Media Literacy: An Alternative to Censorship

Media literacy education has come a long way since the 1970s, when the first "critical thinking" courses were introduced in a few American schools. Most educators today understand that with the revolutionary changes in communication that have occurred in the last half-century, media literacy has become as essential a skill as the ability to read the printed word. Equally important, media literacy education can relieve the pressures for censorship that have, over the last decade, distorted the political process, threatened First Amendment values, and distracted policymakers from truly effective approaches to widely shared concerns about the mass media's influence on youth

Free Expression in Arts Funding

The result of almost two years of research, this report surveys free expression policies among state and local arts agencies, including procedures for anticipating and handling controversy. Its purpose is to provide the arts community, as well as others interested in censorship or cultural policy, with solid research that will enable grant-making agencies to take a principled stand on artistic freedom without alienating their audiences or losing their funding. The report includes candid interviews with agency officials regarding funding disputes, political accountability, and most important, ways of reaching out to communities and opening up dialogue about challenging or provocative art. The report also contains extensive background on the "funding wars" of the 1990s, illustrations, and two appendices summarizing free expression statements and policies among all state arts agencies and a random sample of local agencies.As the Executive Summary points out, despite America's recent history of attacks on controversial art, artistic freedom in the context of public funding remains a critical issue. The ability to make challenging art that can explore all facets of the human condition, including unpleasant ones, is essential to a vibrant culture and a healthy democracy. Neither private philanthropy nor the mass media conglomerates that dominate commercial entertainment can be counted upon to support the give-and-take of diverse viewpoints, reflected through literature, theater, music, film, and other visual art, or to provide visibility for the multi-layered, varied, and inventive cultures of America

Internet Filters: A Public Policy Report (Second edition; fully revised and updated)

No sooner was the Internet upon us than anxiety arose over the ease of accessing pornography and other controversial content. In response, entrepreneurs soon developed filtering products. By the end of the decade, a new industry had emerged to create and market Internet filters....Yet filters were highly imprecise from the beginning. The sheer size of the Internet meant that identifying potentially offensive content had to be done mechanically, by matching "key" words and phrases; hence, the blocking of Web sites for "Middlesex County," or words such as "magna cum laude". Internet filters are crude and error-prone because they categorize expression without regard to its context, meaning, and value. Yet these sweeping censorship tools are now widely used in companies, homes, schools, and libraries. Internet filters remain a pressing public policy issue to all those concerned about free expression, education, culture, and democracy. This fully revised and updated report surveys tests and studies of Internet filtering products from the mid-1990s through 2006. It provides an essential resource for the ongoing debate

The Role of Meta-Cognitive Experiences in Reason-Based Choices For the Self Vs. Others

The Role of Meta-cognitive Experiences in Reason-based Choices for the Self vs. OthersHyejeung Cho, University of MichiganChristina Brown, University of MichiganOur study extends prior research on the role of meta-cognitive experiences in reason-based choices by exploring the differential role of information content vs. experiential information in the context of choices for the self vs. others. Our preliminary findings indicate that people high in Need for Cognition (NFC) rely on their subjective experiences of generating a few vs. many reasons in making their own choice, but not in making a prediction of others' choices. In contrast, people low in NFC rely on their experiences of reason generation in making a prediction of others' choices, but not in making their own choice. [to cite]

Transcription restores DNA repair to heterochromatin, determining regional mutation rates in cancer genomes

Somatic mutations in cancer are more frequent in heterochromatic and late-replicating regions of the genome. We report that regional disparities in mutation density are virtually abolished within transcriptionally silent genomic regions of cutaneous squamous cell carcinomas (cSCCs) arising in an XPC(-/-) background. XPC(-/-) cells lack global genome nucleotide excision repair (GG-NER), thus establishing differential access of DNA repair machinery within chromatin-rich regions of the genome as the primary cause for the regional disparity. Strikingly, we find that increasing levels of transcription reduce mutation prevalence on both strands of gene bodies embedded within H3K9me3-dense regions, and only to those levels observed in H3K9me3-sparse regions, also in an XPC-dependent manner. Therefore, transcription appears to reduce mutation prevalence specifically by relieving the constraints imposed by chromatin structure on DNA repair. We model this relationship among transcription, chromatin state, and DNA repair, revealing a new, personalized determinant of cancer risk

The Out-of-Box Experience of LEGO’s Hidden Side: Augmented Reality (AR)

Out-of-box experience (OOBE) is a method that assesses the first impression of a product and includes the time from when a product is first purchased to unboxing, to setup and usage. A positive OOBE can be facilitated with logical instructions for the end user with the goal of creating a product that is easy to use. Negative first experiences can lead to user frustration and never wanting to use the product again. This study will report on the OOBE of the LEGO® Hidden Side Universe. This LEGO® set is unique because of the augmented reality (AR) game associated with it. AR is a technology that shows digital information over the user’s physical environment to enhance the user’s experience using a device like a smartphone. The interactive game lets users fight off virtual ghosts while interacting with the physical set of LEGOS. This project will discuss the overall experience of unpacking, setting up/configuring, and first use of this LEGO® AR application and suggest improvements in order to further improve this experience

Phonological Facilitation of Object Naming in Agrammatic and Logopenic Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA): Evidence for a Phonological Processing Deficit

Naming is a pervasive deficit in primary progressive aphasia. However, the source of such deficits across PPA variants is little understood. In this study, individuals with agrammatic (PPA-G) and logopenic (PPA-L) PPA, along with age-matched controls, performed a picture-word interference task to test for online phonological processing deficits during naming. All groups exhibited phonological facilitation (PF) effects, i.e., speeded picture naming in the presence of phonologically-related words. However, the PPA participants exhibited abnormally large PF effects that also were protracted, compared to the control group. These results suggest that impaired phonological processing may contribute to anomia in PPA-G and PPA-L

Hydrogen-discriminating nanocrystalline doped-tin-oxide room-temperature microsensor

Highly hydrogen (H-2)-selective [relative to carbon monoxide (CO)] sensor, operating at room temperature, has been fabricated using the micronanointegration approach involving the deposition of the nanocrystalline indium oxide (In2O3)-doped tin oxide (SnO2) thin film on microelectromechanical systems device. The present microsensor exhibits high room-temperature sensitivity towards H-2 (S=12 700); however, it is insensitive to CO at room temperature. In view of the different gas selectivity mechanisms proposed in the literature, it is deduced that the In2O3 doping, the presence of InSn4 phase, the low operating temperature (room temperature), the mesostructure, the small sizes of H-2 and H2O molecules, the bulky intermediate and final reaction products for CO, and the electrode placement at the bottom are the critical parameters, which significantly contribute to the high room-temperature H-2 selectivity of the present microsensor over CO. The constitutive equation for the gas sensitivity of the semiconductor oxide thin-film sensor, proposed recently by the authors, has been modified to qualitatively explain the observed H-2 selectivity behavior