Universal Project Research Articles

Free/Libre Open Source Software development in developing and developed countries: A conceptual framework with an exploratory study

We propose a conceptual framework to understand drivers of motivation for developers in Free/Libre Open Source Software (FL/OSS) development across geographic boundaries. We identify generic motivations (such as sharing and learning, financial and career concerns, and satisfying functional needs), and project-level preferences (such as preferences for large teams, modular and universal projects), as well as the links between the two types of preferences of FL/OSS developers in three regions — North America, China, and India. Our findings from an exploratory study indicate the presence of intrinsic motives in all three regions, with North American developers exhibiting stronger intrinsic motives such as sharing and learning. Project-level preferences differ considerably across the three samples. Finally, we observe that generic motivational factors are related to project-level preferences, although differently in the three regions. For instance, Chinese developers, who are driven by intrinsic motives, are drawn toward projects that are larger in scale, more modular, and universal in nature. In contrast, Indian developers with similar project preferences are mostly motivated by extrinsic motivations.

“What Do Children Learn at School?”

This essay moves to investigate the co-constitution of “the child” and “the secular.” Twins of modernity, “the child” and “the secular” underwrite moral claims about progress, the universal human, and the ordering of time itself. These moral claims are carried forward by dominant narratives of secularism and European Enlightenment.This dominant story aligns secularism with universalism, reason, progress, freedom, and peace “versus” an irrational and atavistic religion. Though narrated as a universal project, secularism, in its dominant form, remains tied to a particular religion, Christianity, and a particular history of origins in Enlightenment Europe. Janet R. Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini have termed this dominant formation “Christian secularism.” How does “the child” come to function in the gap between “the religious” and “the secular”?This essay pursues these connections via a close analysis of French President Nicolas Sarkozy's February 2008 proposed educational initiative to teach the meaning of the Holocaust to every French fifth grader. Sarkozy calls upon the specter of dead Jewish child-victims in order to produce a supposedly universal social body in the present and for the future. This unexpected lamination of pedagogy and necrophilia reveals that the survival of the body politic happens not by keeping death at bay but by soliciting it. As site of this solicitation, the Christian secular child uneasily straddles past and future, death and life. Lee Edelman may be right that “the child” summons the fantasy of a future. Nevertheless, we must critically supplement his analysis by asking, which child, whose fantasized future?

FANON IN THE ANDES

In the rise of contemporary indigenous movements in Latin America, indigenous leaders have acknowledged their debt to the Bolivian indigenous intellectual Fausto Reinaga (1906-1994), a major theorist of the anti-colonial and anti-Occidental ideology known as indianisimo. His work, especially his 1969 classic La revolución india had a profound impact on the development of indigenous movements, intellectuals, and leaders including Bolivian President Evo Morales. Yet, curiously, his work remains sorely understudied. This essay examines the continuing relevance of Reinaga by exploring his ‘Atlantic’ encounter with the thought of the Martinican-Algerian theorist Frantz Fanon. Reinaga’s encounter with Fanon, however, is not an unproblematic one and there are instructive commonalities and tensions in their work. This article addresses Fanon’s influence on Reinaga’s views on colonialism, compares Fanon’s and Reinaga’s deployments of the concept of race, and contrasts their views on postcolonial nation-building. Though in some ways Fanon is more attentive to the complexities and tensions of anticolonial struggles than Reinaga, I argue that the work of Reinaga can be read in a Fanonian spirit, as a dialectical analysis in which the focus on the particular is necessary for universal projects of emancipation.

