Academic literature on the topic 'Boston courier'

En rappelant la carrière de Joseph de Nancrède (1761-1841), cet article évoque le réseau des imprimeurs francophones qui se sont illustrés en Amérique du Nord à la fin du XVIIIe siècle. Au croisement des cultures américaine et française Joseph de Nancrède s'intéressait aussi au destin du Québec, puis du Bas-Canada. Il a non seulement participé à la guerre d'Indépendance américaine, mais il a aussi enseigné le français à Harvard, Massachusetts et fondé en 1789 le Courier de Boston. C'est dans cette ville qu'il a connu le mémorialiste canadien Pierre de Sales Laterrière et qu'il a entrepris une longue carrière d'éditeur, à l'époque où Fleury Mesplet relançait la Gazette de Montréal. Expliquant à ses compatriotes d'adoption la Révolution française, il leur faisait aussi connaître Fénelon, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Brissot de Warville et les classiques français. Une fois naturalisé américain, il oeuvra également en France où il intervint dans l'exportation de la collection Desjardins au Bas-Canada. Dans ses derniers jours, il se lia d'amitié pour Louis-Joseph Papineau qui devint son exécuteur testamentaire. L'action de Joseph de Nancrède s'étend sur une des périodes les plus mouvementées des nations française, américaine et canadienne, à l'époque fondatrice des Révolutions atlantiques.

Abstract Abstract 4299 Previous reports have shown that infusion of NK cells from a MHC mismatched donor can mediate an anti-leukemic effect in the recipient of an allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT). In this phase I study, we infused increasing numbers of allogeneic NK-cell enriched mononuclear cells (NK-MNC) from a MHC haplo-mismatched relative into patients who had recently undergone autologous stem cell transplant. We sought to determine whether infusion of mismatched, allogeneic NK-MNC cells was safe without concern for GvHD or graft rejection, and also whether cell collection, processing and patient treatment could feasibly be performed at different cities across the US. MNC were obtained by apheresis from healthy haploidentical relatives by one steady-state leukapheresis of 2–4 hours on day 1, and were sent by air courier to the PACT* cell processing facility (University of Minnesota) where immunomagnetic depletion of CD3 cells (Miltenyi CliniMACS) was performed. The CD3-depleted cells were then cultured in X-VIVO 15, without gentamicin and phenol red (Cambrex BioScience, Walkersville, Maryland), supplemented with 1000 U/mL IL-2 (Chiron Corporation, Emeryville, CA) and 10% human heat-inactivated AB serum (Valley Biomedical Products and Services, Inc., Winchester, VA) in VueLife™Teflon® (FEP) bags (American Fluoroseal Corporation, Gaithersburg, MD). The resulting NK-MNC products were then returned by air courier at approximately body temperature to Boston for infusion on day 3. Twelve patients (age range: 27–63) within 49–191 days (median 106 days) after autologous HSCT were treated at four different dose levels of NK-MNC: 105, 106, 107 and 2×107 NK-MNC/kg. No logistical transport issues between Boston and the processing facility in Minnesota occurred. Release criteria (< 5 × 105 CD3+ cells/kg, > 20% CD3-/CD56+ cells, viability >70%, Gram stain – no organisms) were met in all but one case. Side effects after infusion occurred only at the higher dose level of NK-MNC infusion: rigors (n=2) and muscle aches (n=1), responsive to meperidine. None of the patients required discontinuation of NK-MNC infusion. No GvHD or marrow suppression occurred. Chimerism analysis (STR-PCR) from leukocytes on peripheral blood samples collected 24 hours after the NK-MSC infusion failed to detect donor-derived NK-MNC in the recipients (sensitivity: 3 %). Given these results, we conclude that long-distance transport of manipulated NK-MNC products between treatment and processing centers is feasible and reliable, clearly supporting the premise of PACT, and that CD3-depleted allogeneic NK-MNC from a MHC-mismatched relative can be safely administered to recipients of a recent autologous HSCT. This project has been funded in part by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health, under the University of Minnesota Contract [] N01-HB-37164 and HHSN268201000008C *PACT: Production Assistance for Cellular Therapies Disclosures: No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.

Differences between the obituaries of men and women were examined in this study. All obituaries ( n = 595) published between November 15, 1992 and January' 15, 1993 in two newspapers, The Boston Globe and The Sacramento Bee, were analyzed. The content and length of the obituaries were coded by gender, age, and occupation of the deceased. In addition to being awarded significantly fewer obituaries, women were found to have shorter obituaries than their male counterparts. Women received the longest obituaries if they were a relative of a famous man. These findings are discussed in a framework which maintains that obituaries are a measurement of life achievement suggesting that women's accomplishments are devalued, even after death.

