A promising route to neuromorphic vision

The human vision system has a very strong capability in perceiving surround-ings.Such visual perception starts in the retina,which receives and preprocesses the...     

Bits,Bytes and Dinosaurs: using Levinas and Freire to address the concept of ‘twenty-first century learning’

Abstract

The discourse of twenty-first century learning argues that education should prepare students for successful living in the twenty-first century workplace and society. It challenges all educators with the idea that contemporary education is unable to do so, as it is designed to replicate an industrial age model, essentially rear-focused, rather than future-focused. Future-focused preparation takes account of the startling effect on economy and society caused by rapid technological change, to the extent that the future cannot be accurately predicted. It is a discourse that effectively renders knowledge obsolete, and which relies increasingly on communication technologies and online pedagogies. This is however an education which in some respects deepens the loss of identity characteristic of contemporary times. Thus, it has negative implications for face-to-face interactions in community which underpins the development of democratic practices. This article challenges these futuristic discourses by appealing to two philosophers of the twentieth century, namely Emmanuel Levinas and Paulo Freire. It considers the Levinasian concepts of the Other and the face, and the Freirean concepts of humanisation and critical education to argue that they offer a discourse of possibility and hope. These thinkers enable the argument that, despite rapid change, there are certain attributes and dispositions that transcend time and place, which schools have not only a right, but an obligation to develop.     

An Investigation of the Language Demands in Content Assessments for English Language Learners

The purpose of the present study is to examine the language characteristics of a few states' large-scale assessments of mathematics and science and investigate whether the language demands of the items are associated with the degree of differential item functioning (DIF) for English language learner (ELL) students. A total of 542 items from 11 assessments at Grades 4, 5, 7, and 8 from three states were rated for the linguistic complexity based on a developed linguistic coding scheme. The linguistic ratings were compared to each item's DIF statistics. The results yielded a stronger association between the linguistic rating and DIF statistics for ELL students in the “relatively easy” items than in the “not easy” items. Particularly, general academic vocabulary and the amount of language in an item were found to have the strongest association with the degrees of DIF, particularly for ELL students with low English language proficiency. Furthermore, the items were grouped into four bundles to closely look at the relationship between the varying degrees of language demands and ELL students' performance. Differential bundling functioning (DBF) results indicated that the exhibited DBF was more substantial as the language demands increased. By disentangling linguistic difficulty from content difficulty, the results of the study provide strong evidence of the impact of linguistic complexity on ELL students' performance on tests. The study discusses the implications for the validation of the tests and instructions for ELL students.     

Journalism

Leon V. Sigal's Reporters and Officials: The Organization and Politics of Newsmaking (Lexington, Mass: D.C. Heath Lexington Books, 1973—price not known but around 15.00)

Edward Jay Epstein's News from Nowhere: Television and the News (New York: Random House, 1973 —$7.95)

John Hohenberg's The Professional Journalist (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1973— )     

A new system of impact excitation of continuous electrical oscillations and their application to wireless telephony

During the development of radio-telegraphy and radio-telephony there have appeared many devices, including various forms of discharge gaps and arcs, for the production of high-frequency oscillations. The following contribution presents yet another method, which was discovered by the author, for the production of oscillatory currents of high frequency; an arrangement which at first sight may appear to differ but slightly from some hitherto known systems, but which, on closer study, will be seen to be new in electrical action. Besides being new, this system possesses some interesting characteristics and some advantages over the other systems, which render it useful. A brief study' of the system is given in the following pages, together with some notes on its successful application to wireless telephony.