Common Carrier

Sonny Kleinfield's The Biggest Company on Earth: A Profile of AT&T (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1981—$14.95)

Roger Sherman, ed. Perspectives on Postal Service Issues (American Enterprise Institute, 1150 Seventeenth St. NW, Washington D.C. 20036—price not given, but available in handback and paperback formats)

Alan L. Sopkin's The Economics of the Postal System: Alternatives and Reform (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1980—$22.95)

John T. Tierney, Postal Reorganization: Managing the Public's business (Boston: Auburn House, 1981—price not given)     

Pistols and petticoats,piety and purity: To Wong Foo,the queering of the American monomyth,and the marginalizing discourse of deification

–Recently, the mainstream media have begun to include positive portrayals of gays and lesbians. This essay suggests that these positive portrayals demand critical scrutiny to determine how they redefine mainstream culture and how they serve to challenge and/or reinforce heterosexual bias. In an analysis of To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, we examine how a narrative film negotiates the practice of drag and represents gay male “drag queens” through a progressive refiguring of the monomythic themes which inform the popular genre of Western film.     

Characterizing the dielectric properties of human mesenchymal stem cells and the effects of charged elastin-like polypeptide copolymer treatment

Human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) have three key properties that make them desirable for stem cell therapeutics: differentiation capacity, trophic activity, and ability to self-renew. However, current separation techniques are inefficient, time consuming, expensive, and, in some cases, alter hMSCs cellular function and viability. Dielectrophoresis (DEP) is a technique that uses alternating current electric fields to spatially separate biological cells based on the dielectric properties of their membrane and cytoplasm. This work implements the first steps toward the development of a continuous cell sorting microfluidic device by characterizing native hMSCs dielectric signatures and comparing them to hMSCs morphologically standardized with a polymer. A quadrapole Ti-Au electrode microdevice was used to observe hMSC DEP behaviors, and quantify frequency spectra and cross-over frequency of hMSCs from 0.010–35 MHz in dextrose buffer solutions (0.030 S/m and 0.10 S/m). This combined approach included a systematic parametric study to fit a core-shell model to the DEP spectra over the entire tested frequency range, adding robustness to the analysis technique. The membrane capacitance and permittivity were found to be 2.2 pF and 2.0 in 0.030 S/m and 4.5 pF and 4.1 in 0.10 S/m, respectively. Elastin-like polypeptide (ELP-) polyethyleneimine (PEI) copolymer was used to control hMSCs morphology to spheroidal cells and aggregates. Results demonstrated that ELP-PEI treatment controlled hMSCs morphology, increased experiment reproducibility, and concurrently increased hMSCs membrane permittivity to shift the cross-over frequency above 35 MHz. Therefore, ELP-PEI treatment may serve as a tool for the eventual determination of biosurface marker-dependent DEP signatures and hMSCs purification.     

Teachers’ perceptions of a voluntary LEA scheme for school self‐evaluation

In 1979, a booklet, Evaluating the School: A Guide for Secondary Schools in the Metropolitan Borough of Solihull, was published and a limited number were distributed to Solihull schools free of charge. The purpose of the booklet is to provide an agenda for school self‐improvement through systematic school review: its use by Solihull schools is entirely voluntary. This is the report of a survey of the perceptions of Solihull secondary school teachers of the booklet and of school self‐evaluation generally.

Four years after its publication, less than half of Solihull secondary school teachers claimed to have actually seen the booklet, less than a quarter to have read all of it and only about ten per cent to recall its contents at all well.

Attitudes amongst Solihull secondary teachers towards school self‐evaluation as a general notion and (amongst those who claimed to have seen it) towards the booklet are generally positive. Attitudes are particularly positive amongst those in the lower status positions in schools and amongst the less experienced. Despite these favourable attitudes, the evidence from the survey is that little change in schools has resulted from the use of the booklet.     

Towards a lifelong learning target for 2015

This paper begins by reviewing the progress which has been made over the past decade in the aim to reach targets such as Education for All and other Millennium Development Goals, especially as far as adult education and gender equality are concerned. While there have been achievements in some countries, universal primary education is not even likely to be reached by 2015. Giving a few examples of recent studies, this paper considers the measurement of lifelong learning and its effects on a country’s economy and its people’s health and well-being. While it is of course much easier to collect data about formal education than about non-formal and informal learning, the author stresses that the latter need to be included more in new strategies alongside formal education. The paper concludes by highlighting ten essential components for a lifelong learning target fit for purpose in a climate-changing society.     

Open‐mindedness and the University Curriculum

This paper discusses the conditions for selecting and structuring media education in the Swedish comprehensive school, with citizenship education at the core. With reference to John Dewey and Walter Lippmann, different conceptions of the nature of the public are elaborated, which also have inherent in them the tension between a modern and a postmodern interpretation of communication. These conceptions, called ‘communication discourses’, affect the selection and structuring of the content of media literacy when interpreted on the basis of curricula, syllabuses and teaching materials. In the paper communication discourses are also considered from a more overarching angle of socialization ‐ how education and media affect the individual's conceptions of his/her own and other individuals’ relationship to society. The question put here is to what degree differing (social) subjects ‐ identities defined on the basis of social class, gender, race and so on ‐ are found in the texts of the institutions: how are subjects presented and represented?

If one wishes to realize the distance which may lie between ‘facts’ and the meaning of facts, let one go to the field of social discussions.

(John Dewey, 1991: 3)

     

The new group: Notes on the New York theatre, 1964–1965

In 7890, two essays by John Muir greatly influenced the establishment of Yosemite National Park, and greatly advanced the movement for the preservation of wilderness reserves. Muir used two techniques, the sublime response and the persona of the mountaineer, to secure his readers’ action on behalf of natural scenery.     

What are open universities for?

This article proposes a framework within which the question as to the purposes of open universities should be examined. It argues that the question has become submerged over time through the establishment of so many open universities that have become natural elements in a higher education landscape rather than remaining radical and innovative institutions. The article looks at a number of innovative distance teaching higher education institutions from the nineteenth century through to the contemporary period, and examines case studies in a wide international range. The outcome of the argument is that open universities should articulate their purposes within a discourse of development, and engage with the ethical and political questions as to how development is understood and advanced.