Writer's Knowledge Research Articles

The Construction of Negotiated Meaning: A Social Cognitive Theory of Writing

Based on five years of close observation of students, writing and collaborative planning--the practice in which student writers take the roles of planner and supporter to help each other develop a more rhetorically sophisticated writing plan--foremost cognitive composition researcher Linda Flower redefines writing in terms of an interactive social and cognitive process and proposes a convincing and compelling theory of the construction of negotiated meaning.Flower seeks to describe how writers construct meaning. Supported by the emerging body of social and cognitive research in rhetoric, education, and psychology, she portrays meaning making as a literate act and a constructive process. She challenges traditional definitions of literacy, adding to that concept the elements of social literate practices and personal literate acts. In Flower's view, this social cognitive process is a source of tension and conflict among the multiple forces that shape meaning: the social and cultural context, the demands of discourse, and the writer's own goals and knowledge. Flower outlines a generative theory of conflict. With this conflict central to her theory of the construction of negotiated meaning, she examines negotiation as an alternative to the metaphors of reproduction and conversation. It is through negotiation, Flower argues, that social expectations, discourse conventions, and the writer's personal goals and knowledge become inner voices. The tension among these forces often creates the hidden logic behind student writing. In response to these conflicting voices, writers sometimes rise to the active negotiation of meaning, creating meaning in the interplay of alternatives, opportunities, and constraints.

LETTERS

The September JOURNAL article by John L. Riggs indicates that AIDS cannot be transmitted through the water route. However, within the table of contents page summary and the article, it is stated the risk is essentially zero the AIDS virus can survive optimal water treatment procedures. The writer asks if this implies that AIDS can be transmitted in nonoptimal treatment drinking water. Also, as the only modes of HIV transmission to date were specified, the author does not see the relationship to drinking water treatment processes. To the writer's knowledge, HIV cannot survive outside a body‐fluid environment and even if it found its way to water sources, it would die on contact with the atmosphere as it is an anaerobic virus. Mr. Riggs responds that the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) does not infect by the oral route, it infects by gaining entry to susceptible cells within the bloodstream (e.g., through cuts, abrasions, etc.). Therefore if the virus was present in a raw drinking water source and survived the usual water treatment processes, an infection could only occur by physical contact with the water by a person who has open cuts or abrasions–not by ingestion. Such an event has not yet occurred and probably never will, however it is scientifically impossible to establish that this will never take place. The growth and reproduction of a virus cannot be described as aerobic or anaerobic since viruses reproduce only within living cells. Depending on the virus in question, it can often remain infectious outside the living cell for a period of time. HIV is a relatively unstable virus and is susceptible to drying and elevated temperatures.

The Black Hills Bill: Expressions of Doubt As to Its Justification and Constitutionality

I. Senate Bill 105, the Bradley Bill, constitutes an unprecedented intrusion by Congress into the affairs of a State. A. The bill will create a new reservation which would cover all or part of seven counties. These are Harding, Butte, Lawrence, Pennington, Meade, Custer and Fall River. B. The bill would transfer over 1.5 million acres of publicly owned land to a newly created entity called the Nation. The publicly owned land is in the Black Hills National Forest, Custer National Forest, Wind Cave, and Buffalo Gap National Grasslands. C. The bill would establish exclusive jurisdiction to regulate hunting and in the newly created Sioux Nation although the State of South Dakota has controlled such hunting and fishing since 1889. S.B. 105 ? 17. (Hereinafter only a ? is given in reference to S.B. 105.) D. The bill would severely alter the water rights regime as discussed in more detail below5. E. The bill would cloud property rights by giving the Sioux Nation the right of first refusal with regard to sale of lands deemed by the Sioux Nation to have special religious or ecological significance. ? 8(6), 11 (b), (c). E The bill would create a huge area of checkerboard jurisdiction as discussed in more detail below. G. The U.S. has not created any reservations of this size, to the writer's knowledge, in the Twentieth Century. II. The historical case justifying the bill is very weak. A. The first elements of the Sioux did not cross the Missouri River and certainly did not see the Black Hills until sometime between 1750 and 1800. 1. Wesley R. Hurt was contracted by the U.S. Department of Justice to study the movement of the Sioux. Hunt traced their progress from Minnesota to South Dakota as follows:

Chapter V: The Writer's Knowledge: Theory, Research, and Implications for Practice

Chapter V: The Writer's Knowledge: Theory, Research, and Implications for Practice

Flood Control Benefits Revisited

This paper provides a brief description of the most common method of calculating urban flood damages‐prevented benefits and critically appraises the data, assumptions, and techniques that may lead to erroneous estimates of benefits. Several issues were identified that, to the writer's knowledge, are not typically addressed in studies: (1) Bias resulting from inaccurate estimates of structure elevations; (2) failure to consider that unemployed labor may be used to repair flood damages; (3) failure to consider replacement of existing structures; and (4) underestimation of willingness to pay for repairs. With a better understanding of the weaknesses of current techniques, future research and data gathering can be directed to yield the greatest increase in overall accuracy.

The Development of International Legal Periodicals in Russia

The influence which the founding of periodicals devoted to public and private international law has had upon the development of the discipline as a whole and upon the shaping of doctrinal views and schools of thought, to the best of the present writer's knowledge, has yet to be the object of scholarly evaluation. The appearance, and occasionally the passing, of individual titles has been noted from time to time, and the explosion of student-edited journals attached to sundry law school international law societies of various appellations in the United States been commented upon, but the phenomenon as a whole deserves, and doubtless in due course will receive, consideration as a transnational one. The present essay undertakes to explore virtually unknown (both as events and as extant cupies) episodes in the development of international legal periodicals in pre- and postrevolutionary Russia.

The Preparation, Modification and Applications of Nonfunctional Liquid Polybutadienes

Abstract This review will be restricted to the applications of liquid polybutadienes (BR) which, as prepared, are devoid of functional groups other than the unsaturation left after polymerization. These products should not be confused with the so called telechelic BRs in which terminal functional groups are deliberately introduced during preparation. The preparative techniques and applications relating to the latter polymers have been described both by French and more recently by Athey. For many applications, it is necessary to introduce functional groups into the “nonfunctional” liquid BRs as a subsequent stage to polymerization. However, such chemical modification is often carried out to yield a relatively high level of functionality and, more significantly, the functional groups are randomly distributed along the polymer backbone. Therefore, there is still a clear distinction between chemically modified, nonfunctional BRs and the telechelic polymers. Whereas the latter have often been included under the “liquid rubber” classification, this term would be incorrect for the nonfunctional BRs with respect to the majority of their applications. Liquid BRs are not a new range of materials. To the writer's knowledge the first commercial liquid BR to be produced by a polymerization process was Plastikator 32. This polymer was produced in Germany, apparently from about 1925. Between about 1950 and the mid-1960s many of the major polymer producing companies developed production techniques and investigated the applications of liquid BRs. However, with the notable exceptions of Du pont's “Budium” and the Richardson Co.'s “Ricon” range (formerly known as Enjay Buton and now manufactured by Colorado Chemicals Specialities Inc.), they did not become fully commercial. It was not until the late 1960s and early 1970s that liquid BRs achieved significant commercial tonnages. This was largely associated with the advent, in Western Europe and Japan, of the use of liquid BRs as the feedstock for electrodeposition primers for car bodies and for chlorinated rubber paints and inks. A reasonable estimate for annual production of liquid BRs in the mid-1970s would be between 8000 and 15 000 (tons.) This ready commercial availability of liquid BRs, encompassing a wide range of microstructure and molecular weight (M.W.) has prompted an equally wide ranging evaluation of their potential applications. It is impossible to define a M.W. above which a BR is no longer construed as being a liquid. BRs up to a M.W. around 50×103 have been included in this loose definition, but the most common range is 1×103−10×103. Apart from M.W. and molecular weight distribution, M.W.D., the viscosity of a BR is very dependent upon the polymer structure. The same parameters which affect viscosity also have a strong influence on the chemical modification and application properties of liquid BRs. Previous articles describing applications of liquid BRs have tended to concentrate on products having a particular type of microstructure. Since the technique of preparation often controls the microstructure and M.W.D., it is relevant to describe aspects of the preparation and chemical modification as a prelude to discussing the applications of liquid BRs.

