Digital Nominalism. Notes on the Ethics of Information Society in View of the Ontology of the Digital

The commodification of code demands two preconditions: a belief if the existence of code and a system of ownership for the code. An examination of these preconditions is helpful for resisting the further widening of digital divides. The ontological belief in the relatively independent existence of code is dependent on our understanding of what the “digital” is. Here it is claimed that the digital is not a natural kind, but a concept that is relative to our practices of interpretation. An interpretative system that sees code as something that can or should always be owned implies an increase of social control and threatens vital processes of knowledge creation that are necessary for an open and egalitarian information society. The ontological belief in “digital code” thus provides the backdrop for an ethical view of the information society. Consequently, if we see digital code as an interpretative notion (in the nominalist way), the ethical questions appear in a different light.     

Why Implementing History and Philosophy in School Science Education is a Challenge: An Analysis of Obstacles

Teaching and learning with history and philosophy of science (HPS) has been, and continues to be, supported by science educators. While science education standards documents in many countries also stress the importance of teaching and learning with HPS, the approach still suffers from ineffective implementation in school science teaching. In order to better understand this problem, an analysis of the obstacles of implementing HPS into classrooms was undertaken. The obstacles taken into account were structured in four groups: 1. culture of teaching physics, 2. teachers?? skills, epistemological and didactical attitudes and beliefs, 3. institutional framework of science teaching, and 4. textbooks as fundamental didactical support. Implications for more effective implementation of HPS are presented, taking the social nature of educational systems into account.     

Financing and political economy of higher education: The case of Lebanon

This paper assesses the adequacy, efficiency, and equity of higher education in Lebanon in both the public and private sectors, while highlighting challenges that are specific to Lebanon. It concludes by discussing various approaches and strategies to remedy the challenges facing higher education in Lebanon.     

Assessing college students’ perceptions of a case teacher’s pedagogical content knowledge using a newly developed instrument

Ongoing professional development for college teachers has been much emphasized. However, previous research on learning environments has seldom addressed college students’ perceptions of teachers’ PCK. This study aimed to evaluate college students’ perceptions of a physics teacher’s PCK development using a newly developed instrument and workshop intervention. A mixed method design was employed incorporating both quantitative and qualitative techniques. The survey “Assessing Students’ Perceptions of College Teachers’ PCK” was adopted as the instrument of research. This survey was conducted twice in this study; with the pre-test carried out during the mid-term exam and the post-test given in the last week of the semester. The results indicate that only SMK and IRS showed significant difference in the four categories of the survey, while IOC and KSU did not. Furthermore, the organized workshops helped the case teacher to better understand students’ prior conceptions of the subject matter and learning difficulties, and further facilitated her adjustment of instructional strategies. The limitations of this study are discussed and suggestions for improvement are also provided.     

Sentiment classification: a lexical similarity based approach for extracting subjectivity in documents

With the growth of social media, document sentiment classification has become an active area of research in this decade. It can be viewed as a special case of topical classification applied only to subjective portions of a document (sources of sentiment). Hence, the key task in document sentiment classification is extracting subjectivity. Existing approaches to extract subjectivity rely heavily on linguistic resources such as sentiment lexicons and complex supervised patterns based on part-of-speech (POS) information. This makes the task of subjective feature extraction complex and resource dependent. In this work, we try to minimize the dependency on linguistic resources in sentiment classification. We propose a simple and statistical methodology called review summary (RSUMM) and use it in combination with well-known feature selection methods to extract subjectivity. Our experimental results on a movie review dataset prove the effectiveness of the proposed methodology.     

Rethinking disability in Amartya Sen’s approach: ICT and equality of opportunity

This article presents an analysis of the concept of disability in Amartya Sen’s capabilities and functionings approach in the context of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Following a critical review of the concept of disability—from its traditional interpretation as an essentially medical concept to its later interpretation as a socially constructed category—we will introduce the concept of functional diversity. The importance of human diversity in the capabilities and functionings approach calls for incorporating this concept into the analysis of well-being and quality of life in persons with disability—aspects in which ICT currently plays a major role. When one contemplates these technologies, it becomes clear that factors such as accessibility, design for all, and user participation in development and implementation processes are key strategies in promoting equal rights and equal opportunity for persons with disability in the different environments of the information society.     

Complex three-dimensional high aspect ratio microfluidic network manufactured in combined PerMX dry-resist and SU-8 technology

In this paper we present a new fabrication method that combines for the first time popular SU-8 technology and PerMX dry-photoresist lamination for the manufacturing of high aspect ratio three-dimensional multi-level microfluidic networks. The potential of this approach, which further benefits from wafer-level manufacturing and accurate alignment of fluidic levels, is demonstrated by a highly integrated three-level microfluidic chip. The hereby achieved network complexity, including 24 fluidic vias and 16 crossing points of three individual microchannels on less than 13 mm(2) chip area, is unique for SU-8 based fluidic networks. We further report on excellent process compatibility between SU-8 and PerMX dry-photoresist which results in high interlayer adhesion strength. The tight pressure sealing of a fluidic channel (0.5 MPa for 1 h) is demonstrated for 150 μm narrow SU-8/PerMX bonding interfaces.     

导生组合类型、阶段式指导与理工科博士生创新能力发展

导师如何通过“因材施教”的指导提升博士生的创新能力,是博士生培养的关注热点。基于481份“双一流”建设高校理工科博士生的调查数据,从导生双主体角度,以控制和支持两个维度的导生组合类型为自变量、博士生年级为调节变量,探索二者对理工科博士生创新能力的影响机制。研究发现,相较于导师低控制和学生低投入、导师低支持和学生低投入,其他导生组合类型均对理工科博士生的创新能力具有显著正向影响。年级在控制维度的导生组合类型对理工科博士生创新能力的影响中起调节作用。研究结果验证了导师阶段式培养的重要性,同时强调了博士生作为学习主体的关键性。