Ancêtre primitif de l'hebdomadaire qui affiche aujourd'hui encore le même titre, le journal la Patrie paraît pour la première fois le 24 février 1879, à Montréal. Propriété de son éditeur, Honoré Beaugrand, il est publié en une édition quotidienne et se vend un sou le numéro. Le comité de rédaction du journal se compose de deux personnes: Beaugrand et l'avocat Ernest Tremblay. On trouve dans Rumilly quelques informations utiles sur le tempérament politique des deux rédacteurs. Tremblay, selon l'historien, est un démocrate au lyrisme échevelé; son expérience dans le journalisme se résume au seul titre d'ex-rédacteur du National, porte-parole officiel en français du parti libéral à Montréal, venant tout juste de disparaître après sept années de publication (officiellement abandonné pour insuffisance de fonds). Quant à Beaugrand, on apprend ce qui suit: « Beaugrand, démocrate avancé [. . .] venait de passer plusieurs années en Nouvelle-Angleterre, où il avait publié un journal errant: la République. Il s'y proclamait disciple de Papineau et incroyant résolu. D'échec en échec, il avait transporté le siège de sa République de ville en ville, à Saint-Louis, à Lowell, à Boston, à Fall-River. En 1877, une polémique le mit aux prises avec Ferdinand Gagnon, qui défendait les bons principes dans le Travailleur, de Worcester. Beaugrand y perdit son crédit en Nouvelle-Angleterre et revint au Canada. Il ne changeait rien à ses idées, et laissait entendre, avec un petit air fanfaron, qu'il s'était affilié à la franc-maçonnerie. Beaugrand, peu robuste mais énergique, avait la franchise de ses idées. Beaucoup de libéraux, qui s'étaient tant défendus de l'alliance radicale, n'acceptèrent qu'à contre-coeur cet allié compromettant. » Voilà le tandem qui guidera les destinées de la toute nouvelle Patrie, Dès le premier numéro du 24 février 1879, le lecteur est informé du statut officiel du journal et de sa mission sur le plan politique: « La Pairie parait aujourd'hui pour remplacer le National comme organe du parti réformiste dans le district de Montréal. Libéral en politique, le nouveau journal continuera la tradition du parti qui combat le gouvernement de sir John A. MacDonald à Ottawa et qui supporte l'administration Joly à Québec. » La Patrie s'adresse d'abord aux partisans libéraux de la région de Montréal et à ceux des localités environnantes. Il est possible que plusieurs personnes de Trois-Rivières et de Québec reçoivent aussi le journal mais nous n'avons aucune indication précise sur ce point. Nous ne savons également rien sur le tirage initial du journal. Vers la fin de mars 1879, le lecteur est avisé que le tirage atteint alors 3,500 copies par jour et qu'il sera bientôt porté à 5,000 copies. À ses débuts, la Patrie étale sa matière sur quatre pages de cinq colonnes. Mais le format s'agrandit par la suite, de sorte qu'en septembre 1879, chaque page du journal contient environ deux fois plus de texte qu'en février. À cette même date, la Patrie se vend en deux éditions quotidiennes, l'une à midi, l'autre à cinq heures. Voici un aperçu de la distribution typique du contenu du journal au cours de 1879 et 1880: 1 ° Sur la première page: des annonces et des extraits de divers journaux, soit canadiens, soit étrangers, sur des sujets plutôt neutres par rapport à la politique. 2° Sur la deuxième page: Un courrier; De brefs articles où l'on commente les problèmes de l'heure, surtout sur les plans politique et économique; Divers extraits soit de journaux canadiens soit de journaux étrangers, avec ou sans commentaires de la Patrie, où sont exposées des positions de principes, polémiques, controverses sur des problèmes d'actualité, des situations ou des individus; Quelquefois aussi on trouve une chronique parlementaire fédérale ou provinciale. 3° Sur la troisième page: des nouvelles locales et régionales, des annonces de tous genres. 4° Sur la quatrième page: un roman-feuilleton et des annonces.


 
 
 Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen argue that in “contemporary Western visualization central composition is relatively uncommon” (Reading Images 203). In fact, “most compositions polarise elements as Given and New and/or Ideal and Real” (Reading Images 203). This is the regular situation on the front pages of Australia’s national and capital city dailies; but not on May 28. Rather than the favoured front page structures of left (Given) and right (New) and/or top (Ideal) and bottom (Real), on this morning the layouts in the newspapers centralised the Schapelle Corby judgment. While this is not unprecedented, it is the type of coverage usually kept for major issues such as 9/11 or the Bali Bombing. Even the recent release of Douglas Wood, which was arguably as, if not more, important for the Australian public in terms of the issues it raised about Australia’s involvement in the war in Iraq, did not receive the same type of treatment. Although further study needs to be undertaken, I believe this centralising of issues, that is the running of one story only, on front pages is a growing trend, particularly among the tabloids. The effect of this centralising layout structure is to reduce the news choice for the reader on front pages that they would normally approach with an attitude of scanning and selecting. While this approach could still be taken across the whole paper, the front-page choices are minimised. This essay will examine the coverage of the Corby verdict in the tabloids The Daily Telegraph, the Herald Sun, The Advertiser, The Mercury, and The West Australian, because it is here that the greatest impact of centralisation on the encoded reading paths can be found. Although the broadsheets The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Courier-Mail, and The Canberra Times also centralised the issue, there is not room here to cover them in detail.
 
 May 28 was the peak of the media frenzy in the Corby coverage, or at least one of the peaks. As the story is ongoing—turning into something of a soap opera in its call to readers and television news viewers to tune in and see the latest bizarre development, such as the chief lawyer admitting he’s a crook—it could peak again, particularly if on appeal a heavier sentence is handed down. On May 28, the focus moved from Corby’s guilt or innocence to the horror of the twenty-year sentence. In each category—broadsheet and tabloid—the layouts were remarkably similar. At a glance, three of the tabloids are so similar that side-by-side on a newsstand they could have been mistaken for the same. Apart from the fact that Corby’s beauty gave her cultural salience, it is not clear why the Australian media was so taken with her story in the first instance when there are and have been many Australians on drug charges in Asia. My interest here is not so much why or how she became news—that’s an issue for another time—but that once she had captured the attention of the Australian print media, how did they visually treat the material and what are the implications of that treatment. I will argue that the treatment elevated her story, giving it the same weight as the war on terror coverage since 9/11.
 
 One of the first elements that draws the eye on any newspaper page is the photograph. Tim Harrower suggests photographs “give a page motion and emotion” (28), arguing however that it is the headline “that leaps out, that grabs you” (37). In reality, it is most likely a combination of both that draws a reader’s attention. Both encode the importance of a story with a dominating photograph or a large headline signalling a story’s significance. The varying size of headlines and photographs and their placement signal the page designer’s order of importance. 
 
 Six of the ten major Australian newspapers chose the same photograph for their front pages on May 28: a picture of Corby with her head held in her left hand and a look of despair on her face. Four of them—The Daily Telegraph, The Mercury, The Advertiser, and the Herald Sun—used the full photograph, while it was heavily cropped into a horizontal picture on the front pages of The West Australian and The Age. The Australian’s choice was similar but the photograph was taken from a slightly different angle. Only one of these newspapers, The West Australian, acknowledged that Corby did not just hang her head in her hand in despair but rather was slapping her head and sobbing as the verdict was read. The television footage gives a different impression of this moment than the still photograph run in the newspapers. The Sydney Morning Herald and The Courier-Mail, in contrast, chose a photograph of Corby struggling with the courtroom police. The Sydney Morning Herald more closely cropped their version so that the emphasis is on Corby. More of the struggle is depicted in The Courier-Mail. The only newspaper making a substantially different choice was The Canberra Times. In this publication, the central vertical photograph was a close up of Corby with tears in her eyes. Her mien is more composed than in the photographs on the other front pages. The source for the photographs, with the exception of The Australian’s choice from Associated Press, was Reuters. Given that the event was in Indonesia and in a crowded courtroom, the array of photographs may have been limited.
 
