Educating for Humanity in Today's World: Towards a new model of education to meet the challenge

It is generally accepted that schools should be concerned not just with imparting particular intellectual or technical skills, but also with the wider character development of children, including their moral and social growth. However, after decades of well-meant but rather scattered initiatives (often launched in response to the unsettling effect of widespread social change) this study reviews the whole rationale for and feasibility of work in this area, and tries to set it onto firmer foundations. After looking at how the curriculum in most state systems is organised, and why there is frequently a gap between the reality and the rhetoric here, it is argued that if education is to play a more meaningful part, a rather different perspective on the main forms of human knowledge and experience that schools usually address is needed: a more radical breakdown which does justice both to traditional curriculum subjects and the more amorphous, but vitally important, ‘base’ of life. Three ways in which the human engagement with the world does appear to separate into its more primary modes are identified: direct experience in the everyday lifeworld (including social interaction); particular bodies of knowledge and skill; and the evaluative or wider meaning-making aspects of our functioning. The significance of each is explored, and in so far as they appear to be central to our human way of being, it is suggested that these might in themselves provide some solid ground on which to base the whole business of educating the young. It is argued that, if schools are to engage more constructively with this wider area of human development, they will have to contribute far more effectively to the first, in particular, of these dimensions of our functioning. Realistic possibilities for such work are explored along with the considerable challenges that can arise

Business Architecture: The Basis for a Design-Oriented Approach to Business Process Outsourcing

This paper presents an approach to business process outsourcing (BPO) based on the development of a business architecture. The paper argues that business architecture can form the basis for the effective planning, design and negotiation of a BPO initiative. The approach comprises the following steps: business problem analysis; determination of the required performance standards; in-house versus market capability assessment; business service provider engagement; joint service architecture design; and service contract negotiation. A key feature of the approach is that the client organisation and the outsourcing business service provider jointly develop the business architecture. The authors make the claim that such an approach to BPO incorporates a design attitude, rather than the decision attitude that is common to other BPO methods and approaches

The element of experience in the poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Coleridge is generally recognized as a highly imaginative poet. Students are too prone therefore to regard his poetry as directly the product of his active imagination. It is the object of this study to show instead that his poetry is based largely upon his actual experiences. I have attempted to demonstrate this fact by giving supply the facts of Coleridge\u27s life, as fully in detail as I have been able to ascertain them, and by correlating them with certain references and materials in his poems. The selections have been grouped according to biographical chronology rather than sequences of composition, which often are not definitely known. I have used Cottle\u27s Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey advisedly as a source. I realize that his references are faulty, but his work contains personal anecdotes in the life of Coleridge which are not to be found elsewhere

Assessing the state of knowledge of contemporary climate change and primates

In recent years, interest in understanding the effects of climate change on species and ecological systems has sharply increased. We quantify and contextualize the current state of knowledge about the effects of contemporary climate change on non‐human primates, a taxon of great ecological and anthropological significance. Specifically, we report findings from a systematic literature search designed to assess the allocation of research effort on primates and climate change and consider how the current distribution of knowledge may be influencing our understanding of the topic. We reveal significant phylogenetic and geographic gaps in our knowledge, which is strongly biased towards lemurs, apes, and a relatively small subset of primate range countries. We show that few analyses investigate changes in primate foods relative to changes in primates themselves or their habitats, and observe that few longitudinal datasets are of sufficient duration to detect effects on the generational scale. We end by identifying areas of research inquiry that would advance our theoretical understanding of primate ecology, evolution, and adaptability, and meaningfully contribute to primate conservation.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/163954/1/evan21874_am.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/163954/2/evan21874.pd

Business Architecture: A Suitable Basis for Planning and Designing a Business Process Outsourcing Initiative

Business architecture, one of the components of enterprise architecture frameworks, is an underutilised but potentially powerful and useful notion for Information Systems (IS) business analysts and solution architects. The development of a future-oriented or target state business architecture representing an achievable operational framework for a business and comprising a set of business processes designed for high-performance can provide an effective basis for addressing and solving an organisation\u27s strategic issues and problems. This paper explores the concept of business architecture and demonstrates its usefulness by showing how it was utilised in planning, designing and communicating a business transformation based on business process outsourcing

