Meme

There is a need for new approaches for enhancing education for sustainable development in universities. Memetics, which is about effective pathways of communication, could be such a new, promising approach. Quality assurance is required in universities to secure and improve education, which could be another approach. The aim of this study is to look into whether and how frameworks for processes and procedures for quality assurance, such as management systems, could be utilized to promote higher education for sustainable development. The study approaches this from both a theoretical and a practical standpoint. An evolutionary perspective was chosen, considering higher education for sustainable development and management systems as memes, or basic units of cultural replication. The practical context was studied by looking into how 11 universities in the Nordic countries have enhanced ESD with management systems. We found that both higher education for sustainable development and management systems could be considered successful memes and that management systems could be applied to enhance higher education for sustainable development.

In June 2009 a group of forum-goers on the popular culture website, Something Awful, created a monster called the Slender Man. Inhumanly tall, pale, black-clad, and with the power to control minds, the Slender Man references many classic, canonical horror monsters while simultaneously expressing an acute anxiety about the contemporary digital context that birthed him. This anxiety is apparent in the collective legends that have risen around the Slender Man since 2009, but it figures particularly strongly in the Web series Marble Hornets (Troy Wagner and Joseph DeLage June 2009 - ). This thesis examines Marble Hornets as an example of an emerging trend in digital, online cinema that it defines as “folk horror”: a subgenre of horror that is produced by online communities of everyday people— or folk—as opposed to professional crews working within the film industry. Works of folk horror address the questions and anxieties of our current, digital age by reflecting the changing roles and behaviours of the everyday person, who is becoming increasingly involved with the products of popular culture. After providing a context for understanding folk horror, this thesis analyzes Marble Hornets through the lens of folkloric narrative structures such as legends and folktales, and vernacular modes of filmmaking such as cinéma direct and found footage horror. The focus then shifts to the ways in which Marble Hornets’ digital folk context amplifies the classic horror conventions with which the series engages. Primary attention is given to three key components: the monster, the narrative, and the audience. Folk horror might be a new term, but it is an old concept, one that reflects the important role that community plays in the forging of fear. It has been suggested that the Slender Man is a tulpa, a creature brought into physical existence by collective thought. As such he is truly a monster for the digital age as he reflects the many faces—positive and negative—of the increasingly “connected” individual. Through the lens of folk horror we may not only witness significant developments in the horror genre, but also those of storytelling on a broader scale.

A Memética é, então, a ciência que estuda como memes se propagam. O que a genética faz com os genes, a Memética faz com os memes. Ou, mais precisamente, o que a genética de populações e a epidemiologia fazem com as informações genéticas, a Memética faz com as informações culturais. O ponto a ser discutido então é apenas se os modelos matemáticos aplicados na primeira podem também ser usados na segunda. Isso, é claro, levanta enormes problemas. Será que a cultura realmente pode ser dividida em unidades de informação? De que são feitos os memes? Como eles são passados? Como saber se eles foram realmente passados ou não? O que determina que um meme vai infectar a mente de uma pessoa e de outra não? Quem manda no meu comportamento sou eu ou meus memes? Eu posso escolher quais memes vão me infectar? Utilizar modelos biológicos para tratar a cultura não seria reducionista e mecanicista? [...] É com este espírito que o livro foi escrito. Mas, antes de tudo, é um livro de divulgação científica. Pretende dar ao leitor a fundamentação filosófica e científica para discutir os conceitos aqui tratados. Pode, então, ser lido por um não-filósofo que só sabe de biologia aquilo que aprendeu na escola

Much is spoken and written about the liberal nature of global trade and its relation to democracy and freedoms. Trade representatives of the transatlantic free trade agreement (TAFTA | TTIP) have talked about the importance of the negotiations being transparent, accountable, and participative. However, a number of leaked draft texts of other free trade agreements being negotiated by the United States (US) and the European Union (EU) indicate that these promises are mostly empty. A leaked European Commission (EC) communiqué further evidences an attempt to establish a “mainstream media narrative” about the TAFTA | TTIP in order to reduce the “anxiety” of EU citizens and consumers. This article carefully analyzes the manners in which the negotiations of the TAFTA | TTIP are proving to be untransparent, lacking in participation, and unaccountable. The purpose of these analyses is not merely to present evidence that this is actually the case at hand, but also to clarify why transparency, accountability, and participation are crucial to the negotiations on transatlantic trade. Lastly, the article suggests that the TAFTA | TTIP negotiations learn from the World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) Marrakesh Treaty, characterized as an "exemplary exercise of transparency, civil society participation, and multilateral cooperation".

