Attitudes towards science among Spanish citizens: The case of critical engagers

Using data obtained from Spanish surveys on the public perception of science, this article presents a critical review of current practices of population profile segmentation, including the one-dimensional representation of perceived risks and benefits and of the systematic underestimation of critical attitudes to the social impact of science and technology. We use discriminant analysis to detect a somewhat hidden cluster in the Spanish population which we call ‘critical engagers’. These individuals are critically and socially responsible and are not reticent about expressing concern regarding scientific-technological change. While they hold an overall positive attitude towards change of this kind, they are at the same time well aware of the risks posed by particular fields of application. We highlight the academic interest and political value of these individuals, attributing to this population a mature and intelligent stance which may well be employed in enhancing the relationship between science and society. </jats:p

Implementing Critical Incident Technique to Enhance the Students Writing Ability in Recount Text

This thesis is entitled implementing critical incident technique to enhance the students' writing ability in recount text (a collaborative classroom action research to the first year students of MAN Gandapura). This research was done because many of the students in MAN Gandapura would unable to make a good paragraph of writing although for one paragraph because of that the researcher needed form this research to increase the students' ability in writing, especially in writing recount text. The researcher conducted the collaborative classroom action research as research methodology and referring to qualitative research. The object of this study was the students at the first year of MAN Gandapura; which consists of thirty students. The researcher found the analysis were the result of this research in MAN Gandapura sufficiently improving recount text through observation checklist, field notes, test and questionnaires as instrument to get the data from the research. The first data collected from observation checklist which the mean score of the observation sheet was increasing through each cycles. Second, the data collected by using field notes which record all the teaching and learning process in both of cycles; cycle 1 and cycle 2. Third, the average score of the students in doing pre-test in the first meeting in cycle 1 was 49, 06 and the average score of the post- test for the cycle 1 was 65,3 and cycle 2 was 72, 7 which more than 70 as criteria of success. The last was questionnaire analyzing of the students responded toward implementation of the critical incident (CI) technique. The result of students score to mark the item in the questionnaire was 80%. It meant the students motivate of using critical incident technique in writing recount text. After the researcher did all steps of the research (cycle 1 and cycle 2). The researcher concluded that the implementation of the critical incident (CI) technique in teaching and learning process could increase students' ability in writing recount text and got ‘agree' students' response when implementing the critical incident technique in the classroom.Key words: Writing, Recount Text and Critical Incident (CI) Technique INTRODUCTIONWriting is an activity to write the ideas and the feeling of the item which is displayed in mind. When talking about teaching writing commonly deal with kinds of writing and teaching strategies. There are control writing, guide writing and free writing. The teaching of control writing is usually for the beginner or for the students of senior high school. In this relation, writing is the attention of control composition is usually much right. The teachers' job is to prove relax control is having the students write what they have the teacher will prove whether the students cable to write and practice it.According to School Base Curriculum of MAN Gandapura, teaching writing to the first year students is hoped the students are able to express the meaning in short functional written text, simple essay like as Recount text, Narrative text, and Procedure text in real life context. The students are able to express the meaning and rhetoric procedures accurately, fluently, and acceptable by using several written languages in real life context like recount, narrative, and procedure

Critical Reasoning and Critical Perception

The outcome of criticism is a perception. Does this mean that criticism cannot count as a rational process? For it to do so, it seems it would have to be possible for there to be an argument for a perception. Yet perceptions do not seem to be the right sort of item to serve as the conclusions of arguments. Is this appearance borne out? I examine why perceptions might not be able to play that role, and explore what would have to be true of critical discourse for those obstacles to be circumvented

A Critical Look at the Abstraction Based on Macro-Operators

Abstraction can be an effective technique for dealing with the complexity of planning tasks. This paper is aimed at assessing and identifying in which cases abstraction can actually speed-up the overall search. In fact, it is well known that the impact of abstraction on the time spent to search for a solution of a planning problem can be positive or negative, depending on several factors -including the number of objects defined in the domain, the branching factor, and the plan length. Experimental results highlight the role of such aspects on the overall performance of an algorithm that performs the search at the ground-level only, and compares them with the ones obtained by enforcing abstraction

