Outcomes of a scientific nonformal educational initiative for youth in Rio de Janeiro

The aim of this research is to understand how former students view their professional and academic paths after taking part in a specific scientific nonformal educational initiative during high school. This program is called Vocational Scientific Program (Provoc) and is carried out in the Oswald Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This institution has for over 100 years played a pioneer role in public health research in the country. This institution has many graduate programs and a high school dedicated to training students in health issues. Provoc was originated in this school and has been part of it for the last 25 years. Since its beginning, this program has been characterized by a significant predominance of women which relates to the female predominance of professionals in this institution working in the traditional areas of Fiocruz, which are Biology, Medicine, Public Health, Humanities and Social Sciences. This study was qualitative in nature and involved observations and 34 individual interviews, which followed a semi structured questionnaire, designed for this research. The results indicate that the majority of participants see their program participation experiences as an asset in their academic and professional careers. Many describe feeling empowered by presenting their work in seminars and a few by writing a research article. Many former students also testified to the establishment of social long lasting relationships in the research work environment. And finally, the interviews reveal a few moments and the factors involved in the selection of a profession by youth.     

Talking about death: Implementing peer discussion as a coping mechanism to overcome fears about dissection,death, and dying

Many studies have reported on the perceptions of medical students toward dissection. It is important to understand the feelings and symptoms experienced during dissection so that they can be adequately handled. Prior to dissection, first year students are given lectures on aspects of dissection, death and dying, and death rituals in various cultures. Two separate questionnaires, one given during the first week of dissection and another given one month into the program were then completed anonymously by dissection groups. The questions were designed to be open‐ended, thereby encouraging group discussion amongst students. The questionnaires were used to determine the perception of students to dissection and to discover if these perceptions change during the dissection program. The first questionnaire revealed that students do experience fears and anxiety prior to and at the beginning of dissection; however, most of these fears dissipated by the time of the second questionnaire. One month into dissection students cited talking to peers as their main coping mechanism and fewer students mentioned emotional detachment from their cadaver as a coping mechanism, as was the case in the first questionnaire. Dissection was perceived as a positive experience by our student cohort and most students cited the main advantage of dissection as the ability to visualize organs in three dimensions. The comprehensive answers received from the students indicated that thorough discussion of feelings amongst peers occurred, introducing students to an important coping mechanism at an early stage of their learning. Anat Sci Educ. © 2013 American Association of Anatomists.     

Narrowmobilization and Tea Party Activism: A Study of Right-Leaning Alternative Media

Past research concerning the theoretical framework of Resistance Performance (RP) has been based on observations of liberal organizations and activists. In the following essay, we engage in a qualitative content analysis of alternative media utilized by conservative “Tea Party” activists to build on the concept of RP. Overall, we discovered that the dominant theme found in much of the content focuses on “purity,” which is considerably different from past RP research that found broad themes of “human rights,” “democracy,” “be the media,” and “principles of unity” embedded within liberal alternative media content. We conclude that the theme of “purity” gives rise to narrowmobilization, which constructs very focused protest communities within right-leaning politics.     

Planning Istanbul’s Public Library System

The paper is an attempt to analyse the role of Nigerian television (TV) journalists as major participants in mass information production, transfer, and, delivery. The analysis centres on the legal, political, economic, and cultural contexts in which the TV journalists operate, and the dangers, problems, and frustrations involved in this operation. It also analyses the strategic role of the TV and its impact as a medium of mass information. The paper concludes by analyzing how TV programming orientation has been skewed in favour of more literate urban and semi-urban populations, and how Nigeria's legal, political, economic, and cultural environments are unfavourable for conscientious and conscious TV journalists. It suggests that only when the TV journalists re-orient themselves and assert their right as people's conscience can they mobilize society for positive change.     

