Formal Boundaries Research Articles

Legaculturation: Turning Laws into a Culture

The interaction between law and culture is fundamental to the functioning of any society. While laws are formal rules enforced by state institutions, culture encompasses the shared values, beliefs, and practices of a society. In order to eliminate problems such as the conflict between law and culture, the pressure of law on culture, the society's behavior against the law, and similar problems, law must be adapted to the culture and existing laws must be made a culture of the society. This article explores the process of transforming legal norms into cultural ones, emphasizing the mechanisms through which laws are internalized and become an integral part of social behavior. By examining historical precedents, theoretical frameworks, and contemporary examples, the article demonstrates how legal norms can shape and be shaped by cultural norms, transcending their formal boundaries. More significantly, it illustrates how the state's promulgation, enforcement, and potential future enactment of laws can be rendered more palatable, acceptable, and culturally integrated to both the state and society. The article posits that as society embraces laws as part of its culture, not only will the state's expenditure on ensuring security decrease, but societal trust will also increase, reducing conflicts and insecurities in the application of laws. The article also, introduces the concept of Legaculturation and emphasizes the importance of turning (transforming) laws into a culture. This comprehensive research provides a professional and detailed examination of the concept of Legaculturation by combining information from existing literature. Ultimately, the article assumes that society will thrive in welfare underpinned by a harmonious blend of legal and cultural norms.

Formal Functions of Drum Patterns in Post-Millennial Pop Songs, 2012–2021

Drum patterns are fundamental to popular music’s soundscape. But the majority of music-theoretical scholarship about drum patterns focuses on their rhythmic and metric features, and there is no widely adopted method for analyzing how drum patterns help express form across complete songs. Grounded in a corpus study from the Billboard Year-End Pop Airplay Songs charts from 2012–2021, this article introduces an analytical method that succinctly depicts the main characteristics of post-millennial pop drum patterns in order to highlight the significant and specific ways they help express formal boundaries, teleological functions, and formal motion. Drum patterns in this repertoire are typically a variation of a standard rock or four-on-the-floor pattern, and my context-based analytical system frames drum patterns as different realizations of three parameters: number of layers, rhythm, and instrumentation. A song’s multiple drum patterns can be analyzed and compared according to these characteristics, and these characteristics can also be used to classify drum pattern changes. In the second half of the article, I present analyses that, in addition to showcasing the system’s utility, emphasize two broad points: that drum patterns can be a primary expresser of teleological functions within individual sections, across formal cycles, and throughout complete songs; and that drum patterns can help express post-millennial pop’s conventional layouts and more novel formal designs.

Unveiling the Necropolitics of Oil on Migrant Bodies in Deepak Unnikrishnan’s Birds

Oil played a significant role in fuelling the sociopolitical and economic development of Middle Eastern nations, attracting mass migration from South Asian nations. The article draws a nexus between the energy dynamics and labour exploitation within these petroleum-rich nations. It undertakes a close reading of the text Birds from Deepak Unnikrishnan’s novel Temporary People as it depicts the lives of migrant labourers who navigate an exploitative petro-capitalist system. The fictional text employs a narrative strategy juxtaposing elements of magic and realism, opening up a space for multilayered marginalised voices. The article engages with energy theories and interweaves Mbembe’s theory on necropolitics to grasp oil’s sovereign influence in delineating the boundaries between life and death in migrant lives. The surplus energy generated through fossil fuel extraction contributes to notions of boundless growth, coupled with technical and economic progress, which conceals the intensive manual labour underpinning these petrocultures. The magical property alluded to oil and the spectral absence of labour in the socio-cultural imagination co-constructs an exploitative and dehumanising labour regime for migrants. The migrant body is kept alive, and their existence is contingent upon the instrumental value of their labouring body, which constructs them as easily disposable and expendable as they are positioned outside the formal boundaries of citizenship.

