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Number of Pages: 2Integrative BiologyGeological Science

Don't Confuse a Tool with a Goal: Making Information Technology Serve Higher Education, Rather Than the Other Way Around

This article examines the relationship between information technology (IT) and educational policy and argues that leaders of universities and colleges must do a better job of thinking creatively and strategically about how IT can enrich their institution's basic educational mission. The paper examines five areas of education policy that are deeply affected by IT-library policy, intellectual property, distance education, commercialization, and curricular standards and processes. The paper suggests that the new technology has unleashed such creative, frequently entrepreneurial activity that is so expensive, pervasive and difficult to manage that it has had a negative impact on some of our fundamental practices in teaching and scholarship. It will continue to do so, and it will drive us if we do not drive it. The paper asks, have we established the mechanisms to review, monitor and evaluate these developments? And, have we given enough thought to how we can employ IT thoughtfully and self-consciously to meet our explicit educational policy goals?

The eyes prefer real images

For better or worse, virtual imaging displays are with us in the form of narrow-angle combining-glass presentations, head-up displays (HUD), and head-mounted projections of wide-angle sensor-generated or computer-animated imagery (HMD). All military and civil aviation services and a large number of aerospace companies are involved in one way or another in a frantic competition to develop the best virtual imaging display system. The success or failure of major weapon systems hangs in the balance, and billions of dollars in potential business are at stake. Because of the degree to which national defense is committed to the perfection of virtual imaging displays, a brief consideration of their status, an investigation and analysis of their problems, and a search for realistic alternatives are long overdue

The History Major and Undergraduate Liberal Education

Argues that the study of history integrates disciplinary knowledge, methods, and principles into a broad education and civic engagement. Recommends that departments set goals for student outcomes, diversify course requirements, and emphasize teaching

Environmental chemical exposures and breast cancer

As a hormone-sensitive condition with no single identifiable cause, breast cancer is a major health problem. It is characterized by a wide range of contributing factors and exposures occurring in different combinations and strengths across a lifetime that may be amplified during periods of enhanced developmental susceptibility and impacted by reproductive patterns and behaviours. The vast majority of cases are oestrogen-receptor positive and occur in women with no family history of the disease suggesting that modifiable risk factors are involved. A substantial body of evidence now links oestrogen-positive breast cancer with environmental exposures. Synthetic chemicals capable of oestrogen mimicry are characteristic of industrial development and have been individually and extensively assessed as risk factors for oestrogen-sensitive cancers. Existing breast cancer risk assessment tools do not take such factors into account. In the absence of consensus on causation and in order to better understand the problem of escalating incidence globally, an expanded, integrated approach broadening the inquiry into individual susceptibility breast cancer is proposed. Applying systems thinking to existing data on oestrogen-modulating environmental exposures and other oestrogenic factors characteristic of Westernisation and their interactions in the exposure, encompassing social, behavioural, environmental, hormonal and genetic factors, can assist in understanding cancer risks and the pursuit of prevention strategies. A new conceptual framework based on a broader understanding of the “system” that underlies the development of breast cancer over a period of many years, incorporating the factors known to contribute to breast cancer risk, could provide a new platform from which government and regulators can promulgate enhanced and more effective prevention strategies

GRAIN EXPORTS AS A SOURCE OF AGRICULTURAL INSTABILITY

International Relations/Trade,