Perceptions Of Science Research Articles

Public law, knowledge and explanation: a critique on the facilitative nature of public law analysis

The aim of this paper is to examine why public law is able to incorporate political theory but excludes feminist critiques. In order to achieve this goal a form of discourse analysis will be undertaken using epistemological and scientific perceptions of knowledge and explanation. This approach is both unusual and unique but will illustrate some of the exclusionary suppositions which underpin analysis within public law. The paper will conclude that only by adopting an alternative starting point for analysis, such as the use of concepts, will public law be able to incorporate alternative and critical approaches.

GMOs in the laboratory

This article explores the lack of controversy over genetically modified objects (GMOs) in the daily life of a research laboratory in Canada. Scientific perceptions of GMOs and the types of knowledge valued in scientific research contribute toward an absence of discussion on the wider social implications of GMOs. Technical and epistemic knowledge are crucial for the success of a scientific project, whereas discussion of the social values involved may be allocated to particular settings, people, or research stages. GMOs, within scientific circles, are seen as many individual projects with different goals, rather than as a single object. Therefore, according to this view, it is inappropriate to be opposed to or to support GMOs in general, without first ascertaining the specifics of a particular project. How then are scientists engaged in seemingly local, distinct projects seen as globally defending this technology? Scientific expertise unevenly translates into political voice, transforming into silences as well as debates.

Young children's perceptionsof scientists: a preliminary study

Background Since the 1950s, there has been a growing body of research dealing with perceptions children have of scientists. Typically, research studies in this area have utilized children's drawings in an effort to discern what those perceptions are. Studies assessing perceptions children have of scientists have shown that children have stereotypical images of scientists. Although there is no direct evidence to demonstrate the link between children's images of science and scientists with their career choice, several researchers (including this researcher) have assumed that children's attitudes towards science are greatly influenced by their perceptions of science and scientists. Purpose This study aimed to find out if there was a difference in the way 5- to 8-year-old children drew scientists, taking account of age, gender and socio-economic status. Sample For this study a convenience sample of 30 young children was used. Participants included young children between the ages of 5 and 8 years from a public elementary school in Ankara, the capital city of Turkey. Although the sample of the study was obtained from one school in a metropolitan area, children involved in this preliminary study were from very different socio-economic backgrounds. As the sample size is very small for making comparisons, it was intended to have a similar number of children from different age groups and socio-economic backgrounds and both genders. Design and methods The researcher worked individually with each child who participated in this study in an interview setting. Although each child was asked a set of standard questions, and given a standard set of directions, each interview session was informal enough to allow the researcher to gain additional information about children's drawings and to clarify any of their responses. During the interview sessions, children's responses were noted by the researcher. Before the children were asked to draw their picture of a scientist, they were offered a set of coloured pencils or crayons and told to feel free to colour their drawing or any parts of it they would like to accentuate. At the end of the interview and drawing sessions, the researcher went through all the drawings and notes to get a ‘feel’ for and ascertain what was being said, identifying key themes in each drawing. Results The most common scientist type drawn in this study was the stereotypical scientist type: someone who conducts research, or someone who tries to invent a new material. But unlike previous studies, around 35% of the scientist figures drawn (n = 15) were of the social scientist type. Stereotypical images drawn by the current study participants included symbols of research, such as scientific instruments and laboratory equipment of all kinds, and symbols of knowledge, principally books and cabinets, technology and the products of science. An interesting finding of this study was that perceptions of young children differed due to their age. Children at the age of 8 years drew non-stereotypical scientist images, and they drew more detail than did their younger peers. When children were compared in terms of their gender, no significant differences were observed between girls and boys. But on the other hand, none of the boys drew female scientists, and five out of 30 children who were girls drew female scientists. While children of parents with lower socio-economic status drew more stereotypical scientist images, children of parents with higher economic status drew different images of scientists, a result which showed us that the scientist perceptions of young children differ with socio-economic status. Conclusions Emergent from this research has been a non-stereotypical perception of scientists, and some evidence exists that such a non-stereotypical perception differs due to age and socio-economic status. While these images may seem amusing, they also provide a reflection of the image that children have about what a scientist looks like. These images may have a powerful impact on present functioning and future plans of young children.

Guest Editorial: Special Section on Visual Analytics

ISUAL analytics is the science of analytical reasoning supportedbyhighlyinteractivevisualinterfaces.People use visual analytics tools and techniques to synthesize information; derive insight from massive, dynamic, and often conflicting data; detect the expected and discover the unexpected; provide timely, defensible, and understandable assessments; and communicate assessments effectively for action. The issues stimulating this body of research provide a grandchallengeinscience:turninginformationoverloadinto the opportunity of the decade. Visual analytics requires interdisciplinary science beyond traditional scientific and information visualization to include statistics, mathematics, knowledge representation, management and discovery technologies, cognitive and perceptual sciences, decision sciences, and more. An important research agenda to develop the next generation suite of visual analytics technologies is described in the book Illuminating the Path: The Research and Development Agenda for Visual Analytics, which is available at http:// nvac.pnl.gov/agenda.stm. The papers in this special section address a number of the issues described in the visual analytics research agenda. They are grouped into five major areas: multidimensional data, graphs and networks, communication network analysis, space and time, and fundamentals. The first two papers address issues of visual analysis of multidimensional data. The first paper, “High-Dimensional

Lines and Criss-Crossings: Hyperlinks in Australian Indigenous Narratives

The issue of an ethical approach to pleasure does not imply a religious or moral order, but a constant re-evaluation of how each image or representation of any contemporary culture (Indigenous, musical, professional, digital, etc.) impacts on social justice, equity, tolerance and freedom. Two attempts of anthropological restitution developed with Aboriginal peoples for a mixed audience are presented here. The first is a CD-ROM ( Dream Trackers: Yapa Art and Knowledge of the Australian Desert), focused on one Central Australian community (Lajamanu in the Northern Territory), while the second is an interactive DVD ( Quest in Aboriginal Land) based on films by Indigenous filmmaker Wayne Barker, juxtaposing four regions of Australia. Both projects aim to explore and enhance the cultural foundations of the reticular way in which many Indigenous people in Australia map their knowledge and experience of the world in a geographical virtual web of narratives, images and performances. The relevance of games for anthropological insights is also discussed in the paper. Nonlinear or reticular thinking mostly stresses the fact that there is no centrality to the whole but a multipolar view from each recomposed network within each singularity, a person, a place (a Dreaming in the case of Aboriginal cultures), allowing the emergence of meanings and performances, encounters, creations as new original autonomous flows. Reticular or network thinking, I argue, is a very ancient Indigenous practice but it gains today a striking actuality thanks to the fact that our so called scientific perception of cognition, virtuality and social performance has changed through the use of new technologies.

Models for the statistics and mechanisms of response speed and accuracy

Van Breukelen offers a promising method for modeling both response speed and response accuracy. However, the underlying conception of both dependent measures is somewhat flawed, leading the author to conclude that the approach possesses limitations that, under revised assumptions, may not hold. The central misconception, and a set of related misconceptions, is addressed, and it is suggested that this approach holds a good deal of promise for application in the perceptual and cognitive sciences.

Glaciers: art and history, science and uncertainty

Glaciers play a central role in the global environmental system, and their behaviour is intimately linked to changing patterns of the ocean–atmosphere circulation, climate, sea level and landscape. Deep cores retrieved from ice sheets have helped us recognise how climate has changed over hundreds of thousands of years, and, for many parts of the Earth's surface, an understanding of landforms, drainage patterns and surface geology would be impossible without an understanding of glacial processes. Today, the role of glaciers in the media and in the popular imagination is dominated by their role in science as indicators of environmental change. However, it is barely a hundred and fifty years since the significance of glaciers in this context was first appreciated. Before the middle of the nineteenth century glaciers occupied a different niche in popular perception, ruled by their place in the artistic and cultural domain rather than the scientific. Changing technologies for observing and analysing glacial phenomena have impacted on both scientific and cultural perceptions of glaciers, and our understanding is still constrained by technological limitations. Despite progress in remote sensing and analytical techniques, our reconstructions of past glaciations remain tentative, our understanding of modern glacial processes incomplete and our modelling of their future unreliable. In nineteenth century art, glaciers represented romance, mystery and unassailable majesty. In twenty-first century science their position is perhaps similar, but what art calls 'mystery', science calls 'uncertainty'.

Cheating the ferryman: A new paradigm of existence?

Article presenting an argument for what occurs subjectively at the moment of death, using insights from quantum physics, neurology, perceptual science, psychiatry, and Gnosticism.

Naturalização da dominação e poder legítimo na teoria política clássica

A reflexão aqui desenvolvida aborda uma das maiores antinomias políticas do pensamento político moderno: aquela que consiste em fazer da comunidade política um artifício humano, fundamentando-a, ao mesmo tempo, em bases pré-políticas, anteriores à ação humana. Ao reinventar o político como espaço de liberdade, os modernos reinventaram o natural como limite dessa liberdade humana que a religião já não estava em condições de conter. Nesse contexto, a caça às bruxas decorre tanto de um obscurantismo religioso ou supersticioso quanto de uma iniciativa racional fundada na eficácia. As implicações políticas do politeísmo cognitivo, que explode na pluralidade das percepções científicas da natureza humana e da natureza das coisas, estabelecem um estreito laço entre a constituição da autoridade da "ciência" moderna, como modelo de conhecimento da natureza, e a constituição da autoridade religiosa e temporal. A naturalização da hierarquia dos sexos no mundo moderno é, ao mesmo tempo, o arquétipo e o sintoma desse processo histórico que desloca a legitimação da dominação do âmbito religioso para o da natureza.

Relating spatial patterns of sugar maple reproductive success and relative deer density in northern New York State

Previous studies of sugar maple ( Acer saccharum) reproduction and its potential controlling factors have been performed on fine spatial scales (e.g. <1–10 ha), and the outcomes of these studies have often been extrapolated to regional scales (e.g. 1000–100,000 km 2). The resulting public and scientific perceptions are that sugar maple reproduction is declining over large areas in northern forests, and that white-tailed deer ( Odocoileus virginianus) herbivory is an important causal factor in this decline. We examined the validity of these perceptions in northern New York State (42,000 km 2) by performing a geostatistical analysis of sugar maple reproduction based on USDA Forest Service inventory data and relative deer density data constructed from hunter harvest records. We indexed sugar maple reproductive success (SMRS) as the number of sugar maple seedlings and saplings per saw log. Regression analysis indicated that global trends were present for both SMRS ( n=290, multiple r 2=0.085, P<0.001) and relative deer densities ( n=200, multiple r 2=0.17, P<0.001). Autocorrelation analysis indicated that SMRS had weak but significant spatial structuring at scales from 2400 to 40,000 m, but that most of the variability in SMRS probably occurred at scales finer than the data sources were able to detect (<2400 m). Relative deer densities demonstrated spatial patterning at scales from 10,000 to 82,000 m. At the township scale (i.e. approximate spatial grain of 10,000 m), SMRS and relative deer density observations were not correlated ( r 2=0.04, P=0.61, n=143). Additionally, the global trends in SMRS and relative deer density did not appear to be related. Within the range of deer densities observed in northern New York and at spatial scales >10,000 m, high deer densities were not necessarily associated with poor maple reproductive success. Lack of a broad-scale relationship between deer densities and SMRS does not preclude relationships at fine spatial scales (<10,000 m). Potential explanations for the lack of relationship between SMRS and deer density at broad scales include: (1) the generally low deer densities across the study area which may be below critical thresholds to impact reproduction; (2) the importance of functional compared to numerical response of deer in determining deer impact; and (3) the importance of other factors and multiple-factor interactions in affecting spatial patterns of reproductive success.

The Last Tasmanian Tiger: The History and Extinction of the Thylacine

1. Introduction: science and the species from a European perspective 2. Constructing objectivity: changing scientific perceptions of the thylacine 3. Of signal importance: select social and predatory behaviours 4. A predatory entertainment: stimuli of consuming interest 5. Ovisceral exploitation: extracts of sheepish behaviour 6. Mythology becomes misology: the dogmatism of unenlightenment 7. Faunal fun and games: the politics of protection 8. The last Tasmanian tiger: indifference and the demise of the species 9. Post-extinction blues: contingency and responsibility in extinction 10. Conclusion: the lessons to be learnt.

Experience and the active mind

This paper investigates a new species ofskeptical reasoning about visual experience that takesits start from developments in perceptual science(especially recent work on change blindness andinattentional blindness). According to thisskepticism, the impression of visual awareness of theenvironment in full detail and high resolution isillusory. I argue that the new skepticism depends onmisguided assumptions about the character ofperceptual experience, about whether perceptualexperiences are 'internal' states, and about how bestto understand the relationship between a person's oranimal's perceptual capacities and the brain-level orneural processes on which they depend. I propose aconception of perceptual experience as a form ofskillful engagement with the environment on the partof the whole person or animal.