 Of interest was the use of the photograph. The Daily Telegraph, The Mercury, and the Herald Sun ran it full-page, like a poster shot, with the mastheads and headlines over the top. In contrast, The Advertiser maintained a white background for their masthead with the photograph underneath enclosed in a heavy frame and the headlines imposed on top. The other newspapers ran the photograph to the edge of the page without an added frame. The Advertiser, The Mercury, and the Herald Sun chose to forgo their normal front-page teasers. This restricted the scan and select for the reader. Normally readers would have at least two stories, sometimes three, as well as two to three teasers or pointers (usually across the top of the page under the masthead) to scan and select their reading matter. On May 28, however, Corby was centralised with a similar reading path encoded for each of these newspapers. The photograph is the most salient element and the eye moves from this to the main headline at the bottom of the page. As the masthead is known and familiar, unless the reader is selecting the newspaper from a newsstand rather than picking it up from their front yard, it is likely they would only subconsciously register it. These layouts, with a reading path from photograph to headlines down the page, are closer to linear in design, than the normal non-linear format and more interactive front pages. Therefore, the coding is for reading “left to right and from top to bottom, line by line” (Kress and van Leeuwen 218). Newspapers are not normally read in a linear way, but 
 
 “selectively and partially . . . Their composition sets up particular hierarchies of the movement of the hypothetical reader within and across their different elements. Such reading paths begin with the most salient element, from there move to the next most salient element and so on.” (218) 
 
 
 There is also sameness in the headlines and their implications. The Mercury, the most unadorned of the layouts, has “20 Years” in block capitals with a subhead and pointer reading “Corby’s Nightmare Sentence, pages 2-6”. The implication is clear, Corby’s sentence is 20 years in jail and it is pronounced a “nightmare”. The Herald Sun also chose “20 Years” with a subheading of “Shock and tears over jail sentence”. Consolidating this notion of “shock and tears” were three smaller photographs across the bottom of the page depicting crying and sobbing women. No male sympathy was depicted, thus tapping into and reinforcing Australian cultural stereotypes that it is the Australian women rather than the men who cry. The Advertiser’s main headline declared “20 Years in Hell”. Beside this was a smaller underlined headline and pointer “Guilty Corby, sent to jail, Australians react in anger Pages 8-15”. There are slight distinctions in these three pages but essentially the encoded reading path and message is the same. That is not to say that some people may read the pages in a different order. As Kress and van Leeuwen argue “newspaper pages can be read in more than one way” (“Front Page” 205), however, the choice on these pages is limited.
 
 The Daily Telegraph uses headlines with different emphasis and includes text from the main story imposed over the photograph. Pointers square-off the pages at the bottom. A kicker head at the top of the page, below the masthead, and set against a photograph of Abu Bakir Bashir, declares: “This terrorist planned the murder of 88 Australians and got two years. Yesterday Schapelle Corby got 20”. This comparison does not appear on the already examined pages. Towards the bottom of the page, the main headline set over two lines reads “Nation’s Fury”. To the right of the “Nation” is a smaller headline, which says “20 years in hell and prosecutor’s still demand life”. The story begins beside the second line “Fury”. The message on this page is more strident than the others and was analysed by the ABC TV show Media Watch on May 30. Media Watch declared the “spin on the verdict” used by The Daily Telegraph as “truly a disgrace”. The criticism was made because Bashir was not convicted in court of masterminding the bombing therefore the word “planned” is problematic and misleading. As the Media Watch report points out, the three Indonesians convicted of masterminding the bombing are on death row and will face the firing squad. 
 
 The final tabloid, The West Australian, presented a similar message to The Daily Telegraph with a headline of “Bomb plotter: 2½ years / Dope smuggler: 20 years”. The visual impact of this page, however, is not as striking as the other pages. The visual designs of The Advertiser, The Daily Telegraph, The Mercury, and the Herald Sun make it immediately clear that the Corby verdict is the central issue in the news and that all other stories are so marginal they are off the page. In contrast, The West Australian ran its normal teasers just below the masthead, offering four choices for the reader as well as weather and home delivery details at the bottom. The heavily cropped central photograph of Corby leaves in only her wrist and central facial features; it is not even immediately apparent that the photograph is of Corby. The story runs in an L-shape around it. Although Corby is central, the reading path is not as clear. The reader’s eye will most likely be drawn from photograph to caption and to headline or headline, photograph, caption. Whatever the path, the story text is always read last, that is, if the reader chooses this story at all (Kress and van Leeuwen, “Front Pages” 205). The story opens by announcing that Corby’s lawyers want the Australian authorities to “launch an investigation” into the case and Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer has offered the help of two Australian QCs in preparing an appeal. This introduction does not support the headline. The comparison with Bashir comes in paragraph three. While Corby still has salience, the inclusion of teasers on the front of The West Australian brings back the choice for the reader, albeit in a small way.
 
