scholarly journals What is the resource footprint of a computer science department? Place, people, and Pedagogy

Data & Policy ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. S. Mian ◽  
D. Twisleton ◽  
D. A. Timm

Abstract Internet and Communication Technology/electrical and electronic equipment (ICT/EEE) form the bedrock of today’s knowledge economy. This increasingly interconnected web of products, processes, services, and infrastructure is often invisible to the user, as are the resource costs behind them. This ecosystem of machine-to-machine and cyber-physical-system technologies has a myriad of (in)direct impacts on the lithosphere, biosphere, atmosphere, and hydrosphere. As key determinants of tomorrow’s digital world, academic institutions are critical sites for exploring ways to mitigate and/or eliminate negative impacts. This Report is a self-deliberation provoked by the question How do we create more resilient and healthier computer science departments: living laboratories for teaching and learning about resource-constrained computing, computation, and communication? Our response for University College London (UCL) Computer Science is to reflect on how, when, and where resources—energy, (raw) materials including water, space, and time—are consumed by the building (place), its occupants (people), and their activities (pedagogy). This perspective and attendant first-of-its-kind assessment outlines a roadmap and proposes high-level principles to aid our efforts, describing challenges and difficulties hindering quantification of the Department’s resource footprint. Qualitatively, we find a need to rematerialise the ICT/EEE ecosystem: to reveal the full costs of the seemingly intangible information society by interrogating the entire life history of paraphernalia from smartphones through servers to underground/undersea cables; another approach is demonstrating the corporeality of commonplace phrases and Nature-inspired terms such as artificial intelligence, social media, Big Data, smart cities/farming, the Internet, the Cloud, and the Web. We sketch routes to realising three interlinked aims: cap annual power consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, become a zero waste institution, and rejuvenate and (re)integrate the natural and built environments.

2021 ◽  
pp. 42-83
Author(s):  
Andrea Mariani

The article presents the social role of Jesuit pharmacies in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth based on the sources of religious provenance and inventories of Jesuit colleges drawn up as a result of the dissolution of the Society of Jesus in 1773. In the first part, the author analyzes the ecclesiastical and secular legislation and its impact on the activities of Jesuit pharmacies. Canon law did not forbid clergymen to deal with medicine, but only limited the possibility of obtaining academic education in this field and conducting surgical procedures. By adopting these rules, Jesuit legislation placed the main emphasis on superiors’ control over the finances of pharmacies and limited the sale of drugs to protect the order from being accused of unfair competition by the townspeople. In the context of state pharmaceutical law, the privilege of June 30, 1662, which allowed for the liberation of journeymen by Jesuit pharmacists, was of great importance. In this way, a path of professional education in the field of pharmacy under the management of the Society, an alternative to the guild system, was created. The second part of the article discusses the social factors that favoured the establishment of monastic pharmacies. Particularly noteworthy is the uneven distribution of Jesuit pharmacies in the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. While in Royal Prussia the Jesuits did not run pharmacies to avoid conflicts with the Protestant bourgeoisie, in the eastern borderlands of the Polish-Lithuanian state, Jesuit pharmacies were often the only institutions of this type. The third part of the work presents the financial situation of Jesuit pharmacies. They had significant income, but also required considerable investments related to the purchase of raw materials and equipment in the Baltic ports. The fourth part of the article concerns the social scope of the activity of Jesuit pharmacists, who not only provided medicines to the poor, but also treated nobles, magnates and high church dignitaries. Not being obliged by guild regulations, apart from preparing medicines, they also diagnosed them, performed minor surgical procedures and assisted women during childbirth. The last part of the article discusses drugs and raw materials in terms of their availability to the broadly understood clientele. The offer of Jesuit pharmacies included both cheap products derived from the local flora, intended for the treatment of the poor, and expensive raw materials from abroad. Moreover, among the medical matter there were preparations for women and infants, as well as for people suffering from syphilis. In the end, the author emphasizes the centrality of pharmacies in the Jesuit pastoral strategy. Thanks to their high level, pharmacies not only corresponded to the ideal of mercy, but also contributed to gaining the favour and trust of representatives of social elites. In this context, the dissolution of the Society is an important turning point not only in cultural and religious life, but also in the history of medicine and pharmacy in the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-27
Author(s):  
Olagunju-Ibrahim R Olawale ◽  
Olokooba S Muhammed ◽  
Solomon O Afolabi

