Strolling through the (post)modern city: Modes of being a flaneur in picture books

The city and the urban condition, popular subjects of art, literature, and film, have been commonly represented as fragmented, isolating, violent, with silent crowds moving through the hustle and bustle of a noisy, polluted cityspace. Included in this diverse artistic field is children’s literature—an area of creative and critical inquiry that continues to play a central role in illuminating and shaping perceptions of the city, of city lifestyles, and of the people who traverse the urban landscape. Fiction’s textual representations of cities, its sites and sights, lifestyles and characters have drawn on traditions of realist, satirical, and fantastic writing to produce the protean urban story—utopian, dystopian, visionary, satirical—with the goal of offering an account or critique of the contemporary city and the urban condition. In writing about cities and urban life, children’s literature variously locates the child in relation to the social (urban) space. This dialogic relation between subject and social space has been at the heart of writings about/of the flâneur: a figure who experiences modes of being in the city as it transforms under the influences of modernism and postmodernism. Within this context of a changing urban ontology brought about by (post)modern styles and practices, this article examines five contemporary picture books: The Cows Are Going to Paris by David Kirby and Allen Woodman; Ooh-la-la (Max in love) by Maira Kalman; Mr Chicken Goes to Paris and Old Tom’s Holiday by Leigh Hobbs; and The Empty City by David Megarrity. I investigate the possibility of these texts reviving the act of flânerie, but in a way that enables different modes of being a flâneur, a neo-flâneur. I suggest that the neo-flâneur retains some of the characteristics of the original flâneur, but incorporates others that take account of the changes wrought by postmodernity and globalization, particularly tourism and consumption. The dual issue at the heart of the discussion is that tourism and consumption as agents of cultural globalization offer a different way of thinking about the phenomenon of flânerie. While the flâneur can be regarded as the precursor to the tourist, the discussion considers how different modes of flânerie, such as the tourist-flâneur, are an inevitable outcome of commodification of the activities that accompany strolling through the (post)modern urban space.

Globalization of science education : comment and a commentary

The globalized nature of modern society has generated a number of pressures that impact internationally on countries’ policies and practices of science education. Among these pressures are key issues of health and environment confronting global science, global economic control through multinational capitalism, comparative and competitive international testing of student science achievement, and the desire for more humane and secure international society. These are not all one-way pressures and there is evidence of both more conformity in the intentions and practices of science education and of a greater appreciation of how cultural differences, and the needs of students as future citizens can be met. Hence while a case for economic and competitive subservience of science education can be made, the evidence for such narrowing is countered by new initiatives that seek to broaden its vision and practices. The research community of science education has certainly widened internationally and this generates many healthy exchanges, although cultural styles of education other than Western ones are still insufficiently recognized. The dominance of English language within these research exchanges is, however, causing as many problems as it solves. Science education, like education as a whole, is a strongly cultural phenomenon, and this provides a healthy and robust buffer to the more negative effects of globalization

Sustainable, smart, safe : a 3'S' approach towards a modern transportation system

Sustainability, smartness and safety are three sole components of a modern transportation system. The objective of this study is to introduce a modern transportation system in the light of a 3‘S’ approach: sustainable, smart and safe. In particular this paper studies the transportation system of Singapore to address how this system is progressing in this three-pronged approach towards a modern transportation system. While sustainability targets environmental justice and social equity without compromising economical efficiency, smartness incorporates qualities like automated sensing, processing and decision making, and action-taking into the transportation system. Since a system cannot be viable without being safe, the safety of the modern transportation system aims minimizing crash risks of all users including motorists, motorcyclists, pedestrians, and bicyclists. Various policy implications and technology applications inside the transportation system of Singapore are discussed to illustrate a modern transportation system within the framework of the 3‘S’ model.

A unified description language for human to automated services

Through the rise of cloud computing, on-demand applications, and business networks, services are increasingly being exposed and delivered on the Internet and through mobile communications. So far, services have mainly been described through technical interface descriptions. The description of business details, such as pricing, service-level, or licensing, has been neglected and is therefore hard to automatically process by service consumers. Also, third-party intermediaries, such as brokers, cloud providers, or channel partners, are interested in the business details in order to extend services and their delivery and, thus, further monetize services. In this paper, the constructivist design of the UnifiedServiceDescriptionLanguage (USDL), aimed at describing services across the human-to-automation continuum, is presented. The proposal of USDL follows well-defined requirements which are expressed against a common service discourse and synthesized from currently available servicedescription efforts. USDL's concepts and modules are evaluated for their support of the different requirements and use cases.

