- Sep 2019
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kellogg.edu kellogg.edu
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Why do we write?
For someone writing a piece it could be about a passion. Or about someone or something they lost. Everyone has different reasons to why they write
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- Aug 2019
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bio.libretexts.org bio.libretexts.org
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The Plant Body
This reading is an excellent example of how a seemingly simple plant is composed of a variety of complex categories and systems.
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three types
I think the best way to go about remembering these 3 types are by breaking down the name itself. Apical derives from apex, which can refer to the farthest edge or tip of something (roots and stem tips). Lateral is a direction of movement, usually side to side (increased thickness). Intercalary refers to being inserted between other parts, areas/places, or things, in this case between leaf blades and nodes. Hope this helps.
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bio.libretexts.org bio.libretexts.org
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leaflets
Many other plants, including the green elms on the DSU campus also have several leaflets coming off of a single stem-like structure to comprise a single leaf.
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plants have tissues that conduct food and water
These plant tissues (vascular tissues) are also known as "TRACHEOPHYTES". These Vascular tissues are made up of two main tissues - The Xylem and Phloem.
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oxygen from photosynthesis
Plants do not always carry "breathe'' out oxygen - sometimes they produce CO2. This is mostly at night as they need to break down carbohydrates to produce energy and also there is no sunlight during the night. With sunlight being one of the main components in the Photosynthesis process, plants cannot produce oxygen at night.
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Their seeds are not enclosed by a fleshy fruit
I've also heard of gymnosperms being refered to as "naked seeded" plants since their seeds are open to air.
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github.com github.com
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Just by looking at the page you can see that it's not a normal check box. You are hiding the checkbox via CSS (opacity: 0) and replacing it with an image for styling reasons. Since the checkbox isn't visible Capybara can't find it. There are a couple of ways to deal with this, either find the element that contains the image being used as a replacement for the checkbox and click on that, or tell check/uncheck that it's allowed to click on the label if necessary to switch the checkbox
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- Jul 2019
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www.journals.uchicago.edu www.journals.uchicago.edu
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I am a researcher working on topics related to subjective well-being (sometimes also called happiness).
I should preface by saying that I have relatively modest training in statistics, and the arguments put forth in this paper are quite out of my depth. For example, I have not heard of things like first order stochastic dominance before reading this paper. I hope that by being open about things that I might be somewhat ignorant, this can be a path for me to develop a deeper understanding of the concerns raised in the paper.
I think (which could well be wrong) the paper is saying that in an ordinal measure like happiness, groups and individuals differ in their 'standard' in reporting happiness (e.g., what it takes to push my happiness from 0 to 1 is different from what pushes your happiness from 0 to 1). This makes comparing 'latent' (or true level of) happiness across groups difficult, if not impossible.
Put differently, if I report a 1 and you report a 0, I cannot be certain that I am happier than you. It could be the case that my standard for reporting a 1 is lower than you. The authors showed that by changing this standard around, inferences about 'true' happiness would change.
I think this is an important point. I think happiness researchers have grappled with this to some degree (from a more abstract perspective; instead of the more statistical/mathematical perspective). E.g., A hypothesis about how people report life satisfaction is that they compare their life to an ideal life (here, the ideal life sets the standard; i.e., two people with the exact same life can have different levels of life satisfaction because they have different ideas about ideal life). Related research in social comparison could be interpreted as moving the standard for happiness higher (instead of lowering 'true' happiness). In contrast, things like gratitude may lead to higher happiness ratings because it lowers happiness standard (instead of increasing 'true' happiness). The set point hypothesis can be interpreted as 1) people fully adapting their 'true' happiness to baseline levels after experiencing major life events or 2) people create a new happiness standard after experiencing a major life event.
This paper prompts me to think harder about happiness measures. It could well be the case that the standard people set for their happiness level (a cognitive process?) may be just as important as 'true' happiness itself.
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- Jun 2019
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hypothes.is hypothes.is
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annotate
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- May 2019
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onbeing.org onbeing.org
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It’s a more Eastern idea that suffering is part of life.
Note to self: try to find some good citation/literature on this
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- Mar 2019
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web.hypothes.is web.hypothes.is
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It would be nice if comments and annotations could be voted by people, and have the possibility to sort them chronologically etc.
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- Dec 2018
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festive.ninja festive.ninja
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It’s about doing the one little thing you can do, even if it’s useless: planting seeds in the midst of the apocalypse, spitting on a wildfire, bailing out the ocean with a bucket. Individual action is almost always pointless.
I believe there are things which can be easily classified as "useless" and have absolutely no impact on the end result (see: a single vote in a normal election)
On the other hand, there are things which do make a small contribution to the end result, even if it's very little. I don't like to call these "useless" because they do have an impact. These should be done even if the individual result is invisible.
The examples shown here belong to the second category.
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- Feb 2018
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webgate.ec.europa.eu webgate.ec.europa.eu
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r them in letters based on their posi
fhjfghjfgh
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have a specific layout to clearly distinguish the
dfgsfdgsdfgfdgfd
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- Jan 2018
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s3.us-central-1.wasabisys.com s3.us-central-1.wasabisys.com
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hlachlne instruction would per- mlt each student to proceed at his orvn rate
This may be true, but can a modern machine or AI, on its own, give a detailed and personalized explanation of why the student was incorrect? For instance, in terms of music, I do not believe a machine can explain the nuance and tone of a passage. It may be able to play a professional recording, but in my opinion, music-making, especially at an enriching, educational level, should be a creative process, not a reductive, emulative one.
Furthermore, there is the problem of the expenses associated with these technologies. Let's say, in 2019, a machine or software is created that can grade music theory assignments with 99% accuracy. How long would it actually take for a significant number of schools to adopt such an AI? While wondering how great it would be to have such a device, it is simply not useful to pretend that it is already here.
Beyond Scantron multiple choice graders or online assignments or videos, I rarely see machines that take the teacher's role. No machine could do everything a human teacher does in this day and age.
Perhaps I extrapolated too much from this article. However, in my mind, when I see someone talk about "machine learning" or "machine teaching," I think of neural networking, big data, and Google Deep Mind.
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Programming Materia
To create a music-teaching machine, expanding upon my first annotation, one would need it to understand the musical material. We would need complex, large-scale neural networking that can compare a student's playing to some model or professionally-done recording. With regard to my own philosophy, I think this would lead to a lack of uniqueness among young musicians. Additionally, this software would need to be easy for teachers to use without programming experience.
In short, if we are to use machines to their full, modern capacity to inspire and guide young musicians, we would need:
- Neural networking software,
- A simple-to-use way for teachers to access or edit that software,
- recording equipment.
Perhaps I extrapolated too much from this article. However, in my mind, when I see someone talk about "machine learning" or "machine teaching," I think of neural networking, big data, and Google Deep Mind.
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s3.us-central-1.wasabisys.com s3.us-central-1.wasabisys.com
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This type of reinforcement occurs frequently in the classroom.
I see positive reinforcement very often. The directors often tell students when they are doing a good job, delegate solos to young artists, commend the ensemble for their work at the concert in front of the audience, and sometimes even let the band decide how a passage should be played. Much of a band, choir, or orchestra director's job is to give positive reinforcement. I'd even say that receiving this praise is the goal of some students for one reason or another.
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Obtaining a score of 80% or higher makes the final exam optional.
Some of these examples can only be entertained in a music classroom fit for them. For instance, in an ensemble where the semester's concert is the final, this would not work. In other contexts, such as a general music, music theory, or music appreciation environment (or even ensembles that do have separate exams), I could see an optional exam, dropped poorest assignment, or homework pass being realistic.
My point? I rarely see negative reinforcement in music classrooms; when I do see it, it serves a very specific purpose. While negative reinforcement is not common, it is useful, and I'd like to see good examples of it applied to a large classroom or ensemble rehearsal.
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s3.us-central-1.wasabisys.com s3.us-central-1.wasabisys.com
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The schoolsoften favor “covering the curriculum,” testing for isolated sets of skills andknowledge, and solo teaching, with limited use and understanding of newtechnologies
It appear to me that as of 2018, Jacobs is ahead of this curve; to me, this curve has passed in teacher education. In terms of technology and new course material, I know we have had music education lectures and courses in the past on iPad ensembles, basic guitar performance, body percussion, and the pedagogy of pop music. In some other courses, we have networks of electric keyboards the instructor can listen to from their seat, and the Department of Bands has taken advantage of projectors and movies just like some major symphonies do.
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s3.us-central-1.wasabisys.com s3.us-central-1.wasabisys.com
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A common misconception regarding “constructivist” theories of know-ing (that existing knowledge is used to build new knowledge) is that teach-ers should never tell students anything directly but, instead, should alwaysallow them to construct knowledge for themselves.
I'd say that this misconception can be falsified by simply stepping into a real teacher's classroom. I believe that there is a difference between pedagogy and execution, or an idea and its reality. I have had several of my own teachers fail to attempt this misguided approach with the students just more confused after the teacher prompts them. In all these cases, the instructor meant well and obviously intended for us to reach a certain conclusion, but nobody was able to get there on their own without direct instruction.
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Anunderstanding of veins and arteries does not guarantee an answer to thisdesign question, but it does support thinking about alternatives that are notreadily available if one only memorizes facts
In a nutshell, this section provides an example of a subject that relies on intuitive thinking or additional knowledge to fill in the gaps between its parts. Knowledge does not arise in the form of lists; it could be said to be more like a web, or a mental internet of ideas.
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- Oct 2017
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spring2018.robinwharton.net spring2018.robinwharton.net
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smooth/rough shiny/dull hot/cold soft/hard light/dark transparent/opaque up/down in/out sta bility/insta bili ty torwa rd/backwanl vertical/horizontal straight/curved or crooked light/heavy chin/thick dean/dirty
The process of characterizing physical attributes is a very straightforward and seemingly uncreative, which may be unconventional for writers. Interestingly enough, computers thrive on performing logical tasks. In a TED talk in 2015, Fei-Fei Li talks about making computers able to understand images. Similar techniques have even been used to read people's dreams, where electrical signals are logged and arranged as an image, and a computer attempts to characterize what the person was "seeing". Researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign took it a step further and wrote the paper "Describing Objects by their Attributes". In it they discussed how they were able to "develop computer vision algorithms that go beyond naming and infer the properties or attributes of objects".
In the video, Fei-Fei Li explains the process her research team used to teach a computer how to recognize objects in images. This process was started by showing the computer gigantic amounts of processed images to allow it to train. At 7:35, SHEEEE mentions that thousands of employees worked together to organize and label over a billion images. This process reminded me of the metadata mentioned by Morna Gerrard in our visit to the Archives. Much like categorizing archives helps us identify the information we want, the categorization of images aids a computer to find what it is looking at.
I think it would be interesting to have technology contributing in the first steps of Prowian Analysis, since their logical approach to solving problems might allow us to have more detailed and thorough descriptions. Perhaps one day, technology will be able to take it a step further and make assumptions about the meaning of physical attributes, allowing material culture to be partly automated.
Paper: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.149.9539&rep=rep1&type=pdf
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they cover over 150 years of American history,
This text was written by two professors who specialize in American art and culture. Material culture is obviously not limited to studying American history, it can be applied anywhere. For example, Marianne Hulsbosch, Elizabeth Bedford, and Martha Chaiklin analyze the culture of different regions in Asia in their book called "Asian Material Culture" (link provided bellow). I would actually argue that material culture is not quite as useful for American history as it would be for others, since the history is relatively "new" and well-documented (if we exclude the limited artifacts that exist of Native American culutres). Material culture analysis is a very useful tool for studying ancient civilizations, which might not have documented every aspect of their lives and history, but have left behind relics and artifacts that showcase what their societies used and valued. By analyzing aspects of ancient objects, such as attention to detail in decoration or their physical condition, we can make conclusions about what life was like thousands of years ago.
This image could be a prime example of history being discovered through material culture rather than the studying of texts. These dice could have been a very common recreational game in the lower classes of a civilization. Since the game was fairly known and popular only among the poor, the upper class scholars might have considered it unimportant to document this activity. Even though no text evidence would reference the dice, we would be able to utilize material culture to analyze the role of these artifacts in the ancient society. By noticing how frequently they appeared, the cheap materials used to make them, and the crude design work, historians could conclude that these artifacts were not a luxury product and were used by the common people.
Sources: http://web.b.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.gsu.edu/ehost/detail/detail?vid=0&sid=290b1925-1046-44ec-9edc-49e64a048b24%40sessionmgr103&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#AN=297832&db=nlebk , http://www.reed.edu/humanities/110Tech/MaterialCulture.html
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s18.pdarrington.net s18.pdarrington.net
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We can u-;e this mode to communicate representations of how something look~
What counts as a visual mode of communication can become a bit confusing in certain cases.
For example, authors of fantasy fiction these days rely heavily on the reader to imagine visuals. They carefully describe physical objects and scenes, much like in Prownian Analysis or our descriptions of the AIDS Quilt panels, to cause the reader to "see" things that they might have never seen or imagined before. I realize that using writing would technically fall under the category of the linguistic mode of communication, but this descriptive writing exists to evoke our visual senses. These authors depend on us visualizing the worlds that they create to tell their story. If this communication uses our "visual-spatial intelligence" according to the Theory of Multiple Intelligences, should it not be considered a mix of the visual and linguistic modes?
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The visual mode refers to the use of images and other characteris-tics that readers see
I think that the importance that "other characteristics" can have as a visual mode is commonly overlooked. The layout of a webpage can communicate to the reader what to emphasize on, the color of an "Open/Closed" sign can communicate the status of a restaurant from beyond a legible distance, and the size of a specific visual object on a billboard can communicate what exact product is being advertised.
A good example of the utilization of visual modes of communication without the direct use of an image is visual poetry. This type of poetry is known for having dominant visual elements. A common technique of achieving this is using the words of the poem to create the perception of a shape or image.
This is a good example of a simple visual poem. The topic of the poem is coffee, hence the writer adjusted the layout of the text to create a shape. This shape is perceived by our minds as a coffee mug, even though there is no actual picture of one.
On an interesting side note: the reason we are able to perceive this image is due to the Gestalt psychology. This is a philosophy of mind of the Berlin School of experimental psychology which studies the self-organizing tendencies of the human brain (especially with images). According to this psychological phenomenon, our mind is always trying to find patterns in the data it receives and many times organizes sets of randomness in order to perceive them as a whole. This is why the seemingly random positions of the words in the poem cause our mind to try to find a pattern in the darker areas of the poem's white background, eventually leading us to seeing a coffee mug.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_poetry , https://www.britannica.com/science/Gestalt-psychology
Image source: https://collaboems.wordpress.com/2012/05/28/visual-poetry-2/
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modes of communication
Interestingly, these five modes of communication correlate to Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences. In 1983 he published the book "Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences," which outlined a model in which people's intelligence was not determined solely by their general ability (also known as IQ or the g factor). Gardner believed believed that types of intelligence were required to fulfill eight criteria:
1) the potential for brain isolation by brain damage
2) its place in evolutionary history
3) the presence of core operations
4) susceptibility to encoding
5) a distinct developmental progression
6) the existence of idiot-savants, prodigies and other exceptional people
7) support from experimental psychology
8) support from psychometric findings.
(Gardner, 1999)
He then proposed nine types of intelligence that would satisfy these criteria: musical-rhythmic, visual-spatial, verbal-linguistic, logical-mathematical, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalistic, and existential (The last one was added after the initial eight). The chart bellow shows the types of intelligence with visual queues and a simpler wordings.
It is interesting that these modes of communication can associate to what Gardner would consider different functions of the brain (Linguistic mode of communication with verbal-linguistic intelligence, visual and spatial modes of communication with visual-spatial intelligence, aural communication with musical-rhythmic intelligence, and gestural communication with bodily-kinesthetic intelligence). Perhaps this indicated that by including multiple modes of communication in our writing for this class (or in any writing), we are able to target more parts of the brain and keep the audience more engaged. This would also mean that according to the Theory of Multiple Intelligences, a multimodal text would have a broader appeal since people lacking on a certain type of intelligence would be able to understand the text through whichever mode of communication suits their strength and preference more. For example, a heavy text with many visuals would be more easy for "picture smart" people (as the graphic above would indicate) to connect with.
Sources: Gardner, H. (1999). Intelligence reframed: Multiple intelligences for the 21st century. New York: Basic Books.
Image source: Linkedin Blog - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/theory-multiple-intelligences-potential-applications-silva-fca-
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Gestural Mode
The gestural mode, along with the visual mode, is another mode of communication that is deeply engraved in humans instincts. Scientific evidence even proves that the recognition of basic human expressions is universal regardless of cultural background. Scientific research has proven that there generally are seven emotions that all humans recognize through facial expressions: "anger, contempt, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, and surprise" (Matsumoto, 2008).
