An evaluation of location management procedures

This paper gives a comparative description of two scenarios for location management in a mobile telecommunications system. The first scenario uses fixed location and paging areas. Mobiles perform a location update as they enter a new location area. The second scenario uses a time-out based location updating scheme. Mobiles start their timer as they leave the paging area they are currently registered in. As the timer elapses, the mobile performs a location update. Both scenarios also differ in the way paging is performed. In the first scenario it is only necessary to page in the location area the mobile is currently registered in. In order to do this efficiently, the paging is done in a 2-step fashion: mobiles are paged first in the paging area in which they were registered in, and next in the entire location area they are registered in. In the second scenario the mobile is paged in multiple steps: first in the paging area it is registered in, next in a circle of paging areas surrounding that area, and so on, until the mobile is found, or the number of steps has reached a certain upper limit. Results comprise a quantitative and qualitative comparison of these scenarios, and guidelines for optimal applicatio

An investigation of the background, practice and intercultural communicative competence of part-time distance language tutors at the Open University

The Open University employs a large number of part-time teaching staff (Associate Lecturers, - AL ) who play a crucial role for student success acting at the interface between institution and students. They are the first and main contact for the students, give tutorials, mark assignments and provide individualized feedback. Despite their importance, relatively little scholarship is undertaken on the background and practice of these ALs which is what this study aimed to address. This scholarship project investigated the cohort of ALs in languages (n=292) to find out more about their backgrounds, tutorial practice, their intercultural experience and how this impacts on their teaching. The study used both quantitative (online survey) and qualitative (semi-structured interviews) approaches for data collection and an established framework for the exploration of intercultural communicative competence (Byram, 1997). The findings overall reflect the position of part-time staff in languages - the majority of colleagues are female (76%), they have extensive teaching experience (many more than 15 years), have usually worked for other institutions apart from the Open University, and are not born in the UK (63%). One important finding was that the overall majority of the ALs had first-hand experience of living across cultures but that they had very limited opportunities to bring their intercultural experiences into their teaching practice. This resulted in the development of recommendations that the AL role in the languages curriculum should be reconsidered and enhanced. These recommendations will be implemented during the renewal of the curriculum and demonstrate how a scholarship investigation can impact on teaching practice and curriculum development

A Puzzle About Responsibility A Problem And Its Contextualist Solution

This paper presents a puzzle about moral responsibility. The problem is based upon the indeterminacy of relevant reference classes as applied to action. After discussing and rejecting a very tempting response I propose moral contextualism instead, that is, the idea that the truth value of judgments of the form S is morally responsible for x depends on and varies with the context of the attributor who makes that judgment. Even if this reply should not do all the expected work it is a first step

Contrastivism Rather Than Something Else? On The Limits Of Epistemic Contrastivism

One of the most recent trends in epistemology is contrastivism. It can be characterized as the thesis that knowledge is a ternary relation between a subject, a proposition known and a contrast proposition. According to contrastivism, knowledge attributions have the form “S knows that p, rather than q”. In this paper I raise several problems for contrastivism: it lacks plausibility for many cases of knowledge, is too narrow concerning the third relatum, and overlooks a further relativity of the knowledge relation

Brains In Vats? Don\u27t Bother!

Contemporary discussions of epistemological skepticism – the view that we do not and cannot know anything about the world around us – focus very much on a certain kind of skeptical argument involving a skeptical scenario (a situation familiar from Descartes\u27 First Meditation). According to the argument, knowing some ordinary proposition about the world (one we usually take ourselves to know) requires knowing we are not in some such skeptical scenario SK; however, since we cannot know that we are not in SK we also cannot know any ordinary proposition. One of the most prominent skeptical scenarios is the brain-in-the-vat-scenario: An evil scientist has operated on an unsuspecting subject, removed the subject\u27s brain and put it in a vat where it is kept functioning and is connected to some computer which feeds the brain the illusion that everything is “normal”. This paper looks at one aspect of this scenario after another – envatment, disembodiment, weird cognitive processes, lack of the right kind of epistemic standing, and systematic deception. The conclusion is that none of these aspects (in isolation or in combination) is of any relevance for a would-be skeptical argument; the brain-in-the-vat-scenario is irrelevant to and useless for skeptical purposes. Given that related scenarios (e.g., involving evil demons) share the defects of the brain-in-the-vat-scenario, the skeptic should not put any hopes on Cartesian topoi

Nearly Solving the Problem of Nearly Convergent Knowledge

This is a reply to Chris Tweed's recent attempt to solve the problem of "nearly convergent knowledge" and thus defend a binary account of knowledge against a contrastivist alternative. Ingenuous as his proposal is, it still does not solve the problem

Reliabilism: Modal, Probabilistic Or Contextualist

This paper discusses two versions of reliabilism: modal and probabilistic reliabilism. Modal reliabilism faces the problem of the missing closeness metric for possible worlds while probalistic reliabilism faces the problem of the relevant reference class. Despite the severity of these problems, reliabilism is still very plausible (also for independent reasons). I propose to stick with reliabilism, propose a contextualist (or, alternatively, harmlessly relativist) solution to the above problems and suggest that probabilistic reliabilism has the advantage over modal reliabilism