Navigating worlds of information: STEM literacy practices of experienced makers

Making as a design-centered learning activity has recently received significant attention in education. We use literacies—how individuals use representations to learn—to explore the STEM literacy practices of experienced designers and makers. Describing makers’ representational practices in STEM contexts can inform the design of literacy supports for young makers that can encourage their use of representations to connect STEM disciplines and design practices. We interviewed experienced makers to describe one literacy practice central to design: identifying, organizing, and integrating information. Makers enacted this practice within specific making processes—e.g., designing—with the purpose of sourcing and navigating information related to their chosen problems. The research supports efforts to bridge learning while making with learning in schools by positioning STEM literacies as central practices involved in the processes of designing and making.     

Comments on Jeff R. Crump's ‘The end of public housing as we know it: public housing policy,labor regulation and the US city’

Jeff Crump's discussion of housing policy in the United States is highly polemic but not very analytic or informative. Crump argues that federal housing policy is attempting to move people out of public housing and into the private housing market and the lowwage labor force. However, he fails to support his argument with credible evidence. My comments point out the most egregious of Crump's claims. I start with Crump's most extreme contentions that housing policy is coercing public housing residents into the low‐wage labor force. I then question his dismissive attitude toward the problems confronted by residents of distressed public housing and policies designed to help low‐income families move out of impoverished neighborhoods. I subsequently show how Crump exaggerates the extent to which federal housing policy is clearing central cities of subsidized low‐income housing. I conclude with a few words on the serious issues that a more informed critique of US housing policy could have raised. L'exposé de Jeff Crump sur la politique du logement aux Etats‐Unis relève principalement de la polémique, plus que de l'analyse ou de l'information. Selon lui, la politique fédérale tente de déplacer la population des logements sociaux vers les marchés de l'habitat privé et de la main‐d'?uvre à bas salaires. Toutefois, il n'apporte aucune preuve crédible à son propos. Ma réaction porte sur ses arguments les plus insignes, en commençant par ses allégations extrémistes selon lesquelles la politique du logement contraint les habitants des logements publics à des emplois peu rémunérés. Je remets ensuite en cause son dédain à l'égard des difficultés que rencontrent les résidents des logements sociaux insalubres, sans oublier les politiques prévues pour aider les familles à faibles revenus à quitter les quartiers pauvres. En conséquence, à mon avis, Crump exagère la mesure dans laquelle la politique fédérale élimine des centres‐villes les habitats à loyer modéré subventionnés. En quelques mots, ma conclusion porte sur les questions graves qu'aurait pu soulever un commentateur mieux documenté sur la politique du logement aux Etats‐Unis.     

The Prosecution of Public Figures and the Separation of Powers. Confusion within the Executive Branch – A Conceptual Framework

Criminal investigation and prosecution of politicians, top civil servants and other public figures are topics frequently discussed in the media. The nature of the investigating or prosecuting authority varies between countries – from the general public prosecutor, through magistrates to independent counsels or parliamentary investigation commissions. This paper analyzes the role and status of public prosecutors within the separation of powers-concept. Prosecutors are usually part of the executive and not the judicial branch, which implies that they do not enjoy the same degree of independence as judges, and are ultimately subordinated to the directives of the minister of justice or the government. Conflicts of interest may hence arise if members of government can use the criminal process for their own or partisan interests. The incentives of public prosecutors in different jurisdictions are compared.     

Money as Social Exergy

Synopsis It has been proposed that open thermodynamic systems will act to dissipate available energy gradients by self-organizing into coherent structures that, with time, evolve and develop into nested hierarchies – panarchies – that adapt to internal and external changes according to a characteristic adaptive cycle. This paper seeks to apply these ideas in the purely societal realm by investigating the role of money in economic systems. Money represents the value embodied in goods; a value that is separate from the exact nature of those goods. We suggest that money thereby liberates the ‘free value’ of economic desire and that this free value has properties analogous to energy. The result is the self-organization of structures and systems (‘econosystems’) that dissipate this ‘free value’. Econosystems act at different scales, and nested levels of econosystems form a panarchy, having effects that can be observed. In particular, it appears that money facilitates the creation of relationships between econosystem actors, increasing the connectedness of the econosystems that envelop those actors. We have identified a phenomenon whereby freed social value (i.e. money) can aggregate, or pool, at a larger econosystem scale in structures such as banks. These pools act as gradients that actors at the neighborhood scale can exploit for self-organization in the econosystem. Thus, econosystem actors appear to be freed from thermodynamic constraints by using money as a means of self-organization. However, because of these pools of aggregated social exergy, connectedness is increased at the larger scale of the econosystem. The potential consequence of this dynamic is that money may act to push larger scale econosystems toward a state of heightened vulnerability to collapse, while freeing smaller scale actors from apparent constraints. In this way, we propose that money acts to skew information feedback loops between econosystem actors and larger scale structures such as economies and ecosystems.      

Distinguishing external from internal scale effects: The case of public infrastructure

The recent applied production theory literature focusing on the economic performance of firms has increasingly recognized the importance of scale effects on costs and therefore efficiency. These scale effects may include short run returns due to fixity of privately demanded inputs (i.e., capital, long run internal returns to scale, and external factors affecting costs. Since these different types of scale effects can be thought of as shifts in and movements along cost curves, the different cost effects of such factors can be identified in a framework which explicitly takes them into account in the definition ofscale.In this article we formalize such a framework, and then use it to measure short run, long run (internal) and external scale effects from fixity of private capital, nonconstant returns to scale and public infrastructure. We then use these measures to identify the impacts of these different scale factors on productivity growth. The focus on public infrastructure as an important external scale factor is motivated by the current theoretical and policy interest in this issue; we show how a structural production theory model provides a rich basis for the analysis of the cost effects of infrastructure investment.     

On the Delegation of Powers: With Special Emphasis on Central and Eastern Europe

Elected politicians can choose to decide themselves or to delegate competence. Delegation can occur in the constitutional stage, but is most common in the post-constitutional stage. Furthermore, domestic delegation can be distinguished from international delegation. The authors propose to analyze both delegation decisions within a unified framework and apply it to eight countries of Central and Eastern Europe that have experienced substantial constitutional change recently. The main differences among these countries with regard to delegation are portrayed, their origins are traced and their effects analyzed.     

抗感冒药的成分分析与合理使用

通过对抗感冒药主要成分的分析,确立合理使用抗感冒药的原则,避免重复用药或滥用药带来的不良反应,从而真正做到合理、安全、有效地使用抗感冒药.