The image above shows sample images of emotions in a study done by Dr. Matsumoto which proved the universality of their recognition.
Sources: David Matsumoto and Paul Ekman (2008) Facial expression analysis. Scholarpedia, 3(5):4237.
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It may take too many pictures to convey the same idea quickly
I think the author is ignoring a key aspect of the advantages of multimodal communication. Using multiple modes allows an audience that does not have access to every type of mode (ex: a user with a muted device) or can not comprehend every mode (ex: a dyslexic person who has difficulty reading) to still receive the information being communicated. For example, in our Primary Source Descriptions we included images, which were by far the most effective way of communicating the description of the Quilt panel, but still included detailed text descriptions. This would aid people who can not load the images in our posts or are blind (therefore using the text through text-to-speech or Braille to receive the information). In conclusion, people should not choose a mode simply due to its advantage for a communication, they should also consider the audience reach that their mode would have. For example, in the 1930s an animated cartoon (without sound) would have done a better job at communicating a story, but a comic book (without speech bubbles) would have been easier to access.
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The information is organized in map form (the spatial mode),
I find the use spatial modes to be extremely helpful when trying to comprehend things, especially data. If we go by the Theory of Multiple Intelligences, I might be considered a person who relies on their "spatial intelligence" frequently.
For example, when analyzing historical events in a class, I appreciate having an accurate timeline that is spaced out to scale. This way I can put important time periods or the long lasting effects of an event in perspective. I believe that people can not appreciate the length of the dynastic rule in China until they see how long (for physical timelines "long" is in the literal sense) it was and how many well-known events of the Western world took place during its existence. Additionally, people seem to forget how long the planet Earth has existed until shown the tiny portion of its timeline that the entire course of human history occupies.
Even just recently I remember using spatial modes of displaying information to help my research colleagues understand an issue. Since some data from a research paper we were referencing had data that was not consistently sampled, we could not accurately replicate their experiment to test their results and input data into deep learning programs. I decided to represent the data using spaced out visuals to explain my suggested method for predicting information within those data gaps.
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volume of sound
The volume of a sound plays a big role on the importance we give to it over other sounds, and tha amplitude of the mood created by it. In the real world a sound that is constantly increasing causes us to instinctively focus our attention on it because it indicates that an object is getting closer. An example of this is our instinct to look in the direction of an increasing volume of engine sound when crossing the road, as a way of avoiding collision with approaching cars. Volume can also play an affect on how we perceive it. For example, the volume of a happy comment could indicate the level of excitement the person saying it is experiencing. Another example is the volume of dark music during a horror film. The viewer is able to recognize how eminent a threat is to the character simply through the increase or decrease of the music's volume. This communication of a "threat-level" can greatly impact the fear a viewer feels even when lowering the volume, by creating a sense of safety and then suddenly switching to a "jump-scare."
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- Sep 2017
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spring2018.robinwharton.net spring2018.robinwharton.net
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These more emotional deductions serve as a bridge to speculation about meaning.
The connection between the physical matter and emotions most easily noticed in art. When viewing a sculpture, a painting, a film, or a photograph, the physical aspects of the art are meant to evoke an emotional response or to showcase the emotions of the artist. A sculpture made of a rough materials and with harsh surfaces might be meant to display feelings of aggression or danger. A film or photograph with dark lighting might be trying to portray a scene in a more dramatic and sorrowful context. As the South African composer Kevin Volans stated, art should be treated "not as an object in this world but as a window into another world."
Source: https://books.google.com/books?id=MUu5DgAAQBAJ&pg=PT22
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Having addressed an object intellectually, and experienced it actually or empathetically with our senses, one turns, generally not without a cer-tain pleasure and relief, to matters more subjective. How does the object make one feel?
This reminds me of our class discussion about the "rhetorical triangle". The text seems to indicate that our though process and analysis should move from a "logos" point-of-view to a "pathos" one. This makes sense, since the student can use their more factual descriptions of an object as a starting point to analyze what they mean through emotion.
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we do not analyze objects; we analyze our descriptions of objects
This concept was mentioned earlier in the text, when Kenneth Haltman quoted Michael Baxandall idea that "We do not explain pictures: we explain remarks about pictures" (page 4). I believe this means that by focusing on certain aspects of an object, we show which topics and aspects of the object we care about. We "analyze" our descriptions because we choose to comment on the physical descriptions we find worth discussing. As the next point states, we truly "do not really see with clarity what we have not said" about the object.
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You may very rea-sonably be interested in learning what previous historians have made of your object or others like it,
A good historical comparison would be with the way the Ancient Greek astronomers interpreted star constellations. They not only noticed patterns which they used for navigation and science, they also assigned the constellations certain meanings and characteristics, usually relating to mythology. For example, Plato called the universe the "Spindle of Necessity" and Aristotle saw the planets as "heavenly bodies."
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- Aug 2017
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spring2018.robinwharton.net spring2018.robinwharton.net
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Matenal culture begins with a world of objects bur takes place in a world of words. While we work 14With" material objects, i.e. refer "to" rhem, the medium in which we work as cultural historians is language.
Material culture completely depends on its physical aspect. It relies on the feelings that people derive from actually having objects or the uses we have for them, not the conversations we have about them. Simply mentioning objects with words does not mean material culture "takes place in a world of words."
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digiphil.hu digiphil.hu
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KERESZTELŐRE
Ez itt a cím.
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alpha-consultations.nice.org.uk alpha-consultations.nice.org.uk
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health, including environmental
just including?
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- Jul 2017
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newsinhealth.nih.gov newsinhealth.nih.gov
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Brain cells bombarded by stress signals have little recovery time and eventually start to shrink and cut connections to other brain cells. The network that coordinates our thoughts, emotions and reactions thus starts to rearrange. Over time, entire regions of the brain can grow or shrink. That may explain why studies have linked higher levels of stress hormones with lower memory, focus and problem-solving skills.
This talks about how stress specifically affects your brain. Your brain is what helps your body function properly so if there is something wrong with it. The effects could be very damaging to you. This is important because not many people understand how bad stress can effect your mind and body.
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www.apa.org www.apa.org
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Studies have also illustrated the strong link between insomnia and chronic stress.8 According to APA's Stress in America survey, more than 40 percent of all adults say they lie awake at night because of stress. Experts recommend going to bed at a regular time each night, striving for at least seven to eight hours of sleep and eliminating distractions such as television and computers from the bedroom.
A symptom of stress is insomnia. It causes you to lie awake. This could also cause further stress with not getting enough sleep and not having a lot of energy. This is important because it can just make thins worse for your health. This is something that I at times experience.
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www.health.harvard.edu www.health.harvard.edu
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Over the years, researchers have learned not only how and why these reactions occur, but have also gained insight into the long-term effects chronic stress has on physical and psychological health. Over time, repeated activation of the stress response takes a toll on the body. Research suggests that chronic stress contributes to high blood pressure, promotes the formation of artery-clogging deposits, and causes brain changes that may contribute to anxiety, depression, and addiction. More preliminary research suggests that chronic stress may also contribute to obesity, both through direct mechanisms (causing people to eat more) or indirectly (decreasing sleep and exercise).
This paragraph is talking abut how after studying stress that it can cause some serious health issues in people who experience chronic stress. This is important because many people experience these issues and for some people they could be caused by stress.
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- Jun 2017
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expectmorelibrary.info expectmorelibrary.info
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great libraries come from great librarians.
It’s all about people.
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A bad library will use the building as an excuse. The case will be made that the public/students/professionals will flock to the library with better parking or a bigger set of book stacks. And that is true. For weeks after a new building opens it will be filled with the curious. However, it is ultimately the services, professionals, and co-ownership that will bring people back. You build a new library when the old one is too small to accommodate the community, not when it is too small to accommodate the stuff.
To be clear – buildings need to be a safe and welcoming environment, but that alone is insufficient for use and impact.
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Let me be very clear. What makes a library bad is not its collections. Bad libraries can have huge collections or small ones. Great libraries can also have large or small (or no) collections.
Reinforce that this not saying a collection is bad or useless or not important, just of secondary importance.
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“Pizza, pizza, pizza, book!”
Reverting back to the value of the work we do can only be seen in circulation is a bad habit. And it is a habit, often done reflexively. We need to negotiate new methods of assessment around community impact and not stuff.
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You need to spread the word that your library is alive and well and is more than what folks expect.
Our strongest advocacy comes from others.
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There is a saying that you shouldn’t muster the troops without giving them marching orders.
It’s data, narratives, and calls to action!
