Specialists In Humanities Research Articles

Mot d’ouverture

The 22nd edition of the European Summer School of the OFFRES network (Frenchspeaking Organization for European Training and Research in humanities) in the CAAS (Centre for Advances Academic Studies) in Dubrovnik (23-30.07.2023), under the title “On the usefulness and the disadvantages of adaptation under the aegis of Molière”, aimed to commemorate the 400 years of birth and the 350 years of death of Molière (1622-1673), while transposing the question of adaptation into the field of Humanities. This edition was organized by the network (Chiara Mengozzi, Chiara Pesaresi) and Maja Vukušić Zorica from the University of Zagreb. It brought together professors and specialists in Humanities, Ph.D. and MA students (and this year some BA students), a total of 52 people from 30 countries including 23 professors, 9 foreign Ph.D. students, 1 foreign student and 19 (!) Croatian students of French Language and Literature from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb. All students participated in 6 workshops and presented the results of their work. This edition of the Summer School is presenting for the first time not only the articles of plenary speakers, but also the work of the students with the specialists that led the workshops, which are, for most of them, the crucial first steps in their future scientific career. The University of Zagreb recognized our efforts and awarded 3 ECTS points to this edition of our Summer School.

Detecting cognitive traits and occupational proficiency using EEG and statistical inference

Machine learning (ML) is widely used in classification tasks aimed at detecting various cognitive states or neurological diseases using noninvasive electroencephalogram (EEG) time series. However, successfully detecting specific cognitive skills in a healthy population, independent of subject, remains challenging. This study compared the subject-independent classification performance of three different pipelines: supervised and Riemann projections with logistic regression and handcrafted power spectral features with light gradient boosting machine (LightGBM). 128-channel EEGs were recorded from 26 healthy volunteers while they solved arithmetic, logical, and verbal tasks. The participants were divided into two groups based on their higher education and occupation: specialists in mathematics and humanities. The balanced accuracy of the education type was significantly above chance for all pipelines: 0.84–0.89, 0.85–0.88, and 0.86–0.88 for each type of task, respectively. All three pipelines allowed us to distinguish mathematical proficiency based on learning experience with different trade-offs between performance and explainability. Our results suggest that ML approaches could also be effective for recognizing individual cognitive traits using EEG.

AI implications for vocational foreign language teaching and learning: new meaning

Importance. AI rapidly and dramatically transforms reality, which poses a problem for the new generation of university graduates coming into profession. Social sciences and humanities majors are concerned about the future of their careers and uncertain of professional skills in demand. This perspective piece argues in favor of shifting to interdisciplinary approach in higher education, with emphasis on integrative content embracing special knowledge, foreign language contexts and pertinent AI-mediated settings. The underlying idea is that in educational contexts, AI cannot only focus on procedural aspects – teaching techniques and management tasks; it is essential to provide language learners with a new professional scope of reference, which means changed curriculums, revised content, and new professions.Research Methods. The work relies on various qualitative methods of research: analysis of present day labour market in AI-mediated contexts of social sciences and humanities; analysis of literature covering the use of AI for foreign language teaching and learning; a descriptive and analytical method; methods of generalizing and systematizing the selected material; interpretive analysis. The materials include scientific works of Russian and foreign scientists and modern labor market data.Results and Discussion. Labour market analysis makes it possible to discover skills essential to a new generation of specialists in social sciences and humanities. In this respect, arguments for updating the content of teaching the majors in question are provided, and a discipline with adequate integrative potential is named. The interdisciplinary approach is illustrated with AI-mediated foreign language contexts of social sciences and humanities as part of the updated integrative content of the discipline “Foreign Language” to be mastered by students.Conclusion. The conducted research brings us to the idea that the discipline “Foreign Language” has a unique potential for preparing a new generation of graduates in social sciences and humanities underpinned by AI. Along with its traditional goal – developing a person’s communicative competence, essential in digital settings, it has good prospects of integrating special subject knowledge and its language correlates, necessary for the effective operation of AI algorithms in such areas, as well as for developing the “linguo-cognitive dimension” of professional activity adequate to these conditions.

