ONIX: Is there a return on investment for all publishers?

Summary What will be the future of ONIX? Some argue that wider industry acceptance will lead to increased efficiencies in the transfer of book data, which will ultimately benefit book sales. ONIX still has to overcome many challenges: its implementation cost is high, whole-salers and aggregators are still using different spreadsheets and information sources. Furthermore, MS Excel as an alternative solution is widely available and accepted by the industry. Small publishers need more education and a straightforward demonstration of ONIX’s return on investment. An outreaching of the helping hand of professional organizations is strongly suggested to foster the adoption process among small players. It is the role of the AAP and BISG to get their memberships to think about what is good for all members as a whole throughout the industry. As an organization BISG can recommend, educate, and promote the standard. It cannot, however, bring pressure or demand organizations use it. Publishers, retailers, and wholesalers make those decisions for themselves and quite apparently the majority do not yet see the rewards. Market players need to determine the cost versus benefit and as long as distributors and retailers agree on receiving other formats, ONIX will never take a strong hold in the marketplace. After all, publishers should compete against each other with good books and not with multiple computer codes.     

Xerox Project: Photocopy Machines as a Metaphor for an “Open Society”

This article shows how various meanings of a new communication technology are born or get transformed when placed in a different political context via a case study of a program organized by the Soros Foundation in 1984 to promote democratic values (the idea of an “open society”) in Hungary. This program, called the Xerox project, helped hundreds of public institutions acquire photocopy machines. Under the suppressive Hungarian regime of the 1980s the appearance of photocopy machines as a new means of copying texts had serious political consequences. By means of historical research and expert interviews, this article analyzes the nature of these consequences and examines how certain meanings and uses of photocopy machines evolved in the latter half of the 1980s.     

Supporting Mexican immigrants’ resettlement in the United States: an ethnography of communication approach to building allies’ communication competence

This research explores interactions among Mexican immigrants and their U.S.- and Mexican-born allies at an immigrant support center (ISC) in the U.S. Southwest. I propose that to support Mexican immigrants in resettling, allies who work at this ISC must apply cultural knowledge about competent communication for Mexican speakers to structure their strategic actions (Sprain & Boromisza-Habashi, 2013). Taking an ethnography of communication (EOC) approach, I investigate the means and meanings of communication (Hymes, 1972) for speakers that point to cultural knowledge about competent communication. Data for this study include 7 months of observation, interviews with 37 community and staff members, and public documents collected during fieldwork. Findings reveal five means of communication that are meaningful for speakers at ISC. This research demonstrates the practical utility of the EOC in understanding how cultural expectations for communication may both assist and limit ISC’s efforts to support resettlement.     

The role of confianza in ethnic social communication among Mexican immigrants making lives in the United States

This research investigates how the cultural construct of confianza shapes Mexican ethnic social communication, or coethnic interaction, during adaptation. Using the ethnography of communication, this paper illustrates how confianza makes available the communicative means of revealing oneself, speaking directively, and asking questions, but makes unavailable the means of violating confidences, judging, and expressing superiority. This research argues that the complexity of these coethnic interactions warrants additional research and suggests that scholars begin their studies by considering if and to what extent immigrants feel able to engage with one another prior to investigating adaptive outcomes of their interactions.     

Surface protein gradients generated in sealed microchannels using spatially varying helium microplasma

Spatially varied surface treatment of a fluorescently labeled Bovine Serum Albumin (BSA) protein, on the walls of a closed (sealed) microchannel is achieved via a well-defined gradient in plasma intensity. The microchips comprised a microchannel positioned in-between two microelectrodes (embedded in the chip) with a variable electrode separation along the length of the channel. The channel and electrodes were 50 μm and 100 μm wide, respectively, 50 μm deep, and adjacent to the channel for a length of 18 mm. The electrode separation distance was varied linearly from 50 μm at one end of the channel to a maximum distance of 150, 300, 500, or 1000 μm to generate a gradient in helium plasma intensity. Plasma ignition was achieved at a helium flow rate of 2.5 ml/min, 8.5 kV_pk-pk, and 10 kHz. It is shown that the plasma intensity decreases with increasing electrode separation and is directly related to the residual amount of BSA left after the treatment. The plasma intensity and surface protein gradient, for the different electrode gradients studied, collapse onto master curves when plotted against electrode separation. This precise spatial control is expected to enable the surface protein gradient to be tuned for a range of applications, including high-throughput screening and cell-biomolecule-biomaterial interactions.     

An alternative model of researching educational practice: A pedagogic–stereoscopic point of view

While teachers and practitioners are increasingly expected to conduct research on their own practice, there is a lot of educational research that is not directly involved in practice. This often leads to unilateral research perspectives on educational practice. Therefore, this article calls for an alternative model of researching educational practice, summarised through the term ‘pedagogical science’. We argue that practical and normative theories that seek to improve educational practice should be combined with theories that aim to describe and explain. It is further argued that the combination of such perspectives and theories, a so-called stereoscopic point of view, can allow for a thorough and holistic investigation of educational practice. As part of this argumentation, the article addresses critical questions of various theoretical models of educational research, models that are being used in Scandinavian, European and Anglo-American research on educational practice. With reference to interdisciplinary models of educational research, such as educational sciences, learning sciences and Bildungswissenschaften, there are trends in which pedagogy is marginalised. Thus, the second argument of the article calls for placing pedagogy at the centre of knowledge production in a broad sense, after which pedagogy is made into a source of knowledge for pedagogical science, which sets forth to test and provide empirical support for pedagogy-based knowledge.     

Sexual abuse of deaf children. A retrospective analysis of the prevalence and characteristics of childhood sexual abuse among deaf adults in Norway

OBJECTIVE: North American studies conclude that deaf children may have a 2-3 times greater risk of sexual abuse than hearing children. No comparative studies are available in the Nordic countries. The present study was initiated to estimate the prevalence of childhood sexual abuse among deaf children in Norway, describe the nature of the abuse, and to examine risk factors. METHOD: A self-administered questionnaire was sent in 1999 to all 1150 adult deaf members of the Norwegian Deaf Register. The Deaf Register includes all deaf Norwegians. The questionnaire, which was also available videotaped in sign language, was an adapted version of a questionnaire used in a Norwegian survey among the general adult population in 1993. The results from this earlier study were used as a comparison group. RESULTS: Deaf females aged 18-65 who lost their hearing before the age of 9 (N = 177) reported sexual abuse with contact before the age of 18 years more than twice as often as hearing females, and deaf males more than three times as often as hearing males. The abuse of the deaf children was also more serious. Very few cases were reported to parents, teachers, or authorities. CONCLUSIONS: Deaf children are at greater risk of sexual abuse than hearing children. The special schools for the deaf represent an extra risk of abuse, regardless of whether the deaf pupils live at home or in boarding schools.     

Academic music: music instruction to engage third-grade students in learning basic fraction concepts

This study examined the effects of an academic music intervention on conceptual understanding of music notation, fraction symbols, fraction size, and equivalency of third graders from a multicultural, mixed socio-economic public school setting. Students (N?=?67) were assigned by class to their general education mathematics program or to receive academic music instruction two times/week, 45?min/session, for 6?weeks. Academic music students used their conceptual understanding of music and fraction concepts to inform their solutions to fraction computation problems. Linear regression and t tests revealed statistically significant differences between experimental and comparison students?? music and fraction concepts, and fraction computation at posttest with large effect sizes. Students who came to instruction with less fraction knowledge responded well to instruction and produced posttest scores similar to their higher achieving peers.