Convergence of Visions

The right for everyone to access “the promised land” of the InfoSociety is widely recognized. The “wiring of the universe” is now technically and financially possible. One should do it quickly in the respect of human values and rights, freedom of opinion, transparency and cultural diversity. However, in the context of communication developments in 1997, it is a multifacet issue of concern to all the countries. The cyberspace era brings many new challenges to the communications' academic curricula, professional practices, media owners and the research and development (R&D) of industries across the world. The emerging virtual communities change social and political relationships, as well as the job market well beyond national and linguistic boundaries. The paper examines the minimal conditions needed for this open process to take place with the participation of all players and the possible role of ORBICOM, the network of UNESCO Chairs in Communication.     

Bringing the Author Back Into the Audience Research: A Hermeneutical Perspective on the Audience's Understanding of the Author

In the current media environment the texts available to media audiences are from very diverse sources. This paper deals with a theoretical question of how the audiences' understanding of author co-determines the reader's interpretation of the particular text. Drawing on the tradition of philosophical hermeneutics, a concept of the imagined author is introduced: a result of the text-reader encounter, where the notion of the author suggested by the text is realized by the reader through their prior knowledge and expectations of an author. A multidimensional model of the author is therefore proposed to appreciate different characteristics and values potentially associated by audiences with varying forms of authorial presence. Distinguishing various dimensions of the author allows a matrix of authorial characteristics to be built that positions the author brought into the encounter by the text as a paratextual feature that co-determines the meaning of the text.     

Commercial ethnicity: Language,class and race in the marketing of the hispanic audience

This essay examines the historical construction of the Hispanic audience and analyzes how contemporary Hispanic audience researchers/marketers have disrupted that unitary, essentialist construction by segmenting the Hispanic audience by class. The principal tool in this effort is language: the Spanish language is proxy for the “mass” of lower socioeconomic class Hispanic audience; English language usage by Hispanics is the sign of a higher class of Hispanic audience. The clearly defined panethnic conceptualization of the Hispanic audience, the nexus of which is the Spanish language, has been blurred. The study draws on interviews with Hispanic media marketers and audience researchers and on analysis of Hispanic market research reports.     

Educational supplementary bibliographic relationships from FRBR point of view: A Canadian Case Study

PurposeOne of the aims of library catalogs is to clearly represent the relationships existing between two or more bibliographic entities, enabling users to make sense of these relationships. Educational bibliographic relationships are the relationships between an educational work, such as a textbook, and its related works. The main interest of this study was to understand the nature of the supplementary work-to-work bibliographic relationships among educational works and the constitution of educational bibliographic families in the Canadian context using AMICUS (the Canadian national catalog). A thorough understanding of educational bibliographic relationships is required for understanding the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) supplementary relationships.Design/methodology/approachWe studied the extent and size of educational bibliographic relationships in the bibliographic universe found in the AMICUS catalog. This is an empirical investigation into the nature and extent of educational work-to-work bibliographic relationships by examining title of works, notes and added entries in bibliographic records. The study was carried out between September 1st 2010 and December 22nd 2010 and examines educational bibliographic relationships between Canadian 2009 publications in each class of the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC). In other words, this study poses two main questions: What is the structure of educational supplementary bibliographic relationships in Canadian publications? Do significant differences exist across the ten DDC classes?FindingsResults show that 595 works of the 2009 bibliographic records in the AMICUS catalog contain an educational supplementary bibliographic relationship. Of the Canadian publications with an educational supplementary work-to-work bibliographic relationship that were studied, the rates of educational bibliographic relationships were relatively high in the fields of Science (27%), Technology (22%), Social Sciences (20%), and Language (19%). The results of this study suggest a set of guidelines for the establishment and maintenance of educational bibliographic relationships.Originality/valueThis is the first research to examine the educational bibliographic relationships, as supplementary relationships.     

OCLC's WorldShare Management Services: A Brave New World for Catalogers

Like other recent library management systems, OCLC's WorldShare Management Services (WMS) is cloud-based. But unlike the others, WMS opens WorldCat for applications beyond its traditional role as a source of bibliographic records. It enables catalogers to work directly from the Master Record, which no longer needs to be exported to a local system. This article describes the impact of WMS on the roles and functions of cataloging departments, and asks if it is changing the meaning of cataloging. It concludes that while the workflows are changed dramatically, the profession of cataloging remains relevant.