Back to Analog. Printing Digital Editions for Data Quality.

This article discusses the challenges of printing TEI XML data sets, and highlights a useful diagnostic value of PDF export for data quality. PDF output, indeed, renders only a part of the encoded information, but it can expose problems pertaining to the semantic accuracy and consistency, syntactic compliance, and completeness of the data. The uncovered problems are presented as possessing three dimensions: internal (the compliance of XML code with data models and schemata), external (the consistency of the print output in rendering the original), and contextual (arising from the interaction of XML with the transformation scenarios). These dimensions help to provide the definition of an error in the context of scholarly digital editions—both retro-digitized and originally digital. The article examines the extended skill set required of quality assurance specialists in social sciences and humanities (SSH) as compared to their industrial counterparts. It also places PDF production within the Agile testing framework, which aims to capture and eliminate defects in the early stages of product development.

Competence-based approach in the training of future specialists in arts and humanities

The evolution of the concept of "competence" in education, in particular in the field of language didactics, was reflected in the works of linguists and sociolinguists of the late twentieth century, for example, considered the ability to speak a language is a feature of the human brain, part of an innate genetic program. In this sense, competence is something that a subject can perfectly embody by giving his biological potential. The competence is unique and independent. Linguistic competence means an innate universal linguistic predisposition, an ideal internal ability that ultimately explains any linguistic phenomenon put into action. The method of questionnaire survey was used to study the features of philologists working in the education system, namely in secondary schools, lyceums, preschool educational institutions, colleges in Almaty.

A Book on the New Humanitarian Science of the XXI Century

The article is a review of a new textbook by N. B. Kirillova, Doctor of Cultural Studies, Professor, Head of the Department of Cultural Studies and Socio-Cultural Activities of the Ural Federal University, published this year by the capital’s publishing house «Academic Project». The author focuses on the problems of interaction between mass media and society. The textbook is designed for a wide range of specialists in humanities.

Население малых городов Северной Осетии: между селом и городом

The article presents the problem of putting into practice the main directions of state policy, which was later called the «Soviet project». Along with the undoubted successes of the all-Union policy in the North Caucasus, it should also be noted that the leveling of the traditional specifics of the region led to the inhibition of some plans of the Soviet government, there were not the results that the central government hoped for. The article is written in line with a new trend in Russian historiography - historical anthropology. In regional studies, the history of small towns has not yet become an object of interdisciplinary analysis, although it is a frontier topic that requires the joint efforts of historians, political scientists, sociologists, and specialists in other humanities. The object of the study was the population of small towns in North Ossetia, which by a directive method turned from rural residents into townspeople. One of the most important directions was the formation of urban settlements by merging several promising villages and the formation of a city. Cities specialized in those industries that were provided with local raw materials. At the same time, traditional forms of dormitories and farming were not taken into account. The creation of cityforming enterprises expanded the labor opportunities of «new citizens» who adopted professions unknown to themselves and moved away from agriculture over time. On the basis of a corpus of heterogeneous documents, an attempt has been made to study the folding mentality of new urban residents, yesterday’s collective farmers. The study of the issue showed that traditional and urban forms of dormitories, cultures and mentalities coexisted in small towns, which represented a peculiarity in the process of urban environment development. The study of the features of the socio-cultural, economic, psychological formation of «new citizens» makes it possible to fill in the problems in the study of an important scientific direction «urban history».

Проблема персональной идентичности в современных отечественных и зарубежных философских исследованиях (на основе аналитики научных баз данных)

Introduction. According to the well-established opinion of specialists in social sciences and humanities, a person diffracts his selves in the modern world: real spaces (professions, statuses) and virtual (accounts, profiles). In the diffraction of a person through spaces of different order, each “new” self acquires relative autonomy (a trace of the self in the network, which is present regardless of the attitude to it), and at the same time there remains the connection that, as it were, keeps the self with his digital images and “prints”. The main questions of the article are: in what relation and in relation to what is it possible to talk about the identity of a modern person; what fundamentally significant do the researches on human identity give us today; what do those who ask questions about personal identity in the digital age focus their attention on? In order to answer these questions, let us turn to scientific articles from domestic and foreign journals. This article presents the analytics of publications from Scopus and RSCI databases, in which the problem of personal identity is posed. The purpose of the article is to analyze scientific publications on human identity and summarize the main ideas presented in those publications. Methods. The research is based on general scientific methods, analysis and synthesis, induction, deduction, and abstraction. The author analyzes scientific publications on the basis of the interpretation method and a systematic approach method. Content analysis was used as a method, but it was used within the scope of the purpose. The publications were selected on the basis of the authors’ research of various aspects of identity and the difference in interpreting the phenomenon. Results. Analysis of Scopus publications made it possible to assert that the problem of identity is moving out of the anthropological context and acquiring new technical and technological frameworks (for example, scholars are raising the problem of the digital data identity, digital identification in the context of online transactions). At the same time, the anthropological view of identity remains. It is found for instance in the context of narratives, texts of a person about self that are posted on the Internet. In this context, the concept of “Person Life View” (M. Schechtman) is presented as a variant of a person’s holistic view of the self. The analysis of domestic publications makes it possible to conclude that representatives of social sciences and humanities in their research strive to overcome the dynamic view of a person (dissolving of identity or an absent self), are in search of models of “stability” of identity. Conclusion. Posing the question about the personal identity of a modern person, it seems that the border between the directly human (consciousness and body, for example) and the technical and technological (the Internet and the objective world) is becoming more and more destabilized every day. This predetermines the direction of the research. Contemporary scholars, who publish the results of their work in journals included in scientific databases, are faced not only with the problem of substantiating human identity as a theoretical concept that reflects the modern situation, but also with the problem of finding models in which a person is able to embody the idea of “stability” of identity in the everyday life.

American war movies. David Ayer’s Fury as mythologisation of war and soldiers

Both pop culture and modern Hollywood cinema are mainly intended for entertainment. American war films are not free from this vice. A researcher of culture should shun attempts to find hidden symbols, myths and flashes of meanings from distant traditional culture in such films. Contemporary popular mythologies do not represent the same mythical pattern that Eliade wrote about. Popular culture consists of ideas on various topics, borrowings, quotations and fragments of meanings, all patched together. In my view, however, Fury goes beyond pop culture and entertainment. After all, there is also good American war cinema and films that are not mindless borrowings or calques of carelessly patchworked pieces of pop culture. One can look at them and find certain cultural tropes and motifs known to specialists in humanities, such as an initiation journey, the symbolic language of eternal myths or archetypal figures of cultural heroes, all in a version transformed by popular culture, of course. The aim of my article is therefore to analyse David Ayer’s film from the perspective of a culture researcher who seeks cultural tropes and sources of the war hero myth in this cinematic work.

Ethical, legal, and social issues (ELSI) in rare diseases: a landscape analysis from funders.

Recent interest in personalized medicine has highlighted the importance of research in ethical, legal, and social issues (ELSI). Issues in ELSI research may be magnified in the rare diseases population (i.e., small numbers of affected individuals, challenges in maintaining confidentiality, and paucity of treatments for diseases where natural history information may be limited). More than other areas of research, potential barriers include the lack of funding opportunities and appropriate review processes for applications to funding agencies. The ELSI Working Group of the International Rare Diseases Research Consortium (IRDiRC) performed an informal survey on ELSI funding initiatives to learn more about different funding mechanisms and to identify potential gaps in funding opportunities. The Working Group discusses these challenges and highlights the role of funding agencies and partners such as patient advocacy groups, specialists in social sciences and humanities, and clinicians to advance ELSI research in rare diseases.

ЦИФРОВА ГУМАНІТАРИСТИКА В СИСТЕМІ ВИЩОЇ ОСВІТИ КАНАДИ

The urgency of the article is due to the increased impact of information and communication technologies on research in the field of socio-humanitarian cycle sciences, which led to the emergence of interdisciplinary direction of research and projects – Digital Humanities, increasing socially important digital content (electronic collections, archives, libraries, museums) and the need for training specialists for this area of activity. The author relies on the main provisions of the publications by V. Kopanieva, T. Yaroshenko, S. Chukanova, O. Oliinyk, and Manifesto for the Digital Humanities. The purpose of the paper is to analyze the experience of preparing specialists in Library Science and Information Sciences (LIS) in the interdisciplinary Master’s Degree Programs in Digital Humanities in Canada and determining the prospects for introducing such programs in Ukraine. The author uses the systematic approach to determining the prospects of training specialists in Digital Humanities for libraries, educational institutions, museums, archives, and other cultural institutions. Methods of analysis of literary sources and information resources, content analysis of university sites in Canada, comparative analysis of educational programs Digital Humanities are applied. The University of Alberta (Edmonton, Canada) was selected as the main research object, where the 3-year Interfaculty Educational Program upon Digital Humanities and the Master of Science in Library and Information Research (MLIS) is offered by the Digital Humanities Program and the Library for Information Studies School. The comparative analysis of the contents of the Interfaculty Educational Program upon Digital Humanities at the University of Alberta and the educational and professional program on Information, Library and Archives Management at Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University stimulated the decision to develop a new specialization in Digital Humanities for undergraduate Master’s program students in Ukraine. Digital Humanities combine information and communication methods and theories with research and teaching in the field of art and the humanities. The training of specialists in the field of DH is an actual and important task for the higher education system in Ukraine, and the experience of universities in Canada can be extremely useful.

Achilles Unbound: Multiformity and Tradition in the Homeric Epics by Casey Dué

Reviewed by: Achilles Unbound: Multiformity and Tradition in the Homeric Epics by Casey Dué Louise Pratt Achilles Unbound: Multiformity and Tradition in the Homeric Epics. By Casey Dué. Hellenic Studies 81. Cambridge, MA and London, UK: Harvard University Press, 2019. Pp. xiii + 204. Paperback, $27.50. ISBN 978-0-674-98736-4. This book offers Casey Dué’s spirited argument on behalf of the Homer Multitext project that she has been working on for eighteen years together with multiple collaborators; its publication is occasioned by the completion of the group’s digital edition of the Venetus A manuscript of the Iliad. Though much of the argument depends on work that she and her primary collaborators have already published, as well as on the work of Parry, Lord and others, the book is written in a clear and conversational style that will make it a useful introduction to the issues for those unfamiliar with earlier scholarship on an oral Homer; it is also a valuable resource for more advanced scholars who want a fuller account of the Homer Multitext project and its implications than is available elsewhere. The preface gives an overview of the project, its aspirations and methods. Like the rest of the book, it confidently asserts the project’s fundamental value in providing scholars with a “much greater understanding of the history” of the Iliad’s evolution and the multiformity of the tradition of composition in performance in which the Homeric epics were created (xii), but is modest in reach, “being merely preliminary to the very necessary work that has now become possible” (x). Dué is eager here and throughout to acknowledge her collaborators, and though I wearied of the frequent, clubby references to them by name in the text, it was inspiring to see a research project in the Humanities bring together scholars of Homer, specialists in digital humanities, undergraduates and many others in such an apparently congenial and fruitful way. The introduction and first chapter offer a succinct summary of the essential scholarship that underlies the project's aims and method. Dué focuses on the concept of multiformity and its relationship to the tradition and describes the Iliad’s evolution over time from the oral performances of its earliest phase to contemporary printed editions. This long evolution, Dué argues, is a primary justification for the Multitext project, which aims to provide an accurate picture [End Page 506] of the complexity and fluidity of the Iliad's transmission rather than futilely seeking to recreate an authoritative version of a non-existent original, as most previous editors of the Iliad have done. The arguments are presented clearly with excellent supporting details; it provides a useful starting place for the more complex discussion that follows. Chapters 2–4 each treat several examples of a different kind of testimony from successive stages of the Iliad's transmission: Chapter 2 discusses four ancient quotations of Homer, Chapter 3 variants found in the Homeric papyri and Chapter 4 those in medieval manuscripts, particularly Venetus A. Chapters 2 and 3 illustrate points using relatively short passages; Chapter 4 has a broader scope, discussing the role of Briseis, the Catalogue of Ships, the Doloneia and Achilles’ shield. Some of the arguments are dense, and, despite Dué’s notable efforts to be clear, she may lose some readers in the thicket; unfortunately, it is not easy to track multiple versions of longer passages simultaneously. Nonetheless, her overall argument is clear and persuades that multiform versions of the Iliad existed at all stages of its transmission, and that at least some of the alternative readings not represented in earlier editions are interesting, at least to specialists, and should be taken into account when discussing the text and its interpretation. Most interesting to me was her discussion of two multiforms of the Iliad’s ending attested in papyri that suggest that the encounter between Achilles and Penthesilea was sometimes told immediately following the burial of Hector. Using Nagy's arguments about the name of Penthesilea, a doublet of Achilles’ own, Dué intriguingly imagines ancient versions of the Iliad that made much more of Achilles as a lover. Yet, however interesting this alternative might be, it...

Training specialists in humanities at technical college

Training specialists in humanities at technical college

Onomatological analysis of the technonyms in the sphere of energetics (based on the Russian, English and Chinese languages)

The article deals with the results of the onomatological analysis of the names of renewable energy facilities in the Russian, English and Chinese languages. The relevance of the study is determined by the trends in the development of these languages and their onomasiological foundation, which require focused attention of linguists in the context of an avalanche-type enlargement of terminological spheres. The results of the research can be useful for a wide range of specialists in humanities, including interpreters working with terminological thesauri in the sphere of renewable and resource energy.

A Translation from German into English of Joseph von Eichendorff's Romantic Novel Ahnung und Gegenwart (1815) by Joseph von Eichendorff

Reviewed by: A Translation from German into English of Joseph von Eichendorff's Romantic Novel Ahnung und Gegenwart (1815) by Joseph von Eichendorff Erlis Wickersham Joseph von Eichendorff. A Translation from German into English of Joseph von Eichendorff's Romantic Novel Ahnung und Gegenwart (1815). Ed. and trans. Dennis F. Mahoney and Maria A. Mahoney. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2015. 426 pp. It is a notable event for students of Romanticism and general readers alike that renowned scholars Dennis F. Mahoney and Maria A. Mahoney have prepared the first English translation of Ahnung und Gegenwart (1815). Indeed, it is the first translation of this unjustly neglected novel into any language at all. The authors hope that this groundbreaking example of a late Romantic narrative with its ethereal and musical poetic inclusions will serve as a text for college classes in several disciplines while opening the way for specialists in comparative literature and other humanities or social sciences to integrate consideration of this novel into their scholarship. The sturdy paperback format of this book with its attractive youthful photograph of Eichendorff is both practical and reasonably priced. It offers a competent introduction consisting of a biography and a welcome overview of influences on his life and work. There are also accurate assessments of his place in the Romantic era and modern scholarship. Finally, the authors offer interpretations of salient aspects of the text to guide general readers as they approach an unfamiliar story. The authors provide informative notes throughout the text. They appear on the pages where individual items need elucidation rather than at the end of the book. This benefits general readers who may find endnotes cumbersome. It also tends to minimize intrusion on the narrative flow. Notes sometimes refer to secondary works pertinent to a particular passage. They serve the function of a selected bibliography and do not intrude on the translators' intention to provide an approachable story for contemporary readers. In a literary work of this kind a translator must decide the vexing question of whether to render the familiar poetry in its original form or to give prose translations. Happily for future readers, the Mahoneys successfully retain the original spirit of Eichendorff's language while keeping the English poetic lines as close to the original as possible. Here is one of many lovely examples: "Oh valleys wide, oh heights / Oh forest green so fair, / In pains and my delights / I found sweet [End Page 297] refuge there" (145). The German reads: "O Täler weit, o Höhen / O schöner, grüner Wald / Du meiner Lust und Wehen / Andächtiger Aufenthalt." Another example is "Mild air comes down blue and flowing / Springtime, springtime it must be" (165), and, in German, "Laue Luft kommt blau geflossen, / Frühling, Frühling soll es sein." When the translators depart from the poetic form of a poem, as they do in the ballad "Der Reitersmann," they explain their rationale: "The following long ballad … has an 'ABAB' rhyme scheme with an irregular rhythm. As with other long ballads within the novel, we have elected to concentrate on the story line, with rhymes for the second and fourth lines, while following Eichendorff's original rhythm as far as possible" (320). The task of translating Eichendorff is complicated not just by the great familiarity of his language but also by the disarmingly simple emotions and phraseology of the original. Indeed, the poetry is so musical that composers have always been attracted to it. Many Germans think of these poems as folk songs rather than the achievement of one person. Another difficulty of translation concerns the rendering of the novel's title into English, which the translators neatly sidestep by keeping the original German. While the notes that accompany the narrative elucidate the action, they also provide comparisons to other literary works, and these can be very helpful. To illustrate the scope of such notes, here is a straightforward example from chapter 14. Friedrich is looking at "a collection of old paintings that he had only recently purchased and … had planned to enjoy" (232). One of them is a surprisingly vivid depiction of Genevieve: "and the sun shines splendidly, everything making music in...

COMPORTAMENTO ANTISSOCIAL NA INFÂNCIA E ADOLESCÊNCIA

Abstract.The family, as a central role in the socialization of children and adolescents, has been considered a decisive factor in the development of juvenile delinquency. Since the end nineteenth century, the family and delinquent behavior has aroused the interest of specialists in humanities (education, psychology, psychiatry, social work, sociology, criminology). These professionals propose that the way to interact appropriately with significant adults and peer group is important for the development of child and adolescent. This article is a literature review, whose main purpose is to synthesize some of the studies, to understanding and explaining the factors that contribute to occurrence antisocial behavior in children and adolescent.Keywords: antisocial behavior; risk factors; protective factorsResumo.A família, como papel central na socialização das crianças e adolescentes, tem sido considerada um factor decisivo no desenvolvimento da delinquência juvenil. Desde o final do século XIX, a temática família e conduta delinquente tem despertado o interesse dos especialistas em ciências humanas (educação, psicologia, psiquiatria, serviço social, sociologia, criminologia). Estes profissionais indicam que a forma de interagir adequadamente com os adultos significativos e grupo de pares é relevante para o desenvolvimento da criança e do adolescente. Este artigo assenta na revisão da literatura, cujo objectivo consiste sintetizar alguns dos estudos realizados, para a compreensão e explicação dos factores que contribuem para a ocorrência de comportamento antissocial da criança e do adolescente.Palavras-chave: comportamento antissocial; factores de risco; factores de protecção

Content Peculiarities of Master’s Professional Foreign Language Training in Translation Studies and Interpretation at the Universities of Slovakia

AbstractThe article is devoted to the content analysis of peculiarities of Master’s professional foreign language training in Translation Studies and Interpretation at the universities of Slovakia. In the context of globalization and integration processes the study of European countries’ experience, in particular, of the Slovak Republic has been actualized. The possibility of implementing progressive ideas of Slovak experience in university level foreign language training of specialists in humanities has been pointed out. The structure and content of the Master’s curricula in Translation Studies and Interpretation have been analyzed. The communicative and intercultural approaches have been defined as the principle approaches of training. It has been noted that university level foreign language training of future specialists in humanities contributes to the forming of students’ linguistic and socio-cultural knowledge. It has been indicated that students acquire conceptual knowledge of the problem on the coexistence of different cultures in socio-cultural space. The general positive characteristics of Master’s professional foreign language training have been defined.