Le sublime et les limites du sensible. Perception scientifique et subjectivité esthétique chez Addison et Kant

Daniel Dumouchel : The sublime and the limits of sensibility. Scientific perception in addison and Kant. We here emphasize certain aspects of the 18th-century relationship between scientific and philosophical discourse on aesthetics, by concentrating on the question of the sublime. This article insists on two crucial theoretical approaches to the sublime in nature, that of Joseph Addison in his essays on 'The Pleasures of the Imagination' (1712) and that of Immanuel Kant in his Theory of the Heavens (1755) and Critique of Judgement (1790).

Novel and transgenic food crops: overview of scientific versus public perception.

Recombinant DNA technology offers opportunities to develop new products in many different fields, including agriculture and the agro-food area. Transgenic plants with improved agronomic traits currently grow in field trials and a few varieties have already reached the European market. By and large, new technologies raise both concerns and expectations and modern biotechnology is no exception. Indeed, a voluntary moratorium on experiments involving recombinant DNA molecules was called for in 1974. At the present time, although a majority of academic and industrial scientists agree that transgenic food crops pose no risk for the environment or human health, some others believe that certain applications of modern plant biotechnology are hazardous. In particular, deliberate releases of genetically modified plants are regarded as risky. There is also a disparity between expert and lay perception of r-DNA technology applications to food crops, which makes public information a difficult task. This paper aims at exposing these conflicting points of view on the agricultural applications of modern biotechnology. We also propose some recommendations pertaining to public information in Europe. It appears that consensus conferences might be a good approach to stimulate public information and public debate in Europe, although this approach has to be adapted to the cultural context of each country.

The double screen: medium and representation in Chinese painting

This is an original book which is skilfully conceived to interweave theoretical exploration with art-historical writing. The book tackles a big question: what is a (traditional Chinese) painting? Wu Hung rejects either an intrinsic analysis of style and iconography or an extrinsic study of cultural and sociopolitical contexts, which both equate a painting with a pictorial representation. Pursuing an integrative perspective of medium and representation, Wu Hung highlights the missing dimension of painting's physical form by focussing on screen images in Chinese art history. Differing from Western scientific perception, the screen is one of the pictorial signs or formats to structure space in Chinese painting and is thus found as a popular pictorial motif throughout Chinese art history. This comprehensive analysis around screen thus becomes a writing of art history that delineates a line of Chinese art development from the Han to Qing dynasties, a period of about two thousand years (from a time shortly before the Christian Era to the 1800s).By focussing on three famous paintings with screen images from the Southern Tang (AD 937-75), a regime during the period of the Five Dynasties and Ten Nations, the book examines the screen's diverse forms and roles by tracing backward and forward the historical development of each specific type of pictorial representation, its unique mode of perception, and its particular configuration of cultural space in Chinese art history. The author first problematizes the traditional reading of Chinese painting by deconstructing Gu Hongzhong's Night Entertainment of Han Xizai. Wu Hung breaks the myth of textual enclosures of both the external (stories and anecdotes) and the internal (colophons) surrounding the famous paintings, which blocks a fresh look at the original work. Instead, he strives to access the visual narrative in the original painting by defining the historicity of the various textual enclosures and investigating the complex relationships between the painted images and life, and between the images of related paintings. Unlike the screen images in Night Entertainment which help construct a spatial/temporal program and regulate the audience's perception in this long handscroll painting, the screen in Wang Qihan's short handscroll Collating Texts plays a different role, around which the author introduces a history of the landscape screen and raises the issue of masculine self-imaging. …

Scientific and Public Perception of Plant Genetic Manipulation — A Critical Review

Scientific views on the importance and potential risks of plant genetic engineering are summarized and the ecological and economic consequences of the large scale release of engineered crops is discussed. The difference between scientific risk assessment and the public's perception of risk due to modification of the former by outrage factors is explained. Polls, media, and literature sources show that the public supports plant genetic engineering activity, but has some concerns. These concerns fall within two categories: (1) it is risky, (2) it is morally wrong. Polls show a lack of knowledge about GE by the public and that outrage factors play a major role; their effects on perception are described in detail. Ethical considerations also exercise a powerful influence over GE's acceptance, but the complementary roles of Religion and Science are emphasized. Different attitudes to nature are described and it is concluded that if the world is to be fed and life support systems sustained, active management of nature is required. Lastly, the need for scientists to communicate with the public and the basis of effective presentation is discussed.