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As a community member you must, in the words of Saint Paul, “test everything; retain what is good.”
Librarians have to get used to asking and being asked why they do everything.
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expectmorelibrary.info expectmorelibrary.info
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We cannot be unbiased, but we can be intellectually honest.
It is very hard to argue having a positive valuable effect in a community and being unbiased.
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So what is a librarian if not a degree, if not a mission statement in isolation, and if not a set of functions? I would argue that a librarian is the intersection of three things: the mission, the means of facilitation, and the values librarians bring to a community. We’ve already covered the first two (approach to mission and facilitation), but what about values?
Note that this defines a librarian not by the place they work.
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This is exactly the mission of libraries. Teaming with allied missions in journalism and publishing and teaching and health care expands the impact of libraries and the other fields.
Be a bridge.
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And what is the response to these so-called threats? Did librarians build a new Google, or their own eBook platform? No, instead they have adopted Google and Amazon because it turns out these tools work. Never mind that Google is the largest advertising agency in the world, and Amazon is now able to mine your reading history. If librarians and the communities that support them define the world through functional eyes of threats and competition, librarians do not engage new players as partners, nor do they effectively work to instill their values within their services. Too many librarians see what works, and use that tool nearly ignorant of the cost to themselves and those they serve.
We need to acknowledge our limitations and faults. Too rosy of a picture that ignores past experiences will be dismissed.
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More and more, information professions are wrestling with an ever more connected society where information is readily available. More professions are coming to understand the importance of social interactions and the complexities of community. Because of that, many professions have found themselves in increasingly close and sometimes disconcerting proximity to other professions.
SO here is our next trick. We need to tie librarians to the familiar and around the learning sphere – but we also need librarians to be special and taking a unique important position in a community.
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A community should be a better place because it contains a library. Better means change—from how it is to something better. The library and librarians should add value to the community. If you add something like value, you change something. So bottom line, a librarian should help guide a community through a continuous change process. Feel free to revisit the whole jackbooted librarians discussion in the “Improve Society” chapter—we know that this change is not solely a matter of the librarian enacting a vision of change. It is also the librarian working with the community, facilitating the change.
Not enough to have nice librarians and nice buildings – librarians should challenge and provoke…be active.
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Being able to unlock walled gardens and a myriad of sources and then weave information into a comprehensive and comprehendible whole is one of the most valuable skills in a knowledge economy. That said, part of that work is to make the result easy to understand and use, not to make the community members into little librarians. You should expect your librarian to speak your language, and the librarian should expect you to respect that doing so is valuable work.
Pounding home to the question “you need a masters for that?”
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Now, it would be easy to read that and think it just applies to public libraries. However, as a member of academia I can tell you there are plenty of cultural divides in higher education. Talking to faculty, then students, then administration can be like using three different languages. Likewise, school librarians have to understand not only the differences between teachers and students, but math teachers, and music teachers, and English teachers.
Reinforcing librarianship across library types.
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I have mentioned ideas like the prejudice library where libraries circulate more than just books and DVDs. There are public libraries that circulate fishing poles near rivers and libraries that circulate puppets. At the Fab Lab in Fayetteville they will be circulating cameras and book-making materials. In Brooklyn they have an on-demand printing press that will print out bound books written by the community. In Africa they are circulating ceremonial masks; at Onondaga Community College you can check out models of body parts and vivisected cats for anatomy classes. My point here is that you should expect librarians to build living collections that the community needs and guarantee the availability of these resources for the whole community.
So now that we assume folks are bought into the view of librarianship as learning we can spice things up with a few more “extreme” examples.
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It is not the books that make these containers into libraries, however; it is the dedication to the community good and learning.
Many librarians have a problematic relation with little free libraries. On one hand they support reading and a form of community engagement (albeit a passive one), but aren’t connected to library institutions or professionals.
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Too often, degreed librarians (and the faculty who teach them) get stuck in the reductionist paradigm. Too often, degreed librarians use this reductionist approach to dismiss or ignore innovation and good ideas that come from outside of their specialization. You should expect more.
The ultimate result of this vision allows librarians to ignore comlex social issues. Poverty, homelessness, illiteracy, civic engagement is not my small part of the world – that is someone else’s job.
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The same way it has impacted your doctor.
Not the professional analogies I use here: doctors, lawyers – high prestige professions.
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called reductionism.
OK, where did this come from? It came from the frustration of public library board members that sought change (or at least understanding) and were blocked by librarians that resisted change by making librarianship more complex. Librarians and IT folks never say no, they simply throw acronyms at you until you give up.
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There are hundreds of librarians employed at publishers and database providers whose products are used throughout academia.
One view of success for the future is fewer libraries, but more librarians. Would this be a good thing?
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they tend to shield communities from the workings of the library
This is the dilemma of the service expert. We work to make service smooth and easy on the member, however, folks need to know how hard it is to get the necessary “credit” for support.
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The key to being a successful librarian by hire is a dedication to and support for continuous learning and training.
This is the key to any good library by the way.
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This is not restricted to just rural public libraries either. The Librarians of Congress have included historians, scholars, authors, and even a journalist. In fact, for centuries the heads of the libraries in colleges and universities were professors and humanities scholars.
With our current Librarian of Congress being a delightful exception.
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There are three basic ways to become a librarian: you are hired as one, you are educated as one, or you grow into being one. The first is the easiest and often least effective way. The second is the norm often mandated by law and probably the most effective way. The last is rare but can be incredibly powerful. Let us take these in turn and talk about the potential positives and pitfalls of each, plus a little of what we can expect from each as well.
Once again this is aimed as much to librarians as the public. It is important to look at librarianship as a field rather than a degree. It allows us to make the tent bigger, and therefore add more voice to the cause.
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The fact is that libraries can’t do anything—they are buildings or rooms.
We have to be careful not to let the support of the community fall to too abstract a concept. We have seen many places where libraries are kept open with volunteers, or as unmanned machines.
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The second effect has been on the librarians. Now the librarians can leave the building and facilitate knowledge
The best advocacy for libraries and librarians is to get out of the buildings. Do your job in public, provide service at the point of need. Meet the partners on their turf.
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Libraries as Place
This goes right up there with “no I don’t hate reading” in terms of taking on sacred cows.
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What do you love? What are you passionate about? Are you willing to teach/share it with the community?
This simple set of questions can have a profound and positive effect. Try them with your staff and your community.
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However, the true collection of any library is not these tools, but the community itself.
Community as collection is a concept as much for librarians as for the public. It bridges from the expected and comfortable to the progressive. Important skills in collection development are not marginalized in this community approach, they are essential and expanded.
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McDonald’s has realized that reflecting local culture
Taking on Dewey’s concept that standardization and efficiency is the sure route to effectiveness.
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Public Library Incubators
Public library example, but also bringing in business. These kind of incubator spaces tend to appeal to municipal officials.
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In 2001 Ellen Roche, a 24-year-old lab technician, entered into a clinical trial at Johns Hopkins University’s Asthma and Allergy Center. The trial was investigating how the lungs responded to chemical irritants. Researchers had Roche inhale hexamethonium. Roche was the third volunteer to do so in the study. The first volunteer had developed a slight cough that lasted a week. The second volunteer had shown no adverse reactions. Roche developed a slight cough that got worse and worse. Five days after inhaling the chemical, Roche was admitted to intensive care. Less than a month later, she was dead.
Our story is still here, just a bit later. Here we are really talking about embedded librarians.
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Reorganizing the Research Library
The goal here is to show these concepts work across contexts and library type. We want people to be supporters of libraries in whatever context they operate.
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Let me give you some examples.
Stories and examples adding to a “solidity” of simultaneously opening up the definition of library, and showing how important they are together.
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iPhone
Call to something familiar. Also co-opting something that many people say will replace libraries, to now include as part of thinking about a library.
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community platform for knowledge creation
The big purpose in this chapter is to give people something concrete to hold on to as we break traditional simple definitions of library. The problem is, when you say localities define libraries, then they have nothing in common?!
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This drive for standards, efficiencies, and mass production has had a profound effect on libraries and how they are perceived.
Dewey’s lasting legacy was prioritizing efficiency over effectiveness. Getting through to folks that having a well-defined process/definition/system/mission does not trump the fact that you are trying to get something done.
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Melvil Dewey. If you haven’t heard the name, then you probably have heard of the Dewey Decimal system, the scheme for organizing books Dewey developed at the end of the 19th century. The system was based on Dewey’s conviction that standardization and uniformity in libraries would help them grow and prosper.