Human diversity and the genealogy of languages: Noah as the founding ancestor of the Chinese

The characteristics which were held to define the Chinese language within the Western intellectual tradition placed it for a time at the centre in discussions of the genealogy of mankind. The dominant premodern paradigm for the explanation of human linguistic diversity was Biblical exegesis, as discussed and elaborated within the framework of ‘universal history’. A number of Western scholars argued that the Biblical patriarchs could be identified with legendary figures from Chinese history and that there was a direct link between the Chinese language and the pre-Babel linguistic order. The Chinese language, in particular its writing system, had universal characteristics, making it central in the quest for the restoration of the linguistic and conceptual unity of mankind. The rise of a modern linguistics marginalized universal projects of etymological speculation, and it was concluded that there was no cognate relationship between Chinese, Hebrew and the European languages. Both the language and the writing system were increasingly seen as anomalous and unnatural. Western understandings of the Chinese language and the Chinese writing system need to be contextualized within the evolution of conceptualizations of the natural and artificial.

Contested Sovereignties and the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund

The Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF) is a new global conservation funding project created in 2000 through start‐up funds from Conservation International, the World Bank, the Global Environmental Facility, and the MacArthur Foundation. It aims to protect the world's biodiversity hotspots, promote civil society, and assist in the Millennial Development Goals to eradicate poverty worldwide. This essay analyzes the CEPF through the making of the Mountains of Southwest China eco‐profile and in light of Hardt and Negri's much‐debated critique of globalization. While the CEPF imagines itself as a universal project with planetary ambitions, which move around the world empirelike, in China it has had to funnel its monies through a range of organizations connected to an increasingly anxious state. What results is a transformed global project, where the meanings of environmental activism, civil society, and grassroots resistance are up for grabs. The CEPF thus provides a window in the production of contested sovereignties in the bold new age of imperial sovereignty.

Prophets Facing Sidewise: The Geopolitics of Knowledge and the Colonial Difference

There is no safe place and no single locus of enunciation from where the uni‐versal could be articulated for all and forever. Hindu nationalism and Western neo‐liberalism are entangled in a long history of the logic of coloniality (domination, oppression, exploitation) hidden under the rhetoric of modernity (salvation, civilization, progress, development, freedom and democracy). There are, however, needs and possibilities for Indians and Western progressive intellectuals working together to undermine and supersede the assumptions that liberal thinkers in the West are better placed to understand what is the common good better than Indian thinkers in post‐partition India. Science, in the last analysis, doesn’t carry in itself an ethics and politics. Therefore, it is doubtful to argue that science is beyond both, and only concerned with the advancement of the frontier of knowledge and understanding. Science could be (like Christianity, Hinduism, Liberalism or Marxism) both imperial and liberating. Knowledge and understanding, rather than science; gnoseology rather than epistemology, should be thought out as which the horizon toward a dialogical and critical cosmopolitanism (e.g., pluriversallity as universal project), could be envisioned beyond East and West, Hindu nationalism and Westertn (neo) liberalism.

Statistical analysis of health preventive behavior of population under universal coverage health insurance project in Chiang Mai municipal area (Thailand)

The purpose of this research is to study people’s health preventive behavior in different aspects and to study the pattern of relation between health preventive behavior and personal data set. The results of this study found that most people did not smoke or drink alcohol, rode motorbike, did not exercise regularly, did not have sexual intercourse with other people except their own couple, and relaxed themselves by listening to music and watching movies. At the level of significance 0.05, the pattern of relation between people’s health preventive behavior and personal data set was analyzed canonical correlation analysis. The results found that the relation between personal data set and medical check up and health interests behavior set had canonical correlation at 0.547. Regarding nonlinear canonical correlation between personal data set, smoking and drinking alcohol behaviors set, exercising behavior set and medical check up and health interests behavior set were 0.683. According to binary logistic regression analysis which corrected classification result 88.3% and the study found that the influential factors for smoking behavior consisted of sex, religion, the highest level in education, type of job and drinking alcohol behavior. Regarding categorical regression, the study found that sex was the most influential factor on drinking alcohol behavior while age and smoking behavior were ranked respectively. Besides, the highest level in education was the most influential factor on health interest while sex and age were ranked respectively.