Scientific and Public Perception of Plant Genetic Manipulation - A Critical Review

Scientific and Public Perception of Plant Genetic Manipulation - A Critical Review

Social and Behavioural Baseline for Guiding Implementation of an Efficacy Trial of Insecticide Impregnated Bed Nets for Malaria Control at Nsukka, Nigeria

Insecticide impregnated bed nets are being tested in many tropical areas as a major tool to control malaria. In a few African countries, there is a history of local bed net production and use, while in most others, ownership of commercially-produced nets is rare due to high costs relative to local income. Such variations in pre-existing bed net use behavior must be studied prior to designing new intervention trials. A "baseline" diagnostic study in Nsukka Local Government of Enugu State, Nigeria, found that local beliefs about malaria causation, which include heat from the sun and hard work, may reduce the perceived efficacy of bed nets as an appropriate malaria control action. While the belief that mosquitos can cause malaria increased with level of formal education, the study also documented that educated people simultaneously hold both indigenous and scientific perceptions about malaria. Although the project provided bed nets, curtains and residual house spray for free, long-term sustainability may be influenced by the main constraint to current ownership of a bed net, i.e., cost. Issues, such as concern about feeling hot under the nets, a tendency to sleep outside during the hot dry season, and variations in people's ideas about what constitutes a malaria episode, point to the need to monitor the bed net intervention. This is recommended as a means of learning how people perceive the efficacy of the nets, whether they use them correctly and whether the intervention can be sustained and integrated into local primary health care programs.

"No esta olvidada la ciencia": Science, Chaos Theory, and Tragedy in "El medico de su honra"

The relationship between science and literature is too frequently presented as a dichotomy of mutually exclusive fields. Scholarship is now showing that the division of studies into arts and sciences--however convenient for academics-may be artificial and misleading. Interdisciplinary approaches that emphasize similarities in scientific and literary thought are increasing in both popularity and influence, as the recent literary critical interest in chaos theory demonstrates.' The emerging science of chaos, which addresses unpredictability and nonlinearity in complex systems, offers a useful framework for the analysis of literature in addition to its more technical, scientific applications. In the following pages, I will address some of the implications of chaos theory that are more pertinent to literary criticism and then discuss in particular Calder6n's El mddico de su honra, keeping in mind the important role of science in the play's thematic imagery and the ways in which chaos theory sheds light on the formulation of Calderonian tragedy. In the process, I will show how the study of chaotics in Calder6n's play can suggest interesting points of comparison between postmodern and premodern thinking. The science of chaos emerged in the 1970s and 1980s to present a challenge to classical Newtonian physics.2 Chaos theory takes issue with the reductionism inherent in the Newtonian model and criticizes by extension the deterministic insistence on order and predictability which has characterized Western science since the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The founders of Western science, products of Enlightenment logic and the age of the machine, conceived of the world mechanistically, breaking the whole into its constituent parts, describing how each component functions, and ultimately delineating a system that behaves in a predictable, stable, and orderly way according to certain universal laws.3 This new scientific perception of the world was fundamentally deterministic; given a set of initial conditions, one could predict the behavior of a system with relative accuracy and reliability. Newtonian

‘Subscore’: a Word that is Useful – but Wrong

In 1992, during the session of ISTA (the International School of Theatre Anthropology) in Brecon, the word ‘subtext’ was replaced by ‘subscore’ – a term felt to be more appropriate for the not necessarily literary theatre, in which actors build their scenic presence with a vocal and physical form of behaviour called ‘score’. Yet, as Odin actress Julia Varley here argues, the actor's body remembers and his or her actions contain a far greater quantity of information than consciousness can ever master – while, more practically, each actor has to go through various phases of utilizing such ‘information’ if work is to be kept alive and interesting, for herself as much as for her audience. Here, Julia Varley argues for an approach to ‘precision’ in acting which is less concerned with the analysis of what is internal or external, but closer to the contemporary scientific perception – that ‘all is matter in communication without borders, a continuous flow and interchange’.