Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism

世界経済・社会統計 = World development indicators

The present historical moment may seem a particularly inopportune time to review Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam's latest exploration of civic decline in America. After all, the outpouring of volunteerism, solidarity, patriotism, and self-sacrifice displayed by Americans in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks appears to fly in the face of Putnam's central argument: that \"social capital\" -defined as \"social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them\" (p. 19)'has declined to dangerously low levels in America over the last three decades. However, Putnam is not fazed in the least by the recent effusion of solidarity. Quite the contrary, he sees in it the potential to \"reverse what has been a 30to 40-year steady decline in most measures of connectedness or community.\"' As an example of how the current \"war on terrorism\" could generate a durable civic renewal, Putnam points to the burst in civic practices that occurred during and after World War II, which he says \"permanently marked\" the generation that lived through it and had a \"terrific effect on American public life over the last half-century.\" 3 If Americans can follow this example and channel their current civic

Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community

萨义德以其独特的双重身份,对西方中心权力话语做了分析,通过对文学作品、演讲演说等文本的解读,将O rie n ta lis m——"东方学",做了三重释义:一门学科、一种思维方式和一种权力话语系统,对东方学权力话语做了系统的批判,同时将东方学放入空间维度对东方学文本做了细致的解读。

萨义德的“Orientalism”释义

The author systematically examines one of the important issues of information — establishing the market price. He introduces the concept of «search» — where a buyer wanting to get a better price, is forced to question sellers. The article deals with various aspects of finding the necessary information.

Economics of Information

The goal of this article is to place the role that social media plays in collective action within a more general theoretical structure, using the events of the Arab Spring as a case study. The article presents two broad theoretical principles. The first is that one cannot understand the role of social media in collective action without first taking into account the political environment in which they operate. The second principle states that a significant increase in the use of the new media is much more likely to follow a significant amount of protest activity than to precede it. The study examines these two principles using political, media, and protest data from twenty Arab countries and the Palestinian Authority. The findings provide strong support for the validity of the claims.

/pdf/social-media-and-the-arab-spring-politics-comes-first-z3edssnczv.pdf

Social Media and the Arab Spring: Politics Comes First

We report on the synthesis of the newly discovered cubic phase of tin sulfide π-SnS and compare its properties to the well-known phase of tin sulfide, α-SnS. Shape control was achieved by the variation of synthesis parameters, resulting in cubic, rhombic dodecahedral and tetrahedral shapes of the π-SnS nanoparticles. X-ray diffraction provided authentication of the proposed model and refined determination of the lattice parameter a = 11.595 A. Raman spectroscopy showed a substantial shift towards higher energies and peak splitting for π-SnS. Optical absorption spectroscopy indicated an indirect band gap of 1.53 eV, in good agreement with density functional theory (DFT) calculations indicating a band gap greater than that of α-SnS. DFT total energy calculations show that the π-SnS phase is energetically similar to α-SnS, and is significantly more stable than the hypothetical ideal rocksalt structure of SnS.

Synthesis and properties of nanocrystalline π-SnS – a new cubic phase of tin sulphide

Scientists are required to communicate science and research not only to other experts in the field, but also to scientists and experts from other fields, as well as to the public and policymakers. One fundamental suggestion when communicating with non-experts is to avoid professional jargon. However, because they are trained to speak with highly specialized language, avoiding jargon is difficult for scientists, and there is no standard to guide scientists in adjusting their messages. In this research project, we present the development and validation of the data produced by an up-to-date, scientist-friendly program for identifying jargon in popular written texts, based on a corpus of over 90 million words published in the BBC site during the years 2012-2015. The validation of results by the jargon identifier, the De-jargonizer, involved three mini studies: (1) comparison and correlation with existing frequency word lists in the literature; (2) a comparison with previous research on spoken language jargon use in TED transcripts of non-science lectures, TED transcripts of science lectures and transcripts of academic science lectures; and (3) a test of 5,000 pairs of published research abstracts and lay reader summaries describing the same article from the journals PLOS Computational Biology and PLOS Genetics. Validation procedures showed that the data classification of the De-jargonizer significantly correlates with existing frequency word lists, replicates similar jargon differences in previous studies on scientific versus general lectures, and identifies significant differences in jargon use between abstracts and lay summaries. As expected, more jargon was found in the academic abstracts than lay summaries; however, the percentage of jargon in the lay summaries exceeded the amount recommended for the public to understand the text. Thus, the De-jargonizer can help scientists identify problematic jargon when communicating science to non-experts, and be implemented by science communication instructors when evaluating the effectiveness and jargon use of participants in science communication workshops and programs.

/pdf/automatic-jargon-identifier-for-scientists-engaging-with-the-4hzd5bwvay.pdf

Automatic jargon identifier for scientists engaging with the public and science communication educators.

This study employs a large-scale quantitative analysis to reveal structural patterns of internet memes, focusing on 2 forces that bind them together: the quiddities of each meme family and the generic attributes of the broader memetic sphere Using content and network analysis of 1013 meme instances including videos, images, and text, we explore memes' prevalent quiddity types and generic features, and the ways in which they relate to each other Our findings show that a higher cohesiveness of meme families is associated with a greater uniqueness of their generic attributes; and b the concreteness of meme quiddities is associated with cohesiveness and uniqueness We discuss the implications of these findings to the understanding of internet memes and participatory culture

https://www.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/jcc4.12120

Families and Networks of Internet Memes: The Relationship Between Cohesiveness, Uniqueness, and Quiddity Concreteness

There is scant research-based evidence regarding what the public is interested in knowing about science, and more knowledge is needed to tailor relevant and engaging formal and free-choice science environments for different publics. This methodological paper describes the potential and limitations of three existing web-based tools — Google Trends, Google Zeitgeist, and Google Insights for Search — for PUS research. It shows how these tools can be used to (1) identify interests in science and pseudoscience, (2) conduct a cross-national comparison of popular science and pseudoscience-related searches and (3) discover possible motivations when searching for specific terms. Trends identified using analyses of online queries are discussed. These provide a bottom-up assessment of PUS, and may add another argument to the controversy regarding quantitative measures and the deficit model.

Elad Segev

Papers

Social Media and the Arab Spring: Politics Comes First

Synthesis and properties of nanocrystalline π-SnS – a new cubic phase of tin sulphide

Automatic jargon identifier for scientists engaging with the public and science communication educators.

Families and Networks of Internet Memes: The Relationship Between Cohesiveness, Uniqueness, and Quiddity Concreteness

Exploring new web-based tools to identify public interest in science