Using Debates to Teach Information Ethics

This experience report details the use of debates in a course on Information Ethics. Formal debates have been used in academia for centuries and create an environment in which students must think critically, communicate well and, above all, synthesize and evaluate the relevant classroom material. They also provide a break from the standard lecture-based learning environment. This report provides advice and suggestions to other faculty faced with teaching a course of this type, based on ten years of experience using debates as a teaching tool in an Information Ethics course

Global South scholars are missing from European and US journals. What can be done about it

Studies have shown that scholars in the global South are under represented in top international peer-reviewed social and medical sciences journals. The global South refers to African, Asian, Latin American, and Middle Eastern countries who are also members of the Group of 77. The intergovernmental organisation of mainly developing countries is used to identify countries in the South. The global North includes the Group of 8 and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. Our own analysis of gender and politics journals shows scholars in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East are missing from leading journals published in the US and Europe. We found that between 2008 and 2017 less than 3% of 947 full length articles in four gender and politics journals published in the global North were written by scholars based in the global South. Researchers based in the global North have a wider global reach and are generally judged to be at the forefront of knowledge production and dissemination. Meanwhile, South-based scholars are often not part of major debates and conversations in their field. This points to a severe imbalance in the production of new knowledge. But all countries in the South are not alike. We found that scholars at three universities in South Africa (Rhodes University, University of Cape Town, and the University of the Witwatersrand) published the most articles followed by researchers at four universities in India. Surprisingly, scholars from large countries such as Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Nigeria have not published articles in these journals

Developing a Predictive Model of Software Piracy Behavior: An Empirical Study

There is, perhaps, no more visible financial dilemma in the software industry today than that of software piracy. In this paper, we detail the development and empirical validation of a predictive model of software piracy behavior by computer-using professionals. The model was developed from the results of prior research in software piracy and the reference disciplines of the theory of planned behavior, expected utility theory and deterrence theory. The study utilized two methods to analyze the piracy decision. A survey was used to test the entire model and an experiment was undertaken to test several relationships between the included variables. The results indicate that the identified factors have a significant impact on the decision to pirate software and that the model is a useful tool in further understanding this behavior. The results add to a growing stream of MIS research into piracy behavior and have significant implications for organizations and industry groups aiming to reduce piracy behavior

Selection and Use of MySQL in a Database Management Course

This paper presents a case study of the selection and use of a software package for an introductory Database Management course in a typical MIS program. Teachers of Database Management face the challenge of providing their students with meaningful experiences with actual database software. The software selected for use in a database course can generally be categorized as one of three types: commercial enterprise software, such as Oracle or IBM’s DB2; personal database software, such as Microsoft Access; or software available for no cost (including open source software), such as PostgreSQL or MySQL. The advantages and disadvantages of each of these types of software are discussed, as is the selection process utilized in this specific case. The teaching approach examined in detail is the use of MySQL on a Linux platform to allow students to create, modify, populate, and query databases. This approach is shown to have several advantages: the software is available at no cost to the students or the institution; it is configurable and manageable by the course instructor without the need to consult specialized database professionals; it provides an enterprise database experience using Structured Query Language (SQL); and using the Internet, it is available to students from remote computers

Students of Government and Political Science in the Peace Corps

This a report about the importance and usefulness of political science majors to the Peace Corps. It is written from the point of view of a Mr. Bradford, presently completing his degree in political science at Swarthmore College, [who] prepared this report during the past summer when he worked as a summer staff intern at Peace Corps/Washington. -- [p.1] He writes on their usefulness in roles in community development, as teachers, in cooperatives, and in future endeavors

An X-ray Survey of Galaxies in Pairs

Results are reported from the first survey of X-ray emission from galaxies in pairs. The sample consists of fifty-two pairs of galaxies from the Catalog of Paired Galaxies Karachentsev (1972) whose coordinates overlap ROSAT Position Sensitive Proportional Counter pointed observations. The mean observed log l_x for early-type pairs is 41.35 +/-0.21 while the mean log l_x predicted using the l_x-l_b relationship for isolated early-type galaxies is 42.10 +/-0.19. With 95% confidence, the galaxies in pairs are underluminous in the X-ray, compared to isolated galaxies, for the same l_b. A significant fraction of the mixed pair sample also appear similarly underluminous. A spatial analysis shows that the X-ray emission from pairs of both types typically has an extent of ~10 - 50 kpc, much smaller than group intergalactic medium and thus likely originates from the galaxies. CPG 564, the most X-ray luminous early-type pair, 4.7x10^42 ergs/sec, is an exception. The extent of it's X-ray emission, >169 kpc, and HWHM, ~80 kpc, is comparable to that expected from an intergalactic medium. The sample shows only a weak correlation, ~81% confidence, between l_x and l_b, presumably due to variations in gas content within the galaxies. No correlation between l_x and the pair velocity difference, separation, or far-infrared luminosity is found though the detection rate is low, 22%.Comment: 40 pages, 6 jpg figures, ApJ (in press