How many times have you mentioned you’re a librarian and someone says “Dewey!”
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The same (equal) versus fair (equitable)
This continues our “complexification” of librarianship for the reader. Ultimately we are trying to answer the question “you need a masters for that?”
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There is another necessary attribute of a community: they must share limited resources.
It is easy to only talk about the positive and easy aspects of community and libraries. True ownership and buy in has to show complexity and depth.
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Is My Library that Grand?
Back to advocating not just for your library, but librarianship in general. We are a big deal, and folks need to know that.
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Charles Duhigg is an investigative reporter for the New York Times and wrote a book, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business.
An attention getting story.
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Grand Challenges
Here we are trying to get people to see their library and libraries in general as very big deals. We are raising the stakes for supporting an essential social institution, not just the place down the corner.
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Walled Gardens
Here we need our communities know that what people use and consume is complex and comes with often invisible trade-offs. Ultimately this is building up library staff’s expertise.
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So what does this have to do with libraries and the conversation about improving society? There is a growing demand for eBooks from library members, and publishers are getting increasingly worried about how they can make money off of their titles. Imagine if you could go register your eBook reader with your local library and seamlessly download any title you wanted free of charge. Why would you ever buy another book? Instead of selling a bunch of copies of the books, publishers would sell one to your library and be done. So publishers are seeking to introduce “friction” into this process. That is, they want to make it easier to license it directly from the publisher than to get it from the library. And most publishers are refusing to license eBooks to libraries at all.
Trying to show members what librarians have to wrestle with behind the scenes. This is ultimately about getting folks to value librarians and library staff, not just the stuff.
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You also must expect a library to do more than simply take a dream and make it happen. Great libraries help shape the vision itself. Notice I use the word “conversation” throughout this book. It is done intentionally, and when talking about how communities seek to improve themselves and the larger society. It is important to know why I use “conversation.”
If I were to rewrite this section today I would include a new definition of “library:” a library is a mandated and facilitated space supported by the community, stewarded by librarians, and dedicated to knowledge creation. This is discussed in greater detail in the New Librarianship Field Guide.
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However, we must never forget that our communities have aspirations and dreams. Though the diversity of our communities can make it difficult to agree on a single vision, we know it is possible. The library can bring our neighbors and colleagues and students and members together in a civil, safe, and inspiring space to dream.
This is as much for librarians as members. We need to be in the aspiration business, not remediation.
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Throughout this book, I talk about expecting more out of the library, but for a moment I need to talk about how libraries and librarians need to expect more out of you. Seeing every community member as a consumer is expecting far too little of you. You are not a consumer or even a customer of a library. Most libraries will use the term “patron” when referring to the community. This is slightly better, but I would rather libraries be energized by their communities, not patronized. I prefer the word member.
Time for some language work. The terms we use for community members matters. To be clear what term used within a community should be determined by the community. What term we use within the profession is a different matter.
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Now here’s one to twist your mind a bit: in some communities and for some questions the Stormfront MLK website is high-quality information. That community is not just the racist sect, but in your community as well. High-quality? Imagine a reporter looking for examples of how hate groups use the web for recruiting. Stormfront is one of the best resources for that reporter. However, it is not the best site to send to an eighth grader looking for after school activities. In discussions of quality, context matters.
This more nuanced version of quality being contextual is as important for fellow librarians as it is for the public.
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Because you need bad information to produce good knowledge.
Here is the paradox we have to work the reader through. It is important to directly address intellectual freedom and quality. To this point we’ve linked things to learning. That is a pretty easy argument applied to things like maker spaces and non-book resources. Now we have to try and sell holding “bad” materials and learning. This is tricky, but ultimately more important.
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“Schoolchildren; factory and shop girls; men who tended bar, drove carriages, and worked on farms and boats; and finally, fallen women, and, in general, the denizens of the midnight world, night-owls, prowlers, and those who live upon sin and its wages.”
I love love love this quote and Wayne’s book. It gets people’s attention and provides a good narrative of how librarians change social perception, not just reflect them.
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Let me be clear: talking about libraries improving society does not include jackbooted librarians marching down the street forcing citizens to properly cite works and read only approved books. I say this because there are those in the library community who think that when one’s mission includes “improving society,” it implies a fixed and somewhat authoritarian vision of improvement.
OK, not a story, but definitely an attention grabber. This was the result of an online “discussion” I had with a librarian who definitely did not buy into my view of librarianship.
In having these conversations, activist librarians are perhaps to most tricky. Folks want librarians to empower, but get very uncomfortable with the idea of powerful librarians, particularly in the public sphere.
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why is this a library and not a school?
A very common question I get.
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Build on Your Motivation to Learn
Back on safer ground here. Where I was selling a more liberal view on intellectual safety, here I am trying to expand a current value. Most folks see librarians and libraries as motivating – but now I want to attach that ideal to the idea of co-owning libraries. The end of Expect More should not be folks feeling good about libraries, but feeling like they have a direct stake in the success of their library.
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Intellectual Safety
So this area can be tricky. While few would disagree with the large concept of safety, we have to be aware that particularly for intellectual safety, librarians’ values are not universally accepted. Materials get challenged, and there is a steady campaign that feels librarians are pushing pornography on the public.
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Transform U
Lots of stories across different sectors. Remember we are pushing this approach for all libraries, not just public.
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providing training
In my work to librarians this is knowledge creation. I’ve made it more specific for a general audience.
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Training
Aside from filling out a framework readers can use to evaluate library service, we are now taking a widely accepted task in libraries (training) and showing how it fits into this new participatory learning context. Building from where folks are to where we want them to be.
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The classic view of providing access is providing access to collections. This has been updated a bit to talk about access to information, but even information is often functionally defined as collections of texts, pictures, and materials either digital or print. There is a big problem with this view of access—it’s one way only. In essence, too many libraries have defined access as providing access to their stuff. You must expect more from your library. You need to expect it to provide a platform where you can access the ideas of others, as well as a platform for you to provide others access to your own ideas.
Time to take a narrative we have established-learning-and combine it with a new narrative-participation. The second macro narrative in libraries we must address is that libraries are about access and consuming.
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Facilitation
We could spend a lot more time discussing knowledge and constructivism – and I do when working with librarians – but this is enough for non-librarians and sets us to move from 30,000 feet back to specifics.
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One Pennsylvania study found:
Flat out repeating a common advocacy plan in K-12.
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Buffy Hamilton, the librarian at the “Unquiet Library” in Creekview High School in Canton, Georgia (outside of Atlanta), knows this.
Example time.
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This dynamic view of knowledge and learning is changing how we teach children in schools. Gone are the days when the “sage on the stage” model of learning was seen as the best form of curriculum delivery. Now, students co-create knowledge, get hands-on experience, and work on projects. We also see this in industry and military training. Hour-long PowerPoint sessions are being replaced with simulations and games. Cognitive and learning sciences are showing us that people are not empty buckets waiting for some skilled orator to fill them with knowledge. Rather, learners are active, constantly relating new ideas and facts to what they already know. The sage on the stage has been replaced by the guide on the side. Our libraries must go through this transition as well.
An appeal to what readers may already know and accept. So examples from education, business, universities, etc.
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Knowledge is ultimately the way in which we see the world, and knowledge determines how we act.
We’re trying to appeal to people’s more emotional side here to keep them engaged. We want to signal early this is not just a boring “fly over” section.
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Knowledge
OK, prepare for the big ask in the book – we are now going to do a deep dive into some pretty complex topics. Most advocacy don’t want to get too tangled in here. 30 second pitches, tweets, and posters can’t do this. We’re going to take advantage of the long form advocacy.
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Rather than jump into that answer, I would like to broaden the question even further. After all, I just spent a chapter saying that libraries are not about books—so are they about Fab Labs? If we should no longer limit our definition of the library to collections and materials, how do we define a library? If I should expect more than book warehouses from my library, what should I expect? What does a library do?
We’ve already given a broad response to this question: learning. However, folks need specifics.
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It was an unusually warm winter in Syracuse. Still, it was quite cold as I made my way with my two boys, Riley (then age 11) and Andrew (then age 8), to the Fayetteville Free Library. Fayetteville is an affluent suburb of Syracuse, and the Free Library is an award-winning library located in the former Stickley Furniture factory. The boys and I were on our way to meet with Lauren Britton, a librarian at Fayetteville. She was going to show us how 3D printing worked.
Story time.
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Mission to Nowhere?
To be sure actions speak louder than words, but words matter. Great outlooks are important, but the ability to articulate it into a mission is an important process.