 Kress and van Leeuwen argue that newspapers “are the first point of ‘address’ for the readers” presenting “the most significant events and issues of the day for the paper and its readers” (“Front Page” 229). In the Corby coverage on May 28, the newspapers presented the court verdict as the most important of all stories on offer and her image became the most salient element, the “nucleus” of the front pages. All newspapers make choices for their readers in their capacity as gatekeepers (see David Manning White and Glen Bleske), but not, I would argue, to the extent that it appeared in the Corby case. A centralising approach to news can be understood with stories such as 9/11 or the Bali Bombing but does one woman’s plight over drug charges in Bali truly deserve such coverage? As a single event maybe not, but the Corby verdict again raised the issue of Australia’s uneasiness about the laws and culture of its Asian neighbours, feelings amplified in the wake of the Bali Bombing. The rhetoric used in the front pages of The Daily Telegraph and The West Australian clearly state this when they compare Corby’s sentence to Bashir’s. They demonstrate a paranoia about the treatment of “our girl” in a foreign judicial system which appears to deal more leniently with terrorists. Thus, one girl’s story is transformed into part of a much larger issue, a fact reinforced through the visual treatment of the material. There remain some questions. What does it say about the newspaper’s attitude to their readers when they centralise issues so strongly that reader choice is removed? Is this part of the “dumbing down” of the Australian media, where news organisations move towards more clearly dictating views to their reading public? Is it attributable to media ownership, after all four of these tabloids belong to News Corporation? These questions and others about the trend towards the centralising of issues are for a bigger study. For now, we watch to see how much longer Corby remains in the nucleus of the news and for further indication of a growing trend towards centralising issues.
 
 References
 
 Bleske, Glen K. “Mrs Gates Takes Over: An Updated Version of a 1949 Case Study.” Social Meanings of News. Ed. Dan Berkowitz. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1997. Harrower, Tim. The Newspaper Designer’s Handbook. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 1998. Kress, Gunther, and Theo van Leeuwen. Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London and New York: Routledge, 1996. Kress, Gunther, and Theo van Leeuwen. “Front Page: (The Critical) Analysis of Newspaper Layout.” Approaches to Media Discourse. Ed. Allan Bell and Peter Garrett. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2003. Media Watch. May 30, 2005. http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s1380398.htm>. Sellers, Leslie. The Simple Subs Book. Oxford: Permagon Press, 1968. White, David Manning. “The ‘Gate Keeper’: A Case Study in the Selection of News.” Social Meanings of News. Ed. Dan Berkowitz. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1997.
 
 
 
