VIRTUALLY PRESENT: AN ETHNOGRAPHY OF COMMUNICATION LOOK AT THE SHAPING OF SOCIAL RULES IN SMALL GROUP INTERACTIONS MEDIATED BY MOBILE DEVICES

In this study I describe the communication rules that inform how particular bar patrons use mobile device technologies to shape particular types of small groups. Mobile devices have increasing been naturalized into the communicative landscape and the effects of this need to be explored. I focus on a college bar, MVF, to answer the following research questions: (1) What are the sets of rules surrounding mobile device use in small groups at MVF during late afternoons and evenings? (2) What are meaning(s) users and other group members attribute to the use of mobile devices at MVF during late afternoons and evenings? (3) What particular type of small group does the use of mobile device technology enable and mediate? I argue that mobile device technologies enable and mediate the presence of three types of social groups, specifically, suspended groups,\u27 \u27procured groups,\u27 and \u27transitory groups.\u2

Practical Strategies for Integrating a Conversation Analyst in an Iterative Design Process

We present a case study of an iterative design process that includes a conversation analyst. We discuss potential benefits of conversation analysis for design, and we describe our strategies for integrating the conversation analyst in the design process. Since the analyst on our team had no previous exposure to design or engineering, and none of the other members of our team had any experience with conversation analysis, we needed to build a foundation for our interaction. One of our key strategies was to pair the conversation analyst with a designer in a highly interactive collaboration. Our tactics have been effective on our project, leading to valuable results that we believe we could not have obtained using another method. We hope that this paper can serve as a practical guide to those interested in establishing a productive and efficient working relationship between a conversation analyst and the other members of a design team.Comment: 11 page

Philosophy and the Apparatus of Disability

Abstract and Keywords Mainstream philosophers take for granted that disability is a prediscursive, transcultural, and transhistorical disadvantage, an objective human defect or characteristic that ought to be prevented, corrected, eliminated, or cured. That these assumptions are contestable, that it might be the case that disability is a historically and culturally specific, contingent social phenomenon, a complex apparatus of power, rather than a natural attribute or property that certain people possess, is not considered, let alone seriously entertained. This chapter draws on the insights of Michel Foucault to advance a historicist and relativist conception of disability as an apparatus (dispositif) of power and identify mechanisms of power within philosophy that produce the underrepresentation of disabled philosophers in the profession and the marginalization of philosophy of disability in the discipline. Keywords: disability, Michel Foucault, apparatus, historicist, relativist, underrepresentation of disabled philosopher

The Impact of a Multi-user Virtual Environment on Teacher Instructional Time, Voluntary Student Writing Practice, and Student Writing Achievement

Thesis (PhD) - Indiana University, School of Education, 2006Two major obstacles to using PBL methods in K-12 classrooms are the time it takes to design the rich learning environment and the time required for students to interact at their own pace with ill-structured problems. The focus of this study was to determine whether game-design design principles can be used to both compliment a digital PBL environment and improve student learning. Further, this study sought to determine whether such a design could allow teachers to act as a challenger of poorly developed knowledge constructs instead of as a font of directional and procedural knowledge for students To answer these questions a digital learning environment was designed that used embedded scaffolds, nested goals, clue trails, narrative context, and explicit rules to improve student writing. This unit was part of a larger multi-user virtual environment, but was designed to be a self-contained unit that leveraged advanced technologies to establish an immersive experience for learning writing skills. The unit was designed to be two-times per week for four weeks in total length which included student training on the active role of a reporter who investigated mysteries taking place in a virtual town. The learner then composed feature stories relating their understanding of the mystery. A comparison class was recruited and the teacher was observed teaching the same content and skill standards but through more didactic methods of instruction. The results of this study showed that the treatment condition had decreases in teacher time spent answering procedural and directional questions, increases in the amount of voluntary student writing activity, and improvements in standardized achievement scores on prompts that consisted of writing tasks similar to those that students participated in during the treatment. Students engaged fully with the learning environment although several tensions emerged. These included tensions between student perceptions of teacher rules versus system rules, student play versus completion of learning tasks, and whether they should learn through the system by reading versus being told what to do. Student disabilities were also encountered during the study which placed the system under a different kind of test than it was designed for, though it successfully engaged these students as well. A final tension arose in the result of the research methods themselves, bringing home the point that a need to capture data may interfere with the learner's experience, possibly reducing or improving the impact of the treatment itself