In 1992, a book appeared on the national scene that took both the publishing world and the public by storm. John Gray's Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus made its first appearance on the New York Times Best Seller list in April 1993, and it remained on the list continuously for the next six years (Publisher's Weekly, 2000). According to Gray's website, 30 million copies of the book have been published in 40 languages (2006). Its popularity was just the beginning of what would become for Gray a relationship counseling empire comprised of 15 titles (see Appendix A for a complete list), Broadway appearances, lecture circuits, a television series, a board game, and an interactive website (Gray, 2006). Appearances on television shows such as Oprah, The Today Show, CBS Morning Show, a two-hour ABC News Special with Barbara Walters, and Good Morning America, and profiles of Gray or references to his work in publications such as Newsweek, Time, Forbes, and USA Today, anointed Gray an expert in relationship counseling, a perception which persists today. John Gray was born in 1951 in Houston, Texas. His website refers to him as Dr. Gray and identifies him as an expert in the field of communication, a former certified marriage and family therapist, and "the premier Better Life relationship coach on AOL," but it does not identify the field in which he earned a Ph.D. (Gray, 2006). In the paperback edition of his book, he identifies himself as member of the National Academy for Certified Therapists (Gray, 2004), but a search for this organization on the Internet brings forward no further information. He also holds membership in the American Counseling Association, which is open to all interested parties of any background. Gray attended both St. Thomas University and the University of Texas but did not receive a degree from either institution. He received B.A. and M.A. diplomas in "Creative Intelligence" from the Maharishi European Research University, located in Seelisburg, Switzerland (Drum, 2004). In 1992, Gray was granted a Ph.D. from Columbia Pacific University (CPU), a distance learning or correspondence school located in Novato, California. In 1997, CPU lost legal authorization to offer or award degrees and was closed by the California Department of Consumer Affairs. During an investigation and assessment of CPU, the Bureau for Private Postsecondary and Vocational Education (Bureau) found that CPU students had been awarded excessive credit for prior experiential learning, the faculty was under qualified, and the university failed to meet standard requirements for issuing Ph.D. degrees. "When an institution issues a degree to a student who has not received adequate training, knowledge, and skill, the student, employers, and the general public are harmed," said Bureau Chief Michael Abbott (California, 01/2000, ¶2). In July 2000, the California Court of Appeals found that the Bureau, which regulates degree-granting institutions had presented substantial evidence to support the closure and CPU exhausted its right of appeal (California, 12/2000). Degrees granted at CPU prior to June 1997 were declared "legally valid" (12/2000, ¶4) and Gray's website claims, "At the time John Gray graduated and received his degree, CPU was a highly respected school in its field" (Gray, 2006). In a press release at the time of the final judgment, however, California Department of Consumer Affairs Director Kathleen Hamilton

We clarify, in this paper, that memes are elements of intertextual relation, from the analysis of 31 videos response for a Brazilian viral called “oração” (A Banda mais  Bonita da Cidade), popular on YouTube in 2011. meme’s intertextuality makes semantic connections and its aggregated value of visibility helps to disseminate original content. We demonstrate that viral videos, when become memes, trigger process of identification and differentiation from versions and parodies created
by the audience.

