UK National statistics for science, engineering and technology studies and careers confirm the under-representation of women in these disciplines. A literature review formed the basis for developing survey questionnaires exploring issues of female students' attraction to, and retention in, engineering and technology studies. Findings indicate that having family members in the engineering or technology industry plays an important part in the students' choice of degree topic and future career. In particular, we found that female students need to be encouraged to (...) study a "male dominated" subject, such as engineering or technology but that teachers do not contribute much to such encouragement. While at university, female students were more comfortable in small practical sessions rather than in a large lecture theatre environment and, when evaluating self-confidence in their skills at graduation, the female students were less confident than their male colleagues. In addition, the study highlights that gaining work experience through an industrial placement should be one of the priorities for engineering and technology students. A high level of determination and wanting to do engineering or technology is especially necessary for women who may be discouraged by the stereotyped image of engineering and technology studies and professions. (shrink)

Ces deux ouvrages qui font la matière de ce volume se complètent parfaitement, c'est pourquoi ils paraissent sous le même titre. L'auteur analyse dans Esquisse d'une esthétique l'activité gratuite de l'artiste. Le procès de la conscience dénonce d'un côté la conscience de l'autre, reconnaît que les religions et les philosophies ne sont que des issues qui permettent de combler le vide d'être que la conscience a creusé en nous.

La relation est au coeur de l'existence individuelle et les multiplicités, que déterminent les différents rapports pratiques, affectifs, sociaux et politiques, sont coextensives à l'invention continue de l'individualité par elle-même. Le présent essai veut rendre compte de la constitution, à partir de la seule activité des individus, des diverses formes d'existence et d'organisation que peut revêtir un ensemble pratique : rassemblements, dispositifs collectifs, réseaux et systèmes, associations et communautés plus ou moins étendues et diversement intégrées, institutions et Etats, sans oublier (...) les conflits et les luttes, avec leur développement historique. Affectée par des phénomènes de domination, la multiplicité reçoit la structure passive de l'union en altérité, comme si la liberté en venait à réaliser, malgré elle, la transmutation de la puissance singulière en impuissance. Mais une multiplicité active peut aussi se constituer en résistant à la servitude et en rompant avec l'être sériel : elle s'affirme alors dans l'expérience subjective du groupe, avec l'apparition du pouvoir normatif et critique appartenant à une multitude libre, qui crée de nouvelles formes de la vie sociale. (shrink)

Introduction: Globally, vitamin D deficiency is one of the most common deficiencies, affecting nearly half the world's population. The objective of this survey was to assess and compare the knowledge about vitamin D and the perceived state of health in Emirati and international tourist female students in Dubai, UAE. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study that took place in universities in Dubai, UAE. This survey consisted of 17 multiple choice questions. The first part of the survey assessed levels of supplementation, (...) diet and UV exposure. Another section evaluated the participants’ self-assessed state of health regarding vitamin D testing, symptoms related to vitamin D deficiency and general welbeing. The collected data were statistically analyzed using SPSS statistics for windows version 26.0 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL). Statistical significance was set at P<0.05. Results: 105 respondents were Emiratis and 65 were international students. The average age was 21, with an average BMI 23.3. Almost one-third of each group reported using Vitamin D supplements once weekly. The majority of both groups reported rarely getting tanned. Almost all participants reported regular consumption of Vitamin-D rich foods. In both groups, more than half reported consuming milk and cheese regularly and up to one-third reported consuming fish in a regular manner. Although more than half of the students rated their health as good; more than two-thirds reported experiencing muscle pain; only half reported having their blood Vitamin D levels measured once; half reported experiencing problems with concentration and more than three-quarters reported experiencing bad mood in the past month. The prevalence of these symptoms was almost similar across different categories of vitamin D supplementation, tanning habits, dietary intake, or nationality. No statistically significant differences were noted between the 2 groups. Conclusion: more Emirati students were aware of the association between vitamin D and osteoporosis than International tourist students (40% vs. 21.9%, respectively; p<0.05). On the other hand, both groups had lower knowledge about the relationship between vitamin D deficiency and depression, Rheumatoid Arthritis and Hypertension, and the optimal vitamin D level; however, no statistically significant differences were noted regarding this knowledge of Emiratis and international students. (shrink)

La théocratie hébraïque est un système unique de croyances, de conduites et de rites, qui a favorisé la cohésion du peuple et le consentement aux règles de la vie commune. Il est vrai que le régime dit théocratique des Hébreux n’est pas une simple illusion rétrospective, propre à tous ceux qui veulent appuyer le pouvoir politique sur l’illusion d’une intervention directe de Dieu dans les affaires de l’État. En effet, la théocratie juive, qui a effectivement existé dans les limites de (...) deux siècles environ, ne déroge pas, dans l’analyse qu’en livre Spinoza, à la thèse que tout pouvoir politique est immanent à la puissance de la multitude, puissance dont il provient et puissance à laquelle il conduit. Le pouvoir qu’a institué Moïse, ni monarchique, ni aristocratique, ni populaire, est une forme faible de démocratie instituée, où le pouvoir, dit appartenir à Dieu, n’appartient de fait à aucun homme. C’est en ce sens que la Loi apparaît comme l’altérité des prescriptions mêmes de la raison, dans des conditions historiques déterminées. (shrink)

