It’s regrettable, but teachers and parents often undermine the ability to make meaning from the myriad of popular culture texts to which young people are exposed. Comics, television, and video games are often perceived as contributing to students’ short attention spans, passivity, and lack of creativity and as providing distractions from educational practices (Gee, 2004). Therefore, the hype around the popularity of Japanese-style comics, or manga (Japanese for “amusing drawings”), among youths in the United States is viewed with bewilderment and amazement (Wolk, 2001). While some teachers are banning manga from their classrooms, some public librarians are rejoicing because they are unable to keep manga on the shelves (e.g., Carey, Reid, & Kawasaki, 2005).
Read the rest of this entry »

• 0 Comments

It’s Japanese comics isn’t it? Manga can be translated as ‘comic books’ that’s certainly what they look like at first glance. Unfortunately the term “comic books” is often based on what is commonly available in the UK either American style superhero comics or humorous strip cartoons. Manga is a format and just about every subject imaginable appears in this format: form “serious literature” to science fiction, romance, mysteries, crime, political thrillers, and humour. Just to complicate things many ‘manga’ now are Korean in origin (manhwa) – see below. The subject and themes remain broadly the same and the origin of the material whether Korean or Japanese is generally given in the author notes in each volume.
Read the rest of this entry »

• 0 Comments

The Exceptional Event Rule (EER) was published March 22, 2007 and became effective May 21, 2007. The EER allows the ambient air quality data which is submitted to AQS and used in making regulatory decisions, to be, in some cases, flagged and, where appropriate, excluded from calculations in determining whether or not an area has attained the standard. The data flagged as “exceptional” must have been affected by an exceptional event, which is defined as an event that affects air quality, is not reasonably controllable or preventable, is an event caused by human activity that is unlikely to recur at a particular location or a natural event, and is determined by the EPA in accordance with 40CFR 50.14 to be an exceptional event.
Read the rest of this entry »

• 0 Comments

SAML, developed by the Security Services Technical Committee of the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), is an XML-based framework for communicating user authentication, entitlement, and attribute information. As its name suggests, SAML allows business entities to make assertions regarding the identity, attributes, and entitlements of a subject (an entity that is often a human user) to other entities, such as a partner company or another enterprise application.
Read the rest of this entry »

• 0 Comments

Mobile communication is the basis for one of the fastest growing business areas at the beginning of the 21 st century. With IMT-2000 (International Mobile Telecommunications 2000), high-speed communication is possible anywhere, at any time, to any communication partner, with almost any device. As IMT-2000 comprises a set of different networking technologies, it provides a communication framework in which a subscriber may freely roam without having to be concerned about which network to use [1]. Hand-over procedures seamlessly integrate in-house networks, campus-based networks, metropolitan and wide area networks.
Read the rest of this entry »

• 0 Comments

This short history identifies 32 major classes of software methods that have emerged over the last 50 years. There are many variations of each major class of software method, which renders the number of software methods in the hundreds. This short history contains a brief synopsis of each of the 32 major classes of software methods, identifying the decade and year they appeared, their purpose, their major tenets, their strengths, and their weaknesses. The year each software method appeared corresponds to the seminal work that introduced the method based on extensive bibliographic research and the strengths and weaknesses were based on scholarly and empirical works to provide an objective capstone for each method.
Read the rest of this entry »

• 0 Comments

In October of 1976 I observed that a certain algorithm – parallel reduction – was associated with monoids: collections of elements with an associative operation. That observation led me to believe that it is possible to associate every useful algorithm with a mathematical theory and that such association allows for both widest possible use and meaningful taxonomy. As mathematicians learned to lift theorems into their most general settings, so I wanted to lift algorithms and data structures. One seldom needs to know the exact type of data on which an algorithm works since most algorithms work on many similar types. In order to write an algorithm one needs only to know the properties of operations on data. I call a collection of types with similar properties on which an algorithm makes sense the underlying concept of the algorithm. Also, in order to pick an efficient algorithm one needs to know the complexity of these operations. In other words, complexity is an essential part of the interface to a concept.
Read the rest of this entry »

• 0 Comments

The history of computers starts out about 2000 years ago, at the birth of the abacus, a wooden rack holding two horizontal wires with beads strung on them. When these beads are moved around, according to programming rules memorized by the user, all regular arithmetic problems can be done. Another important invention around the same time was the Astrolabe, used for navigation. Blaise Pascal is usually credited for building the first digital computer in 1642. It added numbers entered with dials and was made to help his father, a tax collector. In 1671, Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz invented a computer that was built in 1694. It could add, and, after changing some things around, multiply. Leibniz invented a special stepped gear mechanism for introducing the addend digits, and this is still being used.
Read the rest of this entry »

• 0 Comments