Development assistance and the lasting legacies of rebellion in Burundi and Rwanda

Abstract: Rwanda and Burundi have both emerged from civil wars over the past 20 years and foreign donors have provided significant contributions to post-conflict reconstruction and development in the two countries. Yet, although Rwanda and Burundi share several important characteristics, their post-conflict social, political and economic trajectories have been different. This article argues that the nature of the ruling parties in Rwanda and Burundi is key to understanding the countries’ relationships with donors. Rather than seeing aid as an exogenous factor, causing particular development outcomes, it shows how local party elites exert considerable agency over the aid relationship. This agency is influenced by a number of different local contextual factors, including how the parties were established, how they evolved and the ways in which their civil wars ended. Thus, the article provides an analysis of how local context matters in understanding donor–recipient aid relationships, and how the ruling party in Rwanda (the RPF) and in Burundi (the CNDD–FDD) emerged from their respective conflicts with different relationships with international donors

Re-Analysis of Plutonium in Autopsy Tissue : A Case/Control Examination of Nuclear Weapons Sites and Civilian Lung Burden

This research uses advanced statistical techniques to re-analyse the plutonium burden in lung tissue data from “Plutonium in Autopsy Tissue: A Revision and Updating of Data Reported in LA-4875” by McInroy et al. (1979).1 The use of a general linear model has produced new preliminary findings whose potential was not apparent in the findings of the earlier work. Regions surveyed included Los Alamos National Laboratory (NM), Nevada Test Site (NV), Rocky Flats Plant (CO), and Savannah River Site (SC). This model specified a gamma distribution and linked an exponential function to the dependent variable, plutonium burden in lung, controlling for age, gender, year at death, and location near or downwind from a nuclear weapons facility (or not). Communities downwind of all nuclear weapons facilities showed a significantly higher plutonium lung burden than control communities. When aggregated, communities close to or downwind from nuclear weapons facilities (cases) experienced potentially as much as 5.8 times the average plutonium lung burden as communities distant from those facilities (controls), all other variables being controlled for. Cases outnumbered controls by 468 to 212, a factor of 2.2. Women showed a 38% higher overall plutonium lung burden than men across the study span of 1959 to 1976, but this could be partly due to the smaller proportion of women in the study, and the fact that case group membership and pre-test ban death years dominate the female subgroup to a greater extent than the male. Both the 5.8 case/control differential and the 38% differential are highly significant at \u3c0.0001 and 0.0018, respectively. Due to gaps in the data, the absolute values of these factors are less precise than desired, but their high probabilities indicate that the true differences between the case/control and male/female subgroups are extremely unlikely to be insignificant. Although communities distant from weapons facilities bore distinctly lower impacts from airborne plutonium exposure, all Americans were at risk for inhaling plutonium. Compared with communities close to weapons testing field laboratories, communities close to weapons manufacturing facilities experienced at least as great a risk of exposure to airborne plutonium. After 1967, the beneficial effect of the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty is visible in the lung statistics, as the yearly coefficients fall from high double digits to the low single digits, and remain there through 1976. Of 901 subjects, 680 lung samples were used in this analysis. Of those, 199 samples (100 cases, 99 controls) failed to produce counts detectable by the alpha spectrometry equipment of the time. The true values of these observations fell between 0.00 and 0.017 decays/min, and were recoded to 0.0035. This document contains two supplementary files, a Map of Autopsies and Weapons Sites and Flowchart - Denominator Derivation of Analysis Dataset Plutonium in Autopsy Tissue Data Re-Analysis . This research was completed money allocated during Round 5 of the Citizens’ Monitoring and Technical Assessment Fund (MTA Fund). Clark University was named conservator of these works. If you have any questions or concerns please contact us at [email protected]://commons.clarku.edu/carolinapeace/1000/thumbnail.jp