Esta pesquisa tem sua origem no seguinte questionamento: o \"fazer pesquisa\" (desenvolver estágio de Iniciação Científica) é um fator relevante para a apropriação da linguagem científica pelo aluno de graduação em Química? Como se dá essa apropriação? Com o intuito de elucidar esse questionamento observamos o percurso trilhado durante um ano por dois alunos de Iniciação Científica em Química. Nesse período realizamos entrevistas com os orientadores e os alunos, além de observações no local, as quais incluíram gravações em áudio e coleta de materiais orais e escritos produzidos pelos alunos, relacionados ao desenvolvimento das suas pesquisas. Procuramos subsídios para a interpretação dos dados, nos estudos da Sociologia e Antropologia da Ciência, desenvolvidos por Latour e Woolgar, e na Análise do Discurso de linha francesa, como vem sendo divulgada por Eni Orlandi, especialmente quanto às noções de tipologia do discurso e autoria. A análise dos resultados com relação à tipologia revelou nos diálogos entre orientadores e alunos, ocorridos no laboratório, um deslocamento do discurso predominantemente autoritário para um discurso polêmico. Quanto à autoria percebemos na produção do relatório de pesquisa o exercício da repetição empírica e formal, além do uso da repetição histórica, que demonstra a posição de autor ocupada pelos alunos. Observamos ainda na produção de trabalhos para congressos o uso de diferentes tipos de enunciados científicos, classificados por Latour e Woolgar, em diferentes situações que evidenciam a utilização adequada da linguagem científica. Essa investigação nos levou à percepção sobre a influência da Iniciação Científica na apropriação da linguagem científica, e indicou que esse processo se deu por meio da troca com os pares, da imitação de modelos, e, principalmente, da vivência da pesquisa. / This research has its origin in the following questions: is \"doing research\" (developing an Undergraduate Research Project) a relevant factor for the appropriation of scientific language by undergraduate students in Chemistry? How does this appropriation occur? With the intention of understanding these questions we observed two students in Undergraduate Research in Chemistry, by following them closely for one year. During that period we accomplished interviews with the supervisors and the students, and work site observations which included audio recordings and collected spoken and written data produced by the students related to the development of their research. We searched for assistance to analyze the data, within the Science\'s Sociology and Anthropology studies, developed by Latour and Woolgar, and in the Discourse Analysis, in its French approach, as divulged by Eni Orlandi, specifically according to the concepts of discourse typology and authorship. The results of the analysis related to typology demonstrate that in the conversations between supervisors and students carried out in the laboratory there is a transition from a predominantly authoritarian discourse to a polemical discourse. According to the authorship, we realized that in the production of the research report there was the exercise of empirical and formal repetition, beside that, the use of historical repetition which demonstrates the author\'s positions occupied by the students. We also observed in the preparation of work for congresses, that the use of different types of scientific statements indicated the adequate use of scientific language. Therefore, this research leads us to conscientiousness about the influence of Undergraduate Research in the appropriation of scientific language and indicated that this process occurred through the exchange among groups, the imitation of patterns and mainly the research experience.

Modern day children's and young adult non-fiction is replete with books which highlight scientific efforts (treks, safaris, journeys, expeditions) to confront environmental challenges , such texts prevalent in Siebert and Orbis Pictus listings. This presentation will build school librarian awareness of such adventurous selections, provide text-based activities conducive to collaborative efforts with science teachers (multiple grade levels will be addressed), and introduce reading promotion plans and activities based in these award-winning works of literature. First, as an icebreaker, attendees will be asked to imagine a world without...(one planted attendee will stand up with a picture of a species depicted in the books highlighted in the session. This will occur each time a new book is introduced as "breathers" and "attention-grabbers."). The program will open with awareness-based talks (book trailers, audio clips, and author interviews will also be shared) relaying the poignant documented rescue and preservation efforts found in such books, (for example, Parrots Over Puerto Rico). School librarians will discover the engaging nature of these selections based in science, yet perfect for pleasure reading. Next, participants will be provided real-world Common Core (ELA Standards) unit and lesson plan ideas which also contemplate science based standards (i.e. interpret information in charts, graphs, and diagrams). Essentially, participants will come away with the means of developing librarian/science teacher collaborative partnerships. Additionally, a reading promotion plan for each book featured will also be introduced. Participants will be encouraged to elaborate upon and/or provide comments in association with 1) associated texts; 2) collaborative lesson planning with science instructors; and/or 3) reading promotion based in STEM non-fiction materials.

The study was conducted to investigate the effects of an introduction to psychology course on college students' superstitions and beliefs which have some scientific sanction. The test used was selected from H. K. Nixon's 1925 study on answers to psychological questions and considers 30 statements to be marked true or false. Subjects used for this study were 100 men and 100 women students in a beginning psychology course at Utah State University, Logan, Utah. The first administration of the questionnaire was given during the first week of the class with a follow-up administration given during the final week of class. The raw scores earned by each student on the questionnaire of beliefs and superstitions were treated with the chi square method of statistical analysis. One statistically significant change occurred at the 1 percent level--the course altered or influenced the belief in the superstition that long slender hands indicate an artistic nature. There appears to be little effect of a beginning psychology course in changing the superstitions and beliefs in beginning psychology students.

The best interest test is the legal mechanism which governs decision making on behalf of adults who lack the capacity to make their own health care treatment decisions. The test has attracted considerable criticism from health professionals, academics, judges and lawyers for being ill-defined and non-specific. The question of what is meant by 'best interests' remains largely unanswered. As a consequence, the test gives medical and legal decision makers considerable discretion to apply their personal value judgements within supposedly value-free philosophical frameworks - unreasoned and opaque decision making processes are the inevitable result. Because of the dominance of supposedly value-free philosophical frameworks, the place of values in decision making is not always fully understood. Reasoning is not possible without values, which stem from our emotions and passions, our upbringing, our religion, our cultures, our processes of socialisation and from our life experiences. Values help us make sense of our daily lives. I argue that law - like any other social institution - is essentially a human, values based construct. I put forward a theory of values-based law which argues for the recognition that laws, rules and conventions are based on, and contain, individual values. Currently, medical and legal decision makers justify grave decisions on behalf of society's most vulnerable citizens without revealing, or even acknowledging the values which drive and inform their decisions. Any opportunities to scrutinise or debate the values driving decisions are lost. Ultimately, values-based law argues that values underlying best interest determinations must be exposed to facilitate honest, transparent and fulsome decision making on behalf of adults who lack capacity. By applying the theory of values-based law, supposedly value-free decision making processes are exposed as insufficient to facilitate fulsome, honest and transparent legal reasoning.

This thesis reports a computational corpus study of textbooks used in high school science programs in Queensland, Australia. The central research issues concern: 1. how textbook authors deploy linguistic resources in representing scientific knowledge; 2. whether or not authors deploy linguistic resources differently across the disciplines of science, and for younger and older readers; and, 3. whether or not variation in the deployment of linguistic resources can be interpreted in terms of the processes and mechanisms for establishing reliable and valid scientific knowledge. The thesis first summarises theoretical debates concerning the nature and teaching of science. An extended discussion, in the form of a case study of Galileo's work on motion, is presented, along with examples of how the 'Galileo story' has been revised and modified into popular and professional / educational imagination. This discussion thaws out critical points about the relationships between science as an observational and empirical activity and science as an abstract and intellectual activity. This is contrasted with educational constructivist accounts of learning and pedagogy, and how constructivist pedagogy is influenced by constructivist accounts of the doing of science. The data collection and analysis methods are then described in detail. A variety of tagging and marking techniques relating to vocabulary, logical formation and connection words, and grammatical formations are used. These provide the bases for a variety of frequency and collocational analyses, which, in turn, feed into a series of multivariate analyses. After presenting a descriptive overview of the corpus of textbooks, the results are reported in four chapters. Each chapter considers one linguistic resource in turn: vocabulary diversity, lexical organisation, words used to establish logical and structural formations, and grammatical organisation. These chapters show that there is systematic variation in authors deployment of linguistic resources, and that variation with respect to one linguistic resource is associated with variation with respect to the others. In particular, when scientific knowledge is presented through elaboration, persuasion, and description, there is little or no underlying structure to the phenomena being discussed, or there are few or no underlying concepts to which authors can return as their discussions progress. Alternatively, when scientific knowledge is presented in terms of rules, statements, procedures, and arrangements, the content of a topic is structured around a small number of underlying and uni~ing concepts. The contrast is between a loosely structured science that is descriptive, factual and observational, and a highly structured science that is for the most part theoretical. Furthermore, authors selectivity in their deployment of linguistic resources is associated with the major scientific disciplines. The suggestion is that the contents of Biology and Geology, with only a loose structure or no structure to the contents underlying concepts, are presented through elaboration, persuasion, and description, whereas the contents of Physics and Chemistry, structured around a small number of underlying and uni~ing concepts, are presented in terms of rules, statements, procedures, and arrangements. The thesis concludes that what is missing in textbook accounts that embody naive empiricism is the discernment evident in Galileos work: when, how and with what cost to 'simplify' the experiential world, and how to add back to theoretical accounts the complexities of the experiential world. It is an understanding of these processes and the ways in which they can be displayed and developed in classrooms that could better inform the preparation of science teachers as well as laying a stronger base for high school programs.

