Oral traditions,changing rural landscapes,and science education

This forum response extends the argument made by Avery and Hains that oral traditions can be useful for including the cultures and contexts of rural areas within science instruction. To buttress the oral expressions presented in Avery and Hains, I compare oral expressions of a second rural area, 600 miles to the South, in Eastern North Carolina. I explore similarities and differences in expressions from the two areas and consider the changing rural context within Eastern North Carolina. I add a consideration of larger demographic shifts impacting many rural areas—particularly in the US South—and close with a discussion of implications for science education.     

The cognitive relevance of Indigenous and rural: Why is it critical to survival?

Using two case studies of children’s knowledge, this paper sheds light on the value, diversity, and necessity of Indigenous and place-based knowledge to science and engineering curricula in rural areas. Rural contexts are rich environments for cultivating contextual knowledge, hence framing a critical pedagogy of teaching and learning. Indigenous and rural place-based knowledge are nuanced and pragmatic in character, and offer solutions to both local and global challenges. Two case studies, drawn from the experience of Lakota and Dakota communities and rural New York State, demonstrate the need to conserve, transmit, and contribute to Indigenous and rural knowledge through experiential and place-based education that bridges the gap between children’s knowledge and global STEM. This knowledge is inherently diverse in its complexity and connectivity to habitat, and when viewed in this light, has the capacity to transform our perspectives on educational practices and policies as well as our overall outlook on conserving both ecological as well as cultural diversity worldwide. Because diversity and knowledge are necessary for the survival of life on this planet, an enriched concept of pedagogical pluralism, in terms of multiple ways of knowing, is a necessity.     

Genetics of Obesity

Numerous classical genetic studies have proved that genes are contributory factors for obesity. Genes are directly responsible for obesity associated disorders such as Bardet–Biedl and Prader–Willi syndromes. However, both genes as well as environment are associated with obesity in the general population. Genetic epidemiological approaches, particularly genome-wide association studies, have unraveled many genes which play important roles in human obesity. Elucidation of their biological functions can be very useful for understanding pathobiology of obesity. In the near future, further exploration of obesity genetics may help to develop useful diagnostic and predictive tests for obesity treatment.     

CICBS: a methodology and a framework for measuring and managing intellectual capital of cities. A practical application in the city of Mataró

The governments of cities have to make important decisions on the future of their communities. In the past, the vision, objectives, and goals of cities have been determined mainly by considering tangible assets as the main factors of a city's prosperity. However, in the knowledge economy, the role of intangible assets in wealth creation has become fundamental. As a result, a framework of intangible assets that allows navigation from the present reality to the future vision has become an urgent need for all cities. The paper has two well-defined parts. In the first part, it develops a specific methodology and framework for measuring and managing the intellectual capital of cities. In the second part, the study deals with the practical application of this model of intellectual capital in cities with the specific case of the city of Mataró, providing some details of the first cities’ intellectual capital report.     

My avatar,my self: Virtual harm and attachment

Multi-user online environments involve millions of participants world-wide. In these online communities participants can use their online personas – avatars – to chat, fight, make friends, have sex, kill monsters and even get married. Unfortunately participants can also use their avatars to stalk, kill, sexually assault, steal from and torture each other. Despite attempts to minimise the likelihood of interpersonal virtual harm, programmers cannot remove all possibility of online deviant behaviour. Participants are often greatly distressed when their avatars are harmed by other participants’ malicious actions, yet there is a tendency in the literature on this topic to dismiss such distress as evidence of too great an involvement in and identification with the online character. In this paper I argue that this dismissal of virtual harm is based on a set of false assumptions about the nature of avatar attachment and its relation to genuine moral harm. I argue that we cannot dismiss avatar attachment as morally insignificant without being forced to also dismiss other, more acceptable, forms of attachment such as attachment to possessions, people and cultural objects and communities. Arguments against according moral significance to virtual harm fail because they do not reflect participants’ and programmers’ experiences and expectations of virtual communities and they have the unintended consequence of failing to grant significance to attachments that we take for granted, morally speaking. Avatar attachment is expressive of identity and self-conception and should therefore be accorded the moral significance we give to real-life attachments that play a similar role. A shorter version of this paper was presented at the Cyberspace 2005 Conference at Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic