Cosmopolitan Trade Centre or Bone of Contention? Alexandria and the Crusades, 487–857/1095–1453

Abstract

This article examines the position of Alexandria during the crusading period (487–857/1095–1453), seeking to open up the question indicated in the title for discussion. Did Alexandria's importance as a trade centre have an impact on whether or not it became the target of military attacks by the Franks? What other forms of contention was it a focus for during the period? While not claiming to provide conclusive answers, we seek at least to provide a starting point for discussion of this complex issue.     

The urgent need for new approaches in school evaluation to enable Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence

This paper presents observations on the nature of school audit methods in light of the implementation of Scotland’s incoming Curriculum for Excellence and the major normative, technological, and cultural changes affecting schools. It points to a mismatch between the concepts and structures of the incoming curriculum and that of the universalistic yet atheoretical grading schemas used in Scottish school inspections. The analysis demonstrates how school inspection with its basis in specifications and fixed measures conflicts with the formative agenda of the incoming curriculum, causing a barrier to its creative realisation in schools. An alternative framework of school developmental engagement is presented via interpretative processes, theoretically grounded purposes and systems thinking.     

An investigation into the application of ensemble learning for entailment classification

Textual entailment is a task for which the application of supervised learning mechanisms has received considerable attention as driven by successive Recognizing Data Entailment data challenges. We developed a linguistic analysis framework in which a number of similarity/dissimilarity features are extracted for each entailment pair in a data set and various classifier methods are evaluated based on the instance data derived from the extracted features. The focus of the paper is to compare and contrast the performance of single and ensemble based learning algorithms for a number of data sets. We showed that there is some benefit to the use of ensemble approaches but, based on the extracted features, Naïve Bayes proved to be the strongest learning mechanism. Only one ensemble approach demonstrated a slight improvement over the technique of Naïve Bayes.     

4. PROPAGANDA

RESIDENTIAL BROADBAND by George Abe (Indianapolis: Macmillan Technical Publishing “Cisco Press Design and Implementation Series,”; 1997—$55.00, ISBN 1–57870–020–5, 500 pp., charts, graphs, acronyms list [inside covers], appendix directory of companies, index)

INTRODUCTION TO TELECOMMUNICATIONS NETWORK ENGINEERING by Tarmo Anttalainen (Norwood, MA: Artech House “Communications Library,”; 1998—price not given, ISBN 0–89006–984–0, 297 pp., diagrams, chapter problem and review sets, references, index)

MOBILE TELECOMMUNICATIONS: STANDARDS, REGULATION, AND APPLICATIONS by Rudi Bekkers and Jan Smits (Norwood, MA: Artech House “Mobile Communications Series,”; 1998—$95.00, ISBN 0–89006–806–2, 467 pp., diagrams, tables, glossary, bibliography, notes, index)

HIGH PERFORMANCE NETWORKS, PERSONAL COMMUNICATIONS AND MOBILE COMPUTING by Dimitris Chorafas (Basingstoke: Macmillan “Business,”; 1997—£45.00, ISBN 0–333–66683–6, 340 pp., figures, tables, charts, list of contacts, index)

DIGITAL VIDEO BROADCASTING: TECHNOLOGY, STANDARDS, AND REGULATIONS by Ronald de Bruin and Jan Smits (Norwood, MA: Artech House “Digital Audio and Video Library,”; 1999—$73.00, ISBN 0–89006–743–0, 315 pp., diagrams, references, glossary, index)

FROM TALKING DRUMS TO THE INTERNET: AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY by Robert Gardner and Dennis Shortelle (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC‐Clio, 1997—$65.00, ISBN 0–87436–832–4, 355 pp., photos, diagrams, references, bibliography, index)

COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY UPDATE edited by August E. Grant and Jennifer Harman Meadows (Woburn, MA: Focal Press, 1998 [6th ed.]—$35.00, paper, ISBN 0–240–80326–4, charts, diagrams, tables, notes, chapter bibliographies, glossary)