The Joy of Crossing the Dark Line of Script

The standard image of research as toil, method and the principle of objectivity appears sterile, mechanistic and devoid of human agency. But research to happen requires scholars, who are passionate about their subjects of investigation. ‘Doing research’ brings them physical pleasure, which pushes scholars beyond the formal boundaries set in a contract with a university or a grant-making institution. Pecuniary compensation is secondary and rarely adequate for compensating the effort and time expanded. The joy of discovery is the ultimate payback. The first stepping stone to research and then to other scriptaly differentiated fields of enquiry leads through the acquisition of the skill of reading (and often writing). Initially, it comes in the writing system of a person’s first language, but then other scripts tend to follow. This feat of mastering a script always frustrates before achieved, but eventually brings the joy of opening the door to another human world.

Professional field-work: constructing global health law as an ‘emerging field’

ABSTRACT Constructing international legal fields is the work of experts. Such experts struggle over a field’s substantive content, normative direction and formal boundaries. Less commonly observed are the ways in which fields are described as part of such work. In global health law, experts have used the term ‘emerging field’ to capture its ambivalent status between a non-field and an established field. In deploying this term, they demonstrate the term’s productive uses in establishing a plural, open-ended and experimental sphere of professional action that overcomes the criticisms of its predecessor, international health law. In theorising the notion of ‘emerging field’ as an example of professional field-work, this article points not only to the multiple registers of this nascent governance regime, but also to the changing style of international legal expertise itself.

Academy breaking boundaries[sbnd]the effect of integrative learning on the acceptance of others

Integrative learning crosses the formal boundaries between academic disciplines, allowing learners to form a comprehensive and holistic understanding of subjects. This pedagogy encourages integrative thinking, which has the potential to influence life outside the classroom and to transcend cultural and social boundaries. In this study, we examined whether an integrative learning pedagogy of literature and science can improve communication and understanding across cultural boundaries to create tolerance toward the other, in the experience of 15 Bedouin Arab preservice teachers (PSTs) who taught in Jewish schools in Israel. The study was based on several qualitative tools: reflective diaries, semi-structured interviews, and questionnaires answered by the PSTs. The collected data show that integrative learning of literature and science had an impact beyond the academic content. The integrative learning pedagogy influenced the PSTs’ perceptions, causing them to reevaluate prejudices, lower their anxiety level, and increase their tolerance toward the other. These feelings enabled the creation of interpersonal relationships between the Bedouin PSTs and their Jewish students. The uniqueness of this study is in the examination of the effect of the integrative learning of literature and science on an everyday life challenge―the degree of tolerance in multicultural learning groups―and in the conclusion that this pedagogy has the potential to promote tolerance.

Construction as a ‘building event’: exploring the role of project architects and their practices of intermediation during the construction of global architecture

ABSTRACT The main aim of the following paper is to unpack the construction processes behind global architecture that have remained conceptually under-theorized and empirically unexplored. This is achieved by shifting the focus away from the brand-name global architects to the invisible, less prominent project architects employed in their celebrity offices. Based on the analysis of qualitative interviews, the paper conceptualizes project architects as key intermediaries and systematizes their embodied practices of intermediation enacted between design and execution. Project architects are revealed as key actors who negotiate between design ideas and the local contingencies, bridging between different sites of materialization. By introducing the conceptual lens of practices of intermediation, the paper explores how architecture takes its physical form, elucidating the micro-geographies behind construction processes. The construction of global architecture is hereby conceptualized as a ‘building event’, as a situated ‘performance’, during which professionals can transgress cognitive boundaries between design knowledge and execution expertise, and formal boundaries, defined by contracts, regulatory framework, and organizational hierarchies.

Understanding the role of digitalization and social media on energy citizenship.