Th is paper develops an alternative to Dennett's meme-theoretic explanation for religious commitment. First I build an argument in defense of Dennett's position, drawing on a cultural evolution literature that he mentions but does not develop . Th en I describe data that even this enhanced account leaves poorly explained. Next I draw on commitment signaling theory to produce an account that explains these puzzling data. I show how religious culture provides a pervasive example of human epistemic niche construction. An adaptationist analysis of religious culture exposes how the propagation of costly misunderstandings massively reduce the cognitive burdens of Machiavellian social complexity.

During the 2012 presidential campaign an explosion of photo-shopped images circulated that depicted President Obama as unpatriotic. The 'crotch salute', 'left-hand salute', and 'Veterans Day non-salute' serve as case studies for understanding the role of trolling in the public sphere and Internet politics in an era of social networks and circulation. This paper tracks the cultural practices and logics of 'sharing' political memes and conceptualises memes as part of an agonistic public sphere and media ecology. Obama trolling is facilitated through the techno-cultural affordances of memes, which can only become public because of their mimetic form and sterilised partial anonymity. The paper seeks to conceptualise trolling as a broader cultural practice, which can be considered political. Normative assumptions about these memes would portray this trafficking as destructive to deliberative democracy but when understood as a generative cultural practice, trolling becomes central to articulating political emotions in social networks. Photo-shopped Obama salutes, in addition to Big Bird, binder, and bayonet memes, express not only political identities but also larger cultural values within networked popular culture.

The aim of the 2008 Roundtable was to focus on the progress to date in the many facets-methodological, epistemological and conceptual-of the field of legal semiotics, specifically the contribution of different schools and forms of semiotics as well as emerging and emergent semiotics approaches which can be used in researching and interpreting law and legal phenomena. The participants sought primarily to engage with the epistemological and methodological challenges which the field currently faces and to discuss the implications of these.

A lo largo la historia española la sátira ha estado presente de una forma constante, configurándose en una suerte de correa de transmisión, de vehículo informativo y comunicacional. Además de proporcionar herramientas para la comprensión de la realidad, ha tenido en ocasiones la capacidad de generar narrativas propias y modelar imaginarios sociales. Ha sido en los momentos de crisis, ya sea esta económica, política o institucional, en los que oleadas de creatividad se han puesto al servicio de la interpretación de procesos sociales, de la generación de subjetividad y también frecuentemente de un activismo que se ha situado en primera línea. La intención de este artículo es abordar el impacto de la sátira en España desde que la crisis económica se inicia en 2008. Lo llevaremos a cabo desde una perspectiva comparada, acercando nuestra mirada al último gran periodo de crisis en España, el del tardofranquismo y los primeros años de la transición.

The idea that the political system is subject to rampant and invisible voter fraud has animated recent debates over the regulation of elections. Election integrity advocates have claimed that this threat justifies voter identification laws and other laws that have narrowed the ability for some citizens to vote, while voting-rights advocates have claimed that these measures are a form of voter suppression. These legal changes have occurred despite research that has demonstrated that virtually no actual voter fraud (specifically voter impersonation fraud) exists. While the consensus is that these voter suppression initiatives are driven by naked partisanship, this consensus fails to consider how longstanding ideological traditions about voter participation (and their interrelation with race, gender, and class myths) influence the debates over how to adequately regulate the right to vote. This paper will propose a different theoretical framework to address the voter fraud myth: memetic...

El siguiente trabajo propone pensar la relación entre la experiencia vital/mortal que implica un conflicto bélico y una visualidad propia de la guerra. Para eso se trabaja con una manera particular de vincularse con el campo de lo visible: la técnica del montaje. Es a partir de ésta última que podemos pensar a las imágenes que se abordarán en el presente artículo como una colisión de tiempos heterogéneos. Pensar la experiencia de la guerra es pensar una experiencia del desorden, por lo tanto el campo visual que la instituye y que a la vez ésta ayuda a configurar no puede ser lineal sino fragmentado, ensamblado, estallado. Esto no ocurre en una guerra en particular sino en la experiencia bélica per se. En nuestra cultura visual contemporánea sin embargo encontramos un tipo de imagen que fue utilizada para pensar estos conflictos y contestarlos: el meme, que aquí será puesto en diálogo con otras imágenes aparentemente inconexas pero que forman parte de la genealogía de estas imágenes ...