The relationship between listening and other language skills in International English Language Testing System

Listening comprehension is the primary channel of learning a language. Yet of the four dominant macro-skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing), it is often difficult and inaccessible for second and foreign language learners due to its implicit process. The secondary skill, speaking, proceeds listening cognitively. Aural/oral skills precede the graphic skills, such as reading and writing, as they form the circle of language learning process. However, despite the significant relationship with other language skills, listening comprehension is treated lightly in the applied linguistics research. Half of our daily conversation and three quarters of classroom interaction are virtually devoted to listening comprehension. To examine the relationship of listening skill with other language skills, the outcome of 1800 Iranian participants undertaking International English Language Testing System (IELTS) in Tehran indicates the close correlation between listening comprehension and the overall language proficiency.

Enhancing foreign language learning through listening strategy delivered in L1: an experimental study

Listening used in language teaching refers to a complex process that allows us to understand spoken language. The current study, conducted in Iran with an experimental design, investigated the effectiveness of teaching listening strategies delivered in L1 (Persian) and its effect on listening comprehension in L2. Five listening strategies: Guessing, making inferences, identifying topics, repetition, and note-taking were taught over 14 weeks during a semester. Sixty lower intermediate female participants came from two EFL classrooms in an English language institute. The experimental class (n = 30) who listened to their classroom activities performed better (t value = 10.083) than the control class using a methodology that led learners through five listening strategies in Persian. The same teacher taught the students in the control class (n = 30), who listened to the same classroom listening activities without any of the above listening strategies. A pre and post listening test made by a group of experts in the language institute assessed the effect of teaching listening strategies delivered in L1. Results gathered on the post intervention listening test revealed that listening strategies delivered in L1 led to a statistically significant improvement in their discrete listening scores compared with the control group.

Challenges to environmental toxicology and epidemiology : where do we stand and which way do we go?

Modern toxicology investigates a wide array of both old and new health hazards. Priority setting is needed to select agents for research from the plethora of exposure circumstances. The changing societies and a growing fraction of the aged have to be taken into consideration. A precise exposure assessment is of importance for risk estimation and regulation. Toxicology contributes to the exploration of pathomechanisms to specify the exposure metrics for risk estimation. Combined effects of co-existing agents are not yet sufficiently understood. Animal experiments allow a separate administration of agents which can not be disentangled by epidemiological means, but their value is limited for low exposure levels in many of today’s settings. As an experimental science, toxicology has to keep pace with the rapidly growing knowledge about the language of the genome and the changing paradigms in cancer development. During the pioneer era of assembling a working draft of the human genome, toxicogenomics has been developed. Gene and pathway complexity have to be considered when investigating gene–environment interactions. For a best conduct of studies, modern toxicology needs a close liaison with many other disciplines like epidemiology and bioinformatics.

Is language a barrier for quality care in hospitals? A case series from an Emergency Department of a teaching hospital in Brisbane

Aim: The aim of this pilot study is to describe the use of an Emergency Department (ED) at a large metropolitan teaching hospital by patients who speak English or other languages at home. Methods: All data were retrieved from the Emergency Department Information System (EDIS) of this tertiary teaching hospital in Brisbane. Patients were divided into two groups based on the language spoken at home: patients who speak English only at home (SEO) and patients who do not speak English only or speak other language at home (NSEO). Modes of arrival, length of ED stay and the proportion of hospital admission were compared among the two groups of patients by using SPSS V18 software. Results: A total of 69,494 patients visited this hospital ED in 2009 with 67,727 (97.5%) being in the SEO group and 1,281 (1.80%) in the NSEO group. The proportion of ambulance utilisation in arrival mode was significantly higher among SEO 23,172 (34.2%) than NSEO 397 (31.0%), p <0.05. The NSEO patients had longer length of stay in the ED (M = 337.21, SD = 285.9) compared to SEO patients (M= 290.9, SD = 266.8), with 46.3 minutes (95%CI 62.1, 30.5, p <0.001) difference. The admission to the hospital among NSEO was 402 (31.9%) higher than SEO 17,652 (26.6%), p <0.001. Conclusion: The lower utilisation rates of ambulance services, longer length of ED stay and higher hospital admission rates in NSEO patients compared to SEO patients are consistent with other international studies and may be due to the language barriers.