Evaluating Contemporary Children's Biography: Imaginative Reconstruction and Its Discontents

Evaluating Contemporary Children's Biography:Imaginative Reconstruction and Its Discontents Leo Zanderer (bio) In a recent article in the Virginia Quarterly Review Francelia Butler, the editor of Children's Literature, reflects on the fledgling state of the field: its detractors fail to make a necessary distinction between "books" and literature; there is much good writing, but it is obscured by the bad; the academic world has given it only begrudging acknowledgement; only a meagre criticism has thus far developed.1 Thus, trying to evaluate children's literature provides us with a difficult task. Although we must be wary not to claim a complete identity between the two, it does seem logical, as well as expedient, to seek guidance about reading children's literature from mainstream literature and its criticism. Yet, when we turn to biography, we face a problematic situation equal to that of the state of children's literature itself. Biography itself is only now being recognized as a distinct form and genre worthy of rules, criteria, and controversy. There seems to be some uncertainty as to whether biography is essentially literature or history. Should the biographer pay attention only to the facts or should he invent, reconstruct, and recreate the life according to poetic license normally taken by the writer of fiction? Three recent considerations of the art by D. J. Enright, Anthony Alpers, and Michael Holroyd suggest the scope of the problem, and give us a point of departure from which to develop a way of regarding biographies written for children. Enright's view may be termed reactionary. He begins by saying: We continue to hear that biography is the most esteemed, indeed the most popular of literary forms nowadays. If this is true, then, first of all. it is sad, since the novel—the form of literature which has or can have the widest and strongest influence—ought to occupy that position. . . . Dissatisfaction with the pious memorial class of biography. Great Sexless Lives and so forth, led to all sorts of imaginative reconstructions or imitations which in no way got to "the truth". . . . The biographer is a historian, and we still expect historians to get things right, orat least aspire to; the real deserves a special respect. No doubt this is difficult to contrive—the historian wasn't there, whereas the novelist is there, in the middle of his creation—but difficulty is no reason for confusing genres.2 [End Page 33] Enright further maintains that we should resist inventing a life that is opposed to the surface facts of an individual's life and that only satisfies "our own notions of what we would like him to have been." Anthony Alpers is not as openly opposed to imaginative recreations, but his own standards for writing biography suggest a similar conservatism. The biographer is first and lastly concerned with the collection and arrangement of facts. "Biographies fall roughly into three kinds (and many more I'm sure), depending on the author's distance from his human subject in space and time. . . ."3 "Personal" biography is based on the writer's firsthand knowledge of his subject. In writing "proximate or reported biography," the writer doesn't know his subject, "but he either possesses or is equipped to acquire a thorough understanding of the human subject's background and activities perhaps in public action, or in science, or in one of the arts." In "historical biography . . . the biographer works from books and documents unburdened by the drudgeries (and wasted journeys for fruitless interviews) endured by the two other kinds, untainted also by that touch of the low detective." For Alpers "the uses of irony and 'brilliance' in biography are a topic apart. They can displace for a time, but not replace, what the craft demands." Compared to that of Enright and Alpers, Holroyd's biography is a highly daring and creative occupation; as such it seems to allow for the kind of writing that can make biographies palatable and useful to children. In Holroyd's view, biography is only now coming into its own. "It seems to be the product of a strange coupling between old-fashioned history and the old-fashioned novel. . . ."4 Holroyd acknowledges one critic...