This collection demonstrates the strong influence that humanism and freethought had in developing the history and ideals of black intellectualism. Most people are quick to note the profound influence that religion has played in African-American history: consoling the downtrodden slave or inspiring the abolitionists, the underground railroad, and the civil rights movement. But few are aware of the role humanism played in shaping the black experience: developing the thought and motivating the actions of powerful African-American intellectuals. Section One of this (...) book offers biographical sketches of such prominent black humanists as Frederick Douglass, Cheikh Anta Diop, W.E.B. DuBois, Hubert H. Harrison, and Richard Wright. Section Two features essays by black humanists: Douglass, DuBois, Charles W. Faulkner, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Ishmael Jaffree, Claude McKay, Melvin B. Tolson, and Bruce Wright. Section Three offers the views of contemporary black African humanists: Freda Amakye Ansah, Emmanuel Kofi Mensah, Nkeonye Otakpor, Franz Vanderpuye, and Kwasi Wiredu. Section Four contains interviews conducted by Allen on the subjects of black humanist activism, the Afroasiatic roots of classical civilization, and the Harlem Renaissance with: Martin G. Bernal, Charles Faulkner, Leonard Harris, Norman Hill, and Alaine Locke. (shrink)

We are currently facing global healthcare crisis that has placed unprecedented stress on healthcare workers as a result of the coronavirus disease 2019. It is imperative that we develop novel tools to assist healthcare workers in dealing with the significant additional stress and trauma that has arisen as a result of the pandemic. Based in research on the effects of immersive environments on mood, a neuroscience research laboratory was rapidly repurposed using commercially available technologies and materials to create a nature-inspired (...) relaxation space. Frontline healthcare workers were invited to book 15-min experiences in the Recharge Room before, during or after their shifts, where they were exposed to the immersive, multisensory experience 496 Recharge Room users completed a short survey about their experience during an unselected, consecutive 14-day period. Average self-reported stress levels prior to entering the Recharge Room were 4.58/6. After a single 15-min experience in the Recharge Room, the average user-reported stress level was significantly reduced 1.85/6. Net Promoter Score for the experience was 99.3%. Recharge Rooms such as those described here produce significant short-term reductions in perceived stress, and users find them highly enjoyable. These rooms may be of general utility in high-stress healthcare environments. (shrink)

Ethics rounds in clinical ethics have already taken hold in multiple venues. There are “sit-down rounds,” which usually consist of a bioethicist setting a specific, prescheduled time aside for residents and/or others to bring a case or two for discussion with the bioethicist. Another kind of rounds that occurs on an ad hoc or infrequent basis is to have either a staff or outside bioethicist give hospital-wide and/or departmental “grand rounds.” Grand rounds is a traditional educational format in medicine and (...) adding bioethics to the topics covered in grand rounds is an important means of elevating ethical awareness within a department or throughout a healthcare organization. Newer is the rounding practice of adding a bioethicist to other established rounding processes, such as case management and utilization review rounds. All of these kinds of ethics rounds are important opportunities to elevate the level of moral discourse within a healthcare setting and are becoming part and parcel of any full-service hospital bioethics program. (shrink)

The increasing use of online simulations as replacements for animal dissection in the classroom or lab raises important questions about the nature of simulation itself and its relationship to embodied educational experience. This paper addresses these questions first by presenting a comparative hermeneutic-phenomenological investigation of online and offline dissection. It then interprets the results of this study in terms of Borgmann’s (1992) notion of the intentional “transparency” and “pliability” of simulated hyperreality. It makes the case that it is precisely encumbrance (...) and disruption—elements that are by definition excluded from simulations and interfaces—which give dissection its educational value. (shrink)

Why are the fundamentals of education apparently so little changed in our era of digital technology? Is their obstinate persistence evidence of resilience or obsolescence? Such questions can best be answered not by imagining an uncertain high-tech future, but by examining a well-documented past--a history of instruction and media that extends from Gilgamesh to Google. Norm Friesen looks to the combination and reconfiguration of oral, textual, and more recent media forms to understand the longevity of so many educational arrangements (...) and practices. Friesen examines the interrelationship of reading, writing, and pedagogy in the case of the lecture and the textbook--from their premodern to their postmodern incarnations. Over hundreds of years, these two forms have integrated textual, oral, and (more recently) digital media and connected them with changing pedagogical and cultural priorities. The Textbook and the Lecture opens new possibilities for understanding not only mediated pedagogical practices and their reform but also gradual changes in our conceptions of the knowing subject and of knowledge itself. Drawing on wide-ranging scholarship in fields as diverse as media ecology and German-language media studies, Foucauldian historiography, and even archaeological research, The Textbook and the Lecture is a fascinating investigation of educational media. (shrink)