Annual Report 2019 - Institute of Ion Beam Physics and Materials Research

The Institute of Ion Beam Physics and Materials Research conducts materials research for future applications in, e.g., information technology. To this end, we make use of the various possibilities offered by our Ion Beam Center (IBC) for synthesis, modification, and analysis of thin films and nanostructures, as well as of the free-electron laser FELBE at HZDR for THz spectroscopy. The analyzed materials range from semiconductors and oxides to metals and magnetic materials. They are investigated with the goal to optimize their electronic, magnetic, optical as well as structural functionality. This research is embedded in the Helmholtz Association’s programme “From Matter to Materials and Life”. Seven publications from last year are highlighted in this Annual Report to illustrate the wide scientific spectrum of our institute. After the scientific evaluation in the framework of the Helmholtz Programme-Oriented Funding (POF) in 2018 we had some time to concentrate on science again before end of the year a few of us again had to prepare for the strategic evaluation which took place in January 2020, which finally was also successful for the Institute

Right-to-Choose Auctions: A Field Study of Water Markets in the Limari Valley of Chile

Field experiments were conducted with farmers in the Limarí Valley of Chile to test extant theory on right-to-choose auctions. Water volumes that differed by reservoir source and time of availability were offered for sale by the research team. The auctions were supplemented by protocols to elicit risk and time preferences of bidders. We find that the right-to-choose auctions raise significantly more revenue than the benchmark sequential auction. Risk attitudes explain a substantial amount of the difference in bidding between auction institutions, consonant with received theory. The auction bidding revealed distinct preferences for water types, which has implications for market re-design.auction design, field experiments,water market

Проблеми соціального варіювання мови в аспекті перекладу

There is little question that English is the most widely taught, read, and spoken language that the world has ever known. It may seem strange, on some moments' reflection, that the native language of a relatively small island nation could have developed and spread to this status. Its path was foreseen, however, by John Adams, who, in the late eighteenth century, made the following insightful prophesy: English will be the most respectable language in the world and the most universally read and spoken in the next century, if not before the close of this one. When you are citing the document, use the following link http://essuir.sumdu.edu.ua/handle/123456789/1647

Micro-combs: a novel generation of optical sources

The quest towards the integration of ultra-fast, high-precision optical clocks is reflected in the large number of high-impact papers on the topic published in the last few years. This interest has been catalysed by the impact that high-precision optical frequency combs (OFCs) have had on metrology and spectroscopy in the last decade [1–5]. OFCs are often referred to as optical rulers: their spectra consist of a precise sequence of discrete and equally-spaced spectral lines that represent precise marks in frequency. Their importance was recognised worldwide with the 2005 Nobel Prize being awarded to T.W. Hänsch and J. Hall for their breakthrough in OFC science [5]. They demonstrated that a coherent OFC source with a large spectrum – covering at least one octave – can be stabilised with a self-referenced approach, where the frequency and the phase do not vary and are completely determined by the source physical parameters. These fully stabilised OFCs solved the challenge of directly measuring optical frequencies and are now exploited as the most accurate time references available, ready to replace the current standard for time. Very recent advancements in the fabrication technology of optical micro-cavities [6] are contributing to the development of OFC sources. These efforts may open up the way to realise ultra-fast and stable optical clocks and pulsed sources with extremely high repetition-rates, in the form of compact and integrated devices. Indeed, the fabrication of high-quality factor (high-Q) micro-resonators, capable of dramatically amplifying the optical field, can be considered a photonics breakthrough that has boosted not only the scientific investigation of OFC sources [7–13] but also of optical sensors and compact light modulators [6,14]