The Better Beginnings, Better Futures Project: A Universal, Comprehensive, Community-Based Prevention Approach for Primary School Children and Their Families

Evaluated a community-based, universal project designed to prevent emotional and behavioral problems and promote general development in young children, while also attempting to improve family and neighborhood characteristics, to link effectively with existing services, and to involve local residents in project development and implementation. The research involved 554 4-year-old children and their families living in 3 disadvantaged neighborhoods in Ontario, Canada. Longitudinal analyses of changes over the first 5 years of project operation indicated significant improvements in children's and parents' social-emotional functioning and physical health, parenting behaviors, and neighborhood and school characteristics. The findings from the Better Beginnings, Better Futures Project are encouraging and provide unique evidence for the extent to which a universal, comprehensive, community-based prevention strategy can promote the longer term development of young children, their families, and their neighborhoods.

Two Value-pluralist Arguments for Liberalism

John Gray has argued that Berlinian value pluralism undermines the traditional claims of liberalism to universal authority, rendering it at best no more than one legitimate political form among others. That view is mistaken; value pluralism implies a distinctive case for liberalism as a universal project by way of two principal lines of argument. First, pluralism implies the desirability within a given political arena of a diversity of goods and ways of life, a diversity best accommodated by liberalism. Second, the rational resolution of particular cases of value conflict under pluralism is possible (where it is possible) only by way of a particularist, Aristotelian form of practical reasoning, which requires the exercise of certain characteristically liberal virtues. Overall, pluralism not only supports liberalism, but supports liberalism in a strong, universalist and perfectionist form.

Noncommutative simplicial complexes and the Baum--Connes conjecture

We associate a noncommutative C *-algebra with every locally finite simplicial complex.We determine the K-theory of these algebras and show that they can be used to obtain a conceptual explanation for the Baum—Connes conjecture. Our main technical result determines the algebra generated by the coefficients of a universal projection in an algebraic crossed product by a discrete group $ \Gamma $ , in terms of such a noncommutative algebra associated with a simplicial complex defined by $ \Gamma $ .

Universidad Ruperto Carola de Heidelberg: desde la tradición al futuro

En una primera parte del artículo, como antecedente y contexto de las tradiciones y el prestigio de la Universidad de Heidelberg, pasaremos revista a algunos de los acontecimientos más importantes de su historia y de su proyección romántica universal, tan vinculadas a la ciudad que la alberga. En la segunda parte, analizaremos las razones por las que la Universidad de Heidelberg se cuenta entre las más importantes instituciones de excelencia académica de Alemania y de Europa, en materia de docencia e investigación, señalando además los conceptos y las estrategias innovadoras que se están aplicando para consolidar y proyectar su posición de líder mundial, como la creación del Heidelberg Center para América Latina, que se inaugurara en abril del presente año en Santiago de Chile.

RTML: remote telescope markup language and you

In order to coordinate the use of robotic and remotely operated telescopes in networks – like Gottingen's MOnitoring NEtwork of Telescopes (MONET) – a standard format for the exchange of observing requests and reports is needed. I describe the benefits of Remote Telescope Markup Language (RTML), an XML-based protocol originally devel-oped by the Hands-On Universe Project, which is being used and further developed by several robotic telescope projects and firms.

RTML: remote telescope markup language and you

In order to coordinate the use of robotic and remotely operated telescopes in networks – like Göttingen's MOnitoring NEtwork of Telescopes (MONET) – a standard format for the exchange of observing requests and reports is needed. I describe the benefits of Remote Telescope Markup Language (RTML), an XML-based protocol originally devel-oped by the Hands-On Universe Project, which is being used and further developed by several robotic telescope projects and firms.