Egg Gathering at Bempton: Notes on tackle and technique, 1935–39

In 1974, Folk Life contained a paper entitled ‘Sea Bird Fowling in Scotland and Faroe’. We are indebted to the author, John R. Baldwin, for a most comprehensive survey of a once important seasonal activity. Any operation involving a man descending a cliff on a rope is spectacular to the lay observer and many descriptions of it have been published over the years, but none, to the present writer's knowledge, provides so detailed a study, both technical and economic, with evidence drawn from so wide an area.The taking of sea birds and their eggs was, with the exception of the fishing industry, perhaps the last significant exploitation of a natural food resource in these islands.

The Coal Mines Council

This paper is intended as an introduction to a disputes resolving procedure peculiar to the New Zealand mining industry. To the best of the writer's knowledge no previous attempt has been made to describe this mdustrial tribunal (Coal Mines Council). I could find no trace of any in-depth study on the value of this and other industrial decision-making bodies in New Zealand. It has not been possible therefore to draw comparisons. The opinions expressed are those of the writer, and not necessarily those of the Mines Department, Coal Mine Owners or Miners' Unions.

Truman's Ultimatum to Stalin on the 1946 Azerbaijan Crisis: the Making of a Myth

ALTHOUGH IT ALWAYS HAS BEEN clear that the United States generally supported the Iranian attempt to get Soviet troops to evacuate Azerbaijan in northern Iran by and immediately after March 2, 1946, the pre-stated withdrawal date for Allied troops in Iran, it has only been since 1952 that Harry S. Truman claimed that he had given Joseph Stalin an ultimatum which forced the Russian evacuation of May, 1946. It is the thesis of this paper that the ultimatum is a myth created by Truman and perpetuated by scholars. The thesis is premised upon evidence which, to the best of this writer's knowledge, has never appeared in any scholarly book. This paper will examine three aspects of the topic: the evolution of Truman's claim, contrary evidence, and scholarly perpetuation of the myth. It also will serve as a reminder and prime example of the need for scholars to maintain a critical approach to Truman despite his image of honesty.

Apportionment of an International Common Petroleum Deposit

AN international common petroleum deposit is a single petroleum structure or field which underlies in part the territory of two or more States. Such a deposit may be situated on land or offshore. In either location it is still subject to conflicting national rights of exploitation. As such, it is a potential source of international dispute as to the nature and extent of rights as may be asserted by the several sovereigns under whose territory the pool lies. In such a dispute the main problem is to ascertain the content of the law defining the rights of those States interested in the common reserve. It is, therefore, the intention of this paper to determine what the relevant law may be in such a case and to discuss briefly how such legal rules as may be applicable can be most constructively applied. The problem of apportioning an international common petroleum deposit appears, perhaps, to be a somewhat academic one. The discovery of such shared deposits on the international level has been, as yet, very slight indeed. There are in fact, to this writer's knowledge, only two such common fields, both onshore, which have been the subject of international negotiation and settlement of conflicting rights of exploitation.' The problem, nevertheless, has been the subject of far greater recent interest than limited actual practice reveals. Current speculation is that an appreciable amount of petroleum may soon be discovered offshore in the course of current intensive exploration now being carried out. The question of national ownership of any such discoveries, in the case of offshore fields, has become so inextricably connected with the problem of delimiting international offshore boundaries that recent State interest and practice on both of these points have added immediate relevance to this topic.

The Production of Multi-Media Kits by Teachers

At the outset the reader must be warned that this description of multi-media production is based on the writer's experience and knowledge of activities in the United States. Incidentally, in the USA there has been considerable discussion about the meaning of the term ‘Multi-Media Kit’ discussion which has resulted in general agreement on the meaning of the term. A recent definition, which was included in the glossary of terms in the 1975 Handbook of Standard Ter-minology and Guide for Recording and Reporting Information About Educational Technology (published by the US Federal Government) reads ‘a collection of subject-related materials in more than one medium intended for use as a unit and which no one medium is so clearly dominant that the others are dependent or accompanying. Similarly, the Educational Technology Glossary of the Department of Communications, Government of Canada (in a 1975 draft) defines multimedia learning as ‘the integrated use of various communication media (print, audio-tape, film, slide, etc) in the construction of a learning programme, in such a way that each part of the information being learned is carried by the most appropriate medium’. These definitions do not seem to be in conflict—the major thrust being that multi-media must mean that more than one medium is used, and none clearly dominates the communication package.

