A Philosophical Analysis of Chet Bowers’ Ethical Theory of EcoJustice: Shifting towards Uncertainty Thinking in Science Education

The purpose of this study is to analyze Chet Bowers’ ethical theory of ecojustice as the basis of an ecological philosophy of education that recognizes Earth’s uncertainty. Bowers’ main thesis is that the commons, or what were once shared by members of the community, should be strengthened by education reforms based on ecojustice criteria. He argues for certain ideologies of the local authority of the commons, “Western” science and scientists, and the “ecological crisis.” I argue that these certainties are uncertain, which justifies part certainty as deciphered by local people in places, in relation to others. Further, I develop a theory of ecological pragmatism, or thinking with uncertainty, grounded by the classical American pragmatist theory of John Dewey and other scholars. My expectation is to empower science teachers and their students to become informed, and share some of the responsibility for participating in local decisions as stakeholders and advocates for local communities, cultural diversity, and Earth’s diverse ecosystems

Textpresso for Neuroscience: Searching the Full Text of Thousands of Neuroscience Research Papers

Textpresso is a text-mining system for scientific literature. Its two major features are access to the full text of research papers and the development and use of categories of biological concepts as well as categories that describe or relate objects. A search engine enables the user to search for one or a combination of these categories and/or keywords within an entire literature. Here we describe Textpresso for Neuroscience, part of the core Neuroscience Information Framework (NIF). The Textpresso site currently consists of 67,500 full text papers and 131,300 abstracts. We show that using categories in literature can make a pure keyword query more refined and meaningful. We also show how semantic queries can be formulated with categories only. We explain the build and content of the database and describe the main features of the web pages and the advanced search options. We also give detailed illustrations of the web service developed to provide programmatic access to Textpresso. This web service is used by the NIF interface to access Textpresso. The standalone website of Textpresso for Neuroscience can be accessed at http://www.textpresso.org/neuroscience

Applying TOGAF to Define and Govern a Service-oriented Architecture in a Large-scale Research Project

The Service-oriented Architecture paradigm has become a widely adopted solution for enterprise application landscapes. SOA promises system integration improvement, business and IT alignment, applications reusability, and fast adaptability to changing requirements. Yet, the advantages that SOA offers lead to its main management challenges. An SOA consists not only of services. Business requirements, processes, models, rules, policies, and different stakeholders play also an important role. To manage this increased complexity and heterogeneity in SOA landscapes enterprises apply architecture frameworks and governance approaches. An essential enabler for SOA Governance is the traceable documentation of the service-oriented application landscape. This paper shows how the TOGAF Architecture Development Method was applied in a large-scale SOA-based research project to support the governance proposes in the context of a service marketplace. Supplementary templates were defined to guide the description of services, data models, and architectural components. Some of the models and decisions proposed by TOGAF were shifted to other phases to fit the innovative nature of research projects

Touchscreen performance and knowledge transfer in the red-footed tortoise (Chelonoidis carbonaria)

In recent years red-footed tortoises have been shown to be proficient in a number of spatial cognition tasks that involve movement of the animal through space (e.g., the radial maze). The present study investigated the ability of the tortoise to learn a spatial task in which the response required was simply to touch a stimulus presented in a given position on a touchscreen. We also investigated the relation between this task and performance in a different spatial task (an arena, in which whole-body movement was required). Four red-footed tortoises learned to operate the touchscreen apparatus, and two learned the simple spatial discrimination. The side-preference trained with the touchscreen was maintained when behaviour was tested in a physical arena. When the contingencies in the arena were then reversed, the tortoises learned the reversal but in a subsequent test did not transfer it to the touchscreen. Rather they chose the side that had been rewarded originally on the touchscreen. The results show that red-footed tortoises are able to operate a touchscreen and can successfully solve a spatial two-choice task in this apparatus. There was some indication that the preference established with the touchscreen could transfer to an arena, but with subsequent training in the arena independent patterns of choice were established that could be evoked according to the test context

Textpresso - an Information Retrieval and Extraction System for Biological Literature

We developed an information retrieval and extraction system that processes the full text of biological papers. The system, called Textpresso, separates text into sentences, labels words and phrases according to an ontology (an organized lexicon), and allows queries to be performed on a database of labeled sentences. The current ontology comprises approximately one hundred categories of terms, such as "gene", "regulation", "human disease", "brain area" etc., and also contains main Gene Ontology (GO) categories. Extraction of particular biological facts, such as gene-­gene interactions, or the curation of GO cellular components, can be accelerated significantly by ontologies, with Textpresso automatically performing nearly as well as expert curators to identify sentences. Search engine for four literatures, C. elegans, Drosophila, Arabidopsis and Neuroscience have been established by us, and thirteen systems for other literatures have been developed by other groups around the world. Currently, our four systems contain 112,000 papers with 40 million sentences, all systems worldwide contain 190,000 papers with approximately 65 million sentences

Dynamics of Quark-Gluon-Plasma Instabilities in Discretized Hard-Loop Approximation

Non-Abelian plasma instabilities have been proposed as a possible explanation for fast isotropization of the quark-gluon plasma produced in relativistic heavy-ion collisions. We study the real-time evolution of these instabilities in non-Abelian plasmas with a momentum-space anisotropy using a hard-loop effective theory that is discretized in the velocities of hard particles. We extend our previous results on the evolution of the most unstable modes, which are constant in directions transverse to the direction of anisotropy, from gauge group SU(2) to SU(3). We also present first full 3+1-dimensional simulation results based on velocity-discretized hard loops. In contrast to the effectively 1+1-dimensional transversely constant modes we find subexponential behaviour at late times.Comment: 30 pages, 16 figures. v3 typos fixe

Extraterrestrial Regolith Derived Atmospheric Entry Heat Shields

High-mass planetary surface access is one of NASAs technical challenges involving entry, descent and landing (EDL). During the entry and descent phase, frictional interaction with the planetary atmosphere causes a heat build-up to occur on the spacecraft, which will rapidly destroy it if a heat shield is not used. However, the heat shield incurs a mass penalty because it must be launched from Earth with the spacecraft, thus consuming a lot of precious propellant. This NASA Innovative Advanced Concept (NIAC) project investigated an approach to provide heat shield protection to spacecraft after launch and prior to each EDL thus potentially realizing significant launch mass savings. Heat shields fabricated in situ can provide a thermal-protection system for spacecraft that routinely enter a planetary atmosphere. By fabricating the heat shield with space resources from materials available on moons and asteroids, it is possible to avoid launching the heat-shield mass from Earth. Regolith has extremely good insulating properties and the silicates it contains can be used in the fabrication and molding of thermal-protection materials. In this paper, we will describe three types of in situ fabrication methods for heat shields and the testing performed to determine feasibility of this approach

Multi-system factors associated with metatarsophalangeal joint deformity in individuals with type 2 diabetes

The underlying factors contributing to metatarsophalangeal joint deformity, a known precursor to skin breakdown in individuals with diabetes mellitus (DM), is likely to involve multiple body systems. The purpose of this cross-sectional study was to identify multi-system factors associated with metatarsophalangeal joint deformity in individuals with type 2 DM and peripheral neuropathy