 
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We live in an era in which the ‘active learner’ has become accepted as the fundamental goal of good teaching from early childcare to university education (Silberman; University of Melbourne University). In this paper we reflect upon the arts of stillness in contemporary classrooms based on research in schools across Sydney (Watkins and Noble).Part of the context for this paper is the way ‘activity’ has been uncritically elevated to a pedagogic principle in contemporary education. Over several decades a critique of traditional or more formal approaches to education has produced an increasing emphasis on learning that is said to be more engaged often under labels such as ‘discovery’ or ‘experiential’ learning, enquiry methods or ‘learning by doing’. This desire to give students a greater role in the educational process is admirable. It is also seen to be more democratic and ‘relevant’ to young people (Cope & Kalantzis). Positioned against a straw man of ‘passive learning’, characterised by the dominance of teacher direction, rote learning and individuated desk work, this active learning or progressivist perspective on education privileges student ‘ownership’ of curriculum, group-based activity and the ‘doing’ of things. Stillness is characterised as a ‘problem of passivity’, a ‘disease’ of ‘chalk and talk’ (Lucas 84-85). In its most extreme form, this emphasis on activity has been translated into ‘educational kinesiology’ and ‘brain gym’, in which physical movement is seen to have a direct, beneficial effect on learning, often in place of content-based curriculum (Lucas 50). In this paper we don’t engage in a critique of ‘active learning’ per se; rather, taking seriously Foucault’s insistence on the productivity of discipline, we argue stillness is crucial to scholarly labour.Part of the context for this research is public anxiety about ‘Asian success’ within Australian education systems. Students from ‘Asian’ backgrounds are often perceived as having a cultural proneness towards educational achievement (Duffy 28). These perceptions rest on assumptions about ‘Asian values’ of family, sacrifice, hard work and success (Robinson). These assumptions, however, are problematic (Wu and Singh), and carry a concern that such students are ‘passive’ in the classroom, deferential to traditional forms of education and obsessed with exams. Certainly, despite their success, these students don’t conform to what many teachers favour as the ideal learner within the dominant paradigm of progressivism (Cope & Kalantzis 4). These anxieties have also emerged in response to the proliferation of coaching colleges which are seen to transgress western notions of childhood.The research – based on a parent survey in 10 primary schools, interviews with Year 3 teachers, parents and students and classroom observations in six of these schools – explored the extent to which a ‘disposition’ to academic achievement can be explained by ethnicity or relates to a complex set of socio-cultural factors. The report from this study engages with the broad question of the relationship between ethnicity and, what we call, following Bourdieu, the ‘scholarly habitus’ (Watkins & Noble). Against a pathologising of cultural background, it examines the ways achievement is embodied as orientations to learning through different home and school practices. Here we use examples drawn from the observations to focus on the capacities for self-discipline and stillness that can foster achievement. Against the tendency to equate stillness with inaction, we argue that a 'productive stillness' underlines capacities for sustained attention and self-direction. This bodily discipline entails a state of composure, a 'staying' of movement which entails a readiness for action necessary for academic tasks. While not all stillness is ‘productive’, we argue there are forms of stillness which are conducive to the formation of the 'scholarly habitus' (Bourdieu, Logic). The Bodily Capacity for Scholarly LabourBourdieu (State) refers to dispositions that are valued in education: self-discipline, the ability to work intensively, confidence, independence, contemplation, abstraction and the value of excellence. Yet he is less interested in exploring these capacities in relation to teaching practice than in discussing them as forms of social distinction. Educational applications of Bourdieu also focus on the social reproduction of inequality, separate to the technical competencies of schooling, although Bourdieu does not differentiate between them (Lareau and Weininger). To understand the uneven distribution of educational competencies, however, they first need to be examined as bodily capacities that are enabling.To do this, let us contrast two classrooms in Broughton PS, a large school in a low-to-mid SES area in Sydney’s inner south-west with large numbers of Arabic-speaking and Asian students, and smaller groups of Anglo, Pasifika and African students. One class is an enrichment class, in which high ability students are placed and where there is a strong focus on academic work. The other class has many of the least able students. The enrichment class comprises students of mostly Chinese background, with a smaller number of Vietnamese, Indian and Anglo background. There is one Arabic-speaking student but no Pasifika students. The second class is more diverse, and has many Pasifika students, with fewer Chinese, Arabic and Anglo students.The first time we saw the enrichment class was after recess. Students shuffled into their classroom and sat down at their desks with minimum fuss. Many of them pulled out books and read them while waiting for their teacher, Heather, to enter. If they talked, it was quietly, and often about what they were reading. They sat still: the posture of most students was upright, even when they were working. Some students occasionally rocked back, stretching arms and legs. Overall, however, these students had mastered the arts of stillness. Sonia, of Chinese background, is a case in point – she was always work-focused, sitting still and getting on with it. Even during unstructured discussion she remained task-orientated displaying a substantial investment in her work.In the second class the students bustled in, taking a while to settle. Kids stood around chatting, playing, shoving each other until the teacher, Betty, shouted at them, which she did a lot. The noise of the students never abated, even as the teacher was giving instructions, and it frequently reached high levels. There was constant movement as students came in late, and teachers and students wandered in and out. Kids visited other kids; one student rolled on the floor. When they were directed to sit at the front, several squatted, some sat away from the area, several simply stood. When they were at their desks, many slouched forward or leant back; a large number of the students rocked on their chairs during the sessions, some constantly. The directions of the teacher to put ‘feet on floor’ and ‘hands on heads’, or putting her fingers to her lips to gesture for them to be quiet, shouting or by counting back from 5 had little effect. This class was a very active group, but little work got done. They did not have sustained capacities of stillness appropriate for academic activities. In the enrichment class, the teacher didn’t have to check noise or movement very often – the students had internalised these behaviours as capacities that directed their work. Occasionally, they policed each other if they were disrupted. There was occasional talk, but it tended to be in whispers. If the task required it, there was plenty of discussion; and some of the students didn’t hesitate in challenging the teacher when she made a mistake. These students’ stillness and quiet was by-and-large productive and appropriate. We call this a state of composure, a readiness for activity. When required, this class was capable of concentration and application; or, alternatively, discussion. We call it composure because it links to Foucault’s (162-3) insight that modern forms of discipline rest on a ‘composition of forces’ which not only produce an efficient organisation but individuals with a disposition towards acting skilfully.Betty’s class, in contrast, was in a state of decomposure, with unproductive movement and noise. They were rarely still, posture was poor, and many students spent little time attending to work or the teacher. They were rarely ready for work when the teacher called them to it. Rather they saw a change in activity as a chance for movement and chatter. This was not the caged resentment that Willis described in his analysis of resistance to school amongst working class boys. It was not a form of conscious insubordination, though a similar form of ‘self-damnation’ was evident.Sonny, a Samoan boy in this class, in contrast to Sonia, struggled to stay on-task for more than a few minutes, and clearly had little investment in his work. He generally didn’t care where he was at with the task, and expected the teacher to constantly direct him. Sonny was a very large child – the teacher commented that his physical presence in the class was an ongoing problem as he was unaware of other children, constantly bowling them over. The teacher struggled to manage Sonny’s body. He talked frequently and loudly, and leant back on his chair despite being placed in a way that pinned him against a cupboard. His location in the class was telling. He was sitting at a table with students who followed tasks, separated from the usual troublemakers. This is significant for another reason of which Sonny was not fully conscious. At one stage in the lesson he sat bolt upright and pointing at each of his tablemates, yelled, ‘Miss, why am I sitting with all Chinese?’ Betty apparently hoped that being with the quieter Chinese students Sonny would not only be out of harm’s way, he might absorb the skills of application they possessed!This uneven distribution of capacities was also seen in the way different classes undertook a maths assessment task on fractions. While other classes treated it as a general lesson, in the enrichment class it was completed in test conditions, which the teacher later commented the kids loved. The teacher explained the task and the conditions – that there should be no copying, to work in silence, concentrate on the questions, the amount of time they’d get and what to do when they finished (further maths work). She initiated an enthusiastic class discussion of the topic (fractions), reminded them of work they had completed in this area and got them to go through basic aspects of fractions. The task was distributed and students immediately filled in their name and the date. When they commenced their work she moved around the room monitoring their progress. Occasionally she directed a student to reread the instructions and towards the end she reminded them to check their work and then gave them a five-minute warning. There was little movement, fiddling or talk, unless it was a question of clarification directed to the teacher. Most finished and moved quickly onto their maths workbooks. There was a lively discussion afterwards as the class went through the questions and discussed the answers and procedure. Overall, there was a clear sense of a strong investment in the process and the product: with many showing real annoyance when they got things wrong, and deep pleasure when they were correct. While the contrast between these classes is clear, and show an uneven distribution of particular capacities, we should be careful not to make a simple assumption that stillness, quiet and obedience are good, and their opposites bad. Apart from the fact that the enrichment class showed itself capable of vociferous and physical behaviour (as when they were completing a craft activity), the point is really about the appropriateness and productivity of these embodied competencies for particular tasks, and the ability to move between these capacities when necessary.Stillness, and its attendant capacities described above, is not a good in and of itself. There is another kind of stillness that we found in a class in another school we observed. Chestervale PS was in a middle class area in a northern suburb of Sydney that was favoured by parents of Chinese background. This class was by no means as unruly as Sonny’s – classroom behaviour was generally well managed by the teacher, and the students were fairly adept at following tasks. Two students we observed – Walter (of Chinese background) and Eric (of Anglo background) – seemed at first glance to be well-behaved students who did their work. Watching these boys for several hours, however, we became aware of the fact that for large chunks of the classroom time they did nothing, but were not recognised as doing so. Walter spent 45 minutes without adding anything to his writing – a straightforward comprehension task. This was also run in near-test-like conditions of quiet concentration, and Walter, apart from a few minor distractions, seemed to be focused on the pages in front of him but actually wrote nothing in the lesson. The teacher strolled around checking students’ work and giving advice or praise as needed – she managed the class quite well – but seemed not to notice when she checked Walter’s work that he hadn’t written anything. Eric, rather more obviously distracted, but who nevertheless seemed to complete 1-2 questions, got by with little work by being, like Walter, generally quiet. His distractions amounted to little more than staring at the contents of the shelf next to him and fidgeting. Walter and Eric were acquiring specific types of capacities – skills in getting out of work that are also fundamentally unproductive. Walter’s general abilities allowed him to float through the class, but Eric’s failure to develop productive capacities was demonstrated in his poor reading and writing levels. We don’t wish to participate in the academic romanticisation of such tactics as ‘resistance’, however, because while this ‘ordinary art’ is diversionary it does not ultimately work to ‘the advantage’ of the student (de Certeau 29-31). Rather, it is simply disabling.This example highlights two important points. First, as mentioned, stillness and quiet are not in themselves signs of educational ‘productivity’ – such capacities always have to be seen in context, related to specific tasks and aims. Many teachers may encourage stillness and quiet – even reward it – simply because it produces an orderly classroom. Second, we should be wary of looking to ethnicity as an explanation of the uneven distribution of capacities: Eric, as an Anglo student, isn’t subject to the kind of cultural pathologising usually reserved for students of particular ethnic backgrounds and Walter, clearly, did not match the stereotype of an academically engaged Chinese student. These issues are taken up in the larger report. Disciplining the Scholarly HabitusOur point is not just to outline some differences in abilities, but to begin to analyse how these contribute to the dispositions, or lack thereof, of the scholarly habitus, to think about how these capacities relate to particular kinds of practices at home and school which instil specific kinds of discipline, and thus eventually to elaborate links between schooling and cultural background. Neither popular pathologies of cultural difference nor sociologies of education which reduce these complexities to either class or gender adequately account for the capacities and practices at stake here (Watkins and Noble).The comparative account of these vignettes of classroom practice provide examples of different disciplinary forms demonstrating the ways in which school structures and pedagogic practices affect students’ engagement in learning and overall performance at school. As indicated, the notion of discipline used here does not simply pertain to control, operating as a negative force inhibiting learning – though a disabling discipline of control was apparent in the pedagogy some teachers employed and also framed some whole school practices. Discipline, here, has a broader meaning. As Foucault intended, it also refers to the knowledge and skills which need to be mastered in order to achieve success in particular fields. Foucault famously analyses the roles of discipline in the functioning of modern institutions. He describes the emergence of the school in modern times as ‘a machine for learning’. Despite his much-repeated insistence on the productive and enabling nature of discipline (and his insight that discipline ‘is no longer simply an art of distributing bodies, … but of composing forces in order to obtain an efficient machine’), it is the machine-like and oppressive quality of discipline that is often the focus. In relation to the nineteenth century school, for example, he describes it as a ‘morality of obedience’ based on a prescriptive discipline of absolute silence and a Pavlovian process of ‘signalisation’ and response (164-7).Sonia’s class (the enrichment class), however, is not one where passivity or docility is the rule – and illustrates better the form of disciplined, productive stillness crucial to educational activity. As this first group of students demonstrates, this discipline takes a material form, whereby students’ bodies are capacitated through the control and focus they embody. This recalls Foucault’s other focus captured in his view that ‘a disciplined body is the prerequisite of an efficient gesture’ (152). This discipline predisposes students towards particular types of endeavour; a discipline that takes the form of dispositions as in the scholarly habitus. Differing degrees of discipline resulting from the repeated performance of certain practices is what distinguishes the three groups of students in this paper.Writing, listening and talking in class are all forms of labour that require bodily control as well as forms of knowledge. Sonia, for example, evinced capacities of stillness, quiet, attention, self-direction and self-discipline which disposed her to engaged learning. This is a state of composure which evinces a readiness for activity. When required, she was capable of sustained application. This is not to be mistaken for docility – her stillness and quiet were productive for academic engagement. In contrast, many in Sonny’s class were far from composed. They did not have sustained capacities of stillness and quiet or the capacity for self-control in an educational environment. They manifested different types of bodily capacities which incline them, like Sonny, towards disengagement. Eric and Walter are different cases yet again. They displayed a degree of quiet and stillness that was unproductive, that didn’t ready them for engaged activity.This sense of bodily control also operates at basic levels of mastery as well as readiness for intellectual activity. Indeed, low-order capacities are stepping stones for higher order skills. It is difficult to develop literacy, for example, without mastering the physical skills of writing. Such skills require a certain posture and control for perfecting letter and word formation. Such mastery, for example, is needed for writing to become ‘transparent’: the student stops ‘thinking’ about forming the letter or word with the pen, and concentrates on the content of their writing. The physical nature of the labour of writing stops being a conscious task and becomes a largely unconscious capacity, which lends itself to the development of capacities in composition, analysis and abstraction. Neither Walter nor Eric had developed a mastery of the pen or their own body. In the case of Eric, Deirdre, his teacher, commented that he had ‘immature fine motor skills’, which affected his writing. She pointed out that ‘when your writing doesn’t come easy it is going to take longer’, which meant Eric ‘rarely completes things’. ConclusionAs Vitalis argued thousands of years ago, with writing, the whole body labours (cited in Ong 95). But this form of labour entails stillness, self-control and the bodily capacity for sustained intellectual engagement. Educational practice needs to not only return to an appreciation of the arts of stillness but to rethink the ways in which activity in learning is understood; the ways in which an active mind is reliant upon a composed yet capacitated body and the particular pedagogies that, from the early years of school, can promote this form of corporeal governance. ReferencesBourdieu, Pierre. The Logic of Practice. Trans. Richard Nice. Cambridge: Polity, 1990.———. The State Nobility. Trans. Lauretta Clough. Cambridge: Polity, 1996.Cope, Bill, and Mary Kalantzis. “Introduction.” In The Powers of Literacy. Eds. Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis. London: Falmer. 1993. 1-21.De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Trans. Steven Rendall. Berkeley: U of California P, 1984.Duffy, Michael. “Improved by Asian Work Ethic.” Courier Mail 29 Sep. 2001: 28.Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish. Trans. Alan Sheridan. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977.Lareau, Annette, and Elliot Weininger. “Cultural Capital in Educational Research.” Theory and Society 32.5/6 (2003): 567-606.Lucas, Bill. Power Up your Mind. London: Nicholas Brealey, 2001.Ong, Walter. Orality and Literacy. London: Methuen, 1982.Robinson, Kathryn. “Looking for Father-Right.” In Race, Colour and Identity in Australia and New Zealand. Eds. John Docker and Gerhard Fischer. Kensington: UNSW P, 2000. 158-173.Silberman, Mel. The Active Learner. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1996.University of Melbourne. Active Learning. Academic Skills Unit. 6 Mar. 2009 ‹http://www.services.unimelb.edu.au/asu/resources/study/estudy008.html›.Watkins, Megan, and Greg Noble. Cultural Practices and Learning: Diversity, Discipline and Dispositions in Schooling. Penrith South: U of Western Sydney, 2008.Willis, Paul. Learning to Labour. Aldershot: Gower, 1977. Wu, Jianguo, and Michael Singh. ‘“Wishing for Dragon Children”: Ironies and Contradictions in China’s Educational Reforms and the Chinese Diaspora’s Disappointments with Australian Education.” The Australian Educational Researcher 31.2 (2004): 29-44.