The digitalisation of the energy domain can bring forth numerous aspects of the energy transition that can boost the emergence of energy citizenship, information sharing, and improved decision-making processes. However, this is premised on citizens being able to make sense of (digital) information. Hence, this paper proposes a link between energy informatics and energy citizenship via energy literacy, considering the cognitive and affective aspects of energy literacy and their relation to behaviour and action. By doing so, this paper aims to understand how the use of energy-related information and social media within five different case studies from the GRETA project can impel energy citizenship. This paper approaches this rationale through different means: (a) structured interviews to understand how citizens understand and make use of energy information within the case studies; (b) topic modelling on the content of those interviews to identify common factors that might spur on hinder behaviour change towards energy citizenship; and (c) social media content analysis to identify key energy-related topics of discussions among citizens around the globe and assess the role of social media as a tool for energy citizenship. As a result, this paper identified some key takeaways to improve the delivery of energy-related information to energy citizens for enhanced energy citizenship. These takeaways allow to conclude that it is fundamental to surpass the formal boundaries of techno-economic constructs and start addressing qualitative/subjective constructs (e.g., emotions, affections, and feelings) to foster energy citizenship. Also, these takeaways could be translated into social mechanism principles in the design of frontend energy-related digital platforms for improved end-user interactions and energy citizenship. Finally, this paper recognised the need to incentivise energy citizens to use social media for consuming energy-related information, and the need to formulate coordinated and coherent response strategies for disseminating energy-related information.

Scott’s Wandering Tales

ABSTRACT Walter Scott’s shorter fictions come in different shapes and sizes, and live in different types of publications, whether the periodical, short story collection, anthology, gift book or multivolume novel. Even completed novels were augmented with snatches of new prose that ought to be treated as separate stories. This article examines what I am calling Scott’s three main wandering tales: “The Fortunes of Martin Waldeck” (The Antiquary [1816]), “Wandering Willie’s Tale” (Redgauntlet [1824]), and “Donnerhugel’s Narrative” (Anne of Geierstein [1829]). A wandering tale is essentially a short story that can feasibly stand apart from the novel in which it first appeared but whose textual mobility depends on, and can have an impact upon, the host novel, however belatedly. Within the novels, Scott also surrounds his wandering tales with fictional audiences who comment on the meaning of the story delivered in real time, hijacking the conventions of improvisatory oral storytelling but also deploying print-based tricks that rely on the generic knowledge of readers. Reading Scott’s inset fictions as wandering tales relies on a dual understanding of the original print setting and an appreciation of the story’s resistance to the formal boundaries established within the novel.

The Three Loci of Organizational Identity Work: Prospective, Current and Former Members

Organizations work continuously to form, maintain and change their identities. This identity work has this far has been assumed to be carried out only with respect to the members of an organization. In this longitudinal study of identity formation, maintenance, and change we show that the identity work of some organizations has multiple loci. The Swedish secondary school that sought to form and maintain an identity of an ‘excellent school’ directed its identity work not only at its current staff and students, but also towards its prospective as well as former students. Multiple loci of identity work, we argue, is typical for organization where the characteristics of the members are important to its identity. Ignoring the identity work directed at prospective members ignores its fundamental importance in setting the scope for any identity work that can be carried out with the members of an organization. Re- conceptualizing identity work to also include efforts directed outside the organization, furthermore, address the critique that the organizational identity literature is too narrow in its focus on the formal boundaries of organizations and it opens up for an understanding of the sometimes competitive interactions across the identity work of several organizations.

Cadence as Gesture in the Writings and Music of Arnold Schoenberg

ABSTRACTThis article focuses on the writings and music of Arnold Schoenberg to establish concrete techniques for form‐functional analysis, particularly cadential function. In both Fundamentals of Musical Composition and ‘Problems of Tonality’, Schoenberg discusses how form can be communicated to an audience in music with and without tonal functions. I use the already established field of energetics and Robert Hatten's theory of gesture (2004) to describe the musical effect of a number of compositional techniques employed in the service of cadence. This leads me to define rhetorical and syntactical markers for cadential function in Schoenberg's music. I demonstrate this with tonal excerpts from Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4, where harmonic function supports and coincides with these rhetorical and syntactical functions. This same technique is then examined in the Musette and Minuet from Schoenberg's Suite for Piano, Op. 25, where the twelve‐note structure is less useful for hearing formal boundaries. Although this study focuses on Schoenberg's music, it also suggests that there is more in common between what might be termed ‘Romantic’ formal functions and early non‐tonal formal functions.