Set on historical context, this paper examines generally the problems hindering the effective learning of Islamic Law (Sharīʻah) in the citadels of learning in Nigeria. In doing this, the paper highlights the history of legal education especially, the high level of teaching and learning of Islamic Law in the pre-colonial Nigeria and the contemporary problems facing quality Islamic legal education due to colonial antipathy for Islamic Law as well as shortcomings in the content of Sharīʻah law curriculum of the Nigerian legal education system. Using doctrinal research method, the paper finds that scanty contents of the Sharīʻah law courses taught to combined law students in Nigerian universities go contrary to the aims and objectives of the founding fathers of the Islamic legal education in Nigeria. To achieve a turn round and improve the situation, the paper recommends the need for overhauling of the contents of all Islamic Law courses in the Nigerian Universities.


2014 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alejandro Adorjan ◽  
Inés Friss De Kereki

In Introductory Computer Science courses, especially Computer Science 1 (CS1), dropout rates are generally high and results are often disappointing. In order to motivate and engage students to achieve better results in CS1, our teaching strategy is based on designing several activities using a competences oriented approach. This paper describes the use of a framework proposed by Crismond and Adams in order to create pedagogical activities for the CS1 course at Universidad ORT Uruguay. We propose to extend that framework with competences oriented activities. We present a detailed description of each activity. Our thesis is that including this kind of activities helps to obtain better results. Experimentation was done in 2012 and 2013. Teachers of the experimental group referred a high level of motivation of the students. Results show that the inclusion of those activities seems to be helpful for students and the proposed pedagogical design appears to produce better final results.


Author(s):  
Tia C. Madkins ◽  
Nicol R. Howard ◽  
Natalie Freed

In this position paper, we advocate for the use of equity-focused teaching and learning as an essential practice within computer science classrooms. We provide an overview of the theoretical underpinnings of various equity pedagogies (Banks & Banks, 1995), such as culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1995, 2006) and share how they have been utilized in CS classrooms. First, we provide a brief history of CS education and issues of equity within public schools in the United States. In sharing our definition of equity, along with our rationale for how and why these strategies can be taken up in computer science (CS) learning environments, we demonstrate how researchers and educators can shift the focus from access and achievement to social justice. After explaining the differences between the relevant theoretical frameworks, we provide practical examples from research of how both practitioners and researchers might use and/or examine equity-focused teaching practices. Resources for further learning are also included.


2008 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
YAEL DARR

This article describes a crucial and fundamental stage in the transformation of Hebrew children's literature, during the late 1930s and 1940s, from a single channel of expression to a multi-layered polyphony of models and voices. It claims that for the first time in the history of Hebrew children's literature there took place a doctrinal confrontation between two groups of taste-makers. The article outlines the pedagogical and ideological designs of traditionalist Zionist educators, and suggests how these were challenged by a group of prominent writers of adult poetry, members of the Modernist movement. These writers, it is argued, advocated autonomous literary creation, and insisted on a high level of literary quality. Their intervention not only dramatically changed the repertoire of Hebrew children's literature, but also the rules of literary discourse. The article suggests that, through the Modernists’ polemical efforts, Hebrew children's literature was able to free itself from its position as an apparatus controlled by the political-educational system and to become a dynamic and multi-layered field.