The biomining bacterium Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans oxidizes sulfide ores and promotes metal solubilization. The efficiency of this process depends on the attachment of cells to surfaces, a process regulated by quorum sensing (QS) cell-to-cell signalling in many Gram-negative bacteria. At. ferrooxidans has a functional QS system and the presence of AHLs enhances its attachment to pyrite. However, direct targets of the QS transcription factor AfeR remain unknown. In this study, a bioinformatic approach was used to infer possible AfeR direct targets based on the particular palindromic features of the AfeR binding site. A set of Hidden Markov Models designed to maintain palindromic regions and vary non-palindromic regions was used to screen for putative binding sites. By annotating the context of each predicted binding site (PBS), we classified them according to their positional coherence relative to other putative genomic structures such as start codons, RNA polymerase promoter elements and intergenic regions. We further used the Multiple EM for Motif Elicitation algorithm (MEME) to further filter out low homology PBSs. In summary, 75 target-genes were identified, 34 of which have a higher confidence level. Among the identified genes, we found afeR itself, zwf, genes encoding glycosyltransferase activities, metallo-beta lactamases, and active transport-related proteins. Glycosyltransferases and Zwf (Glucose 6-phosphate-1-dehydrogenase) might be directly

Myb genes constitute one of the largest transcription factor families in the plant kingdom. Soybean MYB transcription factors have been related to the plant response to biotic stresses. Their involvement in response to Phakopsora pachyrhizi infection has been reported by several transcriptional studies. Due to their apparently highly diverse functions, these genes are promising targets for developing crop varieties resistant to diseases. In the present study, the identification and phylogenetic analysis of the soybean R2R3-MYB (GmMYB) transcription factor family was performed and the expression profiles of these genes under biotic stress were determined. GmMYBs were identified from the soybean genome using bioinformatic tools, and their putative functions were determined based on the phylogenetic tree and classified into subfamilies using guides AtMYBs describing known functions. The transcriptional profiles of GmMYBs upon infection with different pathogen were revealed by in vivo a...

With the communication systems of the Internet technology having rapidly been improved in 2000s, it is obvious that communication has been evolved into a new dimension. Communication systems of the Internet technology exemplified as blogs and microblogs, social networking websites, news portals, video sharing websites, online encyclopedia and dictionaries, games etc. refer to " social media ". Each space of communal-everyday life has been occupied by social media which are believed to contribute much to the interactive communication. It is undeniable that broad participation of users in social media cannot be considered to be independent from the background of each user shaped by collective mentality, ways of thinking and use of everyday language, on one hand. On the other hand, it can also be claimed that social media could influence individual way of thinking, adoption of an attitude and acquisition of a positive or negative standard of judgment. In Turkey where masculinity is mostly expressed via femininity, everyday language dominated by patriarchal discourse is reproduced and brought into caps, a new and cynical form of visual and written medium of expression of social media. This study focuses on what masculine language tells the target audience through caps. We wish to offer a discursive and semiotic content analysis by random sampling upon how caps functions in the reproduction and reinforcement of masculine language so as to raise awareness of this process for the Internet users and contribute to the multidisciplinary studies.

Myb genes constitute one of the largest transcription factor families in the plant kingdom. Soybean MYB transcription factors have been related to the plant response to biotic stresses. Their involvement in response to Phakopsora pachyrhizi infection has been reported by several transcriptional studies. Due to their apparently highly diverse functions, these genes are promising targets for developing crop varieties resistant to diseases. In the present study, the identification and phylogenetic analysis of the soybean R2R3-MYB (GmMYB) transcription factor family was performed and the expression profiles of these genes under biotic stress were determined. GmMYBs were identified from the soybean genome using bioinformatic tools, and their putative functions were determined based on the phylogenetic tree and classified into subfamilies using guides AtMYBs describing known functions. The transcriptional profiles of GmMYBs upon infection with different pathogen were revealed by in vivo and in silico analyses. Selected target genes potentially involved in disease responses were assessed by RT-qPCR after different times of inoculation with P. pachyrhizi using different genetic backgrounds related to resistance genes (Rpp2 and Rpp5). R2R3-MYB transcription factors related to lignin synthesis and genes responsive to chitin were significantly induced in the resistant genotypes.