ISDN EXPLAINED: WORLDWIDE NETWORK AND APPLICATIONS TECHNOLOGY edited by John M. Griffiths (Chichester, England and New York: John Wiley, 1998 [3rd ed.]—$74.95, ISBN 0–471–97905–8, 291 pp., charts, tables, notes, glossary, index)

DICTIONARY OF COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY: TERMS, DEFINITIONS AND ABBREVIATIONS by Gilbert Held (New York: John Wiley, 1998 [3rd ed.]—$160.00, paper, ISBN 0–471–97517–6, 672 pp., tables, charts, appendices)

RESIDENTIAL BROADBAND: AN INSIDER'S GUIDE TO THE BATTLE FOR THE LAST MILE by Kim Maxwell (New York: Wiley, 1998—$39.99, paper, ISBN 0–471–25165–8, 390 pp., diagrams, tables, bibliography, index)

MAKING MICROCHIPS: POLICY, GLOBALIZATION, AND ECONOMIC RESTRUCTURING IN THE SEMICONDUCTOR INDUSTRY by Jan Mazurek (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press “Urban and Industrial Environments,”; 1999—$30.00, ISBN 0–262–13345–8, 245 pp., charts, references, index)

UNDERSTANDING MODERN TELECOMMUNICATIONS AND THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY by John G. Nellist and Elliott M. Gilbert (Norwood, MA: Artech House, 1999—$49.00, ISBN 0–89006–322–2, 285 pp., photos, diagrams, charts, chapter bibliographies, glossary, index)

WORLD‐CLASS TELECOMMUNICATIONS SERVICE DEVELOPMENT by Ellen Ward (Norwood, MA: Artech House “Telecommunications Library,”; 1998—$59.00, ISBN 0–89006–922–0, 260 pp., diagrams, acronyms list, index)

UNDERSTANDING CELLULAR RADIO by William Webb (Norwood, MA: Artech House “Mobile Communications Series,”; 1998—$59.00, ISBN 0–89006–994–8, 283 pp., diagrams, glossary, index)     

3. PROPAGANDA STUDIES

CONSUMING ENVIRONMENTS: TELEVISION AND COMMERCIAL CULTURE by Mike Budd, Steve Craig, and Clay Steinman (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press “Communications, Media, and Culture,”; 1999— $50.00/22.00, ISBN 0–8135–2591–8 hard, 0–8135–2592–6 paper, 225 pp., photos, tables, charts, bibliography, index)

PACIFICA RADIO: THE RISE OF AN ALTERNATIVE NETWORK by Matthew Lasar (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1999—$34.95, ISBN 1–56639–660–3, 277 pp., photos, notes, index)

COPYCAT TELEVISION: GLOBALISATION, PROGRAM FORMATS AND CULTURAL IDENTITY by Albert Moran (Luton: University of Luton Press, 1998—£14.95, paper, ISBN 1–86020–537–2, 192 pp., illustrations, bibliography, index)     

6. FOREIGN AND INTERNATIONAL

TELECOM REFORM: PRINCIPLES, POLICIES AND REGULATORY PRACTICES by edited by William H. Melody (Lyngby, Denmark: Den private Ingeniørfond, Technical University of Denmark, 1997‐$39.00, paper, ISBN 7–7381–071–1, 557 pp., tables figures notes, index, glossary, appendix)

RADIO CANADA INTERNATIONAL: VOICE OF A MIDDLE POWER by James L. Hall (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, “Canadian Series No. 7,”; 1997—$24.95, paper, ISBN 0–87013–420–5, 295 pp., photos, notes, appendices, bibliography, index)

BITS ACROSS BORDERS: POLICY CHOICES FOR INTERNATIONAL MULTIMEDIA AND DIGITAL SERVICES: A Report of the Second Annual Aspen Institute Roundtable on International Telecommunications, Berlin, Germany, June 19–22, 1996, by Kenneth G. Robinson and Charles M. Firestone (Queenstown, MD: The Aspen Institute, 1997—$10.00, ISBN 0–89843–208–1, 55 pp., appendix)

