The Problem of Women and Mathematics

Reviews relevant research to determine the reasons for the limited participation of women in advanced mathematics and related fields. Explores options for improving women's mathematics skills and increasing their participation in related fields

Do we need permission to play in public? The design of participation for social play video games at play parties and ‘alternative’ games festivals

Play is a fundamental to being Human. It helps to make sense of the self, to learn, to be creative and to relax. The advent of video games challenged traditional notions of play, introducing a single player experience to what had primarily been a communal social activity. As technology has developed, communal play has found both online and real-world spaces within video games. Online streaming, multiplayer games and built-in spectator modes within games underpin online communal play experiences, whilst ‘alternative’ games festivals, play parties and electronic sports, provide real world spaces for people to meet, play and exchange knowledge relating to both playing and making video games. This article reports the study of social play events which bring people together in the same space to explore video games making and playing. Expert interviews with curators, and event facilitators provides qualitative data from which design processes are formalised into a ‘model of participation’ of social play. Four key areas of balance are proposed as core considerations in supporting participation in event design. The study of these events also suggests that their design and fostering of participation has the potential to evoke cultural change in game making and playing practices

Anthony\u27s Silence: The Intersection of Sex, Gender and Race in \u3cem\u3eDesigning Women\u3c/em\u3e

Editor\u27s Note: Lynn H. Turner and Helen Sterk examine one small part of the Designing Women script, a short speech by Anthony (one of the series\u27 regulars). They argue that, as the only African American male in the series, Anthony was in a unique position to examine the gender and race issues posed by the Thomas/Hill hearings, and by the Thomas nomination itself. Calling on writings by African .American scholars commenting on the Senate hearings and on race and gender issues generally, the authors conclude that the structure of Anthony\u27s speech represents a missed opportunity

The Fourth Circuit\u27s Doube-Edged Sword : Eviscerating the Right to Present Mitigating Evidence and Beheading the Right to the Assistance of Counsel

Even before the sea change of Gideon v. Wainwright, the Supreme Court recognized not only an indigent’s right to the assistance of counsel in capital cases, but also his right to the effective assistance of counsel in capital cases. Since those auspicious beginnings, the Court has dramatically broadened the right to present mitigating evidence in the sentencing phase of a capital trial, thereby increasing the need for the guiding hand of counsel in capital sentencing. Thus, it is particularly tragic that the Fourth Circuit’s swiftly evolving approach to the prejudice prong of the ineffective assistance of counsel standard precludes capital defendants from winning ineffective assistance of counsel claims in the very cases where informed and effective assistance would have been most likely to have made a difference. According to the Fourth Circuit, all psychologically based mitigating evidence is a “two-edged sword,” because “although ‘evidence of a defendant’s mental impairment may diminish his blameworthiness for his crime,’ it also may ‘indicate that there is a probability that he will be dangerous in the future.” Thus for habeas petitioners in the Fourth Circuit, the possibility, however remote, that a jury would focus on dangerousness rather than culpability precludes ever winning an ineffective assistance of counsel based upon the failure to present psychologically-based mitigating evidence, no matter how compelling the neglected evidence is, or how derelict counsel was in failing to present that evidence. As this Article will demonstrate, the double-edged sword doctrine is wrong-headed in several respects. This Article hopes to persuade the reader that despite its newness, it is a doctrine already ripe for overruling—or reversal, if necessary. Part I briefly describes the capital defendant’s right to have available mitigating evidence presented to the sentencing body; the real dimensions of this right can properly be understood only by considering both the breadth of the abstract right to present mitigating evidence and the limitations imposed by the interaction of that right with the ineffective assistance of counsel doctrine. Part II describes how the Fourth Circuit’s double-edged sword doctrine departs from established doctrine and diminishes established rights. Part III presents the conceptual and empirical fallacies of the Fourth Circuit’s approach

A three person poncho and a set of maracas:designing Ola De La Vida, a co-located social play computer game

Events that bring people together to play video games as a social experience are growing in popularity across the western world. Amongst these events are ‘play parties,’ temporary social play environments which create unique shared play experiences for attendees unlike anything they could experience elsewhere. This paper explores co-located play experience design and proposes that social play games can lead to the formation of temporary play communities. These communities may last for a single gameplay session, for a whole event, or beyond the event. The paper analyses games designed or enhanced by social play contexts and evaluates a social play game, Ola de la Vida. The research findings suggest that social play games can foster community through the design of game play within the game itself, through curation which enhances their social potential, and through design for ‘semi-spectatorship’, which blurs the boundaries between player and spectator thus widening the game’s magic circle

Analysis of feral pig (Sus scrofa) movement in a Hawaiian forest ecosystem using GPS satellite collars

The ecosystem altering impacts of feral pigs have been widely documented around the world. However, a general framework for their control and management has been lacking, especially in island ecosystems. One reason for this lack of management is that we have little knowledge of how pigs move through different island ecosystems, especially ones that are topographically challenging such as Hawai‛i. With recent advances in telemetry and movement modeling, it is now becoming practical to understand where these large introduced animals are moving and how they are using habitat. Hence, the primary goal of this study is to understand feral pig movement in terms of terrain, slope restrictions, and distance traveled beyond a natal site, within an island forested landscape. Based upon this goal, the objectives were to (1) assess different methods of time-series analysis in terms of animal movement and home range, and (2) use the information to inform wildlife management and policy. In 2008, a total of 36 feral pigs were collared with Global Positioning System (GPS) units across four different field sites on three Hawaiian Islands (Maui, Molokai, and Kauai) and tracked for an average of 60 +/- 10 days. Of the 36 collared animals, only four could be used for analysis due to various technological failures. Using three different movement modeling approaches (Brownian Bridge, minimum convex polygon, and the kernel density estimator), we found that feral pigs, within the heterogeneous landscape of Hawaiian watersheds have a spatial recognition limit or ecological neighborhood of between 1.65 and 2 km. All three methods indicated a slight variation of individual home range estimates. These results demonstrated that pigs move less in heterogeneous and heavily vegetated ecosystems. Even under the most conservative estimate, pigs moved 0.2 km/day. Considering that feral pigs disperse exotic plants and increase nutrient loading of streams, our results indicate that even a small abundance of pigs have a very large impact on the native ecosystems of Hawaii, due to their concentration around a natal site or resource center. Based upon this work, we suggest that managers must increase measures to limit habitat connectivity, such as perimeter fences and trapping along remote roadways that are used as feral pig dispersal mechanisms