activation status of the thin filaments.

It takes a village: examining how and when brand-specific transformational leadership affects employees in internal brand management

The hospitality work environment presents many unique challenges for employees and organizations, such as the intertwined and collective work nature, implicit job expectations, and a shrinking labor market. The demand for highly skilled employees who are sufficient to deliver the unique brand values to customers is on the rise for building successful service brands through employees. The need to retain talented employees is further intensified by the “great resignation” movement in the USA along with the COVID-19 pandemic. This study demonstrates the positive role of brand-specific transformational leadership in promoting employees’ highly engaged brand building behavior (investment-of-self) and their resistance to outside competing job offers. More importantly, drawing upon cognitive dissonance theory, this study shows that the impact of brand-specific transformational leadership is mediated by employees’ sense of brand community internally, as well as moderated by perceived brand promise accuracy. These results supported the essential role of achieving employees’ cognitive consonance in brand communication both internally and externally. These results are supported by 203 US hospitality employee responses from multiple data collections purposefully designed with temporal and cognitive distance.

Early career researchers’ collective advocacy work within an Australian university context

Early career researchers’ collective advocacy work within an Australian university context