1,812,460 research outputs found

    Transformation of the performing arts councils

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    Amounts served and consumed of school lunch differed by gender in Japanese elementary schools

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    School lunches serve to improve nutritional status and to promote the health of children. The purpose of this study was to investigate the portion sizes of school lunches served and consumed in Japanese elementary schools. In addition, gender difference in servings and consumption were also studied. A cross-sectional study was undertaken between October 2007 and February 2008 in schools located in Tokyo and Okayama, Japan. A total of 192 fifth-grade children attending four elementary schools participated in this study. Weighed plate waste methods and observation were used to collect dietary data for two non-consecutive days. The proportion of children who chose staple foods along with main dishes and/or side dishes for at least one day was higher in boys than in girls (respectively, for staple food: 42.1% vs. 9.3%, for main dish and/or side dish: 68.4% vs. 44.3%, P < 0.001). The ratio of initial amount served to amount offered was 0.88 ± 0.11 for boys and 0.84 ± 0.10 for girls (P < 0.05). The ratio of amount consumed to amount offered was 1.04 ± 0.19 for boys and 0.88 ± 0.12 for girls (P < 0.001). Weight was related to amount consumed both in boys (r = 0.222, P < 0.05) and in girls (r = 0.201, P < 0.05). These findings suggest that the nutritional standards of school lunch programs should take into account gender differences. Clearly, boys were more likely to consume more than the initial amounts served due to their higher propensity to take second helpings. Boys feel few reservations about taking second helpings to adjust their total intake. However, school lunch plans should take into consideration girls' reluctance to do so, by serving appropriate initial portion sizes

    Technology, culture and citizenship in education for creative economy in Brazil: the case of the NAVE Project in Rio de Janeiro

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    The aim is to examine how the NAVE Project in Rio de Janeiro was able to develop and stimulate capacities for creative economy in its students, despite the socioeconomic and political crises Brazil and the state of Rio de Janeiro face. Based mainly in the theoretical work of Araya (2010), Venturelli (2000) and Hearn & Bridgett (2010) and following the methodological steps of Sécca& Souza (2009)with bibliographic and document research of NAVE Project in the city, we argue that the full-time activities carried out by NAVE intertwine technology, cultural activities and citizenship with the school life and encourage students to critically appropriate the main languages and techniques for creative economy. The conditions of possibility for this are, in this case, connected to the construction of partnerships between the government and the private sector, which can bring alternatives for funding activities in times of political and economic crises. However, as these partnerships face many difficulties to be constructed and maintained in many parts of the country, NAVE also develops low-cost and no-cost teaching activities which can be applied by professors in other public – and also private – schools in Brazil and develop transdisciplinarityamong the technical / scientific, cultural and business pillars of creative economy

    Culture, technology and the city

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    The 21st century has been described as the “century of cities”. By 2030, 70 per cent of the world’s population will live in cities, with the most rapid urbanization occurring in the developing world. This paper will draw up geographer Ed Soja’s concept of the “spatial turn” in social theory to consider how the culture of cities can act as a catalyst to innovation and the development of new technologies. In doing so, the paper will develop a three-layered approach to culture as: the arts; the way of life of people and communities; and the embedded structure underpinning socio-economic relations. It will also consider technology at a three-layered element, including devices, practices and ‘logics’ of technology, or what the Greeks termed techne. The paper will consider recent approaches to urban cultural policy, including cluster development and creative cities, and suggest some alternatives, noting that a problem with current approaches is that they focus excessively upon production (clusters) or consumption (creative cities). It will also consider the development of digital creative industries such as games, and the strategies of different cities to develop an innovation culture

    Technology and Culture: Humans Inventing Themselves

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    Since the ancient Greek myth of Prometheus who stole fire from the god, Zeus, humans have been befuddled by their own cleverness. We make useful tools and devices which seem to free humans for higher pursuits only to discover that the unintended consequences demand that newer and even more clever devices be invented. Sooner or later we find out that the instruments of our technologies are shaping our destiny rather than the other way around. Throughout history this struggle has gone on till the present when the consequences of technological progress seem to many to be overwhelming. If culture is the cultivation of the best in mankind, a new kind of challenge faces us