<p>It is important for the military to know as much as possible about how easily detected their vehicles are. One way among many used to detect vehicles is the use of radar sensors. The radar reflecting characteristics of military vehicles are therefor often rigorously tested. With measurements and simulations it is possible to calculate likely detection distances to a vehicle from different angles. This process often produces very large data sets that are hard to analyze.</p><p>This thesis discusses and implements a method for visualizing the detection distance data set and also discusses a lot of related issues with a focus on computer graphics.</p><p>The main concept is called spherical displacement and the idea is to visualize the detection distances as a surface with the imagined vehicle in the center point. Detection is likely inside the surface but not on the outside. This concept is the next step from the colored sphere where the colors represent the detection distance which was previously used.</p><p>The thesis project resulted in a visualization tool that uses the new concept and can handle large data sets. The spherical displacement concept is more intuitive and shows detail better than the colored sphere visualization.</p>

<p>This study investigates the treatment of race biology and related subjects in Swedish schoolbooks from 1873 to 1994, with special emphasis on the “gymnasium”-level. The concept of race biology has several connotations: it is at one hand related to physical anthropology and at the other to eugenics. Like in Germany the latter was in Sweden first called “racial hygiene”. After an introduction giving the historical background the books are reviewed for their content on this matter. The conclusions drawn are as follows:<br /><br />1. During the late 19th century and early 20th century, mental, cultural and physical appearances of peoples from various parts of the world are discussed with little emphasis on the distinction between race (as a biological concept) and culture.<br /><br />2. Finns and Lapps are in early books considered as belonging to the Mongolian race. This may be understood in terms of the confusion between classification of race and language but also of at the time prevailing theories of Sweden’s racial history.<br /><br />3. Around 1930 a distinction between race, as a biological concept, and people, as a linguistic and cultural concept is pronounced. Personality characteristics are attributed to biological races.<br /><br />4. The dark-skinned African and Australian populations are treated with special disrespect, whereas the lighter-skinned Polynesians are discussed with high esteem.<br /><br />5. The teachings of the Nazi racialist H. F. K. Günther have a decisive impact on the treatment of in particular European ”races” and their mental characters on at least one author. Even the word “master-race” is used for the Nordic race. The most controversial parts of this teaching are removed in 1945.<br /><br />6. From the 1950’s onward the interest in races is diminished in books in geography, and in the biology books racism is generally condemned.<br /><br />7. Eugenics (racial hygiene) is advocated in biology books into the 1970’s, in a manner close enough to be called political propaganda. The low efficiency of sterilisation against Mendelian recessives is generally presented. The Swedish sterilisation policies at the time are presented in detail in the biology books.<br /><br />8. Traditional race classification is present still in the 1980’s, even with regard to the European “racial types”. Much attention is given to the “extreme” racial crossing between Europeans and Hottentots.<br /><br />9. In a biology book from 1967, control of the third world population explosion (in itself a theme from the 1950’s onward) is explicitly discussed in the context of eugenics.<br /><br />10. When modern in utero diagnostic methods are discussed in the 1990’s, eugenics is not concerned.</p>

