Technological efficacy: a new identity category

Debates continue about the relative benefits, costs and risks of the diffusion of computer-based technologies throughout society and schooling. One area that has received considerable attention is gender equity. Early work on gender and computers focused on differences between male and female access and use (e.g. Huff, Fleming & Cooper, 1992; Kirkman, 1993; Morritt, 1997; Nelson & Cooper, 1997; Sofia, 1993), with concerns focused on the potential for girls to be disadvantaged. In some respects, it is arguable that problems of gender equity in schools with respect to computers have been overcome. For example, in a small study I conducted in two New Zealand senior primary classrooms in 2003, I found that both boys and girls were motivated to use computers and appeared to have equal opportunities to access computers in the classroom. The students in my study expressed a belief in the importance of using computers, and this belief can also be discerned from educational policy and media coverage. In this paper I argue that, although gender by itself no longer appears to be a source of disadvantage in terms of access to and use of computers in schools, many questions about technology, schooling and power relations still remain unanswered. I present two alternative viewpoints on the new digital age. First, I explore Melanie Stewart Millar’s (1998) analysis of digital discourse as one which reproduces the power of white, middle-class, educated, well-paid males, and excludes anything else it considers ‘Other’. Second, I review arguments that the digital age has provided sites for the transcendence of traditional hierarchies and inequalities (e.g. Spender, 1995). I conclude that, despite the discrepancies between these two viewpoints, both concur that technological disadvantage will exacerbate any existing inequality that might result from intersections of identity categories, such as, gender, ethnicity, age, and socio-economic status, and that in this digital age, technological efficacy is arguably a new identity category.

The effect of the category of sport team on the role of nostalgia in an individual supporter’s psychological connection to that sport team

With the many benefits related to high levels of psychological connection with a sport team, marketers, management and communities desire supporters to be highly connected with sport teams. A major gap has been identified in relation to the effect of the category of sport team on the role of nostalgia in determining that connection. A conceptual model is presented together with a proposed methodology. This research will aid academics and administrators in their communications with and targeting of consumers and affords communities the opportunity to benefit from consumers’ higher levels of psychological connection with a sport team.

Applying choice based conjoint measurement to forcast demand for a new restaurant category

This paper examines the use of Choice Based Conjointexperimentation for forecasting demand for a new restaurant category.The results of the forecasting experiment are compared to demand forexisting restaurant categories to determine whether the choice experimentreplicates actual category shares in the sampled region. The analysisshows that Choice Based Conjoint experiments are able to predictcategory shares for existing restaurant categories. It is then shown howthe approach may be used to estimate demand for a new category.

Presença humana em unidades de conservação de proteção integral em área rural e urbana: uma análise principiológica

O Sistema Nacional de Unidades de Conservação (SNUC), instituído pela Lei 9985/00, prevê a criação de cinco categorias de unidades de conservação de proteção integral (UCPI) e de sete de uso sustentável. Dentre as categorias do grupo de proteção integral encontra-se a categoria Parque, podendo ser Nacional, Estadual ou Natural Municipal, conforme o ente instituidor. Esta categoria pode ser criada tanto em área rural como em área urbana, indistintamente. É muito comum se deparar com a presença humana nos limites dos Parques, seja por populações tradicionais, em áreas rurais, ou ocupações desordenadas, em áreas urbanas. A lei não faz a distinção rural/urbana, mas prevê o realocamento das populações tradicionais, cuja presença não se revela prejudicial à área protegida. De forma oposta, as concentrações humanas residentes em Parques localizados em áreas urbanas tornam-se prejudiciais à proteção da área especialmente protegida, visto que apresentam elevado grau de impactação ambiental, não se preocupando com a preservação ou conservação como as populações tradicionais, estas extremamente dependentes dos recursos naturais para sua subsistência. A partir da hipótese de que a mesma categoria de UCPI, em especial os Parques, pode abrigar grupamentos humanos diferenciados (populações tradicionais, em área rural, e pessoas invasoras, em área urbana), buscou-se analisar os princípios colidentes que permeiam a situação, no sentido de ponderá-los, aplicando o que tiver maior peso. Diante da dimensão axiológica no tratamento das populações tradicionais, conclui-se que seja razoável sua permanência em UCPI localizadas em áreas rurais, porém, inadmissível a presença humana nas situadas em regiões urbanas.

Inglés : 850 palabras básicas en español = Category: basic english 850 words

[ES] Glosario de las 850 palabras más usadas en inglés

Modulating the granularity of category formation by global cortical states

The unsupervised categorization of sensory stimuli is typically attributed to feedforward processing in a hierarchy of cortical areas. This purely sensory-driven view of cortical processing, however, ignores any internal modulation, e.g., by top-down attentional signals or neuromodulator release. To isolate the role of internal signaling on category formation, we consider an unbroken continuum of stimuli without intrinsic category boundaries. We show that a competitive network, shaped by recurrent inhibition and endowed with Hebbian and homeostatic synaptic plasticity, can enforce stimulus categorization. The degree of competition is internally controlled by the neuronal gain and the strength of inhibition. Strong competition leads to the formation of many attracting network states, each being evoked by a distinct subset of stimuli and representing a category. Weak competition allows more neurons to be co-active, resulting in fewer but larger categories. We conclude that the granularity of cortical category formation, i.e., the number and size of emerging categories, is not simply determined by the richness of the stimulus environment, but rather by some global internal signal modulating the network dynamics. The model also explains the salient non-additivity of visual object representation observed in the monkey inferotemporal (IT) cortex. Furthermore, it offers an explanation of a previously observed, demand-dependent modulation of IT activity on a stimulus categorization task and of categorization-related cognitive deficits in schizophrenic patients.