    Technology and culture in Greek and Roman antiquity

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    The technological achievements of the Greeks and Romans continue to fascinate and excite admiration. But what was the place of technology in their cultures? Through five case-studies, this book sets ancient technical knowledge in its political, social and intellectual context. It explores the definition of the techne of medicine in classical Athens, the development of new military technology in Hellenistic times, the self-image of technicians through funerary art in the early Roman Empire, the resolution of boundary disputes in the early second century AD, and the status of architecture and architects in late antiquity. Deploying a wide range of evidence, it reconstructs a dialectic picture of ancient technology, where several ancient points of view are described and analyzed, and their interaction examined. Dr Cuomo argues for the centrality of technology to the ancient world-picture, and for its extraordinarily rich political, social, economic and religious significance. • Offers five in-depth, varied case-studies, each with a slightly different methodological focus • Covers a broad period from classical Athens to late antiquity and a wide range of disciplines • Only book of its kind to make extensive use of non-textual material and of the newest historiographical approaches from both classics and the history of science and technology Contents Introduction; 1. The definition of techne in classical Athens; 2. The Hellenistic military revolution; 3. Death and the craftsman; 4. Boundary disputes in the Roman Empire; 5. Architects of late antiquity; Epilogue

    Towards the integration of culture into the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology

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    Educational technology is increasingly used in multicultural contexts and across national cultures. Educational technology users with different national and professional backgrounds may, however, exhibit different attitudes towards technology. Previous research provides isolated evidence of the relationship between learning technology acceptance and culture, and so an overall picture is missing. Therefore, this study attempts to integrate culture (sensu Hofstede, 2001) into an established technology acceptance model (ie. the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology, UTAUT, Venkatesh, Morris, Davis & Davis, 2003). Examining a large sample (N = 2866) of learning technology users from Germany and Romania by means of questionnaire survey, we investigate the differences in culture and technology acceptance between sample subgroups. The collected data reveal the presence of cultural differences both between countries and between professions. In line with previous research, these differences are associated with dissimilar acceptance profiles, ie. different values of acceptance variables and of path coefficients between them. Based on the findings, this study makes headway in cross-cultural research by proposing an extended model of UTAUT – one which integrates three of Hofstede’s culture dimensions. As a practical implication, national and professional culture may shape computer-based learning environments

    INTEGRATING CULTURE, SONG LYRICS AND TECHNOLOGY IN TRANSLATIONCLASS

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    Translation class which is dominated by writing activity can be dull and boring for university students if it is not well organized. Some teaching techniques are introduced to minimize the dullness of lecture. One of them is using students’ interest, that is using song lyrics rather than article taken from text book as the source text. This teaching technique can be the best alternative since almost all students like music and sometimes they do not know the meaning of the song they sing or if it is Indonesian song, they can not find the best equivalent in English. This teaching technique can be considered as personal learning because the students can choose any song lyrics they like. By using song lyrics students will find the excitement and enthusiasm while they doing the tasks which they cannot find when they are translating articles, especially when they are asked to do the task using their own laptops. Nowadays, less students bring dictionary in the class because almost all of them have dictionary programs or application such as kamus.net, indotranslate.com and googletranslate in their laptops or smartphones. Some of the programs and application can translate not only a word, but phrases and even sentences into the target language. This effortless way of translating has missed one important point in doing translation, that is culture. Culture in this discussion should be seen in a broad sense. Culture is not only understood as the advanced intellectual development of mankind as reflected in the arts, but it refers to all socially conditioned aspects of human life (cf. Snell-Hornby, 1988: Hymes, 1964). With technology, students can easily type the words, phrases and sentences into the search box in their dictionary program or application but the outcome is sometimes awkward and unsuitable to the target language. The outcome of translating process should be natural and suitable to the target language as Nida and Taber (1969) stated that translating consists of reproducing in the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the source language message, first in terms of meaning and secondly in terms of style. A translation process should involve culture to find the best meaning and style in the target language so that the text can be as natural as it can be. Moreover, Will in Noss (1982: 3) stated that translation is a transfer process which aims at the transformation of a written source language text into an optimally equivalent target language text, and which requires the syntactic, the semantic and the pragmatic understanding and analytical processing of the source language. It is clearly stated that culture takes important role in translating process and students need to learn to involve culture in the translation process in interesting and exciting ways. In this teaching technique, students are given English song lyrics and they are asked to translate them in Indonesian and they are also given Indonesian song lyrics and they are asked to translate them into English

