“Seeking Information from the Lips of People”: oral history in the archives of Qatar and the Gulf region

The turn to oral history in Qatar and the Arabian (also known as Persian) Gulf is not a rejection of traditional archival authority as has been the case in other parts of the world. In the Gulf, oral history has been embraced out of a desire to fill the silences of the largely unwritten record attributable to previous low levels of literacy and strong oral traditions in the region. Today, oral history is seen as the best method to capture details about traditional ways of life during the pre-oil era. After discussing archival concerns about the evidentiary nature of oral histories, this paper explores how it has come to be a crucial documentation tool in the Gulf, adapted to the specific nation building and cultural heritage priorities of the region.     

A new approach to explore the knowledge transition path in the evolution of science & technology: From the biology of restriction enzymes to their application in biotechnology

In this contribution, we develop a new approach to explore the process of knowledge transition from discovery-oriented science to technological fields, via applications-oriented research, including a mediator set. This trajectory is referred to as the D-A-T trajectory. It is shown how it can be constructed and measures are proposed to characterize the relational strength among different environments (discovery oriented research, applications-oriented research and patents) and the speed of evolution. Our approach is illustrated by a case study of three fundamental restriction enzymes articles. Among other results we found that 387 patents cited 124 of the 988 articles (a share of 12.55%) in the mediator set. Defining the non-patent references (NPR) transition rate as the number of citing patents divided by the number of articles in the mediator set yields a value 0.392. Our results suggest that the D-A-T path acts as a backbone and reveals important “invisible contributions” of an original scientific work during its evolution from discovery oriented research to outside academia. Our contribution provides a useful tool for bridging the existing gap in detecting the transition of knowledge between science and technology.     

Four pitfalls in normalizing citation indicators: An investigation of ESI’s selection of highly cited papers

InCites Essential Science Indicators is becoming increasingly used to identify top-performing research and evaluate the impact of institutes. Unfortunately, our study shows that ESI indicators, as well as other normalized citation indicators, have the following flaws. First, the publication month and the online-to-print delay affect a paper’s probability of becoming a Highly Cited Paper (HCP). Papers published in the earlier months of the year are more likely to accumulate enough citation counts to rank at the top 1% compared with those published in later months of the year. Papers with longer online-to-print delays have an apparent advantage for being selected as HCPs. Research field normalizations lead to the third pitfall. Different research fields have different citation thresholds for HCPs, making research field classification important for a journal. In addition, the uniform thresholds for both articles and reviews in ESI affect the reliability of HCP selection because, on average, reviews tend to have higher citation rates than articles. ESI’s selection of HCPs provides an intuitive feel for the problems of normalized citation impact indicators, such as those provided in InCites and SciVal.     

活用陶行知教育思想,让英语课堂更高效

在不断探索和实践新课改的理念中,提高英语课堂教学的有效性主要通过以下几个途径:认真备课作基础、激情导入开好头、合作学习同进步、师生融洽效率高、激活思维巧提问、及时表扬多激励。     

如何在声乐教学中培养学生的学习兴趣

声乐是一门综合艺术,学习者要有坚忍不拔的毅力,持之以恒的精神才能获得美妙的声音。所以激发学生的学习兴趣就成为非常重要的环节,生动的语言、明确的学习目标、良好的师生情感、良好的歌唱心理素质、丰富细腻的情感体验都是提高学习兴趣的有效途径。