Response to Distinguished Lecture

Response to Distinguished Lecture Veronika Fuechtner Haakenson's lecture challenged all of us to carefully consider the place from which we are speaking. This resonated for me because my own university, Dartmouth College, was founded in 1769 on Abenaki lands by the minister Eleazer Wheelock under the patronage of the Earl of Dartmouth. Wheelock raised the funds together with his former student, the Mohegan minister Samson Occom, promising to Christianize Native American men. However, as Occom wrote, Dartmouth became quickly "too alba [white]," and those who it was intended to serve, did "never have much benefit of it."1 For almost two centuries, Dartmouth educated mostly Christian white men. It presents one of many examples of how the enterprise of the liberal arts in the US rests on a material history of violence and marginalization.2 This material history is inextricably intertwined with an intellectual history that encompasses colonial ideologies, theological antisemitism, the philosophical racism of the Enlightenment, and the scientific racism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Universities and their scholars established, but also simultaneously questioned and undermined the tools of racist patriarchy. The reflection on what it means when these tools are used to examine their very creations must be part of any critical labor. Can the master's tools dismantle the master's house?3 Writing with livid clarity, the poet Audre Lorde didn't formulate this as a question. To her, they never could. Haakenson's talk addresses precisely this issue: How can the intellectual work of decolonization resist becoming a gesture of tokenism, or yet another form of "settler appropriation" as Tuck and Yang suggest? And I would like to add here: How can such intellectual work resist becoming another expression of a capitalist, neoliberal logic that establishes radical rhetoric in the mainstream as cultural currency, but contains its transformative power? Herbert Marcuse described so well how everything that starts as subversion will end up as a commodity, as radical chic.4 Think only of the Che Guevara T-Shirt worn by Prince Harry. Haakenson undertakes the work of decolonization for the avant-garde of the early twentieth century, for several decades now a very canonical field in US German studies—in fact at times seemingly the [End Page 355] only field present in ever-shrinking German departments. German studies in the US is often sold with the lights and shadows of Weimar Cinema, and the pensive walk of the flaneur, or even the flaneuse. So, how can we un-settle Weimar? How can we look up from the Asphalt and stop watching People—on a Sunday? How can we deal with what to us may be Weimar's other paradox? Haakenson described the first, historical paradox of the avant-garde with Jakobson and Stavrinaki as the push for "legalization of illegality" paired with the experience of the marginalization of the arts. But there is also the present paradox that has propelled an aesthetic conceived as subversive into the aesthetic of choice for German department websites and admission brochures. What are we selling, when we sell Weimar? And what would thinking another Weimar look like? Haakenson's talk provides answers by addressing the global circulation of visual references in Dada, as well as by bringing Dada into conversation with contemporary art, specifically with Adam Pendleton's brilliant unpacking of its colonial and racist baggage. But, as Haakenson makes clear in his reading, the work can't stop with pointing to this baggage and dwelling on the injustice of its weight. There is a possibility in the avant-garde once we consider its presentness, or as Haakenson writes, its "concern with ephemerality, iconicity, and time." Stephen Greenblatt has described how the viewer of a photograph senses the energy it extends beyond its formal boundaries, a "resonance" that makes its historical and situational context perceivable to the viewer.5 The relationship between the viewer and the photograph could also be described in psychoanalytic terms as an interplay of transference and countertransference. The viewer's imagination and photography's resonance not only speak to each other but condition one another and create a space that momentarily suspends the sense of progressive time.6 Pendleton's artistic...

Work/Life Relationships and Communication Ethics: An Exploratory Examination.

Workplace relationships that transcend formal role boundaries offer benefits and challenges to organizations and relational participants. Communicative processes that form and maintain these relationships can be examined from a communication ethics perspective focused on the outcomes emerging from these relationships that define particular goods for personal and organizational life. The blended nature of these relationships makes them host to potentially competing goods tied to public and private concerns. Considering the connection of virtue approaches to communication ethics in organizational settings to the turn to positive approaches to communication and organizational theory reveals avenues for ethical reflection and action in these increasingly important relational forms.

