METRICS FOR BIO-INSPIRATION BASED ON TAXONOMIES

Using bio-inspiration allows engineers to use the knowledge implicitly built up by natural evolution. Current tools for providing engineers with bio-inspiration yield many biological working principles. Starting from the Linnaean taxonomy, which can be seen as a design revision history, this work proposes metrics for a working principle based on the observations of that working principle in different organisms. A first metric measures the reinforcement of a working principle via the number of observations (publications/submissions to a database) made by biologists. Furthermore, biological strategies that evolve independently and use the same working principle might be more resilient and globally applicable, prompting the proposal of a metric measuring the spread in the taxonomy. Finally, bio-novelty measures the biological novelty, inversely related to the biological diversity employing the working principle. To illustrate the use of the metrics, they are applied to the working principles identified in the ‘temporary attachment’ category of AskNature.

Visualizing online collaborative writing strategies in higher education group assignments

PurposeWorking together in groups is a common and emphasized feature in today's society, and higher educational settings often utilize group assignments to enable students to develop collaborative skills. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to describe and analyze applied strategies and the patterns that emerge during students online collaborative writing in higher education group assignments. The research questions that this article aims to answer are (1) which patterns of students online collaborative writing emerge in higher education group assignments and (2) what strategies of online collaborative writing do higher education students apply in group assignments?Design/methodology/approachThis study's design builds on Conversation Analysis to explore visualizations of Google Docs revision history of online collaborative writing documents. Documents from 25 student groups were the basis of the analysis. The visualizations used in this project are produced with the DocuViz Chrome extension.FindingsThe findings suggest that visualizations can provide a quick and fairly accurate estimate of collaborative strategies used when students write together online. Three patterns of document growth were identified, two of which could be directly linked to strategies for collaboration. Cramming patterns are indicative of low collaboration and concentrating patterns with high levels of collaboration.Practical implicationsThe findings provide useful insight for teachers regarding the nature of collaboration taking place during online collaborative writing tasks. By visualizing the revision history, much can be learnt about the nature of the collaboration and of the individual group member's contributions in a student group that otherwise remains largely invisible to the teacher.Originality/valuePrior studies have combined visualizations with extensive analysis of document content. This investigation shows that an examination of the visualization of the document's revision history can be used to draw conclusions about the nature of collaboration during the online writing process.

Composing the Violin Concerto

This chapter discusses Sibelius’s compositional processes in relation to his Violin Concerto in D Minor (op. 47). It considers concerto models, Sibelius’s study of folk traditions, and the composer’s revision process. It argues that compositional processes are shaped by performers, performance environments, cross-genre interests, and critics, as well as by the composer’s imagination. This chapter highlights violinists such as Wilhelm Burmester, alongside critics, especially Karl Flodin, who are part of the concerto’s compositional and revision history. The chapter also outlines the main structural and melodic features of the revised concerto.

The Anyone-Can-Edit Syndrome

The user-generated wiki encyclopedia Wikipedia was launched in January 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. Wikipedia has become the world's largest wiki encyclopedia, and behind many of its entries are interesting stories of creation, or rather intercreation, since Wikipedia is produced by a large number of contributors. Using the slogan “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit” (Wikipedia 2013), Wikipedia invites everyone to participate, but the participants do not necessarily represent all kinds of individuals or interests – there might be an imbalance affecting the content as well as the perspective conveyed. As a phenomenon Wikipedia is quite complex, and can be studied from many different angels, for instance through the articles’ history and the edits to them.This paper is based on a study of Featured Articles from the Swedish Wikipedia. Three articles, Fri vilja [Free will], Fjäll [Fell], and Edgar Allan Poe, are chosen from a list of Featured Articles that belongs to the subject field culture. The articles’ development has been followed from their very first versions in 2003/2004 to edits made at the end of 2012.The aim is to examine the creation, or intercreation, processes of the articles, and the collaborative production. The data come from non-article material such as revision history pages, article material, and some complementary statistics. Principally the study has a qualitative approach, but with some quantitative elements.

Reconstructing LOST: Connecting storyworld geography to narrative comprehension in online Wiki communities

This paper examines how viewers of the ABC television show Lost collaboratively reconstructed the geography of the fictional island at the center of the show’s plot through an online encyclopedic wiki, Wikia’s Lostpedia. Examining participant activity on the wiki site over the course of the show’s six-year run reveals how narrative audiences initially processed information about the storyworld space as well as how those audiences revised their ideas and assumptions as the serialized story progressed. Here I use “The Island” page’s revision history to trace the means by which participants negotiated and organized the information concerning where the island was located in the “real world.” Secondly, I move to approaches used in locating and organizing landmarks. Finally, I address the ways in which participants synthesized this information into the creation of their own maps and the problems they encountered in doing so.