Variations between the software environments(e.g., installed applications, versions of libraries) on different high-performance computing (HPC) systems lead to a heterogeneity problem. Therefore, we design an optimized, homogeneous virtual machine (VM) called a virtual application appliance (VAA). Scientists can package scientific applications, and all supporting software components, as VAAs and run them independently from the underlying heterogeneous HPC systems. However, securely moving data in and out of the VAA and controlling the execution of applications are not trivial for a non-computer scientist. Consequently, we develop two automated stage-in/stage-out secure data movement mechanisms. We also explore a migration mechanism to further simplify the control of the VAA execution. Empirical evaluation results show that VAAs achieve near-native performance in widely used bioinformatics applications that we tested. Data movement, VM boot up, shutdown and migration overheads of VAAs are negligible with respect to total run-times.

This thesis is about the production of knowledge in meteorological research. Meteorology is an interesting case because of its crucial role in defining the climate change problem, but also because of its reliance on simulation modeling, a comparatively little studied scientific practice. The thesis provides an analysis of the central practices of simulation modeling and field experimentation. It draws upon concepts from social world theory, where practice is closely related to work. The thesis also employs the notion of translation, as developed by the actor-network approach, in order to analyse how different practices and entities become associated with each other. Empirical data was collected with interviews and participant observation and most of the fieldwork was conducted at the Department of Meteorology, Stockholm University. The first four chapters are preliminary: Introduction, theory, method and a review of the field and its history (Chapters 1–4). The empirical findings are then presented in four chapters. Chapter 5 presents how meteorological experimentalists organize collaborations by connecting and translating different practices. The use of measuring instruments has an important role in this. In Chapter 6, modeling work is described in detail. The differences between modeling for weather forecasting and for research purposes are analyzed and in particular, the construction of simulation models. It is concluded that this involves a materialization of theoretical models. The next two chapters take their point of departure in intersections where modeling practice meets experimentation. Chapter 7 is focused on model evaluation and I conclude that the comparison of observations and model output is needed to produce reference in simulation modeling and thus, legitimate this practice. The second intersection, discussed in Chapter 8, is the construction of new components of simulation models, so-called parameterizations. In addition to the previously mentioned sources, the analysis in this chapter is also based on research funding applications. It is concluded that climate research is constructed in such a way that parameterizations become potential boundary objects that shape the relationship between experimentalists and modelers. The final chapter discusses the central findings of the thesis. It is structured around different themes within social world theory: subworlds and segmentation, legitimation, arena processes, and intersections. Crucial methodological issues are revisited as well. It is shown how climate modeling shapes meteorological research and the consequences of simulation modeling practice for scientific work more generally are outlined as well. The chapter also includes an extensive discussion of the utility of the concept boundary object.

This thesis articulates a critique of scientific naturalism from the perspective of John Dewey. Scientific naturalism can be defined by two explicit, metaphysical commitments, one ontological and one epistemological. Implicit to these commitments is a further commitment concerning the nature of human experience. This understanding of human experience can be described as epistemic reductionism because it reduces the whole of experience and all empiricism to epistemology. Scientific naturalism is the orthodox position for most contemporary, Anglo-American philosophy. Many philosophers within this tradition are dissatisfied with scientific naturalism and attempt to critique scientific naturalism from the perspective of "liberal" naturalism. One major objection from the liberal perspective concerns the ontology and placement of moral qualities: where are moral qualities to be placed in a scientifically naturalistic ontology? However, due to the fact that liberal naturalists share with scientific naturalists a commitment to an epistemically reductionistic understanding of the nature of human experience, liberal naturalism fails to adequately address the placement problem.