Zooming In

At the heart of this article is the presence of Indigenous children in photographs of explorative travels taken by Dutch Missionaries of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Netherlands New Guinea (present-day West Papua, Indonesia) in the early twentieth century. Departing from the hypothesis that the children may have been guiding the missionaries, this research studies if and how young West Papuans acted as ‘local intermediaries’ in the early years of colonial settlement. ‘Zooming in’ on engagements between missionaries and children in both visual and textual sources, two paradoxical aspects of Indigenous children in missionary archives are grappled with: their centrality as objects of civilising practices on the one hand, and their marginalisation as historical subjects in colonial textual practices on the other. The visual and textual are brought in conversation: the active presence of children as individual historical actors participating in processes of colonisation in the photographs helps to see children and their actions in ‘still’ discourse, to contextualise captured instances in time and space. This shows how and when missionaries depended on the knowledge, skills, and networks of local children to introduce them to their new working ground. This article thus adds to the existing body of literature on colonial intermediaries, in which young people constitute an overlooked group, and to complement understandings of non-elite colonial childhoods of Indigenous children outside of familial or institutional contexts

Quality Dimensions for B2C E-Commerce

Organizations have still not realized the full potential of e-commerce. One factor that is likely to influence the further adoption of e-commerce is the quality of the e-commerce system as system quality impacts user satisfaction and hence use of the system. However, in order to improve the quality of any systems, one first needs to identify measures to assess quality. Although other researchers have recognized the need for such measures, they have primarily focused on a single specific aspect of e-commerce systems, typically the user interface. In this paper we identify the key components of e-commerce systems and synthesize existing research related to quality of these components to arrive at a comprehensive list of quality dimensions, which in turn provide measures to assess the quality of e-commerce systems

An Implementation of the IT Fundamentals Knowledge Area in an Introductory IT Course

The recently promulgated IT model curriculum contains IT fundamentals (ITF) as one of its knowledge areas. It is intended to give students a broad understanding of (1) the IT profession and the skills that students must develop to become successful IT professionals and (2) the academic discipline of IT and its relationship to other disciplines. The model curriculum recommends 33 lecture hours to complete the IT fundamentals knowledge. The model curriculum also recommends that the material relevant to the IT fundamentals knowledge area be offered early in the curriculum, for example in an Introduction to IT course; however, many institutions will have to include additional material in an introductory IT course. For example, the Introduction to IT course at Georgia Southern University is used to introduce students to the available second disciplines (an important part of the Georgia Southern IT curriculum aimed at providing students with in-depth knowledge of an IT application domain), some productivity tools, and SQL in addition to an introduction to the discipline of IT. For many programs there may be too much material in an introductory IT course. This paper describes how Georgia Southern University resolved this problem by describing the structure of the introductory course at Georgia Southern, its assessment methods, and the relationship between the course and the ITF knowledge area and how those aspects of the ITF knowledge area that are not covered in the introductory course are covered elsewhere in the program

Using a cognitive architecture to examine what develops

Different theories of development propose alternative mechanisms by which development occurs. Cognitive architectures can be used to examine the influence of each proposed mechanism of development while keeping all other mechanisms constant. An ACT-R computational model that matched adult behavior in solving a 21-block pyramid puzzle was created. The model was modified in three ways that corresponded to mechanisms of development proposed by developmental theories. The results showed that all the modifications (two of capacity and one of strategy choice) could approximate the behavior of 7-year-old children on the task. The strategy-choice modification provided the closest match on the two central measures of task behavior (time taken per layer, r = .99, and construction attempts per layer, r = .73). Modifying cognitive architectures is a fruitful way to compare and test potential developmental mechanisms, and can therefore help in specifying “what develops.

boasblog papers. Thinking About the Archive & Provenance Research

In the debate about the colonial past of ethnographic museums in Western Europe, provenance research has emerged as a central method for researching colonial legacies and addressing museums’ need for decolonisation. Researchers have started to investigate colonial era collections systematically to create a sound basis for dealing with these collections in the future. As a consequence, they are increasingly seen as archives in themselves. What has been lacking, however, is a debate about the theoretical implications of this approach – what are the implications of such an archival perspective and what kinds of knowledge can provenance research create? To find answers to this question, the authors of this volume engage with a range of materials – from the famous Benin Royal Collections to a seemingly insignificant Egyptian doll. They approach these materials sometimes on a theoretical, sometimes on a very practical level to offer their different visions of what a theoretically grounded provenance research may look like

Temperature seasonality in the North American continental interior during the Early Eocene Climatic Optimum

Paleogene greenhouse climate equability has long been a paradox in paleoclimate research. However, recent developments in proxy and modeling methods have suggested that strong seasonality may be a feature of at least some greenhouse Earth periods. Here we present the first multi-proxy record of seasonal temperatures during the Paleogene from paleofloras, paleosol geochemistry, and carbonate clumped isotope thermometry in the Green River Basin (Wyoming, USA). These combined temperature records allow for the reconstruction of past seasonality in the continental interior, which shows that temperatures were warmer in all seasons during the peak Early Eocene Climatic Optimum and that the mean annual range of temperatures was high, similar to the modern value ( ∼ 26&thinsp;°C). Proxy data and downscaled Eocene regional climate model results suggest amplified seasonality during greenhouse events. Increased seasonality reconstructed for the early Eocene is similar in scope to the higher seasonal range predicted by downscaled climate model ensembles for future high-CO2 emissions scenarios. Overall, these data and model comparisons have substantial implications for understanding greenhouse climates in general, and may be important for predicting future seasonal climate regimes and their impacts in continental regions.</p

Temperature seasonality in the North American continental interior during the Early Eocene Climatic Optimum

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/148644/1/Hyland_et_al_2018_CotP-Eocene_Climate_Equability.pd

Colonial heritage and restitution: a round table discussion among museum professionals

Political Culture and National Identit

Frost and leaf-size gradients in forests: global patterns and experimental evidence

Explanations of leaf size variation commonly focus on water availability, yet leaf size also varies with latitude and elevation in environments where water is not strongly limiting. We provide the first conclusive test of a prediction of leaf energy balance theory that may explain this pattern: large leaves are more vulnerable to night-time chilling, because their thick boundary layers impede convective exchange with the surrounding air. Seedlings of New Zealand evergreens spanning 12-fold variation in leaf width were exposed to clear night skies, and leaf temperatures measured with thermocouples. We then used a global dataset to assess several climate variables as predictors of leaf size in forest assemblages. Leaf-minus-air temperature was strongly correlated with leaf width, ranging from -0.9 to -3.2 C in the smallest- and largest-leaved species, respectively. MAT and frost-free period were good predictors of evergreen angiosperm leaf size in forest assemblages, but no climate variable predicted deciduous leaf size. Although winter deciduousness makes large leaves possible in strongly seasonal climates, large-leaved evergreens are largely confined to frost-free climates because of their susceptibility to radiative cooling. Evergreen leaf size data can therefore be used to enhance vegetation models, and to infer palaeotemperatures from fossil leaf assemblages