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Platforming Threatoric on TikTok : Racial‑Religious Fear during Malaysia’s 15th General Election
Full text linkThis paper examines how TikTok shaped the production and circulation of threatoric, the affective and discursive staging of racial and religious threat, during Malaysia’s 15th General Election (GE15). Drawing on Proximisation Theory (PT) and Social Media Critical Discourse Studies (SM-CDS), it analyses 60 publicly accessible TikTok videos collected between 5 and 24 November 2022 that mobilise ethnoreligious anxieties, frequently invoking the May 13, 1969 riots to frame political opposition as imminent existential danger. Moving beyond content-centred analysis, the paper approaches threatoric as a platformed genre organised through observable platform formats and techno-semiotic resources. The analysis identifies four recurring patterns: affective-sonic staging, epistemic claims to evidentiality, platformed polyvocal legitimation, and interactional and translational amplification that intensify spatial, temporal, and axiological proximisation in multimodal form. Synthesising these patterns, the paper specifies eight platform affordances through which ideological fear is rendered familiar, morally saturated, and presented as epistemically self-evident within the sampled dataset. It argues that GE15 TikTok content does not constitute an ideological rupture but a platformed rearticulation of enduring ethnonationalist anxieties under conditions of platformed politics
Faculty Conceptualizations of ‘Curriculum’ in Canadian Polytechnics
Full text linkIn higher education, ‘curriculum’ is a term that is as ambiguous in meaning as it is ubiquitous in use. However, few educational researchers have sought to trouble these differences in conceptions held by those working in higher education institutions, and even fewer have examined these differences amongst those working most closely with curriculum: the instructional faculty. This thesis examines the various conceptions held by teaching faculty, the implications of these differences, and the influence that academic background and teaching experience have on these conceptions. Applying phenomenographic methods, this study analyzed 18 interviews conducted with faculty across four polytechnic institutions in Alberta, Canada. Phenomenographic analysis of these interviews yielded a hierarchically structured and inclusive outcome space composed of five qualitatively different categories of conception. Further qualitative analysis revealed no apparent relationship between the academic background or teaching experience of individual faculty members and the degree of complexity or sophistication of the conceptions that most closely aligned with their expressed statements. An unexpected outcome was identified during analysis, as it was found that faculty statements were more complex and sophisticated when describing their teaching experiences than when making prescriptive statements about what curriculum should be. This study identifies not only the qualitatively different ways faculty conceive of curriculum, but also that they are unaware of the breadth and complexity of curriculum, as demonstrated by the simplified and limited prescriptions they express when asked directly about curriculum. Institutional curriculum language, codified through curriculum policies and processes, is proposed as the primary factor influencing faculty conceptualizations of curriculum within their instructional context. By demonstrating that faculty have varying conceptualizations and understandings of curriculum, this study highlights the need for further research in this area within other Canadian and international higher education contexts
Enclosures and the Making of Modern Britain
No full text• This chapter asks why the English enclosure movement has been considered in isolation from colonial enclosures (the British conquest and appropriation of overseas territories). • It offers a brief history of land enclosures in England and outlines the standard social-scientific account of their role in the making of modern Britain. • It troubles this standard account by examining the entangled relationship between domestic and colonial enclosures. • It considers how resituating domestic enclosures in the context of colonial enclosures enriches our understandings of the making of modern Britain. • It asks how this more expansive account of enclosures might deepen social- scientific understandings of ongoing forms of global capitalist enclosure in the contemporary world
‘They Are All the Same’ : Securitising the Muslim Brotherhood in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, Ordering Space and the Regional ‘Common Sense’
No full textOrder in the Middle East cannot be fully understood without delving into the securitisation of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). In its multi-faceted existence as an organisation, a movement and, most importantly, an idea, the MB weaves together transnational and domestic struggles over what political projects are legitimate, who holds dominant positions and other divisions and gradations that organise social space. By looking at securitisation as a struggle over order, it is possible to examine the post-2011 securitisation of the MB and its spatial implications, focusing on processes in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and Egypt at the intersection of transnational politics. Combining securitisation theory, Bourdieu’s social theory and spatial theory strengthens our understanding of how interlocking securitisation processes carry far-reaching implications for power, order and space in the Middle East, shaping relations and the normative ‘common sense’ in and across scales