    The key role of organizational culture in a multi-system view of technology-driven change.

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    Organizations undergoing technology-driven change must understand that technology is only one of several inter-related components which drive organizational performance. A multi-system perspective of organizations highlights the interdependencies between an organization's technology, structure and culture and how these affect organizational processes and behaviors. Successful technological innovations require that either the technology be designed to fit the organization's current structure and culture or that the organizational structure and culture be reshaped to fit the demands of the new technology. Thus, the desired effects of new technology are most often realized in organizations able to implement the additional changes that are required to maintain overall fit. To illustrate these issues, this paper presents a case study based on a technology-driven change in a Turkish financial organization. Special attention is given to the role of organizational culture, which is often cited as the most critical factor in successful technology assimilationOrganizational culture; Organizational strategy; Technology-driven change; Technology assimilation;

    Technics, individuation and tertiary memory: Bernard Stiegler's challenge to media theory

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    Media studies as a field has traditionally been wary of the question of technology. Discussion of technology has often been restricted to relatively sterile debates about technological determinism. In recent times there has been renewed interest, however, in the technological dimension of media. In part this is doubtless due to rapid changes in media technology, such as the rise of the internet and the digital convergence of media technologies. But there are also an increasing number of writers who seem to believe that media theory, and more widely social science and the humanities, needs to rethink the question of technology and its relationship to society, culture and cultural production. Andrew Feenberg has characterized the two most dominant positions as, on the one hand, the social constructivist or 'technology studies' approach to technology, and, on the other, 'substantivist' theories of technology. The social constructivist approach, aims to counter technological determinism by showing how the development of technology is shaped not by technical and scientific progress but by contingent social, cultural and economic forces. The limitation of this view, however, is that it tends to see technology as no different from any other social process and it may lose the ability to distinguish between the technical object and any other social formation or cultural artefact. Doubtless constructivism would like to see technology as a subset of the cultural artefact and not vice versa, therefore explaining technology in terms of culture and society. But there are powerful arguments for arguing something like the opposite: in other words for understanding culture and society in terms of or as technical objects. In recent years this argument has been put most forcefully by the French philosopher Bernard Stiegler and it is to his work and its implications for media theory that this essay is dedicated. In particular I will show how Stiegler might defend his ideas around technics from the charge of technological determinism. Firstly, technics is not understood in the narrow sense of techno-scientific technology but in the wider sense of all the ways in which the human is exteriorised into artefacts or organized inorganic matter. Technics in this sense is therefore inseparable from culture and society and it makes no sense either to talk of technics determining culture and society or vice versa. Culture and society are not constituted by technics as if by a cause but rather constituted through it. Secondly, a technics in Stiegler's sense does not represent scientific progress or a deterministic evolution; rather, however strange this may seem, technics is a kind of pure accidentality or contingency. For Stiegler it is because of the exteriorisation of the human into artefacts or inorganic organized matter that culture and society constitute themselves contingently. Stiegler's work therefore offers a way for us to rethink the relationship between culture and technology in ways which can productively reconfigure the concerns of critical theory
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