There is a need for new approaches for enhancing education for sustainable development in universities. Memetics, which is about effective pathways of communication, could be such a new, promising approach. Quality assurance is required in universities to secure and improve education, which could be another approach. The aim of this study is to look into whether and how frameworks for processes and procedures for quality assurance, such as management systems, could be utilized to promote higher education for sustainable development. The study approaches this from both a theoretical and a practical standpoint. An evolutionary perspective was chosen, considering higher education for sustainable development and management systems as memes, or basic units of cultural replication. The practical context was studied by looking into how 11 universities in the Nordic countries have enhanced ESD with management systems. We found that both higher education for sustainable development and management systems could be considered successful memes and that management systems could be applied to enhance higher education for sustainable development.

We present the formal definition of meme in the sense of the equivalence between memetics and the theory of cultural evolution. From the formal definition we find that culture can be seen analytically and persuade that memetic gives important role in the exploration of sociological theory, especially in the cultural studies. We show that we are not allowed to assume meme as smallest information unit in cultural evolution in general, but it is the smallest information we use on explaining cultural evolution. We construct a computational model and do simulation in advance presenting the selfish meme powerlaw distributed. The simulation result shows that the contagion of meme as well as cultural evolution is a complex adaptive system. Memetics is the system and art of importing genetics to social sciences.

This article aims to discuss the role humour plays in politics, particularly in a media environment overflowing with user-generated video. We start with a genealogy of political satire, from classical to Internet times, followed by a general description of “the Hitler meme,” a series of videos on YouTube featuring footage from the film Der Untergang and nonsensical subtitles. Amid video-games, celebrities, and the Internet itself, politicians and politics are the target of twenty-first century caricatures. By analysing these videos we hope to elucidate how the manipulation of images is  embedded in everyday practices and may be of political consequence, namely by deflating politicians' constructed media image. The realm of image, at the centre of the Internet's technological culture, is connected with decisive aspects of today's social structure of knowledge and play. It is timely to understand which part of “playing” is in fact an expressive practice with political sign...

In his latest contribution to the application of Darwinian evolutionary thinking to the social sciences, W. G. Runciman conceives of human behavior as resulting from three levels of selection-biological, cultural, and social. These give rise, respectively, to evoked, acquired, and imposed patterns of behavior. The biological level is hardly controversial, but to draw a distinction between separate cultural and social selective processes is more problematic. Runciman takes memes to be the variants competitively selected at the cultural level and the practices constituting rule-governed roles to be the variants competitively selected at the social level-thus preserving separate spheres of research for anthropology and sociology. It is not clear, however, what drives cultural and social evolution. Nor are the three levels theoretically well integrated. The book's strength lies in the numerous examples provided of how the application of selectionist theory illuminates and enriches sociological and historical explanations and contributes to the construction of historical narrative.

Juvenile fibroadenoma is a common cause of breast masses seen in adolescents and young women. Giant juvenile fibroadenomas are usually single and unilateral. The etiology is thought to be due to increased levels of estrogen during adolescence, although it is not yet fully understood. Treatment options range from simple excision to subcutaneous mastectomy according to the size of the lesion. This article aimed to present a case that was diagnosed with "giant juvenile fibroadenoma".

In his latest contribution to the application of Darwinian evolutionary thinking to the social sciences, W. G. Runciman conceives of human behavior as resulting from three levels of selection-biological, cultural, and social. These give rise, respectively, to evoked, acquired, and imposed patterns of behavior. The biological level is hardly controversial, but to draw a distinction between separate cultural and social selective processes is more problematic. Runciman takes memes to be the variants competitively selected at the cultural level and the practices constituting rule-governed roles to be the variants competitively selected at the social level-thus preserving separate spheres of research for anthropology and sociology. It is not clear, however, what drives cultural and social evolution. Nor are the three levels theoretically well integrated. The book's strength lies in the numerous examples provided of how the application of selectionist theory illuminates and enriches sociological and historical explanations and contributes to the construction of historical narrative.

