Since the installation of an ITER-like wall, the JET programme has focused on the consolidation of ITER design choices and the preparation for ITER operation, with a specific emphasis given to the bulk tungsten melt experiment, which has been crucial for the final decision on the material choice for the day-one tungsten divertor in ITER. Integrated scenarios have been progressed with the re-establishment of long-pulse, high-confinement H-modes by optimizing the magnetic configuration and the use of ICRH to avoid tungsten impurity accumulation. Stationary discharges with detached divertor conditions and small edge localized modes have been demonstrated by nitrogen seeding. The differences in confinement and pedestal behaviour before and after the ITER-like wall installation have been better characterized towards the development of high fusion yield scenarios in DT. Post-mortem analyses of the plasma-facing components have confirmed the previously reported low fuel retention obtained by gas balance and shown that the pattern of deposition within the divertor has changed significantly with respect to the JET carbon wall campaigns due to the absence of thermally activated chemical erosion of beryllium in contrast to carbon. Transport to remote areas is almost absent and two orders of magnitude less material is found in the divertor.
This methods-oriented paper introduces visual methods and specifically photography to study immediate information space (Lee, 2003); that is, information-rich settings such as offices or homes. It draws upon the authors' firsthand ethnographic field experiences, a review of relevant theoretical and methodological literature, and an analysis of cases within information studies that have made use of visual and photographic techniques. To begin, the traditions of visual research within anthropology and sociology are traced and major epistemological, methodological, and disciplinary debates associated with visual scholarship are presented. Then, investigations of immediate information space that utilize photography are analyzed, including examples from the areas of personal information management, health informatics, information behavior, and computer-supported cooperative work. Moreover, a section entitled "Applying Photographic Techniques. . ." supplies guidelines for employing photography in a research design, as well as a question-based research framework and tips for photographing information phenomena.
This study examines how video conferencing is living up to its potential as a substitute for face-to-face communication among remote professionals. We interviewed mobile knowledge workers to better understand how video conferencing is used in professional settings. The laws of media provided our theoretical framework. We found that video conferencing enhances the face; retrieves gesture and setting; obsolesces telephone and face-to-face communication, although imperfectly; and reverses into facelessness when sights and sounds from the background become distracting. The telephone may become more obsolete when problems like low bandwidth are resolved. Professionals would benefit from conferencing on devices on which their faces appear larger, and distracting background is less visible. Novel, in this work, are the consequences of video conferencing working too well.
The knowledge workforce is changing: global economic factors, increasing professional specialization, and rapid technological advancements mean that more individuals than ever can be found working in independent, modular, and mobile arrangements. Little is known about professional information practices or actions outside of traditional, centralized offices; however, the dynamic, unconventional, and less stable mobile work context diverges substantially from this model, and presents significant challenges and opportunities for the accomplishing of work tasks. This article identifies 5 main information practices geared toward mobilizing work, based on in‐depth interviews with 31 mobile knowledge workers (MKWs). It then uses these 5 practices as starting points for beginning to delineate the context of mobile knowledge work. We find that the information practices and information contexts of MKWs are mutually constitutive: challenges and opportunities of their work arrangements are what enable the development of practices that continually (re)construct productive spatial, temporal, social, and material contexts for work. This article contributes to an empirical understanding of the information practices of an increasingly visible yet understudied population, and to a theoretical understanding of the contemporary mobile knowledge work information context.
This article introduces the guided tour as an appropriate research technique for studying situated and embodied information. The guided tour hybridizes aspects of observation and interviews, and involves a researcher's relatively shortened, nonspontaneous entry into a field site. During a guided tour, a participant leads the researcher through the location (often one that is personally meaningful for him or her) while describing and explaining its features, thinkingaloud the ideas, thoughts, and feelings to which it gives rise, and responding to the researcher's gentle inquiries. This article begins with a sustained background to the technique and descriptive breakdown of it in terms of other, related methods and techniques. It then reviews prior use of the guided tour in the information and library science field, where it is not prevalent per se, but has been used on an ongoing basis for at least three decades. It delineates practical steps and tips for carrying out a guided tour as well as strengths and limitations of the technique for studying situated, embodied information and information phenomena in general. The article concludes by briefly discussing researchers as embodied research instruments and the role of reflexivity in qualitative research.
The present study contributes to the development of integrated models for information behavior and practices at the domain-specific level. To this end, the model for everyday information practices proposed by Savolainen in 2008 is enhanced by integrating the element of information creating, based on Thomson's recent 2018 study. The integration resulted in the expanded model for everyday information practices. Using conceptual analysis, the above model was examined in light of conventional (positivist and post-positivist) and interpretive (social constructivist) criteria for theory assessment. The findings suggest that the integrated model meets best the interpretive criteria such as meaningfulness and understandability, mutuality of concepts and descriptive logic, empirical verifiability, and usefulness. In contrast, theoretical potential of the model is fairly limited when weighed against the conventional criteria, such as generalization and prediction. Overall, the findings suggest that, in its current form, the expanded model cannot be regarded as a "genuine theory" of everyday information practices. However, the model does incorporate many of the qualities characteristic of social scientific theories, and thus exhibits considerable theoretical potential. This is even more so if the interpretive, naturalistic basis of the data in which the expanded model is based is considered.
Recent work suggests that technological devices and their use cannot be understood in isolation, and must be viewed as part of an artifact ecology. With the proliferation of information and communication technologies (ICTs), studying artifact ecologies is essential in order to design new technologies with effective affordances. This paper extends the discourse on artifact ecologies by examining how such ecologies are constructed in the context of mobile knowledge work, as sociotechnical arrangements that consist of technological, contextual, and interpretive layers. Findings highlight the diversity of ICTs that are adopted to support mobile work practices, and effects of individual preferences and contextual factors (norms of collaboration, spatial mobility, and organizational constraints).
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