Not a lot of deconstruction here, as this section is already pretty straightforward in terms of advocacy.
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Take a look at the mission again: improving society through facilitating knowledge creation. What ever happened to promoting a love of reading and/or books? Does expecting more from libraries mean abandoning reading and literature, fiction and poetry? The reason reading isn’t in this larger mission is that not all libraries are centrally focused on reading. School libraries and public libraries see the promotion and expansion of reading skills as one of their core goals; corporate and academic libraries assume the people they serve already have these skills. What’s more, while reading is a crucial skill to creating knowledge, it is not the exclusive route to “enlightenment.” Some learn through reading, some through video, others through doing, and the vast majority through combining these. We should expect our libraries to support all of these modalities of learning.
This section is a direct result of feedback from both librarians and board members. One could see a lot of utility work here – libraries only value is in directed study – but the role as haven and pleasure reading is still relevant.
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Bad libraries only build collections. Good libraries build services (and a collection is only one of many). Great libraries build communities.
Tweetable idea
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My point is that if you think of a library as a bunch of books in a building (or worse, if your librarian thinks of it that way), you need to expect more—a whole lot more.
So rather than pounding a narrative idea over and over and over again, the idea is to draw people in and flesh out a new narrative. Where Chapter 2 was about data, this chapter is the stories.
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In fact, the Library of Alexandria was much more akin to the universities of today.
Link to a generally positive concept.
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Libraries, good ones and bad ones, have existed for millennia. Over that time, they have been storehouses of materials, certainly, but also places of scholarship, record keepers for nation states, and early economic development incubators. In fact, the idea that a library is a building filled to the rafters with books and documents is only about an 80-year-old view.
If you are going to challenge an existing narrative (libraries are books) you need to replace it with something better. This is the long form version of that thread we started in the first chapter. What we’re trying to do is allow people to replace the narrative, not because they were wrong, but because it is a reward for knowing more – becoming an insider.
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It seems folks weren’t looking to read the books that they had donated and were willing to drive to the three other public libraries within a five-mile radius.
Directly challenging the idea that a library is books.
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They also found that residents took this as an opportunity to recycle items like Hustler magazine. The librarians weren’t that interested in sorting through these shoulder to shoulder with Boy Scouts.
Humor is a powerful way to help people retain ideas and information.
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Every table was a place for more shelves and more books. That, they said, was the purpose of the library—holding books and materials, not meeting spaces and coffee.
This story is really the roots of Expect More. Also note that these attitudes are changeable as seen in the Pew Data
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While the librarians were expecting some resistance to the off-site plan, the level of pushback took them by surprise.
Because there was a minimal relation and conversation between the groups. Advocacy can’t be a one-time event, it must be ongoing and sustained.
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off-site storage
Never call it off-site storage. Alternative or expanded shelving. There is to this day an emotional attachment with books on shelves. Not books – book on the shelf. We see this in off-site as well as in weeding. Both necessary and can be done to improve access, but must be discussed and introduced with care.
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The Syracuse University Library was full. There was no room left on the shelves.
Start with a story.
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Symbol of Community Aspirations
This can be a bit of an abstract concept much like supporting democracy. The real way to use this in a discussion is to get folks off the library as deficit fixing narrative.
As librarians we want to be service oriented and help people. This can turn into or be perceived as seeing a community as a bunch of problems needing to be solved. While it is true that we should address these problems, we need to do so in relation to a positive goal. We want people to read…so that our community can grow. We want the homeless to have services so we can be a more just and kind community.
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Democracy and Education
A place to reinforce literacy
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Cradle of Democracy
This is a big one, often used, but rarely operationalized argument. It is a common argument but rarely has teeth. In essence we argue that libraries are important for citizenship, but rarely talk about how they actually promote/support democratic participation.
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Third Space
Like cultural heritage, this is an argument to make a nostalgic and possibly passive idea, into an active one. In this case from haven and quiet place to read, to social spaces.
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Steward of Cultural Heritage
The goal in this section comes back to evolving ideas and creating a new nostalgia. We want to highlight the importance of preservation, but also make it more active and alive. Cultural heritage is not just about stuff from the past, it is about community narratives and living knowledge.
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Safety Net
This is a strong narrative, but really relies on knowledge of community. Do they care about the safety net? Also, this is an argument that can be used across library types. Academic and school libraries provide remediation and study services.
There is also a danger to this argument (or rather the consequences of this argument) in the public library as the last public service standing. See https://davidlankes.org/?p=6421 for more on this.
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Center of Learning
Here we are reinforcing our alternative narrative to libraries as books and that is libraries as learning. This is also where you can talk about literacy. Why isn’t literacy a big bold section on its own? Well, literacy and the role of the library will change based on the community served. Academic libraries rarely talk about their role in literacy because students should already be able to read, but more importantly, literacy is the job of academic departments. So use it and refine it for your context.
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A small library in rural Eureka, Illinois
Entrepreneurship and supporting startups is still a strong argument for public and academic libraries.
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University of Toronto’s Martin Prosperity Institute
One of the newer and stronger studies out there.
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Economic Stimulus
Let me be clear that I believe in the value of libraries outside of just supporting an economy, but this is a very strong argument to many communities. There are a lot of great studies out there that talk about cost/benefits of libraries.
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The second concept that can get lost in the discussion of libraries as purchasing agents is the notion of the common good. That is, if a community (a school, a city, a college) pools its money to acquire things, those things should benefit the community as a whole. That may seem obvious, but libraries and communities can miss this point. Let’s take a service called Freegal.
This section is more for librarians and board members than the general reader.
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Let’s start with items needing organization.
This is here to reinforce the importance of librarians and staffing in libraries. The economic argument for shared purchasing could be used by others in communities. For example, in several academic libraries, it is the IT department that has taken on database licensing.
I was also on a public library board after the recession of the 1990s. During the recession book budgets had been cut. This board had made it a policy to grow the book budget by 10% each year after the recession. The year I came in, they found that to increase the book budget they would have to lay off staff. I reminded them that having a lot of materials, and no one to organize or shelve them defeated the purpose. It is important to reinforce buying stuff takes people to purchase and organize and support use.
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Collective Buying Agent
This is an interesting argument. It is the most concrete argument for libraries, and one that is widely accepted…however it also can veer towards redistribution of wealth and some anti-taxer discussion.
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Collective Buying Agent Economic Stimulus Center of Learning Safety Net Steward of Cultural Heritage Third Space Cradle of Democracy Symbol of Community Aspirations
This list comes from a review of the literature, and in talking with library leaders and librarians. It is most likely not complete (Third Space, for example, was a justification added between the 1st and 2nd edition of the book. Encourage your audience to think of others.
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There are plenty of voices that question the need for any library.
Never deny the obvious. There are those that question the need for libraries. This is also true, by the way, in discussing the fact that there are librarians without and MLIS.
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Cushing Academy is an elite prep school about 70 miles west of Boston. On its lush wooded campus, 445 students from 28 states and 28 countries work through high school. It is also, if you believe the Boston Globe, the end of libraries as we know them.
Start with a story. People are tuned to listen to stories.
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Here is the key to a successful library: you. In a city or a Fortune 500 company, the library must shape itself around you and the goals of your community. If your community strives for greatness, the library should be great. If you are concerned about the future, or the economy, or the state of democratic discourse in this country, your library should be concerned as well. If you make these expectations known, if you arm yourself with what is possible and not what is, then the library and librarians can meet those expectations and goals. Of course, this is a two-way street. Great libraries expect a lot of their communities as well. Yes, great libraries require financial support, but even more than that they require open communication about your needs, your challenges, and your dreams.
True advocacy is about bringing people on board and getting them invested.
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In this book, you are going to read about a public library that has created a Fab Lab—a space where the community can work with 3D printers and make new inventions. You are going to read about a school library where the librarian is too busy helping teachers raise their performance to shelve books. You are going to read about librarians creating new companies in rural Illinois and transforming lives in Dallas. These are brilliant libraries and librarians, but if you see them as exceptional—as above and beyond the norm—you expect too little of your library.
Foreshadowing for folks who may think this is still going to be a big love letter to libraries as they are. Linking to trends and hot topics.
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This book is written not for those librarians but for the people who either support or oversee libraries. This includes college provosts, students, parents, board members, volunteers, and, well, just about everyone who has ever gone to school or pays local taxes. You need to know what libraries are capable of, and you need to raise the bar on your expectations.
Big tent time – a major aim of the book is to get folks to realize libraries are beyond public libraries.