A load and time-dependent hazardous materials distribution problem in urban areas
Full text linkThe objective of this paper is to model and solve the hazardous materials distribution problem in which a set of orders is serviced by a heterogeneous fleet of tank trucks. The objective of the problem is to determine the delivery routes of the trucks so that all the orders are serviced at the minimum traversed distance and transportation risk. A new transportation risk measure is proposed, which takes into account: (i) the population exposed within a load-dependent, impacted area around the truck, and (ii) the travel speed of the vehicle. Moreover, the proposed problem incorporates the effect of the scheduling of the loading operations performed at the depot into the routing problem. The proposed problem is modeled by a bi-objective vehicle routing and scheduling problem, which apart from determining delivery routes, deals simultaneously with the scheduling of the loading operations at the depot. To address the bi-objective routing and scheduling problem, we have developed an NSGA-II algorithm, known as a non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm, with various novel features. The results of the performed experiments indicate that the proposed risk measure substantially reduces the duration that the population stays under the risk of a HazMat shipment
The Singapore Convention : Five Years On
No full textThis chapter discusses the United Nations Convention on International Settlement Agreements Resulting from Mediation 2018 ('The Singapore Convention on Mediation') that has sought to undergird international commercial mediation with a unified enforcement mechanism for settlements reached within the process. The chapter begins by discussing the origins and development of the Convention before examining its main provisions and underpinning rationale. By drawing on recent empirical evidence, the international reception thus far, and how the terms of the Convention are making inroads into States' domestic regimes, the chapter then casts an eye over the progress the Convention has made in the past 5 years. In discussing the potential future impact of the Convention, the chapter focuses on such issues as the development of common mediation standards, areas of uncertainty in the Convention's drafting and Convention's role in legitimising mediation in the eyes of would-be users and their lawyers
A Novel Use of Pseudospectra in Mathematical Biology : Understanding HPA Axis Sensitivity
No full textThe Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal (HPA) axis is a major neuroendocrine system, and its dysregulation is implicated in various diseases. This system also presents interesting mathematical challenges for modeling. We consider a nonlinear delay differential equation model and calculate pseudospectra of three different linearizations: a time-dependent Jacobian, linearization around the limit cycle, and dynamic mode decomposition (DMD) analysis of Koopman operators (global linearization). The time-dependent Jacobian provided insight into experimental phenomena, explaining why rats respond differently to perturbations during corticosterone secretion's upward versus downward slopes. We developed new mathematical techniques for the other two linearizations to calculate pseudospectra on Banach spaces and apply DMD to delay differential equations, respectively. These methods helped establish local and global limit cycle stability and study transients. Additionally, we discuss using pseudospectra to substantiate the model in experimental contexts and establish bio-variability via data-driven methods. This work is the first to utilize pseudospectra to explore the HPA axis
Identification of new protein-coding potential in Leishmania braziliensis using a proteogenomics approach
No full textAmerican tegumentary leishmaniasis (ATL) is primarily caused by Leishmania (Viannia) species such as Leishmania braziliensis, Leishmania panamensis, and Leishmania guyanensis, which show complex genomic organisation and stage-specific adaptations underlying their pathogenicity. Despite the availability of its reference genome, limitations in gene annotation persist due to the presence of hypothetical proteins, pseudogenes, and unrecognised coding regions. In this study, we used a proteogenomic approach integrating publicly available high-resolution mass spectrometry data with a custom six-frame translated genome database to refine the genome annotation of L. braziliensis strain MHOM/BR/75/M2904. Utilising stringent database-dependent searches with a 1 % false discovery rate, we identified many unique peptides, of which 1034 were genome search-specific peptides (GSSPs) mapping exclusively to unannotated genomic regions. These GSSPs facilitated the discovery of 56 novel protein-coding genes and the correction of 228 existing gene models, including N- and C-terminal extensions. Notably, several novel genes encode proteins with conserved domains such as membrane attack complex/perforin (MACPF), kinesin K39, and peptidase S9/S15, suggesting functional relevance in parasite biology. Our findings demonstrate the power of proteogenomics to uncover cryptic protein-coding regions and improve genome annotations beyond conventional predictions. This refined annotation enhances our understanding of L. braziliensis biology, providing a more accurate proteomic landscape that can inform studies on parasite virulence, host interaction, and potential therapeutic targets. The study underscores the importance of integrating proteomic evidence with genomic data to capture the full coding potential of kinetoplastid parasites, paving the way for improved diagnostics and interventions against leishmaniasis