Review of Education as Social Action: Knowledge, Identity and Power (Book Review)

Review of a collaboration between United Nations Research Institute for Social development (UNRISD) and the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University Sweden. Ashok Swain discusses ‘Knowledge, Identity and Power’. He links education and power through the control of knowledge. Knowledge he argues can be used despotically through a ‘master discourse’ designed to impose national identity; or knowledge is owned by people whose critical skills have been sharpened

Increasing the power of the verifier in Quantum Zero Knowledge

In quantum zero knowledge, the assumption was made that the verifier is only using unitary operations. Under this assumption, many nice properties have been shown about quantum zero knowledge, including the fact that Honest-Verifier Quantum Statistical Zero Knowledge (HVQSZK) is equal to Cheating-Verifier Quantum Statistical Zero Knowledge (QSZK) (see [Wat02,Wat06]). In this paper, we study what happens when we allow an honest verifier to flip some coins in addition to using unitary operations. Flipping a coin is a non-unitary operation but doesn't seem at first to enhance the cheating possibilities of the verifier since a classical honest verifier can flip coins. In this setting, we show an unexpected result: any classical Interactive Proof has an Honest-Verifier Quantum Statistical Zero Knowledge proof with coins. Note that in the classical case, honest verifier SZK is no more powerful than SZK and hence it is not believed to contain even NP. On the other hand, in the case of cheating verifiers, we show that Quantum Statistical Zero Knowledge where the verifier applies any non-unitary operation is equal to Quantum Zero-Knowledge where the verifier uses only unitaries. One can think of our results in two complementary ways. If we would like to use the honest verifier model as a means to study the general model by taking advantage of their equivalence, then it is imperative to use the unitary definition without coins, since with the general one this equivalence is most probably not true. On the other hand, if we would like to use quantum zero knowledge protocols in a cryptographic scenario where the honest-but-curious model is sufficient, then adding the unitary constraint severely decreases the power of quantum zero knowledge protocols.Comment: 17 pages, 0 figures, to appear in FSTTCS'0

Cross Layer Aware Adaptive MAC based on Knowledge Based Reasoning for Cognitive Radio Computer Networks

In this paper we are proposing a new concept in MAC layer protocol design for Cognitive radio by combining information held by physical layer and MAC layer with analytical engine based on knowledge based reasoning approach. In the proposed system a cross layer information regarding signal to interference and noise ratio (SINR) and received power are analyzed with help of knowledge based reasoning system to determine minimum power to transmit and size of contention window, to minimize backoff, collision, save power and drop packets. The performance analysis of the proposed protocol indicates improvement in power saving, lowering backoff and significant decrease in number of drop packets. The simulation environment was implement using OMNET++ discrete simulation tool with Mobilty framework and MiXiM simulation library.Comment: 8 page

The use of the experimentally deduced Brunt-Vaisala frequency and turbulent velocity fluctuations to estimate the eddy diffusion coefficient

The determination of the turbulent energy dissipation rate or the eddy diffusion coefficient from radar observations can be done through the turbulence refractive index structure constant, deduced from calibrated echo power measurements, or through the turbulent velocity fluctuations, deduced from the echo spectrum width. Besides the radar parameters, power and spectrum width, the first approach needs knowledge of profiles of temperature and electron density in the mesosphere and the fraction of the radar volume filled with turbulence. The latter approach needs knowledge of the temperature profile, namely, the Brunt-Vaisala frequency. The use of this latter approach is demonstrated

Power-knowledge and critique in Australian legal education : 1987-2003

While the word 'critique' appeared frequently in Australian legal education texts between 1987 and 2003, the meaning and the emphasis accorded critique varied widely. Michel Foucault's ideas about the close relationship between knowledge and power provide a theoretical framework within which this inconsistency of meaning and emphasis can be described, analysed and explained. Rather than monolithic, the discipline of legal education was by 2003 a dynamic nexus of distinct and competing discourses: doctrinalism, vocationalism, corporatism, liberalism, pedagogicalism and radicalism. Each of these six discourses was simultaneously a form of knowledge and an expression of disciplinary power within the law school. As a form of knowledge, each discourse accorded critique a different meaning and a different emphasis as a consequence of a range of historical, social and political contingencies. As an expression of power, each discourse was an attempt to achieve a set of objectives including the universalisation of a particular approach to the teaching of law and the enhancement of the status of a particular role within the law school. Critique, in a variety of forms, was a strategy employed by each discourse in order to achieve these objectives and to dominate and displace competing discourses

Walking across Wikipedia: a scale-free network model of semantic memory retrieval.

Semantic knowledge has been investigated using both online and offline methods. One common online method is category recall, in which members of a semantic category like "animals" are retrieved in a given period of time. The order, timing, and number of retrievals are used as assays of semantic memory processes. One common offline method is corpus analysis, in which the structure of semantic knowledge is extracted from texts using co-occurrence or encyclopedic methods. Online measures of semantic processing, as well as offline measures of semantic structure, have yielded data resembling inverse power law distributions. The aim of the present study is to investigate whether these patterns in data might be related. A semantic network model of animal knowledge is formulated on the basis of Wikipedia pages and their overlap in word probability distributions. The network is scale-free, in that node degree is related to node frequency as an inverse power law. A random walk over this network is shown to simulate a number of results from a category recall experiment, including power law-like distributions of inter-response intervals. Results are discussed in terms of theories of semantic structure and processing

The instabilities of expertise: remaking knowledge, power and politics in unsettled times

In this article, we explore the implications of contemporary populist challenges to established forms of expertise in the UK, USA and elsewhere. Drawing on a Foucauldian conception of knowledge and power as always articulated, we argue for a conjunctural approach to understanding the ways in which formations of expertise become stabilized and de-stabilized, vulnerable to challenge and contestation. We trace the role of economic expertise in defining the limits of political and policy “realism” before and after the crash of 2007–8. We then consider the rise of nationalist-populist political mobilizations which challenged existing “expertise” in the name of popular wisdom. In the context of de-stabilized forms of expertise, we ask about emergent attempts at reconfiguring knowledge, power and politics in different ways

The use of indigenous knowledge in development: problems and challenges

The use of indigenous knowledge has been seen by many as an alternative way of promoting development in poor rural communities in many parts of the world. By reviewing much of the recent work on indigenous knowledge, the paper suggests that a number of problems and tensions has resulted in indigenous knowledge not being as useful as hoped for or supposed. These include problems emanating from a focus on the (arte)factual; binary tensions between western science and indigenous knowledge systems; the problem of differentiation and power relations; the romanticization of indigenous knowledge; and the all too frequent decontextualization of indigenous knowledge