La presente investigación basado en el “Prototipo de los conceptos de Massive Open Online Course MOOC y el rendimiento académico de los estudiantes de la I.E. Salesiano “Don Bosco”; tuvo como objetivo general determinar la influencia del prototipo de los conceptos de Massive Open Online Course MOOC en el rendimiento académico de los estudiantes, para mejorar las competencias interpretativas, argumentativas y propositivas; comprobando la hipótesis que el prototipo de los conceptos de Massive Open Online Course influye positivamente en el rendimiento académico de los estudiantes. La implementación de la aplicación basado en el prototipo de los conceptos de Massive Open Online Course es una tecnología que incrementa la información virtual sobre diversas temáticas en las que los estudiantes participan activamente en desarrollar sus competencias y lo puedan realizar desde sus hogares.

The LHC (Large Hadron Collider) will serve as the energy frontier for high-energy physics for the next 20 years. The highlight of the LHC running so far has been the discovery of the Higgs boson, but the LHC programme has also consisted of the measurement of a myriad of other Standard Model processes, as well as searches for Beyond-the-Standard-Model physics, and the discrimination between possible new physics signatures and their Standard Model backgrounds. Essentially all of the physics processes at the LHC depend on quantum chromodynamics, or QCD, in the production, or in the decay stages, or in both. This book has been written as an advanced primer for physics at the LHC, providing a pedagogical guide for the calculation of QCD and Standard Model predictions, using state-of-the-art theoretical frameworks. The predictions are compared to both the legacy data from the Tevatron, as well as the data obtained thus far from the LHC, with intuitive connections between data and theory supplied where possible. The book is written at a level suitable for advanced graduate students, and thus could be used in a graduate course, but is also intended for every physicist interested in physics at the LHC.

In modern history, democracy’s dilemma or deficit is evident particularly in the international arena: the imposition of autocratic rule through imperialism and colonialism. In his Conquest of America, Tzvetan Todorov points to the annexation of the Americas by the Spanish empire in the course of which some 70 million native inhabitants perished. The most prominent feature was the lack of relational equality—a lack which persisted in later forms of imperialism. In the 20th century, a new type of autocracy emerged in the modern “center”: totalitarianism. More recently, a newer danger emerged in the bosom of democracy itself. Todorov distinguishes between three constitutive elements: the people (founding community), political agents, and shared purpose. Each of these factors can lead to antidemocratic abuses: the people to reactionary “populism”; individual agents to “hyper-liberalism”; collective purpose to “messianism” or the policy of “imposing democracy by bombs.”

This book is the first to make chi-squared model testing, one of the data analysis methods used to discover the Higgs boson and gravitational waves, accessible to undergraduate students in introductory physics laboratory courses. By including uncertainties in the curve fitting, chi-squared data analysis improves on the centuries old ordinary least squares and linear regression methods and combines best fit parameter estimation and model testing in one method. A toolkit of essential statistical and experimental concepts is developed from the ground up with novel features to interest even those familiar with the material. The presentation of one- and two-parameter chi-squared model testing, requiring only elementary probability and algebra, is followed by case studies that apply the methods to simple introductory physics lab experiments. More challenging topics, requiring calculus, are addressed in an advanced topics chapter. This self-contained and student-friendly introduction to chi-squared analysis and model testing includes a glossary, end-of-chapter problems with complete solutions, and software scripts written in several popular programming languages, that the reader can use for chi-squared model testing. In addition to introductory physics lab students, this accessible introduction to chi-squared analysis and model testing will be of interest to all who need to learn chi-squared model testing, e.g. beginning researchers in astrophysics and particle physics, beginners in data science, and lab students in other experimental sciences.

Making Harvard Modern is a candid, richly detailed portrait of America's most prominent university from 1933 to the present: seven decades of dramatic change. Early twentieth century Harvard was the country's oldest and richest university, but not necessarily its outstanding one. By the century's end it was widely regarded as the nation's, and the world's, leading institution of higher education. With verve, humor, and insight, Morton and Phyllis Keller tell the story of that rise: a tale of compelling personalities, notable achievement and no less notable academic pratfalls. Their book is based on rich and revealing archival materials, interviews, and personal experience. Young, humbly born James Bryant Conant succeeded Boston Brahmin A. Lawrence Lowell as Harvard's president in 1933, and set out to change a Brahmin-dominated university into a meritocratic one. He hoped to recruit the nation's finest scholars and an outstanding national student body. But the lack of new money during the Depression and the distractions of World War Two kept Conant, and Harvard, from achieving this goal. In the 1950s and 1960s, during the presidency of Conant's successor Nathan Marsh Pusey, Harvard raised the money, recruited the faculty, and attracted the students that made it a great meritocratic institution: America's university. The authors provide the fullest account yet of this transformation, and of the wrenching campus crisis of the late 'sixties. During the last thirty years of the twentieth century, a new academic culture arose: meritocratic Harvard morphed into worldly Harvard. During the presidencies of Derek Bok and Neil Rudenstine the university opened its doors to growing numbers of foreign students, women, African- and Asian-Americans, and Hispanics. Its administration, faculty, and students became more deeply engaged in social issues; its scientists and professional schools were more ready to enter into shared commercial ventures. But worldliness brought its own conflicts: over affirmative action and political correctness, over commercialization, over the ever higher costs of higher education. This fascinating account, the first comprehensive history of a modern American university, is essential reading for anyone with an interest in the present state and future course of higher education.

