2,115 research outputs found
Heeding Grammar and Language-games: Continuing Conversations with Wittgenstein and Roth
This paper continues a conversation about Wittgensteinâs picture of language and meaning and its potential applications for educational theorising. It takes the form of a response to Wolff-Michael Rothâs earlier paper âHeeding Wittgenstein on âunderstandingâ and âmeaningâ: A pragmatist and concrete human psychological approach in/for education,â in which Roth problematizes the use of the terms âunderstandingâ and âmeaningâ in education discourse and proposes their abandonment. Whilst we agree with Roth about a series of central points, at the same time we maintain that he has taken his argument in directions antithetical to our reading of Wittgensteinâs work. We offer four points of departure, exploring themes of: (i) appropriate questioning; (ii) eliminativism; (iii) language-games and grammar; and (iv) productivity, explanation, and a science of learning. We conclude by discussing ways consistent with Wittgensteinâs thought to go on in thinking about education
From Quadcopter to Submarine
The goal of this project was to create a quadcopter that is capable of going underwater and returning to the surface to take off again. This concept was created after speaking with a customer that had very specific user needs. The project included creating several different designs and doing a concept selection based on these user needs. After selecting a concept, a design was created and adjusted based on an engineering analysis. The parts were selected based on a budget that was assigned to the project and a prototype was created. The final prototype was capable of flight and was completely submergible, however; the static stability of the craft prohibited flight after returning to the surface of the water
Traumatic brain injury in later life increases risk for Parkinson disease
Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/111787/1/ana24396.pd
Our Space: Being a Responsible Citizen of the Digital World
Our Space is a set of curricular materials designed to encourage high school students to reflect on the ethical dimensions of their participation in new media environments. Through role-playing activities and reflective exercises, students are asked to consider the ethical responsibilities of other people, and whether and how they behave ethically themselves online. These issues are raised in relation to five core themes that are highly relevant online: identity, privacy, authorship and ownership, credibility, and participation.Our Space was co-developed by The Good Play Project and Project New Media Literacies (established at MIT and now housed at University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communications and Journalism). The Our Space collaboration grew out of a shared interest in fostering ethical thinking and conduct among young people when exercising new media skills
Wasm SpecTec: Engineering a Formal Language Standard
WebAssembly (Wasm) is a low-level bytecode language and virtual machine,
intended as a compilation target for a wide range of programming languages,
which is seeing increasing adoption across diverse ecosystems. As a young
technology, Wasm continues to evolve -- it reached version 2.0 last year and
another major update is expected soon.
For a new feature to be standardised in Wasm, four key artefacts must be
presented: a formal (mathematical) specification of the feature, an
accompanying prose pseudocode description, an implementation in the official
reference interpreter, and a suite of unit tests. This rigorous process helps
to avoid errors in the design and implementation of new Wasm features, and
Wasm's distinctive formal specification in particular has facilitated
machine-checked proofs of various correctness properties for the language.
However, manually crafting all of these artefacts requires expert knowledge
combined with repetitive and tedious labor, which is a burden on the language's
standardization process and authoring of the specification.
This paper presents Wasm SpecTec, a technology to express the formal
specification of Wasm through a domain-specific language. This DSL allows all
of Wasm's currently handwritten specification artefacts to be error-checked and
generated automatically from a single source of truth, and is designed to be
easy to write, read, compare, and review. We believe that Wasm SpecTec's
automation and meta-level error checking will significantly ease the current
burden of the language's specification authors. We demonstrate the current
capabilities of Wasm SpecTec by showcasing its proficiency in generating
various artefacts, and describe our work towards replacing the manually written
official Wasm specification document with specifications generated by Wasm
SpecTec.Comment: 5 pages, 7 figure
Improving attitudes towards adders (Vipera berus) and nature connectedness in primaryâage group children
Adder ( Vipera berus ) populations are experiencing declines in many countries, including the United Kingdom. Perceptions of adders and other venomous snakes are generally negative, making conservation of these species a challenge, and persecution remains within the top five perceived causes for adder declines in the United Kingdom. Improved understanding and attitudes are needed to support current conservation efforts. However, ensuring these positive attitudes continue into the future relies on addressing children's loss of connection to nature, and intervention at this early attitudeâformation stage can be crucial for traditionally âunpopularâ species, such as snakes. An adderâfocussed public engagement project, Adders are Amazing !, was carried out in Pembrokeshire, United Kingdom, in 2018â19 to improve understanding and attitudes towards adders using a blended scienceâcreative arts approach. The project included halfâday primary schoolâbased workshops to inform 111 pupils aged 8â11 about adder ecology, alongside creative art experiences. Questionnaires were used to measure the children's attitudes towards adders and their nature connectedness both before and after the workshops and these were compared with equivalent questionnaires carried out at a control school (57 pupils) where no workshops were conducted. The project demonstrated that engagement that blends both art and science can significantly change attitudes towards adders without any direct contact with the animals themselves; specifically, participants' scores for âWonderâ, âLearning Interestâ and âConservation Concernâ increased. The workshops also significantly increased measures of the children's general connectedness to nature (specifically, âEnjoyment of Natureâ and âResponsibility for Natureâ). We recommend conservation bodies focus on, and not shy away from, soâcalled âunpopularâ species, to promote understanding and acceptance of these species and support their conservation. Blended artsâscience initiatives, which can be easily adapted to suit a wide range of species and the artistic practices of local communities, are an effective way to achieve this. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog
Rfam: updates to the RNA families database
Rfam is a collection of RNA sequence families, represented by multiple sequence alignments and covariance models (CMs). The primary aim of Rfam is to annotate new members of known RNA families on nucleotide sequences, particularly complete genomes, using sensitive BLAST filters in combination with CMs. A minority of families with a very broad taxonomic range (e.g. tRNA and rRNA) provide the majority of the sequence annotations, whilst the majority of Rfam families (e.g. snoRNAs and miRNAs) have a limited taxonomic range and provide a limited number of annotations. Recent improvements to the website, methodologies and data used by Rfam are discussed. Rfam is freely available on the Web at http://rfam.sanger.ac.uk/and http://rfam.janelia.org/
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