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Perhaps the biggest “why” question you can ask, and the one at the center of this book, is why do so many people see librarianship as antiquated, conservative, and less-than-inspiring? Why is it that while folks love the idea of libraries and librarians, they are quick to limit them to books or children, or simply think of them as historical holdovers? The answer is not that these people are wrong, but that they need to expect more. Too many libraries are about books. Too many librarians are reliving history and are stuck in a sort of professional conservatism that favors what they do over why they do it. Too many librarians see their collections, not the community, as their jobs. Too many libraries are seeking to survive instead of innovate, and promote the love of reading over the empowerment of the populations they serve. I am not claiming that these librarians are the majority, but they are too numerous and their communities (you) expect too little of them.
Acknowledging current perspectives, forgiving them, and then presenting them with something better.
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The field of librarianship represents an annual investment of nearly $26 billion in North America and well over $40 billion worldwide. In an age when traditional institutions are declining, library usage has grown steadily over the past twenty years. Did you know “one out of every six people in the world is a registered library user” and “Five times more people visit U.S. public libraries each year than attend U.S. professional and college football, basketball, baseball and hockey games combined.” By understanding librarians and libraries we can understand how to build credibility and trust in a community overwhelmed with change and choices. We can discover how to create an environment to disagree and maintain a civil discourse. Ultimately, by understanding librarianship, we can even understand something as grand as the role of a citizen in society.
Using data to make stories real.
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Today’s librarians are using the lessons learned over that nearly 6,000-year history to forge a new librarianship based not on books and artifacts but on knowledge and community. They are taking advantage of the technological leaps of today to empower our communities to improve. The librarians of today are radical positive change agents in our classrooms, boardrooms, and legislative chambers. They built the web before we called it the web. They were crowdsourcing knowledge and searching through mountains of information before Google, before Facebook, and even before indoor plumbing. Today’s new librarians are not threatened or made obsolete by the net. They are pushing the net forward and shaping the world around you—often without your notice.
Libraries evolve and technology changes opportunities.
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When we try to discover why, we find that there is power in libraries and steel in librarians. It goes deeper than tradition, buildings, and books. The reason for the protests and protectiveness over libraries is not found in collections of materials or columns and architecture. To find the answer to this riddle, one must look past the buildings and the books to the professionals who, throughout history, have served humanity’s highest calling—to learn
Making the link to learning specific – also putting it in a universal context: who can fault learning?
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In Ferguson, Missouri, amidst racially charged protests and riots, the teachers and parents turned to public libraries to create ad hoc schools teaching and feeding the children of the city. In the wake of natural disasters the librarians of Calgary and New York City opened their libraries to provide the devastated residents of their cities with a safe place to recover and power to contact loved ones. Librarians in Ferguson, Calgary, New York, Baltimore, Iraq, Paris, and beyond chose to support their residents even when their own homes were destroyed, and their lives upended.
Begin introducing a larger narrative about the importance of libraries beyond books – without mentioning books. This is tied to George Lakoff’s work.
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Why are stories like this, while maybe not quite so dramatic, repeated across the U.K. and the United States? As cities faced with a devastating financial crisis sought to close library branches, citizens rallied. Protestors disrupted town halls and city council meetings. Citizens picketed, and in Philadelphia, the City Council went so far as to sue the Mayor over the closing of libraries.
Tie it to the local and less lofty.
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The Arab Spring had come to Egypt. In early 2011, on the heels of a successful revolution in Tunisia, Egyptians took to the streets to demand reforms from a government regime that had been in power for nearly 30 years. While much of the media fixated on protestors who occupied Tahrir Square in the Egyptian capital of Cairo, many protests started in the port city of Alexandria. In Alexandria, as in Cairo, people from across generations and the socio-economic scale rioted to demand liberty, justice, and social equity. In an attempt to restore the constitution, what was seen primarily as a peaceful uprising lead to the deaths of at least 846 people, and an additional 6,000 injured across Egypt. On January 28 at 6 pm, after the prisons had opened, releasing murderers and rapists onto the street, all security withdrew from the streets of Alexandria. Roving gangs of looters took to the streets to take advantage of the chaos.
Linking love of libraries to a larger scale.
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- Feb 2017
- Sep 2016
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www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
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Many Latinos argue that the country’s race categories — indeed, the government’s very conception of identity — do not fit them.
Some Latino people think that the country's race categories are not an accurate depiction of what they identify with. This could be seen as extremely racist.
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- Aug 2016
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Local file Local file
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One currentproject in Dr Schulz’s lab is to characterise a selection of interesting loci in detailusingisoform specific primers and qRT-PCR.
Would be better to end with making an explicit connection between the ENCODE tissue-specific RNAseq data and the Setd2 knock-down RNAseq data. Would it make sense to focus on loci showing evidence for tissue-specific polyA as well as being dependent on Setd2 for correct splicing?
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not significant (<0.0274)
I would call that marginally significant
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Presumed that themechanism of poly(A) site selection/alternative polyadenylation may operate genome-wide in a tissue-specificmanner,and thus, contribute to the complexity of the mammalian transcriptome,
use of very long prepositional phrases at the start of sentences makes reading difficult. stick to simple subject- predicate- object sentence structure.
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AAA indicates poly(A) site
nice and useful figure but: you primed the cDNA synthesis with random hexamers. the qRT-PCR results are therefore not specific to polyadenylated transcripts. so, above figure shows models consistent with the data rather than summarisations of the data (you did not directly measure polyA).
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random hexamers
beware that this implies non-polyadenylated transcripts also are represented in the sample
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Based on the RNA-seq data
depends in this case on whether you look at the scatter plot or the UCSC genome browser: they are not telling the same story for some reason. my corrections below reflect what UCSC shows, which results in flipping of placenta and thymus.
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moretranscripts terminate across
see above; will stop pointing this out
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conversion rate was calculated as72.55%
low conversion rate leads to over-estimation of methylation, which could explain the 45% methylation seen in placenta
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used for measurements ofheart
primer sets are not tissue-specific; you used them for all tissues; only the measurements themselves are tissue-specific
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Adck2 encodes for a kinase
The host transcript of the CGI is non-coding. Your upstream primers amplify both the coding transcript and the non-coding host transcript. That is a limitation. Could explain the inconsistencies re the RNAseq data.
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qRT-PCR
qRT-PCR cannot show transcription termination: all it can do is verify the RNAseq data, i.e., more relatively more transcription upstream of an active CGI compared to transcription across the CGI. It is important to be precise about what qRT-PCR can and cannot do.
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1) Tissue with high CGI activity and more transcripts terminating upstream than across and 2) Tissue with lowCGI activity and more transcripts terminating across than upstream, as described in the chapter ‘Loci selection’.
The data do not show transcripts terminating upstream or downstream of the CGI, they are merely consistent with the hypothesis.
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BiQAnalyzer compares the sequences in all aligned Cs and highlightsthe sequence as critical if they are identical in all aligned Cs. All these sequences were excluded in theanalysis.
This works because of incomplete conversion (<100%), plus actual differences in CpG methylation states.
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Bonferroni correctionwas conducteddue to multiple comparisonsignificant valuelimitwas set to<0.025.
Bonferroni multiple testing correction: you divide alpha (the significance threshold), typically (by convention) 0.05, by the number of tests, and that gives you the corrected significance threshold.
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Protocol
What you did not do due to lack of time: optimisation of the qRT-PCR assays. That would have included a melt curve analysis to detect primer dimers and/or off-target amplicons, and to then run the same reaction again, but with an additional "read" step during each cycle at a higher temperature than the 55C annealing temperature. The "read" temperature is chosen based on the melt curve so that primer dimers and smaller off-target amplicons have melted (become ssDNA) while the target still is dsDNA. This gives you more target-specific fluorescence measurements.
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There is only fluorescence if the dye bindsto the PCR product.
Any dsDNA will generate fluorescence, including, for example, primer dimers and off-target amplicons. That is why SYBR is considered relatively non-specific. But its is relatively cheap compared to more specific assays like TaqMan.
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The point where the fluorescence becomes measurable is calledthreshold cycleor quantification cycle.
Fluorescence always is measurable. The threshold cycle is when fluorescence exceeds a given and fixed threshold value, which is chosen to intersect the amplification curves during their exponential phase.