2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
pp. 4675-4682
Author(s):  
Atefeh Danesh Moghadam ◽  
Alireza Alagha

In the advent of information era, not only digital world is going to expand its territories, it is going to penetrate into the traditional notions about the meaning of the words and also valorize new concepts. According to Oxford Dictionary, the word heritage is defined: The history, tradition and qualities that a country or society has had for many years and that are considered an important part of its character. In order to present how emerging patterns, as the consequences of technology development, are going to be considered as the new concept of heritage, we follow four steps. In the first step, we present the convergence of Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) and a concise history of its convergence. In the second step, we argue how convergence has culminated in emerging patterns and also has made changes in digital world. In the third step, the importance of users behaviors and its mining is surveyed. Finally, in the fourth step; we illustrate User Generated Contents (UGC) as the most prominent users behaviors in digital world.


Author(s):  
Mark Meagher

Responsive architecture, a design field that has arisen in recent decades at the intersection of architecture and computer science, invokes a material response to digital information and implies the capacity of the building to respond dynamically to changing stimuli. The question I will address in the paper is whether it is possible for the responsive components of architecture to become a poetically expressive part of the building, and if so why this result has so rarely been achieved in contemporary and recent built work. The history of attitudes to- ward obsolescence in buildings is investigated as one explanation for the rarity of examples like the one considered here that successfully overcomes the rapid obsolescence of responsive components and makes these elements an integral part of the work of architecture. In conclusion I identify strategies for the design of responsive components as poetically expressive elements of architecture.


The paper is a review on the textbook by A. V. Yeremin, «The History of the National Prosecutor’s office» and the anthology «The Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian Empire in the Documents of 1722–1917» (authors: V. V. Lavrov, A. V. Eremin, edited by N. M. Ivanov) published at the St. Petersburg Law Institute (branch) of the University of the Prosecutor’s office of the Russian Federation in 2018. The reviewers emphasize the high relevance and high level of research, their theoretical and practical significance. The textbook and the anthology will help the students increase their legal awareness, expand their horizons.


Author(s):  
Nadiia Kulesha

The centenary of the Ukrainian Revolution (1917―1921s) made relevant the interest to the developments and the personalities of that time, specifically, to the personality of the President of the ZUNR, Petrushevych, Yevhen. The newspaper «Ukrayinskyi Prapor» founded in 1919 in Vienna, throughout its existence, was considered as an official print organ of the Dictator (i.e., Y. Petrushevych). The Vienna period of this publication lasted from August 1919 to mid-November 1923. From the end of November 1923 till April 1932, the paper was published in the capital of the Weimar Republic, Berlin. It was the only newspaper of the Ukrainian emigration published for the longest time in interwar Germany. It was an example of a socio-political periodical. There collaborated outstanding editors and publicists. The pages of this paper record the history of the diplomatic struggle of the West Ukrainian foreign representatives for the liberation of the Eastern Galicia from the protectorate of Poland and the restoration of Ukrainian statehood. Its materials documented the course of the occupation of the Eastern Galicia by Poland and the process of «Polonization» of the Ukrainian population of that region. The article explores the Berlin period of existence of the magazine. Specifically, it studies the changes in the ideological line of the magazine, more specifically, its pro-Soviet editorial orientation because of the illusions about the transformation of the national policy of the Soviet rule in Ukraine, especially during the period of Ukrainization. Then the traditional headings of the magazine were joined by the publications with positive coverage of the flourishing Ukrainianization in Soviet Ukraine. The newspaper also actively reacted to the SVU (Union for Liberation of Ukraine) trial in Kharkiv, justifying the position of the Soviet authorities. The paper’s editorial staff were well-known figures of Ukrainian politics, science, and culture: Yu. Bachynsky, O. Hrytsai, A. Zhuk, M. Lozynsky, R. Perfetsky, and others. They provided a high level of editorial content with high-quality, multifaceted texts. We conclude that in terms of the editorial content and formal aspects, the newspaper «Ukrayinskyi Prapor» matched the standards of the European mainstream press of that time.


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