Computing the Loewner driving process of random curves in the half plane

We simulate several models of random curves in the half plane and numerically compute their stochastic driving process (as given by the Loewner equation). Our models include models whose scaling limit is the Schramm-Loewner evolution (SLE) and models for which it is not. We study several tests of whether the driving process is Brownian motion. We find that just testing the normality of the process at a fixed time is not effective at determining if the process is Brownian motion. Tests that involve the independence of the increments of Brownian motion are much more effective. We also study the zipper algorithm for numerically computing the driving function of a simple curve. We give an implementation of this algorithm which runs in a time O(N^1.35) rather than the usual O(N^2), where N is the number of points on the curve.Comment: 20 pages, 4 figures. Changes to second version: added new paragraph to conclusion section; improved figures cosmeticall

Detection and characterization of a 500 μm dust emissivity excess in the Galactic plane using Herschel/Hi-GAL observations

Context. Past and recent observations have revealed unexpected variations in the far-infrared – millimeter (FIR-mm) dust emissivity in the interstellar medium. In the Herschel spectral range, those are often referred to as a 500 μm emission excess. Several dust emission models have been developed to interpret astrophysical data in the FIR-mm domain. However, these are commonly unable to fully reconcile theoretical predictions with observations. In contrast, the recently revised two level system (TLS) model, based on the disordered internal structure of amorphous dust grains, seems to provide a promising way of interpreting existing data. Aims. The newly available Herschel infrared GALactic (Hi-GAL) data, which covers most of the inner Milky Way, offers a unique opportunity to investigate possible variations in the dust emission properties both with wavelength and environment. The goal of our analysis is to constrain the internal structure of the largest dust grains on Galactic scales, in the framework of the TLS model. Methods. By combining the IRIS (Improved Reprocessing of the IRAS Survey) 100 μm with the Hi-GAL 160, 250, 350, and 500 μm data, we model the dust emission spectra in each pixel of the Hi-GAL maps, using both the TLS model and, for comparison, a single modified black-body fit. The effect of temperature mixing along the line of sight is investigated to test the robustness of our results. Results. We find a slight decrease in the dust temperature with distance from the Galactic center, confirming previous results. We also report the detection of a significant 500 μm emissivity excess in the peripheral regions of the plane (35° < |l| < 70°) of about 13–15% of the emissivity, which can reach up to 20% in some HII regions. We present the spatial distributions of the best-fit values for the two main parameters of the TLS model, i.e. the charge correlation length, lc, used to characterize the disordered charge distribution (DCD) part of the model, and the amplitude A of the TLS processes with respect to the DCD effect. These distributions illustrate the variations in the dust properties with environment, in particular the plausible existence of an overall gradient with distance to the Galactic center. A comparison with previous findings in the solar neighborhood shows that the local value of the excess is less than expected from the Galactic gradient observed here

UNBODY: A Poetry Escape Room in Augmented Reality

The integration of augmented reality (AR) technology into personal computing is happening fast, and augmented workplaces for professionals in areas such as Industry 4.0 or digital health can reasonably be expected to form liminal zones that push the boundary of what currently possible. The application potential in the creative industries, however, is vast and can target broad audiences, so with UNBODY, we set out to push boundaries of a different kind and depart from the graphic-centric worlds of AR to explore textual and aural dimensions of an extended reality, in which words haunt and re-create our physical selves. UNBODY is an AR installation for smart glasses that embeds poetry in the user’s surroundings. The augmented experience turns reality into a medium where holographic texts and film clips spill from dayglow billboards and totems. In this paper, we develop a blueprint for an AR escape room dedicated to the spoken and written word, with its open source code facilitating uptake by others into existing or new AR escape rooms. We outline the user-centered process of designing, building, and evaluating UNBODY. More specifically, we deployed a system usability scale (SUS) and a spatial interaction evaluation (SPINE) in order to validate its wider applicability. In this paper, we also describe the composition and concept of the experience, identifying several components (trigger posters, posters with video overlay, word dropper totem, floating object gallery, and a user trail visualization) as part of our first version before evaluation. UNBODY provides a sense of situational awareness and immersivity from inside an escape room. The recorded average mean for the SUS was 59.7, slightly under the recommended 68 average but still above ‘OK’ in the zone of low marginal acceptable. The findings for the SPINE were moderately positive, with the highest scores for output modalities and navigation support. This indicated that the proposed components and escape room concept work. Based on these results, we improved the experience, adding, among others, an interactive word composer component. We conclude that a poetry escape room is possible, outline our co-creation process, and deliver an open source technical framework as a blueprint for adding enhanced support for the spoken and written word to existing or coming AR escape room experiences. In an outlook, we discuss additional insight on timing, alignment, and the right level of personalization