Teaching peers to talk to peers

Scientists should learn to communicate effectively with their colleagues through long-term, sustained training instead of ad hoc, one-off "interventions" that may or may not occur during graduate school or postdoctoral work. Since such training may place unreasonable demands on research advisors, institutions should create career opportunities for "peer-peer communication teachers."

Arts | Humanities | Complex Networks

In the last decade, the science of complex networks [1] experienced a remarkable success story, driven by never-before-seen amounts of data and an ever-increasing interest in understanding complex properties and dynamics. More and more physicists, computer scientists, engineers, mathematicians, biologists, economists and social scientists are tackling similar problems with methods borrowed from each other or, increasingly, developed by teams working across disciplines. The Leonardo satellite symposium Arts | Humanities | Complex Networks, at NetSci2010 (Boston, 10 May 2010), strives to expand and foster cross-disciplinary research on complex networks within, or with the help of, arts and humanities. Up to this point arts and humanities have usually not been included in the list of relevant disciplines featured in the standard network science literature. Given the wealth of arts and humanities data, as well as the growing role of visualization and other perceptualizations in network science, we are sure that lessons can be learned by network scientists as well as specialists in arts and humanities. The study of networks and network visualizations complement each other, as studying the represented always presupposes the study of representation. Network science can help to explore complex structures and dynamics in areas ranging from literature, art and archaeology to music, film and image science. At the same time, specialists from the arts and humanities can help to develop visualizations and other perceptualizations using expertise that draws on a broad historical corpus of works. Beyond that, other collaborative intersections can certainly be identified and explored. The convergence of arts, humanities and network science has the potential to bring new insights and foster knowledge that none of these fields can achieve on their own. We find complex network structure wherever we look in the arts and humanities, including bibliographies, museum inventories and research databases. Every conceivable link relation in these datasets forms a complex network in a larger “network of networks” between objects, people, places, times, events and concepts [2]. Interesting sub-networks in the arts and humanities include multimodal networks of features and metadata in art, film and literature; implicit citation and the transmission of motifs (including Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne); as well as networks of cultural exchange and trade, from the Neolithic to modern supply chains. Relevant network dynamics include the emergence and evolution of canons in art, music, literature and film, as well as the evolution of communities of practice in art and science. Dealing with the growing role of data visualization, network researchers benefit from cross-disciplinary collaboration. Ten years ago, leading protagonists of network science and information visualization pointed out that, visualizing a complex network, one should be able to reduce it to a simple tree or one should not try it at all, pointing to the alternative of pure numerical measures. Since then, an impressive number of examples, driven by increasing processing power and new layout methods, continue to disprove this opinion. Scientists develop new ways of visualization, such as “edge bundling,” that bring more clarity to complex network structure. Artists have developed convenient visualization tools, such as the Processing programming language, benefitting not only fellow artists but also increasingly the sciences. And humanities researchers are using tools from cell biology such as Cytoscape, visualizing their own complex network data. As a part of NetSci2010, Arts | Humanities | Complex Networks will foster interdisciplinary communication and collaboration, effectively adding arts and humanities to the expanding list of fields associated with complex network research. We will be happy to present the results in a forthcoming issue of Leonardo.

Social, Ethical Aspects of Science Attract Student Group

Recently, some 6500 invitations went out from basement of a Capitol Hill townhouse in Washington, D.C. They were sent to universities, research institutes, and individuals in U.S. and more than 80 foreign countries, inviting undergraduate and graduate studentsto participate in a unique international conference—the 1985 Student Pugwash International Conference. Based on theme, Science, Technology & Individual Responsibility, conference will be held June 23-29 at Princeton University. Ninety or so students will be selected to participate, out of 500 or more applicants expected. At conference, students will engage in a week of intensive discussions with more than 30 prominent scientists, engineers, specialists in social sciences and humanities, and executives. The discussions will focus on the ethical and social dimensions of scientific and technological decision-making—with working groups concentrating on five current issues. Keynote speaker will be Presidential Science Advis...