This paper evaluates and criticises the developmental systems conception of evolution and develops instead an extension of the “gene's eye” conception of evolution. We argue (i) Dawkin's attempt to segregate developmental and evolutionary issues about genes is unsatisfactory. On plausible views of development it is arbitrary to single out genes as the units of selection. (ii) The genotype does not carry information about the phenotype in any way that distinguishes the role of the genes in development from that other factors. (iii) There is no simple and general causal criterion which distinguishes the role of genes in development and evolution. (iv) There is, however, an important sense in which genes but not every other developmental factor represent the phenotype. (v) The idea that genes represent features of the phenotype forces us to recognise that genes are not the only, or almost the only, replicators. Many mechanisms of replication are involved in both development and evolution. (vi) A conception of evolutionary history which recognises both genetic and non-genetic replicators, lineages of replicators and interactors has advantages over both the radical rejection of the replicator/interactor distinction and the conservative restriction of replication to genetic replication.

According to Richard Dawkins in his essay "Selfish Genes and Selfish Memes," ideas are swiftly taking over the function of genetics. Dawkins claims that "all life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities." In other words, the evolution of anything, be it a DNA strand or a melodic device, is based on its ability to reproduce itself.

Breast skin and parenchyma are metastatic sites for various tumours. Metastasis to the breast is rare, but it must be considered in the differential diagnosis of a breast mass. Melanoma is among the most commonly reported metastatic tumours of the breast. With the increasing incidence of melanoma, this complication is being encountered with greater frequency. Melanoma has different manifestations in the breast. All these manifestations are important not only as initial presentations of the disease, but also as indicators of the progression period of the disease. Along with a brief review of the literature, we report the case of a woman who presented with breast metastasis after 17 years as the first sign of recurrence of a melanoma. The aim of this study was to report the clinico-pathological features of a patient with metastatic melanoma to the breast. Metastasis can mimic either benign disease or primary malignancy and is often an unexpected diagnosis in a patient presenting with a breast mass. These masses generally indicate disseminated disease with very short survival. Metastasis should be suspected in patients with a breast mass and a prior history of melanoma even if the primary was removed a long time ago (17 years in our case). Fine needle aspiration cytology combined with immunohistochemistry is essential for the diagnosis of metastasis.

Drosophila development is regulated by two hormones, 20-hydroxyecdysone (ecdysone) and juvenile hormone. We previously found that expression of the E75 gene is induced by both hormones in cultured S2 cells. E75 occupies over 100 kb of genomic DNA; it has four alternative promoters producing isoforms E75A, E75B, E75C, and E75D. To identify hormone response elements in the 60-kb noncoding area upstream of the E75A transcription start site, we developed a novel approach combining in vitro, in vivo, and in silico techniques. Using chromatin immunoprecipitation coupled with quantitative real-time PCR, we identified five putative enhancers marked with H3K4 monomethylation and depletion of H3. Four of these are ecdysone-regulated enhancers, which possess hormone-responsive chromatin and contain sequences sufficient to confer ecdysone inducibility to a reporter gene. Using EvoPrinterHD-and Multiple Expectation Maximization for Motif Elicitation-based computational analysis, we first created a database of short sequences that are highly conserved among 12 Drosophila species. Within this database, we then identified a set of putative ecdysone response elements (EcREs). Seven of these elements represent in vivo binding sites for the ecdysone receptor and are necessary for hormone-mediated activation of gene expression in cultured cells. We found that each EcRE exhibits different binding and activation properties, and at least some of them function cooperatively. We propose that the presence of multiple EcREs with distinct features provides flexibility to the rapid and powerful response of E75A to ecdysone during Drosophila development.