What is pedagogy, exactly? Merriam-Webster defines it simply as “the art, science, or profession of teaching.” In contemporary academic discourse, however, pedagogy is generally left undefined — with its apparent implicit meanings ranging anywhere from a specific “model for teaching” (e.g., behaviorist or progressivist instruction) to a broadly political philosophy of education in general (most famously, a “pedagogy of the oppressed”). In this paper, Norm Friesen and Hanno Su follow the Continental pedagogical tradition in giving pedagogy a general but (...) explicit definition. They do so by looking at how pedagogy arises both in everyday life and in school as unavoidably ethical activity undertaken primarily for the sake of the young person or child. Such activities, the authors maintain, are structured not so much by processes, methods, and outcomes, but by irresolvable oppositions and the tensions between them. They illustrate this inductively through a series of images and examples — moving gradually from ones involving parenting and early childhood to ones from elementary and secondary schooling. In this way, Friesen and Su show that pedagogy is not so much one or more ideologically focused or evidence-based instructional or psychological approaches to be mastered by a professional or teaching specialist. It is instead an independent but ethically informed practical perspective — one that can (and has) been extended to form a distinctively pedagogical theory and discipline. As such, it is something that is not only a part of our everyday life and culture, but arguably of all human cultures. (shrink)

Norm Phelps has long been one of the leading theoreticians, historians, and strategists of the animal advocacy movement. His new book collects his recent writings on this subject, as well as offers in print for the first time a fully revised and updated version of the e-book he published with Lantern in 2013 (978-1-59056-379-3). Phelps argues that faced with the overwhelming wealth and power of the animal exploitation industries, animal activists are like David trying to stand up to Goliath. (...) But rather than following the unsuccessful strategies of the past, Phelps proposes that we change the game by adopting David's strategy of refusing to play by Goliath's rules. Additional essays explore class and race in animal advocacy, the place of public policy vs. private morality in creating social change, and the unyielding barrier of human exceptionalism. Trenchant, wise, and deeply committed to the reduction of suffering and the liberation of animals, Changing the Game is sure to offer animal advocates much food for thought as the movement charts a way forward for all sentient beings. (shrink)

As we rapidly approach the 50th year of the much‐celebrated ‘cognitive revolution’, it is worth reflecting on its widespread impact on individual disciplines and areas of multidisciplinary endeavour. Of specific concern in this paper is the example of the influence of cognitivism's equation of mind and computer in education. Within education, this paper focuses on a particular area of concern to which both mind and computer are simultaneously central: educational technology. It examines the profound and lasting effect of cognitive science (...) on our understandings of the educational potential of information and communication technologies, and further argues that recent and multiple ‘signs of discontent’, ‘crises’ and even ‘failures’ in cognitive science and psychology should result in changes in these understandings. It concludes by suggesting new directions that educational technology research might take in the light of this crisis of cognitivsm. (shrink)

As we rapidly approach the 50th year of the much‐celebrated ‘cognitive revolution’, it is worth reflecting on its widespread impact on individual disciplines and areas of multidisciplinary endeavour. Of specific concern in this paper is the example of the influence of cognitivism's equation of mind and computer in education. Within education, this paper focuses on a particular area of concern to which both mind and computer are simultaneously central: educational technology. It examines the profound and lasting effect of cognitive science (...) on our understandings of the educational potential of information and communication technologies, and further argues that recent and multiple ‘signs of discontent’, ‘crises’ and even ‘failures’ in cognitive science and psychology should result in changes in these understandings. It concludes by suggesting new directions that educational technology research might take in the light of this crisis of cognitivsm. (shrink)

Although there are many points of continuity, there are also a number of changes in the pedagogical form of the anatomy lecture over the longue durée, over centuries of epistemic change, rather than over years or decades. The article begins with an analysis of the physical and technical arrangements of the early modern anatomy lecture, showing how these present a general underlying similarity compared to those in place today. It then goes on to consider examples of elements of speech and (...) presentation, description and illustration that are used in the biology lecture from the early modern (sixteenth to seventeenth centuries) and late modern (or contemporary) eras. The anatomy lecture thus demonstrates a basic physical and technical continuity in the classroom or theater, whereas the larger epistemic functions in which it is embedded have changed: from a descriptive, discursive function, focusing on individual organs and their physicality, to one that is more integrative, systemic and also performative in both form and content. (shrink)

The challenge: the most difficult battle ever fought -- The universal crime -- Slave owners for abolition -- We are all nazis and if i quit eating meat, i'll have to admit -- That to myself -- The crown of creation and the acme of evolution -- Follow the money -- Optimism of the will -- The environment: a dark age was about to begin -- It ain't what you do, it's the time that you do it -- The empire (...) strikes back -- The madness of more -- Creating a universal rights movement -- We're not in kansas anymore -- The response: the prize and the plow -- Agitators and politicians -- In the beginning -- The movement turns to politics -- Abolitionism: the agitation-only approach to animal rights -- How welfare reforms promote liberation -- The proof of the pudding -- Suffering matters -- Public policy and private morality -- Why violence can't change the game for animals. (shrink)