The Effect of Interchanging Segments Between Two Typewriters: A Unique Criminal Defense Defeated

Abstract Typewriting problems can take unusual turns in some cases. Routinely we identify machines and at times are called upon to make some estimate of the date of typewriting or of its continuity. To this writer's knowledge, however, no one has been faced with the problem of showing that a typewriter involved in a criminal case had actually been rebuilt during trial in an endeavor to substantiate the authenticity of fraudulent documents.

Traded Goods, Nontraded Goods, and the Balance of Payments

HISTORICALLY, analyses of the determinants of a country's balance of payments position have centered on (1) relative price effects (the elasticities approach), (2) income effects (the absorption approach), and (3) asset effects (the portfolio balance approach). In their recent discussions of monetary and fiscal policy, McKinnon [8] and Mundell [9] examined the income and asset effects. Their small country assumption (given world prices of tradable goods) ruled out relative price effects. In contrast, recent discussions of currency depreciations and optimal currency areas have emphasized the importance of relative price changes by relaxing the small country assumption and by introducing nontraded goods. In his classic paper on optimum currency areas, McKinnon [7] defined nontraded goods as follows. 'The ratio of tradable to nontradable goods' is a simplifying concept which assumes all goods can be classified into those that could enter into foreign trade and those that do not because transportation is not feasible for them .... This overly sharp distinction between classes of tradable and non-tradable goods is an analytically simple way of taking transportation costs into account. By tradable goods we mean: (a) exportables, which are those goods produced domestically and, in part, exported: (b) importables, which are both produced domestically and imported.2 McKinnon's definition of an optimal currency area depended crucially on the relative size of the nontraded goods sector. Pearce's [11] analysis of a currency depreciation represents possibly the most comprehensive attempt to incorporate nontraded goods. Using a model with two traded goods and one nontraded good, Pearce concluded that It may well be that the success of exchange depreciation as a policy rests more upon its power to reduce the price of non-traded goods relative to those traded than upon its power to affect the real terms of trade.3 Despite this promising start, A. Krueger [4] noted in her review of Pearce's paper that To date, to this writer's knowledge, no other payments models have

New Analytical Solutions for Dye Diffusion Equations

The two- and three-dimensional, unsteady-state, convective-diffusive partial differential equations describing the concentration distribution of a tracer dye released as an instantaneous source (line or point, respectively) and subject to the no-flux boundary conditions at the river bottom and surface (two-dimensional) and banks (three-dimensional) have been derived analytically using integral transform methods. Previous efforts at analytical dye modeling have assumed infinite geometry in all dimensions thus avoiding the complicating second type (no-flux) boundary conditions at the river bottom, surface, and banks. In the present study, the river was considered finite in the vertical and lateral directions, the dye source location was made arbitrary, and to the writer's knowledge the results represent the first two- and three-dimensional analytical solutions of tracer modeling to appear in the literature which include the boundary effects of the river. The solutions will have particular application in the calculation of turbulent diffusion coefficients in two and three dimensions, which for the first time will analytically include any significant effects of the river boundaries.