He walked about for the next two hours, walked all over Boston, heedless of his course, and conscious only of an unwillingness to return to his hotel and an inability to eat his dinner or rest his weary legs. He had been roaming in...

I first saw the light in the city of Boston in the year 1857. “What!” you say, “eighteen fifty-seven? That is an odd slip. He means nineteen fifty-seven, of course.” I beg pardon, but there is no mistake. It was about four in the...

The "Science, Technology, Engineering, Precollege Studies" (STEPS) program was developed in 1988 by Dr. Esther Pearson. The STEPS program has served thousands of youth over the past two decades to provide academic support and mentoring to minorities and women students. The STEPS program focuses on demonstrating a connected learning approach to STEM academics. Students participate in mentoring through the STEM pipeline of course choices, extra-curricular activities, and exposure to STEM practitioners. Students learn to overcome the challenges that prevent successful matriculation into STEM fields. Minority and women students in elementary through college in the Boston and greater Boston areas learn how to navigate from a desire for a STEM career to achieving one.

The American Council on Education estimates that 85% of traditional colleges and universities offers distance-accessible courses. Boston University has been an early player in this arena, and in this paper we synthesize two models for virtual learning on the basis of actual courses that took place. Also we focus on the authors experience with communicating at a distance in the context of credit and non-credit courses.

In order to introduce Internet technology literacy in the town of Westford (Boston Suburb) a new series of workshops were introduced during the winter of2000. This paper describes the strategy used to inform Westford community about the workshop and also presents an outline of the course topics and summary of research results generated from the participant's feedback and their experiences with the workshop.

School children in general and high school students, in particular more often than not lose interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education. Underrepresented and female students are even more discouraged by STEM courses. Our investigation and interviews with high school teachers cite that the main reason for such disinterest is the disconnect between school and reality. Students cannot relate the abstract concepts they learn in physics, biology, chemistry, or math to their surroundings. This paper discusses a new capstone project-based approach that closes this gap. This work is an outcome of an NSF funded project called CAPSULE (Capstone Unique Learning Experience). We use the top-down pedagogical approach instead of the traditional bottom-up approach. The top-down approach relates the abstract concepts to exciting open-ended capstone projects where students are engaged in designing solutions, like products to solve open-ended problems. This top-down approach is modeled after the college-level capstone design courses. The paper presents the model, its details, and implementation. It also presents the formative and summative evaluation of the model after deploying it in the Boston Public Schools, a system heavily populated by the targeted student groups.

Ranking alternatives is a natural way for humans to explain their preferences. It is being used in many settings, such as school choice (NY, Boston), Course allocations, and the Israeli medical lottery. In some cases (such as the latter two), several ``items'' are given to each participant. Without having any information on the underlying cardinal utilities, arguing about fairness of allocation requires extending the ordinal item ranking to ordinal bundle ranking. The most commonly used such extension is stochastic dominance (SD), where a bundle X is preferred over a bundle Y if its score is better according to all additive score functions. SD is a very conservative extension, by which few allocations are necessarily fair while many allocations are possibly fair. We propose to make a natural assumption on the underlying cardinal utilities of the players, namely that the difference between two items at the top is larger than the difference between two items at the bottom. This assumption implies a preference extension which we call diminishing differences (DD), where a X is preferred over Y if its score is better according to all additive score functions satisfying the DD assumption. We give a full characterization of allocations that are necessarily-proportional or possibly-proportional according to this assumption. Based on this characterization, we present a polynomial-time algorithm for finding a necessarily-DD-proportional allocation if it exists. Using simulations, we show that with high probability, a necessarily-proportional allocation does not exist but a necessarily-DD-proportional allocation exists, and moreover, that allocation is proportional according to the underlying cardinal utilities.

In the winter 1813–1814 I attended a mathematical school kept in Boston ... on entering his room, we were struck at the appearance of an ample Blackboard suspended on the wall, with lumps of chalk on a the ledge below, and cloths hanging at either side. I never heard such a thing before. The introduction of computerized presentation techniques and overheads has also changed the teaching process as the blackboard did it on the 19th century. Computerized techniques have made possible showing the students more material related with the specific subject. Special videos, simulations and other multimedia tools represent one of the most relevant changes in the traditional learning. Simulations enable the students to familiarize themselves with the topic and highlight the key parameters as well as their influence. Several simulations have been included in the Computerized Educational Platform (CompEduHPT) together with theory and other educational features. These simulations constitute an alternative way to learn, based on discovery and experience. It is important to realize that the simulations are only a part of the package of learning. All the simulations are preceded with theory chapters, quizzes and preparatory tasks to enable fruitful exercises to be designed, including the simulations. Furthermore, the majority of these simulations are supported by a “guide” that provides help advising the student on how to perform the simulation and inviting him/her to analyze the changes every time that the student clicks on it based on the theory given in the chapters. This creates a completely integrated educational tool designed to enhance the learning of students involved in gas turbine technology courses either at the campus or as distant learners. A variety of simulations exist, stretching from simulated basic physical phenomena to complete cycle simulations. The Gas Turbine related simulations comprise for example a number of ideal and real gas turbine cycles, basic two-dimensional velocity triangle simulations as well as aerodynamic design of turbomachines and aeroelasticity simulations. One of the objectives of this paper is to show the potential of integrating the simulations in the learning process and the possible ways to overcome some of the obstacles by using tools already available and designed to enhance the learning process such as CompEduHPT. Evaluations show that simulations are appreciated among the students as an aid to grasp the general physical understanding of formulas and theory enhancing the learning process. The learning method and learning pace are highly valued among the students, which indicates that a computerized program including multiple ways of learning may be of considerable support to the more conventional and personal student-teacher way of learning.