Intro to Archival Science: Developing an Undergraduate Archival Elective Outside of a LIS Program

Abstract

This case study describes the development and implementation of a three-credit undergraduate archival science course at Mount St. Mary’s University. Offered through the university’s Department of History, this course was designed to prepare students for positions in archives-related careers, unlike most research-based undergraduate archival electives. Benefits of the course to both students and the archivist profession will be discussed.     

Arithmetic and cryptography

Among the unexpected features of recent developments in technology are the connections between classical arithmetic on the one hand, and new methods for reaching a better security of data transmission on the other. We will illustrate this aspect of the subject by showing how modern cryptography is related to our knowledge of some properties of natural numbers. As an example, we explain how prime numbers play a key role in the process which enables you to withdraw safely your money from your bank account using ATM (Automated Teller Machines) with your secret PIN (Personal Identification Number) code.     

Linkages Between Children's and Their Friends' Social and Physical Aggression: Evidence for a Gene–Environment Interaction?

Based on a sample of 406 seven-year-old twins, this study examined whether exposure to friends' social or physical aggression, respectively, moderates the effect of heritability on children's own social and physical aggression. Univariate analyses showed that children's own social and physical aggression were significantly explained by genetic factors, whereas friends' social and physical aggression represented "true" environmental factors that were unrelated to children's genetic dispositions. Multivariate analyses further suggested a possible gene–environment interaction in the link between friends' and children's physical aggression but not in the link between friends' and children's social aggression. Instead, friends' social aggression was directly related to children's social aggression, in addition to genetic effects on this behavior. Theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.     

‘To go boldly’: teaching science fiction to first-year engineering students in a South African context

This paper reflects on the teaching of science fiction texts to first-year engineering students at the University of the Witwatersrand as part of a Critical Thinking course that uses literature as a vehicle through which to develop competence in critical literacy and communication. This course aims to equip engineering students, as future intermediaries between science and society, with the ability to fulfil this role in both the contemporary global world and South Africa more specifically through the imaginative inhabitation of divergent subject positions afforded by literary texts. Science fiction encourages students to engage imaginatively with various societal ideas, constructs and possibilities. One of the principles of the course is that reading facilitates empathic responses, challenging readers to inhabit unfamiliar subject positions. In this way, the teaching of science fiction aims to develop self-reflective and critical learning practices, wherein engineering students grapple with the ethical ramifications of extrapolated known science in a South African context.     

Digital writing practices: a close look at one grade three author

This paper reports on the digital writing practices of a Grade Three primary school student as he used an iPad to plan, produce and share digital texts. The case study acknowledges that writing is undergoing a period of great change in many classrooms and works to show how a student author has interpreted and produced digital texts with new technologies. In particular, the specific practices, digital materials and literacy concepts will be explicated through analyses of two digital texts created by this author. This focus acknowledges the ways texts can be planned, produced and shared using multiple modes and media. These social practices and the wider learning opportunities afforded through the flexible and recursive ways students produce text have yet to be fully explored. This paper also extends current understandings about digital writing practices through its examination of the connections between and among multiple apps as an author crafts digital text.     

Evaluation of Food Protection and Defense Outreach Education Programs

ABSTRACT: This analysis documents the outcomes and impacts from a series of food protection and defense educational programs conducted over a 3‐y period for private and public sector food system professionals. Several measures were used to determine the professions of participants; their improvements in skills and abilities that resulted from workshops; the audiences' most valued program content; practice changes resulting from educational program participation; abilities to recognize and change food system vulnerabilities; and changes in knowledge levels. Findings indicate that the knowledge level and interest within the target audience progressed over the 3‐y period from basic awareness level through more complex and higher order skills and competencies such as being able to walk through a food production, processing, distribution, or retail facility and identify specific vulnerabilities and make specific risk control recommendations. Pre‐ and posttest scores from the 3rd y of educational activities indicate that baseline awareness levels of core content on food protection and defense is now high among those most likely to attend these types of events, and that participants need to be challenged with additional higher‐level education to promote specific skills. This program series proved successful in building important relationships among food industry and regulatory partners. Analysis of the food security investigation (FSI) series will be useful in the development and delivery of new education and outreach efforts. It is hoped that the analysis and discussion will provide the motivation to further develop a set of competencies that can be used to ground educational efforts that focus on securing and defending our food system.     

The Neolithic or Wood Age

Although perishable under many conditions, wooden artifacts from the Neolithic period have been remarkably well preserved in peat bogs and lakes. Indeed, in view of the large number and quality of the finds, the Neolithic Age might equally well be termed the Wood Age. The objects produced were technically highly sophisticated: the properties of different kinds of wood were well known and used to full advantage, and the skill with which they were made suggests that there may have been craftsmen specializing in woodwork.