In March 2012, the Kony 2012 campaign was launched by the NGO Invisible Chindren, having as its main tool a 29 minute movie, whose main goal is to mobilize people in order to find and arrest Joseph Kony, the leader of LRA (Lord’s Army Resistance), an active militant group in central Africa accused of practicing a series of crimes against humanity. The popularity reached by this activist movie has led us to focus our analysis on some strategies used by its producers and on some of the main effects of the campaign so far. We depart from considerations over the meaning of a variety of video footages taken from Youtube that were used as basic building blocks in the making of Kony 2012. The analysis, then, follows the sequence in which images and sounds are woven into the Kony 2012 narrative, and its unfolding of the potential political meanings in the micro videos. Finally, taking the movie as a moment immersed in a complex process of construction, dispute and negotiation of an imagined digital community, we discuss the ways in which the movie and the practices that surround it are proposed as a global politics, built from myths and utopias, which places itself as young, post-modern and digital all at once. The movie provokes answers from other digital actors in this new agora, which proved itself highly manipulable and also, not without paradoxes, highly critical.

This paper evaluates and criticises the developmental systems conception of evolution and develops instead an extension of the “gene's eye” conception of evolution. We argue (i) Dawkin's attempt to segregate developmental and evolutionary issues about genes is unsatisfactory. On plausible views of development it is arbitrary to single out genes as the units of selection. (ii) The genotype does not carry information about the phenotype in any way that distinguishes the role of the genes in development from that other factors. (iii) There is no simple and general causal criterion which distinguishes the role of genes in development and evolution. (iv) There is, however, an important sense in which genes but not every other developmental factor represent the phenotype. (v) The idea that genes represent features of the phenotype forces us to recognise that genes are not the only, or almost the only, replicators. Many mechanisms of replication are involved in both development and evolution. (vi) A conception of evolutionary history which recognises both genetic and non-genetic replicators, lineages of replicators and interactors has advantages over both the radical rejection of the replicator/interactor distinction and the conservative restriction of replication to genetic replication.

Meme Tags are part of a body of research on Group-Wear: a wearable technology that supports people in the formative stages of cooperative work. Conference participants wear Meme Tags that allow them to electronically share memes-succinct ideas or opinions-with each other. Alongside of the person-toperson transactions, a server system collects information about the memetic exchanges and reflects it back to the conference-goers in Community Mirrors-large, public video displays that present real-time visualizations of the unfolding community dynamics. This paper presents results from a proof-of-concept trial of the Meme Tag technology undertaken at a MIT Media Laboratory conference.

"To date there appears to have been little academic research that concentrates on investigating nineteenth century professions and none that could be located which consider their role in relation to the development of small provincial towns during this period of occupational flux. For example  Holmes (1982 ) and Corfield  (1999 ) concentrate on profession in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; Abbott (1988) nineteenth and twentieth century profession in England, France and America and other researchers on the development of specific occupations such as medicine (Friedson 1970); accountancy (Matthews 2006); librarianship (Goode 1961) and although Larson’s (1977) research locates the beginning of professional mobilisation projects in the nineteenth century, it is primarily concerned with the twentieth. This research therefore explores how professional services developed in small English county towns during the nineteenth century and uses the county town of Stafford as its focus. It takes the form of a series of three interrelated case studies that move from providing a macro view of professional life and work in Stafford; to a more focused case study of one specific occupation, that of chemist/druggist; to investigating one particular Stafford family that for several generations had members who worked as chemists/druggists. This approach provides an overview of the type and level of professional services on offer in Stafford during this period along with an in-depth analysis of one particular occupation.

Research results indicate that profession as a concept held little value for the folk of Stafford throughout the nineteenth century and that professional services in the town were slow to develop, even during a period of rapid population growth. A range of twentieth century research theories and frameworks for categorising profession were tested and appeared not to be appropriate for accurately identifying professional work at this time and a nineteenth century framework is proposed. The growth of educational opportunities throughout the century and the use of profession as a marketing tool are however found to be intrinsically linked to the growth of the concept of profession by the end of the nineteenth century.
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