In a Sea of Empires: Networks and Crossings in the Revolutionary Caribbean by Jeppe Mulich

Reviewed by: In a Sea of Empires: Networks and Crossings in the Revolutionary Caribbean by Jeppe Mulich Pernille Røge In a Sea of Empires: Networks and Crossings in the Revolutionary Caribbean. By Jeppe Mulich. Cambridge Oceanic Histories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. 216 pages. Cloth, ebook. In recent years, the dwindling reliance on national and single-imperial frameworks of analysis in favor of an emphasis on connectivity and entanglement has stimulated a surge of fresh transimperial and colonial histories. This shift in focus has been especially pronounced in the study of the early modern Caribbean, where it has also generated an invigorating new trend focusing on broader regional integration. Scholars now regularly embrace multilingual research projects to explore how lived experiences of colonial officials, planters, merchants, and enslaved and free people of color in the Caribbean were shaped by interisland and regional networks as much as by the assertions of sovereignty issued from distant imperial metropoles. By attending to illicit commercial networks, shared responses to natural disasters, and maritime border crossings, historians have produced textured understandings of regional integration and brought into view a Greater Caribbean as a recognizable unit of historical analysis.1 In In a Sea of Empires, Jeppe Mulich both narrows and expands this focus, for though he concentrates specifically on the Leeward Islands in the northeastern corner of the Caribbean, he also makes the case that integration at the microregional level was a critical component of early nineteenth-century globalization. By examining formal and informal relations among the Dutch, French, Spanish, British, Danish, and Swedish colonies from the end of the American Revolution through the abolition of slavery in the British Caribbean, Mulich argues that layered networks forged through cross-imperial practices of contraband trade, slavery, and privateering made the Leeward Islands "a politically polyglot zone of thin sovereignty and local integration" (2). As a result, he suggests, they serve as a historical example of an "inter-imperial microregion" (2), an ideal type that Mulich suggests can be found across the globe but whose role in early globalization remains little explored. As both a sociological model for the analysis of globalization from a regional perspective and a historical case study of the Leeward Islands, In a Sea of Empires is well-written and conceptually stimulating. The theoretical [End Page 341] framework for integration Mulich develops in the introductory chapter alone makes the book worthwhile. Drawing on network analysis and a relational approach, Mulich defines an "inter-imperial microregion" as a "geographical area inhabited by multiple polities, with a particularly high density of relations and interactions between and across the formal boundaries of these polities" (16). Some, but not all, of these must be imperial polities and have connections to authorities outside the microregion, "placing their subjects in a situation of potential conflict between regional and metropolitan interests" (16). Though Mulich first introduced this model in an article in 2013, he develops it further in this book, explicitly highlighting its utility in understanding processes of globalization and integration within geographically defined spaces.2 As he explains in the conclusion, studies of interimperial microregions can help historians recognize that globalization occurred not only through top-down macro developments "but also through the bottom-up activities of people making a living in spaces that became increasingly integrated into widening networks of connectivity and interdependence" (176). Mulich's interest in the Leeward Islands is therefore predominantly programmatic, and the five chapters that follow the introduction serve to test the model of an "inter-imperial microregion" as a unit of analysis. Mulich particularly focuses on the British and Danish Virgin Islands and Swedish Saint Barthélemy, surveying the dense networks and connections among these islands as drivers of integration. Chapter 2 examines smuggling and clandestine maritime trade. Mulich shows how Danish Saint Thomas and Swedish Saint Barthélemy flourished as Caribbean centers of contraband trade in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars due to these islands' status as free ports and Danish and Swedish neutrality.3 Chapter 3 explores warfare and colonial violence, arguing that white colonists' interisland reliance on military assistance during threats of slave uprisings was another engine of integration. Chapter 4 studies privateering and how...

