The production and reception of assistance proposals between pedestrians and visually impaired persons during a course in orientation and mobility

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Based on a detailed examination of video recordings of Locomotion and Orientation lessons, this chapter explores the social production and reception of assistance proposals to blind students by sighted pedestrians at an urban crossing. We examine the combination of several resources which makes publicly recognizable an embodied and embedded display of trouble (Kendricks and Drew, 2016). We show how passer-byes approach the blind person and introduce a confirmation query (“you want to cross?”), which is then systematically rejected by a blind student’s account (“I am learning locomotion right now”). This rejection reveals an another, contrastive setting with its alternate set of relevancies, sequential organization and categories. In this second context, the various attempts of passer-by to initiate help proposals become accountable interruptions of an ongoing exercise. We will show how the normative features of the visual order in which the blind student is immersed disturbs his attempts to turn into practice a set of alternatives, audible-based methods for crossing streets, without stopping him to cope with the normative consequences of the practical management of two contrastive settings. The very apprenticeship of a new alternative set of sensorial abilities bumps into the taken for granted visual practices which shape the common production and understandings of urban orders and disabilities.

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Singularization/Mutualization: The emergence of a new form of patient activism around biomedical entities.

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This chapter extends the STS perspective on the involvement of patient organizations in biomedical research to organizations named after the infra-molecular entities driving their diseases: rare genetic disease and oncogene-focused patient groups. From what perspective do these novel kinds of associations rally around molecular entities and their affordances? Is the reference to these entities associated with specific modalities of action especially as regards basic and clinical research and therapy? We show that the grouping of patients around such entities amounts to a dual process of singularization/mutualization. Singularization processes parallel the disassembling and reassembling of nosological categories engendered by genomic investigations. However, singularizing is associated with mutualizing: by comparing disease singularities and their differential effects, patient associations identify shared problems or overlaps with regards to diagnostic practices and therapeutic interventions. The transformative effects of the singularizing and mutualizing processes make them a key component of the biomedicine and society research agenda.

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Operations with physical internet

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Physical Internet (PI) is an revolutionary and rapidly advancing paradigm in the field of global logistics and supply chain management. Initially, PI was conceptualized as a framework that emulates the data packet transmission model of the digital internet, applying it to freight transport and logistics over the physical systems. Over time, the PI concept has significantly evolved, incorporating cutting-edge technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Digital Twins, and Artificial Intelligence, and aligning with emerging economic models like platform economy, sharing economy, or circular economy, for example. As a result, PI has developed into a holistic paradigm aimed at streamlining and optimizing logistics operations and supply chain management to enhance the sustainability and resilience. This chapter explores the potential of PI to transform operations management within logistics and supply chains, highlighting key pathways for its continued evolution and impact. Additionally, it outlines promising research avenues, where PI and emerging operations management practices can complement each other, notably in logistics coopetition, Cyber-Physical Internet, and Logistics-as-a-Service models.

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