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hybrid cross Mus m. musculus(B6) and Mus m. castaneus(Cast) -BxC or hybrid cross Mus m. castaneus(Cast)and Mus m. musculus(B6)–CxB
you may be asked if some of the inconsistencies between your results and the RNAseq data can be explained by the genetic differences between the hybrids and the B6 mice used by ENCODE. possibly yes, since Cast is quite distant from B6 in evolutionary terms, i.e., there are many genetic differences that definitely have an effect on gene expression. the next question may be: well, why then did you use hybrid tissue? it's the only option available for some tissues, given our tissue stocks, and we don't have a B6 colony any more.
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nucleosomes
nucleosome = octamer of histones
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non-histonic
indeed, genes encoding histones are treated very differently
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jonudell.net jonudell.net
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Orphans make sense
It makes sense to me on a technical level but isn't something I would provide in an interface aimed at the general public. My inclination would be to have the default interface not show orphan annotations at all. The new york times front page is a great example. If things started to work, you would rapidly have far more orphans than anything else. Without the context of the annotation its hard to imagine these would provide much value. Perhaps this is something that could be added to a different, non-default view that provided some sort of historical perspective on the URL under consideration.
This argues for capturing a bit more of the context around any given annotation for preservation as part of the annotation. e.g. 150 characters up and downstream.
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- Jun 2016
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The fact that we joke about it documents an acceptance of a culture of abuse online. It helps normalize online harassment campaigns and treat the empowerment of abusers as inevitable, rather than solvable.
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- May 2016
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pietroliuzzo.github.io pietroliuzzo.github.io
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[] αἰτησάμενος
The text is broken at the beginning. See Liuzzo 2015 for an explanation of this.
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- Apr 2016
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These are the problems we’re working on, the ones I’m really excited to start open sourcing and sharing.
I feel the next logical step is to open source my.Enspiral.
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blog.jonudell.net blog.jonudell.net
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Scott owns the blog, Amy’s a sharecropper on it.
I've been thinking about this metaphor, and about comments on blogs vs. blogs linking to blogs. In some ways this is another part of the Wikipedia vs. Federated Wiki question. I say "vs." because the alternatives do become binary at some point in the conversation. But back to the owning vs. sharecropping: in terms of web presence, maybe; in terms of discourse and rhetoric and the ways call and response differ, maybe not. I'll keep thinking. And I'm grateful for the heads-up that Hypothes.is is at last up and running!
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- Feb 2016
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www.unito.it www.unito.it
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Prova nota Unito
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reconhecendo.me reconhecendo.me
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Carolina Nalon
essa Carolina é aquela que curte séries, né?
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- Jan 2016
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ifsacop21.wordpress.com ifsacop21.wordpress.com
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Promote a biocentric instead of and anthropocentric paradigms.
Biocentric includes man and includes him in an appropriately prioritized order. An anthropocentric view should be a biocentric, ecocentric, charitable, human view simply because humans are (among other things) organisms, situated in ecosystems, capable of charity, love, humility and that is in fact what makes us human. What is best for the environment is what is best for humans and everything else.
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Ecocide
Interesting idea. The only thing is that the science is not where we would like it to be. Most of the accusing will need to be done in retrospect. In that case, many will have lost culpability due to insufficient knowledge. I just wonder how this will hold up in a court of law for most practical cases. For some large-scale cases, I can see it working, as long as the effects are enormous.
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- Sep 2015
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langsci-press.org langsci-press.org
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subjunctive (I and II)
As far as I know: Konjunktiv I und Konjunktiv II are named "present subjunctive" and "past subjunctive" respectively. I am not sure if this terminology is familiar to the English speakers.
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Tense (
Perfect has not been taken into account, I guess because it is an analytic form(?)
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langsci-press.org langsci-press.org
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with ditransitive verbs inX Theory. InX Theory, it is assumed that a headis combined with all its complements at once
But cf. Larson, Richard K. 1988. On the Double Object Construction. Linguistic Inquiry 19: 335-391. for a binary analysis of double object constructions in English, and the theories developing the VP shells (and later the Little vP).
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storylineblog.com storylineblog.com
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No culture in history has been more distracted. If you are wondering why there are no more C.S. Lewis’ in the world, no more stories as good as Tolkien’s, no cathedrals as great as the gothic’s, no music as moving as Pachelbel’s, it may be because the writers of these books, the tellers of these stories, the architects of these buildings and the composers of these symphonies are sitting on their couches watching television. I wonder what’s on tonight.
Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, gothic cathedrals, Pachelbel suddenly represent the essence of the good western culture.
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- Aug 2015
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scienceintheclassroom.org scienceintheclassroom.org
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J. A. Masseyet al., Self-assembly of organometallic block copolymers: The role of crystallinity of the core-forming polyferrocene block in the micellar morphologies formed by poly(ferrocenylsilane- b -dimethylsiloxane) in n -alkane solvents. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 122, 11577 (2000). Y. Ni, R. Rulkens, I. Manners, Transition metal-based polymers with controlled architectures: Well-defined poly(ferrocenylsilane) homopolymers and multiblock copolymers via the living anionic ring-opening polymerization of silicon-bridged [1]ferrocenophanes. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 118, 4102 (1996). S. F. Mohd Yusoff, J. B. Gilroy, G. Cambridge, M. A. Winnik, I. Manners, End-to-end coupling and network formation behavior of cylindrical block copolymer micelles with a crystalline polyferrocenylsilane core. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 133, 11220 (2011).
These references are not in the pdf
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- Jul 2015
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nar.oxfordjournals.org nar.oxfordjournals.org
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Figure 1
Basically useless unless highly zoomed in...
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- Jun 2015
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www.containerstore.com www.containerstore.com
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this is cool.
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- Mar 2015
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netzeundnetzwerke.de netzeundnetzwerke.de
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und Etherpad-Sessions stellte
Ich habe mir auch hier erlaubt ein paar Kommentare anzufügen.
Dies geschah auch mit Hypothes.is, jedoch via des PDF Exports, da andernfalls, weder auf live noch read-only Pads, die Kommentieroberfläche nicht geladen wurde.
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- Jan 2015
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hypothes.is hypothes.is
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Create an account using the sidebar on the right of the screen.
Created an account and now I'm ready to test this phenomenal innovation.
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- Nov 2014
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firstaid.cloud.answerhub.com firstaid.cloud.answerhub.com
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↑ Blood pressure (upregulates α1-receptors on arterioles
It's true!
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- Sep 2014
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www.transmography.net www.transmography.net
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Coarse, blood-clotted cloth stuck to him like a shroud.
It's a good image but "blood-clotted cloth" is a tongue twister.
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- Apr 2014
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localhost localhost
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this is a comment
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a comment from me
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- Nov 2013
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www.enbridge.com www.enbridge.com
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L'inversion proposée de la canalisation 9B représente une étape déterminante pour assurer l'avenir des industries du raffinage et de la pétrochimie du Québec
Je ne veux pas assurer leur avenir, je veux le changer.
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comment.rsablogs.org.uk comment.rsablogs.org.uk
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creating the future in schools that can deal with the demands of today
Schools should address the demands of tomorrow, not those of today.
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- Oct 2013
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www.sunnewsnetwork.ca www.sunnewsnetwork.ca
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New comment
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- Sep 2013
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www.scribd.com www.scribd.com
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What means does civilization employ in order to inhibit theaggressiveness which opposes it, to make it harmless, to get rid of it, perhaps?
history of the development of the individual--
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the bees, the ants, the termites - strove for thousands of years before they arrived at theState institutions, the distribution of functions and the restrictions on the individual, for which we admirethem to-day
equally, can find things for which we are horrified of them, etc.
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satisfaction of the instinct is accompanied by an extraordinarily high degree ofnarcissistic enjoyment, owing to its presenting the ego with a fulfilment of the latter’s old wishes foromnipotence.
satisfy instinct for narcissistic enjoyment
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instinct is diverted towards the externalworld and comes to light as an instinct of aggressiveness and destructiveness. In this way the instinct itselfcould be pressed into the service of Eros, in that the organism was destroying some other thing, whetheranimate or inanimate, instead of destroying its own self
still bound to increase self-destruction
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preservation of the species
consider in context of Darwinian "survival", and interesting to consider the contrast with Berlant's "Slow Death" concept--hunger to the point of obesity, love striving after objects to the point of depression
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Schiller,that ‘hunger and love are what moves the world’
Christian Morgenstern (1871-1914) German romantic poet, "Das Wasser": "Ohne Wort, Ohne Wort; rinnt das Wasser immer fort; andernfalls, andernfalls; sprach' es doch nichts andres als: Bier und Brot, Lieb und Treu; und das waere auch nicht neu. Dieses zeigt, dieses zeigt; daß das Wasser besser schweigt."
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