This article considers how the figure of the ``user'' is deployed to imagine the assembling of location-based mobile phone technologies in the context of UK policy. Drawing on the sociology of expectations, we address the performativity of the ``user'' in the think tank Demos' publication Mobilisation. In the process, we analyze how discourses about users enact particular futures that feature arrangements of, for example, persons, mobile phone technologies, and political institutions. We present two narrative strategies operating in Mobilisation: first, the (...) purification of the social and technological in the portrayal of futures and their impediments; second, how existing, emergent, and future users serve as ``narrative joints'', reconnecting the social and technological in the enactment of preferred policy trajectories. In conclusion, we explore Mobilisation as a `catalogue of expectations' in which the representation of a multiplicity of users is itself performative, enacting a particular future policy terrain while bracketing off others. (shrink)

This paper develops the outlines of a pragmatic, adaptive management-based approach toward the control of invasive nonnative species (INS) through a case study of Kings Bay/crystal River, a large artesian springs ecosystem that is one of Florida’s most important habitats for endangered West Indian manatees (Trichechus manatus). Building upon recent critiques of invasion biology, principles of adaptive management, and our own interview and participant–observer research, we argue that this case study represents an example in which rigid application of invasion biology’s (...) a␣priori imperative to minimize INS has produced counterproductive results from both an ecological and social standpoint. As such, we recommend that INS control in Kings Bay should be relaxed in conjunction with an overall program of adaptive ecosystem management that includes meaningful participation and input from non-institutional stakeholders. However, we also note that adaptive management and INS control are by no means mutually exclusive, in Kings Bay or elsewhere. Instead, we suggest that adaptive management offers a means by which INS control efforts can emerge from—and be evaluated through—ongoing scientific research and participatory dialogue about the condition of specific places, rather than non-contextual assumptions about the harmfulness of INS as a general class. (shrink)

The spectre of determinism stalks many of the concerns surrounding the impact of genetic research into both disease and normal behaviour. The ability accurately to predict a person's actions would certainly have profound implications for notions of individuality and free will. But to what extent will the current explosion in genetic research provide more accurate predictors than have been available for millennia in the form of wealth, social status and perceived family resemblance? The genetic research program is at too early (...) a stage to answer this question with confidence, but various indicators tend to point in the same direction: the predictive ability of genetic analysis will generally be low. This conclusion runs counter to widely perceived popular notions. The deconstruction of genetic determinism is an essential safeguard against the real concern that genetic information may be used for discrimination by unscrupulous powers. (shrink)

We prove linear and polynomial growth properties of sets and functions that are existentially definable in the ordered group of integers with divisibility. We determine the laws of addition with order and divisibility.

In this note I construct a proper o-minimal expansion of the ordered additive group of rationals.

This proceedings volume contains most of the invited talks presented at the colloquium. The main topics treated are the model theory of arithmetic and algebra, the semantics of natural languages, and applications of mathematical logic to complexity theory. The volume contains both surveys by acknowledged experts and original research papers presenting advances in these disciplines.

This is the first book to offer the best essays, articles, and speeches on ethics and intelligence that demonstrate the complex moral dilemmas in intelligence collection, analysis, and operations. Some are recently declassified and never before published, and all are written by authors whose backgrounds are as varied as their insights, including Robert M. Gates, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency; John P. Langan, the Joseph Cardinal Bernardin Professor of Catholic Social Thought at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown (...) University; and Loch K. Johnson, Regents Professor of Political Science at the University of Georgia and recipient of the Owens Award for contributions to the understanding of U.S. intelligence activities. Creating the foundation for the study of ethics and intelligence by filling in the gap between warfare and philosophy, this is a valuable collection of literature for building an ethical code that is not dependent on any specific agency, department, or country. (shrink)

We prove linear and polynomial growth properties of sets and functions that are existentially definable in the ordered group of integers with divisibility. We determine the laws of addition with order and divisibility.

Working in an o-minimal expansion of the real field, we investigate when a germ of a complex analytic function has a definable analytic continuation to its Mittag–Leffler star. As an application we show that any algebro-logarithmic function that is complex analytic in a neighborhood of the origin in $\mathbb {C}$ has an analytic continuation to all but finitely many points in $\mathbb {C}$.

Our recent paper advocating adaptive management of invasive nonnative species (INS) in Kings Bay, Florida received detailed responses from both Daniel Simberloff, a prominent invasion biologist, and Mark Sagoff, a prominent critic of invasion biology. Simberloff offers several significant lines of criticism that compel detailed rebuttals, and, as such, most of this reply is dedicated to this purpose. Ultimately, we find it quite significant that Simberloff, despite his other stated objections to our paper, apparently agrees with our argument that proposals (...) for alternative management of established INS (i.e., alternatives to minimization/eradication) should not be rejected on an a␣priori basis. We argue that more specific development and application of adaptive approaches toward INS management, whether in Kings Bay or other appropriate case studies, would be facilitated if ecosystem managers and invasion biologists follow Simberloff’s lead on this key point. While Sagoff largely shares (and, indeed, served as a primary source for developing) our general arguments that challenge common moral and scientific assumptions associated with invasion biology, he does question our suggestion that participatory adaptive management provides an appropriate framework for approaching environmental problems in which science and politics are inherently entangled. We attempt to answer this criticism through a brief sketch of what participatory adaptive management might look like for Kings Bay and how such an approach would differ from past management approaches. (shrink)