Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope

The Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope(LAMOST) is a meridian reflecting Schmidt telescope with a clear aperture of four meters,a focal length of 20 meters and a field of view of five degrees.By using active optics technique to control its reflecting corrector,     

Authors and electronic publishing: what authors want from the new technology

Responses from almost 1,250 academic authors around the world were analysed to obtain their views on electronic publishing of learned journals. Currently, having a print version of journals is still more important to them than an electronic version. The issue of greatest importance to authors and readers is the continuing availability of back volumes, and there are strong concerns about pricing of electronic journals. The potential gains in publication speed through publishing electronically appear not to be a priority. Electronic preprint and reprint archives are used very little at present, with the exception of the physics and mathematics communities. Of all publisher‐mediated tasks, the peer‐review process is the most valued, followed by provision of citation‐linking. Respondents' views of future developments in electronic publishing are also explored.     

English in classrooms: only write down what you need to know: annotation for what?

The annotation of texts in the school English classroom is central to the curriculum, examination and the history of English as a school subject. In this paper we explore ‘the way it is done’ across two different classrooms. We focus on the relationship between official definitions of annotation offered by national policies and examination syllabuses and its actualization in particular classrooms. The article takes a multimodal approach: attending to all modes of representation and communication in the teaching of English including image, gesture, gaze and the spatial organization of the classroom.     

Careers and lifestyles of craft makers in the 21st century

A survey of over 2,000 craft makers in England and Wales undertaken in 2003 forms the basis of this study. It is compared with data from a previous national survey, enabling a unique longitudinal perspective on specific trends within this sector. The career paths travelled by makers between their initial training and forming their enterprises are explored and the dynamism of the sector and its potential contribution to the UK economy are made apparent. Three themes are addressed: the initial training of the makers; the emerging pattern of late entry to the sector; and, finally, individuals' career paths in the context of lifestyles and quality of life associated with working in the crafts.     

Cultural capital and the place of sport

It is not unusual now to talk about the culture of the body, or to see routine and organized physical activity, as well as sport, as part and parcel of cultural life. In recent decades body management techniques have become a very conspicuous aspect of self-presentation and have been served by the expansion of the supply of commercial services to deal with diet and health, physical training and cosmetic improvement to appearances. The professionalization and commercialization of sport have also accelerated. Bourdieu interpreted measures for body management and maintenance in terms of the accumulation and display of cultural capital. He distinguished three types of cultural capital: institutionalized, objectified and embodied. This article considers some of the elements of the very complex and extensive property, embodied cultural capital. The Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion (CCSE) survey included questions on sporting activity, sports spectatorship and physical exercise routines, important elements in the mosaic of contemporary cultural activities. This article teases out the patterns of participation and taste in this area, examining differentiation by class, gender, education, ethnic and age groups in particular. While showing that all these factors matter, gender is the most important source of differentiation, though this is more the case for sport than for exercise per se. In addition, it is shown that educational qualification is particularly important in predicting participation in exercise, whereas occupational class makes more difference to the choice of sport, whether playing or watching.     

The musical field

This article examines musical taste, as revealed by the Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion survey. It shows that musical taste is highly divided and contentious, with large numbers of people intensely disliking certain genres of music. It shows the existence of two distinctive musical taste communities, one linking taste for rock, electronic, urban, world and heavy metal music, and the other linking classical music and jazz. Tastes for specific musical works do not easily map onto musical genres, and are less closely correlated with each other. Using logistic regression, it is shown that age and ethnicity in particular, and gender, educational qualifications and occupational class, strongly condition taste for both musical genres and works.     

NEW LAW ON HIGHER EDUCATION IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA

The Federal Assembly of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic approved, on 10 April 1980, the new law (Nr.39/80) on higher education. This law was under preparation nearly three years by the Czech and Slovak ministries of education and representatives of universities and other institutes of higher education as we'll as experts in charge of economic and social development. Starting from 1 September 1980 it will replace the previous law on higher education (Nr. 19/66) that has been in effect since 1966.

The following article, written for “Higher Education in Europe” by Professor Jiri M#akeri?ka, Director of the Research Institute on Engineering Studies in Prague, presents the main elements of this new law.