IT'S A WIRED WORLD by Anne C. Leer (Oslo: Scandinavian University Press [Universitetsforlaget], 1996—L27.50, ISBN 82–00–42310–7, 188 pp., figures, appendices, notes, glossary)

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF COMMUNICATION: RETHINKING AND RENEWAL by Vincent Mosco (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1996—$39.95/13.95, ISBN 0–8039–8560–6 hard, 0–8039–8561–4 paper, 320 pp., figures, tables, notes, index)

EBU YEARBOOK 1997 (Geneva: European Broadcasting Union, 1997—free by contacting the EBU, no ISSN given, 52 pp., tables, charts, photos)

LIVE, DIRECT AND BIASED? MAKING TELEVISION NEWS IN THE SATELLITE AGE by Brent MacGregor (London: Arnold/New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997—prices not given, ISBN 0–340–66224–7 hard, 0–340–66225–5 paper, 234 pp., table, references, index)

GLOBAL INFORMATION AND WORLD COMMUNICATION: NEW FRONTIERS IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS by Hamid Mowlana (London: Sage, 1997 [2nd ed.] $29.95, ISBN 0–7619–5256‐X hard, ISBN 0–7619–5257–8 soft, 270 pp., figures, selected bibliography, index)     

International and comparative systems

SWITCHING CHANNELS: IDEOLOGIES OF TELEVISION IN INDIA by Nilanjana Gupta (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998—price not given, ISBN 0–19–564204‐X, 155 pp., tables, notes, reading list, index)

CRIME, THE MEDIA AND THE LAW by Dennis Howitt (Chichester, England: John Wiley & Sons “Wiley Series in The Psychology of Crime, Policing and Law,”; 1998—price not given, ISBN 0–471–96905–2 hard, 0–471–97834–5 paper, 233 pp., references, index)

GLOBAL MARKETING AND ADVERTISING: UNDERSTANDING CULTURAL PARADOXES by Marieke de Mooij (London: Sage, 1998—£40.00/17.99, ISBN 0–8039–5969–9 hard, 0–8039–5970–2 paper, 336 pp., tables, charts, tables, photos, index)     

Europe

YOURS IN SISTERHOOD: MS. MAGAZINE AND THE PROMISE OF POPULAR FEMINISM by Amy Erdman Farrell (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press “Gender &; American Culture,”; 1998—$39.95/16.95, ISBN 0–8078–2424–0 hard, 0–8078–4735–6 paper, 232 pp.)

WOMEN'S STUDIES SERIALS: A QUARTER‐CENTURY OF DEVELOPMENT edited by Kristin H. Gerhard (New York: Haworth Press, 1998—$49.95, ISBN 0–7890–0541–7, 263 pp.)

A HISTORY OF POPULAR WOMEN'S MAGAZINES IN THE UNITED STATES, 1792–1995 by Mary Ellen Zuckerman (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press “Contributions in Women's Studies, No. 165,”; 1998—$59.95, ISBN 0–3133–0675–3, 272 pp.)     

Student interests and undergraduate performance: the importance of student–course alignment

There has been a growing interest in the influences on undergraduate performance in recent years as a result of the increasing diversity of students entering third-level education and an ever increasing emphasis on the development of a robust knowledge economy. This paper investigates the influence of students’ dominant interest types and prior academic achievement on undergraduate performance in an Irish university. Holland's Self-Directed Search (SDS) interest inventory was completed by 308 students drawn from three, second year undergraduate programmes in engineering, nursing and teaching. The impact of dominant interest types and prior academic achievement on the performance of these students in their second year was then investigated using correlation and linear regression analyses. When combined, student interests and prior academic achievements were found to account for between 38% and 50% of the variance in undergraduate performance for students in these three undergraduate programmes.