The Cult of Dead Kin in Assyria and Babylonia

Assyriologists have long been aware of the evidence for a cult of the dead in Assyria and Babylonia, but there is at present, to the writer's knowledge, no systematic study of the subject. She has therefore examined the evidence relating to the cult of the dead, and attempted to compare the attitude towards dead kin shown in the cult with what we know of relations between living kin and of concepts of descent. In this study, comparisons are occasionally made with other societies not culturally connected with Mesopotamia. The writer's interest here lies in the application of social anthropology to the study of Mesopotamian society. Traditionally anthropologists have studied the type of society formerly called “primitive”, now more often called “small-scale” or “pre-industrial”. Ancient Mesopotamia was not a society of this type, but a peasant society, with a comparatively elaborate technology and a wide field of social relations, at least among the power-holding groups. Social anthropologists have only recently begun to study peasant societies. It will be appreciated that the writer has no formal training in social anthropology, and that this attempt is, therefore, highly tentative.The factors determining the existence and importance of a cult of dead kin in a society have not been clearly revealed by comparative study. Scheinfeld has indeed shown that all societies that have such a cult have also the institution of inheritance of property, but the evidence examined by him does not permit the conclusion that inheritance is a precondition for the existence of a cult of deceased kin.

Toward a Morphological Classification of Organic Reefs and Reef Complexes: ABSTRACT

Most of the literature concerning the definition of organic reefs (bioherms and biostromes) and of similar carbonate accumulations emphasizes the genetic and biostratigraphic classification of these features. To the writer's knowledge, no previous attempt has been made at a purely morphological classification. Reef complexes have in recent years been called bank atolls, reef-fringed carbonate banks, and biohermal flanked biostromes. Such hybrid names appear to impose a dualistic origin on a complex, although it is obviously a genetic unit, and they should therefore be avoided. Henson's reef complex included the sediments genetically associated with the sensu stricto; these are not banks or biostromes within the generally accepted meaning of these t rms. The writer therefore has introduced the term cycloherms (circular reefs) for the gigantic shelf atolls such as those in the Devonian of western Canada, in the Permo-Pennsylvanian of West Texas, and in the Cretaceous of Mexico. In addition, the term phragmoherms (wall reefs) was introduced for fringing reefs and barrier reefs such as those in the Triassic of the Alps. In recent years bioherms proper have been called reefs, reefs, and other such terms which bear little relation to their actual morphologic proportions. Such names are based on the shapes commonly seen in cross sections of exaggerated vertical scale, and create erroneous impressions of their true relative dimensions. The new, unequivocal names proposed for these bioherms are aspiherms (shield reefs) for the pinnacle type and trapeziherms (table reefs) for the flat-topped haystack type. End_of_Article - Last_Page 637------------

Onset of Atomic-Subshell Filling in Ordinary and Superheavy Elements

Energy considerations in the central-field approximation to the one-electron problem are used to derive a theoretical expression, namely, ${Z}_{1}(l)>~(\frac{1}{6}) {(2l+1)}^{3}$, for the atomic number ${Z}_{1}(l)$ at which a given atomic $l$ subshell first begins to become occupied. The lowest integral values of ${Z}_{1}(l)$ satisfying this relation for $l=0, 1, 2$, and 3 are found to be in exact agreement with the corresponding empirical values, i.e., ${Z}_{1}=1, 5, 21$, and 58, respectively. In the domain of the superheavy elements ($100\ensuremath{\lesssim}Z\ensuremath{\lesssim}200$) and beyond, this relation gives ${Z}_{1}(l)=122$, 222, and 367 for $l=4, 5$, and 6, respectively. The first member of this latter triad is in close accord with a recent estimate of ${Z}_{1}(4)=125$, cited by Seaborg. Comparison is made with the work of others in this field. To the writer's knowledge, this is the first calculation, without arbitrary introduction or adjustment of parameters, to yield results in complete accord with experiment.

Some aspects of the design of aircraft steering systems

THE FUNDAMENTAL principles governing the behaviour of aircraft during steering manoeuvres on the ground are now well known and documented, but one particular aspect of the problem has not, to the writer's knowledge, been dealt with in the literature. This article examines this feature and describes methods for evaluating its effect on the overall steering power requirements and system behaviour. The influence of tyre characteristics is also examined.