Városfogalmak különböző tudományok látószögében, modernkori városhierarchiák

Bán, Gergely Károly: City concepts in the perspective of various disciplines, modern age urban hierarchies In today's era of interdisciplinarity – when the break-up of formal boundaries between disciplines is a common phenomenon – it is not easy to find a common language, set of concepts and methods for different disciplines to use in their common research fields. A great example to this is the research of urban history, especially the research into city hierarchy. The complexity of this research topic is well illustrated by the fact that it is inherent in geography, history, sociology, statistics and economics. The different disciplines work with different definitions of the city, which are most definitely represented in research papers on urban history in the recent years. Legal (administrative), statistical, economic, sociological or geographic city concepts all have different understanding of the city. If we were to ask what discipline provides us with the most relevant, most fitting definition for the city as a settlement form then the answer would be: each of them. Why should not we talk about the definition of the city in the context of these city concepts, that is, administrative, statistical, sociological, etc. urban hierarchies? The aim of my study is to provide a complex picture of the potential urban hierarchy of the modern age.

Birds and birding 2013-2020 at Macaneta, Southern Mozambique

The Macaneta area lies in the Incomati River estuary in northern Maputo Bay, Maputo Province, southern Mozambique. The 56 km2 area of study was selected based on access from tracks and follows no formal boundaries. The site comprises a 10 km stretch of ocean beach, coastal dunes with patchy thicket forest, and low lying wet grasslands inland to the Incomati River. The wetlands have complex hydrology offering diverse salinity and temporal conditions. The peninsula of Praia de Macaneta is also included in the study site but with few data. Improved access to the site in Oct 2016 enabled over 200 field ornithological visits Oct 2016-Oct 2020 and the sightings are analysed and reported herein. A total of 295 species was recorded including eight Globally Threatened birds (three Endangered, five Near-threatened) and Internationally Important numbers of White-breasted Cormorant Phalacrocorax carbo and Whiskered Terns Chlidonias hybrida were found. Three new birds for Mozambique were discovered; Sharp-tailed Sandpiper Calidris acuminata (first for Africa), White-rumped Sandpiper C. fuscicollis and Pearl-breasted Swallow Hirundo dimidiate. An annotated checklist of selected species is presented. The Sharp-tailed Sandpiper in particular drew much birder interest with 254 international visitor days over the 12 weeks of its first visit Feb-Apr 2018, contributing over US$12,000 into the local economy. The bird returned for two further seasons but it was not possible to gather further data.

‘Answer in any way you want’: Discursive tensions in conversations of a citizen participation process

This paper contributes to empirical knowledge of citizen participation as a communicative event, by analyzing discursive tensions in interviews between civil servants and citizen-parents, that are part of a participatory process on how to mitigate violence in a suburban area in Sweden. Citizen participation events are increasingly initiated by public institutions in Western societies. Research, however, shows that goals of participatory processes often conflict with formal decision-making structures and institutional boundaries. Yet, how such tensions play out on the level of interaction is little researched. This study therefore analyzes discursive practices deployed by civil servants and how these construct characteristic tensions for the interviews. Three practices are identified: (1) pursuing the initial question, (2) cueing an institutional frame, and (3) epistemic positioning of the parents. These practices, being guided by an institutional agenda, create tensions both to the parents’ lifeworld and for the ideals of the participatory method itself.

