NONVERBAL ASPECTS OF CREATIVE THINKING: STUDIES OF DEAF CHILDREN

Pictorial figural representations are of essential importance in the cognitive development of the deaf. Creative abilities of the deaf were studied with regard to five components of classroom behaviour: motivation, socialization, antisocial behaviour, passiveness and level of intelligence. The subjects were a group of 22 deaf pupils aged 13‐15 and a group of hearing children. The Test of Creative Thinking‐Drawing Productions (TCT‐DP), the Raven Standard Progressive Matrices and the Pupil Behaviour Inventory were used to examine main trends. Comparisons indicated that no significant difference was found between the school functioning of the hearing and the nonhearing in achievement motivation and antisocial behaviour. However in socialization and in intelligence level the nonhearing were significantly lower than the hearing. TCT‐DP results showed that the number of thematic solutions and humour responses increased with deafness, and certain elements became more stereotypical, less individual and less original In addition, IQ in deaf pupils was related to the drawing of concrete objects, whereas in the hearing group intelligence level was related to use of abstractions.     

Quality incentive based congestion control for multimedia communication over IP networks

In this paper we introduce a framework for using quality as an incentive to promote proper application level congestion control. Through integrating a joint-source channel coder and feedback-based congestion control scheme, we are able to construct accurate and efficient quality incentives. The framework is applicable in all network architectures where end-to-end congestion control may be used, and is as such not specific to either best-effort or traffic class-based architectures. The concept is presented along with preliminary simulations that highlight the resulting rate control accuracy. We also discuss how to implement some well-known congestion control schemes within our framework.     

A cross-cultural perspective on televised political advertising during the presidential election between the US and South Korea: 1992–2012

Our study was motivated by the fact that, despite the increasing pervasiveness of political advertising in the political process of many democracies, little empirical research has been conducted to unveil common patterns or crucial differences of political spots across cultural boundaries. Our study thus provided one opportunity to gain better understanding and insights into how media phenomena are related to cultural orientation by comparing and contrasting the content of political spots across the United States and South Korea. In particular, this study analyzed verbal components of political spots in both US and Korean presidential elections over the past 20 years. To the extent that clear differences exist between American and Korean cultural patterns, political spots, which are a conspicuous indicator of cultural values, appear to manifest these differences quite strongly. The findings of this study provide evidence that political advertising primarily reflects the uniqueness of indigenous cultures.     

Cultural Distance and Foreign Drama Enjoyment: Perceived Novelty and Identification with Characters

This study employs a cross-cultural perspective to examine how local audiences perceive and enjoy foreign dramas and how this psychological process differs depending on the cultural distance between the media and the viewing audience. Using a convenience sample of young Korean college students, this study, as predicted by cultural discount theory, shows that cultural distance decreases Korean audiences’ perceived identification with dramatic characters, which erodes their enjoyment of foreign dramas. Unlike cultural discount theory, however, cultural distance arouses Korean audiences’ perception of novelty, which heightens their enjoyment of foreign dramas. This study discusses the theoretical and practical implications of these findings, as well as their potential limitations.     

Environmental Education in Teacher Training: a case study of seven German Colleges and universities and its outcomes

This paper consists of two parts, the first one sets out the place of the case studies in the context of environmental education in German colleges and universities [1]. The case studies reported here should initiate inter‐university discussions on the objectives of, and the ways to incorporate, environmental education into the training for the pedagogical professions at German academic institutions. The second part tries to deduce generalisable aspects from the studies carried out in order to make some provisional conclusions about environmental education in pre‐service teacher education and the necessary research work in this field. Here use is made of the EEITE characteristics which Country Project Representatives agreed during their Summer Conference in 1993 as criteria to analyse the outcomes of the case studies [2].     

Rethinking the ethics of scientific knowledge: A case study of teaching the environment in science classrooms

In this paper we argue that scientific literacy ought to be rethought in that it involves ethics as its core element. Considering the fact that science education has addressed ethical dilemmas of Science, Technology, Society and Environment (STSE) issues, it is worthwhile to question what the ethics of scientific knowledge mean in terms of their implications in modern society where knowledge generally is separated from action and thereby from the responsibility for knowing. We draw on the concept of integrity of knowing to analyze knowledge about the environment in Korean sixth—grade science classrooms. Examining the notion of immediate coping and ConfucianCheng, we differentiate ‘knowing about ethics’ and ‘knowing ethically’ with respect to STSE issues. We challenge the notion of knowing, suggesting instead that there is not only knowing about but knowingin andfor action. Participatory scientific literacy ought to aim for the latter form of knowing. This understanding of ethics and scientific literacy could help science educators bring forth the responsibility for knowledge in science classrooms by encouraging students to become active and responsible concerning STSE issues.     

Passive optical separation and enrichment of cells by size difference

A size-selective cell sorting microfluidic device that utilizes optical force is developed. The device consists of a three-dimensional polydimethylsiloxane microstructure comprised of two crossed microchannels in a three-dimensional configuration. A line shaped focused laser beam is used for automatic size-selective cell sorting in a continuous flow environment. As yeast cells in an aqueous medium are fed continuously into a lower channel, the line shaped focused laser beam is applied (perpendicular to the direction of flow) at the junction of the two crossed channels. The scattering force of the laser beam was employed to push cells matching specific criteria upward from one channel to another. The force depends on the size of the cells, the laser power, and the fluid flow speed. The variation in size of yeast cells causes them to follow different routes at the intersection. For flow speeds below 30 μm∕s, all yeast cells larger than 3 μm were removed from the main stream. As a result, a high purity sample of small cells can be collected at the outlet of bottom channel.     

A group recommendation system for online communities

Online communities are virtual spaces over the Internet in which a group of people with similar interests or purposes interact with others and share information. To support group activities in online communities, a group recommendation procedure is needed. Though there have been attempts to establish group recommendation, they focus on off-line environments. Further, aggregating individuals’ preferences into a group preference or merging individual recommendations into group recommendations—an essential component of group recommendation—often results in dissatisfaction of a small number of group members while satisfying the majority. To support group activities in online communities, this paper proposes an improved group recommendation procedure that improves not only the group recommendation effectiveness but also the satisfaction of individual group members. It consists of two phases. The first phase was to generate a recommendation set for a group using the typical collaborative filtering method that most existing group recommendation systems utilize. The second phase was to remove irrelevant items from the recommendation set in order to improve satisfaction of individual members’ preferences. We built a prototype system and performed experiments. Our experiment results showed that the proposed system has consistently higher precision and individual members are more satisfied.