The Questioning Process: An Approach to ESOL That Combines the Teaching and Learning of English with the Facilitation of Growth in Self and Cultural Awareness

This project delineates an approach to ESOL that combines the teaching and learning of English with the facilitation of growth in self and cultural awareness - a greater knowledge of one\u27s self and one\u27s cultural molding. This approach involves the examination by students of items from American media, to understand what such items say, what they imply about American culture and for students\u27 own culture (s), and what these implications mean for students themselves. The instructor facilitates this process through the progressive asking of questions - thus the name \u27the questioning process\u27 - and simultaneously monitors language usage by students\u27 discussion for use in subsequent language instruction. The approach delineated in this project evolves from the author\u27s concerns over the political and cultural implications of ESOL. The project\u27s preface is an analysis, subjective in tone, of global evolution, and of the role of American and of ESOL in that evolution. The project\u27s chapters form an objective response to the subjective questions raised by the preface - an approach to ESOL based on the Socratic method, delineated through a set of specific techniques and procedures in the ESOL classroom, and through a set of examples of and materials for this approach. The project\u27s appendix is a narrative of some potentially helpful personal experiences using this approach. The project is designed to be of use both to those ESOL teachers who wish to use only its techniques and materials, and to those who wish to consider it in depth, as a philosophically-thought-out approach to teaching ESOL

Happiness, Culture, and Context

The first part of this paper discusses why statistical comparisons of happiness and wellbeing are insufficient. It considers criticisms of these statistical comparisons, and discusses how, while they are useful for some purposes, they do not enable fully adequate cross-cultural comparison. The paper then discusses the problem of surveys both in terms of language, given the subtly different terms in different languages for happiness, and in terms of culture, arguing that difference in cultures can cause the findings of surveys to be less than transparent. It then turns to a consideration of culture itself, which has become increasingly problematic in anthropology in recent decades. ‘Culture’ is a term that has been shifting in its meanings. Culture no longer refers simply to ‘the way of life of a people,’ but also to the array of choices individuals make from ‘the global cultural supermarket’; culture in both these senses needs to be analyzed in terms of how it develops in the individual, as recent anthropological theories have been exploring. This new-found complexity of culture does not mean that researchers on subjective wellbeing should abandon culture as a variable; rather, they should augment statistical surveys of wellbeing, which are based on the older, conventional conception of culture, with ethnographic interviewing conducted by researchers who understand the language and culture in a given society. Only on this basis can the cross-cultural study of wellbeing reach its full potential, the paper argues, a potential uniting of different academic disciplines in a common endeavor, that of fully understanding what happiness means and how it can best be attained in the world

Phylogenetic signal in nucleotide data from seed plants: Implications for resolving the seed plant tree of life

Effects of taxonomic sampling and conflicting signal on the inference of seed plant trees supported in previous molecular analyses were explored using 13 single-locus data sets. Changing the number of taxa in single-locus analyses had limited effects on log likelihood differences between the gnepine (Gnetales plus Pinaceae) and gnetifer (Gnetales plus conifers) trees. Distinguishing among these trees also was little affected by the use of different substitution parameters. The 13-locus combined data set was partitioned into nine classes based on substitution rates. Sites evolving at intermediate rates had the best likelihood and parsimony scores on gnepine trees, and those evolving at the fastest rates had the best parsimony scores on Gnetales-sister trees (Gnetales plus other seed plants). When the fastest evolving sites were excluded from parsimony analyses, well-supported gnepine trees were inferred from the combined data and from each genomic partition. When all sites were included, Gnetales-sister trees were inferred from the combined data, whereas a different tree was inferred from each genomic partition. Maximum likelihood trees from the combined data and from each genomic partition were well-supported gnepine trees. A preliminary stratigraphic test highlights the poor fit of Gnetales-sister trees to the fossil data

Assessing among-locus variation in the inference of seed plant phylogeny

Large multilocus analyses can greatly reduce sampling error in phylogenetic estimates and help resolve difficult phylogenetic questions. Yet conventional multilocus analyses may be confounded by variation in the phylogenetic signal or processes of evolution among loci. We used nonparametric bootstrapping methods to examine locus-specific variation within a 12-locus seed plant data set and to examine the effects of this variation on estimates of seed plant phylogeny. The observed maximum likelihood and maximum parsimony bootstrap support from phylogenetic analyses of sites within single loci often notably differs from the bootstrap support obtained by sampling an equal number of sites from the concatenated 12-locus data set. This indicates heterogeneity among loci in the phylogenetic inference, and the differences among loci are not explained by the distribution of fast and slowly evolving sites. Bootstrap analyses that resample loci with replacement, rather than sampling individual sites with replacement, reveal extensive sampling variance among loci. The results suggest that seed plant phylogenetic analyses may not be robust to sampling error when only 12 loci are used and indicate a need for further investigation into the causes of the locus-specific variation. © 2007 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved

Assessing systematic error in the inference of seed plant phylogeny

We used parametric bootstrapping to assess the performance of maximum parsimony and maximum likelihood phylogenetic analyses of a 12-locus seed plant data set. Evidence of biases in maximum parsimony analyses of single-locus data sets may explain some of the locus-specific variation among DNA-based hypotheses of seed plant phylogeny. In particular, there is strong evidence of bias in maximum parsimony analyses, especially of plastid loci, that favors placing Gnetales sister to other seed plants. We concatenated simulated single-locus data sets to examine biases in analyses of a 12-locus data set in which each locus is simulated with different substitution parameters and branch lengths. Maximum parsimony analyses of the simulated 12-locus data set also show evidence of biases in favor of recovering trees with Gnetales sister to other seed plants and against recovering anthophyte, gnepine, and gnetifer trees. These biases are most evident in analyses that include the fastest-evolving characters. In the maximum likelihood analyses of the simulated 12-locus data sets, there is evidence of a bias against recovering the anthophyte hypothesis. Otherwise, there is little evidence that the heterogeneous branch lengths and substitution processes among loci influence the results from maximum likelihood phylogenetic analyses. © 2007 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved

Leo F. Goodstadt, Poverty in the Midst of Affluence: How Hong Kong Mismanaged its Prosperity,

Leo F. Goodstadt’s new book explores how the Hong Kong government’s ongoing support of business over all else has created a society that treats its most vulnerable members with callousness and cruelty. Goodstadt, who served as the Hong Kong government’s chief policy advisor from 1989 to 1997, has written this book on the basis of his extensive knowledge of inner governmental workings in Hong Kong, as well as more widely available mass-media sources. The book is depressing but essential readin..

Conatraints on ΔG\Delta G from Prompt Photon plus Jet Production at HERA-N⃗\vec{N}

The utility of prompt photon plus associated jet production for constraining the size and shape of the polarized gluon density of the proton $\Delta G$ is examined at $\sqrt{S}=40$ GeV, appropriate for the proposed HERA-$\vec{N}$ polarized $\vec{p}\vec{p}$ collider experiment. The calculation is performed at next-to-leading order (O($\alpha\alpha_s^2$)) in QCD. The reliability of the predictions are examined in some detail.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figure

Scenery as Policy: Public Involvement in Developing a Management Plan for the Scenic Resources of the Columbia River Gorge

The Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area (NSA) was created in 1986 in response to a growing interest in preserving the scenic beauty of the gorge. The creation of the NSA and other areas around the country with a scenic resource emphasis indicates a growing interest in protecting landscapes with diverse scenic qualities that are not showcase areas such as the Grand Canyon and Yosemite. NSA mandates included the protection and enhancement of scenic, natural, cultural, and recreational resources (SNCRs) as the primary concern in the consideration of new land uses. The NSA management plan contains a complex mix of management tools for the protection of SNCRs in the gorge. This research was an investigation into how scenic resources policy was developed, with a focus on the scenic resources of the NSA. One issue was the definition of scenic resources, which are undefined in the management plan. Because of the difficulty of identifying scenic resources, other resources may be managed as a surrogate for them. An analysis was made of the scenic resources management schemes of several federal reserve lands with a stated scenic management objective to determine if this was the case, and to compare their management strategies for the NSA. A second issue was the public\u27s understanding of what constitutes a scenic resource and the role that public input had in the development of the management plan. Empirical work suggests that complexity of issues may hinder successful public input processes. A final issue was how identifiable stakeholders in the Columbia River Gorge differed in their views on scenic resources, which may depend on their proximity to and relationship with such resources. Results of data analysis and the interview process reveal that public understanding about scenic resource concepts is low, and that gorge planners were primarily responsible for development of scenic resources policy in the NSA management plan. As expected there were some identifiable differences in the views on scenic resources among various stakeholders. Scenic resources management elsewhere is done primarily through traditional zoning requirements, and the basis of management of scenic resources appears to be for other culturally-defined purposes such as recreation

Les demandeurs d’asile, symboles de la non-sinité de Hong Kong

Cet article traite de la situation des demandeurs d’asile à Hong Kong et de son évolution ces dernières années. Hong Kong traite relativement bien les demandeurs d’asile, même si leurs chances d’obtenir le statut de réfugié sont quasiment nulles. Bien que les demandeurs d’asile n’aient pas le droit de travailler, il leur est presque impossible de vivre uniquement de la minuscule aide gouvernementale qu’ils reçoivent. Face à la négligence du gouvernement, les demandeurs d’asile ont été érigés en héros par certains jeunes Hongkongais après le Mouvement des parapluies. Alors que les demandeurs d’asile étaient jusqu’ici généralement ignorés ou méprisés par les Hongkongais, certains jeunes ont fait d’eux des symboles de la non-sinité de Hong Kong.This article discusses the situation of asylum seekers in Hong Kong and how it has changed in recent years. Hong Kong treats asylum seekers relatively well compared to some other societies, but at the same time, the chance of being accepted as a refugee is virtually zero. Although it is illegal for asylum seekers to work, it is virtually impossible for them not to work given the miniscule government support they receive. Amidst government neglect, asylum seekers have emerged as heroes among some Hong Kong young people after the Umbrella Movement. Whereas in years past, asylum seekers were generally ignored or looked down upon by Hongkongers, among some youth today, asylum seekers have emerged as symbols of Hong Kong’s non-Chineseness