Class Divisions Today—the Inclusive Democracy Approach

The aim of this article is to show that the collapse of the socialist project and the consequent abandonment of 'grand narratives' should not be followed by the rejection of every type of class analysis and politics, or, even more so, by the abandonment of every attempt to develop a universal project for human emancipation. Instead, class divisions have to be redefined to extend beyond the original conception of them which was restricted to the economic sphere, and a new class model should be developed, which would embrace the politics of 'difference' and 'identity' and would be appropriate to the era of an internationalised market economy. In the first part of the article, the historical development of economic class divisions is examined and the inadequacies of the Marxist class categories are assessed. In the second part, a new model of class divisions based on the unequal distribution of power in all its forms is developed, whereas in the final part an attempt is made to define the subject of emancipa...

On an actual apparatus for conceptual change

The project of “conceptual change” has assumed a central place in science education, as both a research program and professional maxim. Conceptual change flags the transformation of students' naive conceptualizations of science into the scientific understandings of their curriculum. This article organizes a reading of the literature that brings into view a collection of design specifications for a conceptual change apparatus. Moving from the conceptual to the practical, it then pursues an analysis of one such apparatus, in the particulars of a science education demonstration program produced by the Harvard–Smithsonian Private Universe Project. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Sci Ed84:228–264; 2000.

Erratum

This article has been withdrawn as it was published elsewhere and accidentally duplicated. The original article can be seen here: 10.1108/03074809910273250. When citing the article, please cite: Robin Murray, Neil Smith, Ian Pettman, (1999), “The UNIverse Project: a review of progress up to the demonstration phase”, New Library World, Vol. 100 Iss: 4, pp. 153 - 163.

The UNIverse Project

This paper covers the UNIverse Project, one of the leading projects currently being funded under the European Commission's Telematics for Libraries 4th Framework Programme. The paper will describe the technical background of the project and will outline the way in which we have built on the concept of the virtual union catalogue to overcome the problems traditionally associated with distributed catalogue searching. It will also explore the way in which the virtual union catalogue plays a fundamental role in integrating key library services to provide a sophisticated software solution for users in today's networked information environment.

The UNIverse Project: a review of progress up to the demonstration phase

Reviews the progress of the UNIverse Project, a large‐scale open distributed libraries demonstration project supported by the European Commission’s Telematics for Libraries Programme. Concentrates on the technical achievements of the first two phases of the contract and indicates some technical problems encountered. Describes the development of the special interest groups and the plans for the final stage (the demonstration and evaluation phase) including progress to January 1999. Outlines the work remaining in the demonstration phase including the evaluation and proposed exploitation plans as well as a new task focussing on business and economic issues.

Tradition and Change

Since the 1980s, China has undergone another wave of modernization characterized by rapid social change, fast paced economic growth and the proliferation of new legislation. Does this imply the triumph of a universal project of modernity in China? Or is China modernizing on its own terms? What is the relation between tradition and modernity, and between the state and society, given that modernization has been planned and pushed forward by the state from the beginning. This article examines cases that reflect incongruity and conflicts between formal and informal institutions in the process of modernization. It emphasizes the positive role tradition has played and might play in the formation of norms and orders, and suggests a way to rethink the relation between tradition and modernity and the implication of tradition for the ‘rule of law’ and modernity in China.

Project offers funding applicants education, public outreach help

The Windows to the Universe project (http://www.windows.umich.edu) offers principal investigators developing proposals for funding from NASA, the National Science Foundation, and other agencies a high leverage vehicle for education and public outreach efforts associated with their proposals. With a rapidly growing audience of over 300,000 users per month (as of February 1999), approximately one third in the K‐12 sector, the Windows to the Universe project provides investigators an instant, large‐scale, global audience.The approximately 4800 interconnected html documents developed by the project over the past 4 years (including an emphasis on Sun‐Earth connections through its “Space Weather Today” section) provide a substantial body of content, as well as a proven user‐friendly interface, that can be immediately utilized to avoid duplication of effort and provide efficient use of education and public outreach funds. The Windows to the Universe project also includes teacher workshops, evaluation, and dissemination.