Critical and Near-Critical Branching Processes

Scale-free dynamics in physical and biological systems can arise from a variety of causes. Here, we explore a branching process which leads to such dynamics. We find conditions for the appearance of power laws and study quantitatively what happens to these power laws when such conditions are violated. From a branching process model, we predict the behavior of two systems which seem to exhibit near scale-free behavior--rank-frequency distributions of number of subtaxa in biology, and abundance distributions of genotypes in an artificial life system. In the light of these, we discuss distributions of avalanche sizes in the Bak-Tang-Wiesenfeld sandpile model.Comment: 9 pages LaTex with 10 PS figures. v.1 of this paper contains results from non-critical sandpile simulations that were excised from the published versio

Critical Thinking

{Excerpt} Blaise Pascal felt that “Man is obviously made for thinking. Therein lies all his dignity and his merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought.” A contemporary of René Descartes, Pascal is however best remembered for resisting rationalism, which he thought could not determine major truths: “The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know.” Blaise Pascal and René Descartes are reference points for two major attitudes to conscious representation of the world: although both saw reason as the primary source of knowledge, they disagreed profoundly over the competence of Man—the truth, as always, lies between faith and radical doubt. For sure, pace the propensity of intellectuals to promulgate eternal truths, or at least make a lasting impression, the idea of critical thinking neither begins nor ends with Pascal or Descartes. Socrates set the agenda nearly 2,500 years ago when the “Socratic Method” established the need to seek evidence, analyze basic concepts, scrutinize reasoning and assumptions, and trace the implications not only of what is said but of what is done as well: “Knowledge will not come from teaching but from questioning.” Thereafter, within the overall framework of skepticism, numerous scholars raised awareness of the potential power of reasoning and of the need for that to be systematically cultivated and cross-examined. Critical thinking, by its very nature, demands recognition that all questioning stems from a point of view and occurs within a frame of reference; proceeds from some purpose—presumably, to answer a question or solve a problem; relies on concepts and ideas that rest in turn on assumptions; has an informational base that must be interpreted; and draws on basic inferences to make conclusions that have implications and consequences. To note, each dimension of reasoning is linked simultaneously with the other; problems of thinking in any of them will impact others and should be monitored. Hence, effective, full-spectrum questioning that connects from multiple perspectives must illuminate each element of thought so it may permeate the model

Taking a critical look at holographic critical matter

Despite a recent flurry of applications of the broadly defined ('non-AdS/non-CFT') holographic correspondence to a variety of condensed matter problems, the status of this intriguing, yet speculative, approach remains largely undetermined. This note exposes a number of potential inconsistencies between the previously made holographic predictions and advocates for a compelling need to systematically contrast the latter against the results of alternate, more conventional, approaches as well as experimental data. It is also proposed to extend the list of computed observables and utilize the general relations between them as a further means of bringing the formal holographic approach into a closer contact with the physical realm.Comment: Contains a refined scaling analysis and comments on the recent Ref.16. None of the conclusions have change

Critical Fields and Critical Currents in MgB2

We review recent measurements of upper (Hc2) and lower (Hc1) critical fields in clean single crystals of MgB2, and their anisotropies between the two principal crystallographic directions. Such crystals are far into the "clean limit" of Type II superconductivity, and indeed for fields applied in the c-direction, the Ginzburg-Landau parameter k is only about 3, just large enough for Type II behaviour. Because m0Hc2 is so low, about 3 T for fields in the c-direction, MgB2 has to be modified for it to become useful for high-current applications. It should be possible to increase Hc2 by the introduction of strong electron scattering (but because of the electronic structure and the double gap that results, the scatterers will have to be chosen carefully). In addition, pinning defects on a scale of a few nm will have to be engineered in order to enhance the critical current density at high fields.Comment: BOROMAG Conference Invited paper. To appear in Supercond. Sci. Tec