Semantic, perceptual and number space: relations between category width and spatial processing.

Coarse semantic encoding and broad categorization behavior are the hallmarks of the right cerebral hemisphere's contribution to language processing. We correlated 40 healthy subjects' breadth of categorization as assessed with Pettigrew's category width scale with lateral asymmetries in perceptual and representational space. Specifically, we hypothesized broader category width to be associated with larger leftward spatial biases. For the 20 men, but not the 20 women, this hypothesis was confirmed both in a lateralized tachistoscopic task with chimeric faces and a random digit generation task; the higher a male participant's score on category width, the more pronounced were his left-visual field bias in the judgement of chimeric faces and his small-number preference in digit generation ("small" is to the left of "large" in number space). Subjects' category width was unrelated to lateral displacements in a blindfolded tactile-motor rod centering task. These findings indicate that visual-spatial functions of the right hemisphere should not be considered independent of the same hemisphere's contribution to language. Linguistic and spatial cognition may be more tightly interwoven than is currently assumed.

Naturaleza y cultura en la poesía del modernismo latinoamericano

Desde una constelación de poemas clave -"Caupolicán" (1888) de Rubén Darío, "Amor de ciudad grande" (1882) de José Martí y "En el campo" (1893) de Julián del Casal-, el análisis traza las diferencias en la articulación de una categoría fundante del siglo XIX latinoamericano en lo que va del romanticismo al modernismo. Si el concepto de "civilización" es el soporte del orden emergente que define roles sociales y nacionales en la nueva distribución global del XIX, su carácter intrínsecamente antinómico produce un racimo de oposiciones binarias -igualmente jerárquicas y valorativas- como cultura-naturaleza y ciudad-campo. Bajo estas condiciones, el romanticismo latinoamericano encontró en la nueva relación de la subjetividad con el entorno un camino para ensayar su estética, al re-culturizar el espacio natural para integrarlo al proceso de construcción de identidades nacionales. Desde las coordenadas de una fractura en esta tradición, los poemas del modernismo reconfiguran la antinomia entre naturaleza y cultura en una nueva inflexión que termina afectando los resortes de legitimación de un proyecto estético. En particular, nuestra hipótesis se aproxima al ritmo poético entendiéndolo como una fisura en la "ciudad letrada", el elemento propulsor de una nueva institución literaria que -mientras transforma el paradigma opositivo civilización-barbarie, original-copia, local-universal- contribuye a deslindar la autoridad del poeta modernista respecto del modelo del letrado tradicional

Naturaleza y cultura en la poesía del modernismo latinoamericano

Desde una constelación de poemas clave -"Caupolicán" (1888) de Rubén Darío, "Amor de ciudad grande" (1882) de José Martí y "En el campo" (1893) de Julián del Casal-, el análisis traza las diferencias en la articulación de una categoría fundante del siglo XIX latinoamericano en lo que va del romanticismo al modernismo. Si el concepto de "civilización" es el soporte del orden emergente que define roles sociales y nacionales en la nueva distribución global del XIX, su carácter intrínsecamente antinómico produce un racimo de oposiciones binarias -igualmente jerárquicas y valorativas- como cultura-naturaleza y ciudad-campo. Bajo estas condiciones, el romanticismo latinoamericano encontró en la nueva relación de la subjetividad con el entorno un camino para ensayar su estética, al re-culturizar el espacio natural para integrarlo al proceso de construcción de identidades nacionales. Desde las coordenadas de una fractura en esta tradición, los poemas del modernismo reconfiguran la antinomia entre naturaleza y cultura en una nueva inflexión que termina afectando los resortes de legitimación de un proyecto estético. En particular, nuestra hipótesis se aproxima al ritmo poético entendiéndolo como una fisura en la "ciudad letrada", el elemento propulsor de una nueva institución literaria que -mientras transforma el paradigma opositivo civilización-barbarie, original-copia, local-universal- contribuye a deslindar la autoridad del poeta modernista respecto del modelo del letrado tradicional

Naturaleza y cultura en la poesía del modernismo latinoamericano

Desde una constelación de poemas clave -"Caupolicán" (1888) de Rubén Darío, "Amor de ciudad grande" (1882) de José Martí y "En el campo" (1893) de Julián del Casal-, el análisis traza las diferencias en la articulación de una categoría fundante del siglo XIX latinoamericano en lo que va del romanticismo al modernismo. Si el concepto de "civilización" es el soporte del orden emergente que define roles sociales y nacionales en la nueva distribución global del XIX, su carácter intrínsecamente antinómico produce un racimo de oposiciones binarias -igualmente jerárquicas y valorativas- como cultura-naturaleza y ciudad-campo. Bajo estas condiciones, el romanticismo latinoamericano encontró en la nueva relación de la subjetividad con el entorno un camino para ensayar su estética, al re-culturizar el espacio natural para integrarlo al proceso de construcción de identidades nacionales. Desde las coordenadas de una fractura en esta tradición, los poemas del modernismo reconfiguran la antinomia entre naturaleza y cultura en una nueva inflexión que termina afectando los resortes de legitimación de un proyecto estético. En particular, nuestra hipótesis se aproxima al ritmo poético entendiéndolo como una fisura en la "ciudad letrada", el elemento propulsor de una nueva institución literaria que -mientras transforma el paradigma opositivo civilización-barbarie, original-copia, local-universal- contribuye a deslindar la autoridad del poeta modernista respecto del modelo del letrado tradicional