PROPOSAL OF FORMAL AND NON-FORMAL EDUCATION FOR NEW GENERATION DIGITAL LEARNING DEMAND IN ENGINEERING

Millennial generation, starting from twelve-year-olds up to adolescents, is one of the most complicated generational cohorts; its ecosystem, beyond of formal and non-formal education boundaries, is more diverse than for any other previous generation. Digital learners prefer a digital learning environment, as the advantage of digital learning is the control over time, place, way and pace, enabling you to impersonate as an educational institution, applying smart personal network which consists of 3 domains: applied smart technologies; reflexive pedagogy for the digital century [1]; learning environment [2], thus without any confrontation of formal and non-formal education, but rather with consolidation of resources to promote engineering development of formal environment at school, higher educational establishments and informal activities – projects, scientists’ night events, open days, interest-related education programmes, etc.Goal of the research is to analyse the proposal of formal and non-formal education for the new generation digital learning demand and identify the examples of good practice in engineering, based on the identified digital leaning criteria obtained as a result of theoretical analysis. Millennial generation, starting from twelve-year-olds up to adolescents, is one of the most complicated generational cohorts; its ecosystem, beyond of formal and non-formal education boundaries, is more diverse than for any other previous generation. Digital learners prefer a digital learning environment, as the advantage of digital learning is the control over time, place, way and pace, enabling you to impersonate as an educational institution, applying smart personal network which consists of 3 domains: applied smart technologies; reflexive pedagogy for the digital century [1]; learning environment [2], thus without any confrontation of formal and non-formal education, but rather with consolidation of resources to promote engineering development of formal environment at school, higher educational establishments and informal activities – projects, scientists’ night events, open days, interest-related education programmes, etc.Goal of the research is to analyse the proposal of formal and non-formal education for the new generation digital learning demand and identify the examples of good practice in engineering, based on the identified digital leaning criteria obtained as a result of theoretical analysis. In the design research of cross-sectional study 323 respondents took part: 226 representatives of formal education and 97 representatives of non-formal education. In the research the quantitative and qualitative data collection (questionnaires, case analysis) and processing (nonparametric software in SPSS environment and content analysis) methods have been applied. Results of Mann-Whitney U-test to two independent samples confirm statistically significant differences depending on the respondents’ profile: representatives of non-formal education tend to value Higher such digital learning criteria as situational and authentic, whereas representatives of formal education value higher interactive digital learning on demand, which is related to application of different media platforms (p≤0.05).The research analyses the examples of good practice in case studies in engineering.Engineering can be geared towards fundamental research, but in the pupils’ educational process the innovative solutions of technical sciences with a perspective of practical applicability arouse a greater interest. Learning efficiency and acquisition of new knowledge are successful if learning is linked to research work in higher educational establishments and transfer of findings in the education system in close collaboration with representatives of economic sectors and businesses.

Synaptic metaplasticity in binarized neural networks

While deep neural networks have surpassed human performance in multiple situations, they are prone to catastrophic forgetting: upon training a new task, they rapidly forget previously learned ones. Neuroscience studies, based on idealized tasks, suggest that in the brain, synapses overcome this issue by adjusting their plasticity depending on their past history. However, such “metaplastic” behaviors do not transfer directly to mitigate catastrophic forgetting in deep neural networks. In this work, we interpret the hidden weights used by binarized neural networks, a low-precision version of deep neural networks, as metaplastic variables, and modify their training technique to alleviate forgetting. Building on this idea, we propose and demonstrate experimentally, in situations of multitask and stream learning, a training technique that reduces catastrophic forgetting without needing previously presented data, nor formal boundaries between datasets and with performance approaching more mainstream techniques with task boundaries. We support our approach with a theoretical analysis on a tractable task. This work bridges computational neuroscience and deep learning, and presents significant assets for future embedded and neuromorphic systems, especially when using novel nanodevices featuring physics analogous to metaplasticity.

Proximal Extrahepatic Bile Ducts: Comprehensive Review

Proximal extrahepatic bile ducts are the biliary tree segment within formal boundaries from cystic ductcommon hepatic duct junction to sectoral hepatic ducts. Despite being a focus of attention of diagnostic and interventional radiologists, endoscopists, hepatobiliary surgeons and transplantologists they weren’t comprehensively described in available papers. The majority of the authors regard bile duct confluence as a group of merging primitively arranged tubes providing bile flow. The information on the proximal extrahepatic bile duct embryonal development, variant anatomy, innervation, arterial, venous and lymphatic supply is too general and not detailed. The present review brought together and systemized exiting to the date data on anatomy and function of this biliary tract portion. Unique, different from the majority of hollow organs organization of the proximal extrahepatic bile duct adapts them to the flow of the bile, i.e. viscous aggressive due to pH about 8.0 and detergents fluid, under higher wall pressure than in other parts of biliary tree.