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Topic Review
Social Construction of Technology
Social construction of technology (SCOT) is a theory within the field of science and technology studies. Advocates of SCOT—that is, social constructivists—argue that technology does not determine human action, but that rather, human action shapes technology. They also argue that the ways a technology is used cannot be understood without understanding how that technology is embedded in its social context. SCOT is a response to technological determinism and is sometimes known as technological constructivism. SCOT draws on work done in the constructivist school of the sociology of scientific knowledge, and its subtopics include actor-network theory (a branch of the sociology of science and technology) and historical analysis of sociotechnical systems, such as the work of historian Thomas P. Hughes. Its empirical methods are an adaptation of the Empirical Programme of Relativism (EPOR), which outlines a method of analysis to demonstrate the ways in which scientific findings are socially constructed (see strong program). Leading adherents of SCOT include Wiebe Bijker and Trevor Pinch. SCOT holds that those who seek to understand the reasons for acceptance or rejection of a technology should look to the social world. It is not enough, according to SCOT, to explain a technology's success by saying that it is "the best"—researchers must look at how the criteria of being "the best" is defined and what groups and stakeholders participate in defining it. In particular, they must ask who defines the technical criteria success is measured by, why technical criteria are defined this way, and who is included or excluded. Pinch and Bijker argue that technological determinism is a myth that results when one looks backwards and believes that the path taken to the present was the only possible path. SCOT is not only a theory, but also a methodology: it formalizes the steps and principles to follow when one wants to analyze the causes of technological failures or successes.
  • 2.1K
  • 09 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Forensic Facial Comparison
Forensic facial comparison is a human observer-based technique employed in forensic facial identification. Facial identification falls under the broader discipline of facial imaging, and involves the use of visual facial information to assist in person identification. Through the analysis of photographic or video evidence (e.g., CCTV), forensic facial identification is routinely utilized to associate persons of interest to criminal activity in a judicial context. The recommended approach to forensic facial comparison is facial examination by morphological analysis, whereby a facial feature list is used to analyze, compare, and evaluate visible facial features between a target image and a potential matching image. This process is then validated by a second analyst. Forensic facial comparison, and its broader discipline of facial identification, should not be confused with automated facial recognition technology or the innate psychological process of facial recognition.
  • 2.1K
  • 13 Dec 2021
Topic Review
Education on Renewable Energy in Secondary Schools
Education is key to advancing a society that can achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). One SDG is shifting energy consumption from fossil fuels to renewable energy (RE) sources to reduce environmental damage and prevent global warming. Awareness must be instilled among citizens at an early age (as early as secondary school) to motivate students to pursue higher education and careers in RE concepts and technologies.
  • 2.1K
  • 25 Jul 2022
Topic Review
The Scissors
The Scissors is an aerial dog fighting maneuver commonly used by military fighter pilots. It is primarily a defensive maneuver, used by an aircraft that is under attack. It consists of a series of short turns towards the attacking aircraft, slowing with each turn, in the hopes of forcing the attacker to overshoot. Performed properly, it can cause the attacking aircraft to move far enough in front to allow the defender to turn the tables and attack. The scissors is a close-maneuvering technique, and as such, is really only useful when defending against guns or low-performance missiles. It was a major technique from World War I to the Korean War, but is much less common today. The introduction of high-angle missiles makes it much less effective, as the attacker can shoot even when the defender is not in front of them. Modern aircraft also make it difficult to use this technique as they maintain energy much better than earlier designs and the maneuvering limits are often the pilot's physical limitations, not the aircraft. In fact, for many years now, fighter pilots flying aircraft with even a reasonable thrust-to-weight ratio and average wing loading are well advised to avoid engaging in a scissors maneuver, since any turning, rolling or slow-speed disadvantage the pilot's aircraft might have with respect to that of his opponent (or pilot skill in energy assessment and management techniques) will quickly become evident in the scissors, and lead to his defeat in short order. Basic fighter maneuvering theory recognizes two different types of scissors maneuvers; the flat scissors and the rolling scissors.
  • 2.1K
  • 26 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Mirroring (Psychology)
User:RMCD bot/subject notice Mirroring is the behavior in which one person unconsciously imitates the gesture, speech pattern, or attitude of another. Mirroring often occurs in social situations, particularly in the company of close friends or family. The concept often affects other individuals' notions about the individual that is exhibiting mirroring behaviors, which can lead to the individual building rapport with others. Mirroring is the subconscious replication of another person's nonverbal signals. This concept takes place in everyday interactions and often goes unnoticed by both the person enacting the mirroring behaviors as well as the individual who is being mirrored. The activation of mirror neurons takes place within the individual who begins to mirror another's movements and allows them a greater connection and understanding with the individual who they are mirroring, as well as allowing the individual who is being mirrored to feel a stronger connection with the other individual. Mirroring is distinct from conscious imitation under the premise that while the latter is a conscious, typically overt effort to copy another person, mirroring is unconsciously done during the act and often goes unnoticed. The display of mirroring often begins as early as infancy, as babies begin to mimic individuals around them and establish connections with particular body movements. The ability to mimic another person's actions allows the infant to establish a sense of empathy and thus begin to understand another person's emotions. The infant continues to establish connections with other individual's emotions and subsequently mirror their movements. Mirroring can establish rapport with the individual who is being mirrored, as the similarities in nonverbal gestures allow the individual to feel more connected with the person exhibiting the mirrored behavior. As the two individuals in the situation display similar nonverbal gestures, they may believe that they share similar attitudes and ideas as well. Mirror neurons react to and cause these movements, allowing the individuals to feel a greater sense of engagement and belonging within the situation.
  • 2.1K
  • 06 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Islamic Revival
Islamic revival (Arabic: تجديد tajdīd, lit., "regeneration, renewal"; also الصحوة الإسلامية aṣ-Ṣaḥwah l-ʾIslāmiyyah, "Islamic awakening") refers to a revival of the Islamic religion. The revivers are known in Islam as mujaddids. Within the Islamic tradition, tajdid has been an important religious concept, which has manifested itself throughout Islamic history in periodic calls for a renewed commitment to the fundamental principles of Islam and reconstruction of society in accordance with the Quran and the traditions of the Islamic prophet Muhammad (hadith). The concept of tajdid has played a prominent role in contemporary Islamic revival. In academic literature, "Islamic revival" is an umbrella term encompassing "a wide variety of movements, some intolerant and exclusivist, some pluralistic; some favorable to science, some anti-scientific; some primarily devotional, and some primarily political; some democratic, some authoritarian; some pacific, some violent". After the late 1970s, when the Iranian Revolution erupted, a worldwide Islamic revival emerged in response to the success of the revolution, owing in large part to the failures of secular Arab nationalism in the aftermath of the Six-Day War and the humiliation the ideology’s defeat in the war brought to the Muslim world, and popular disappointment with secular nation states in the Middle East and Westernized ruling elites, which had dominated the Muslim world during the preceding decades, and which were increasingly seen as authoritarian, ineffective and lacking cultural authenticity. Further motivation for the revival included the Lebanese Civil War, which began in 1975 and resulted in a level of sectarianism between Muslims and Christians previously unseen in many Middle Eastern countries. Another motivation was the newfound wealth and discovered political leverage brought to much of the Muslim world in the aftermath of the 1973 oil crisis and also the Grand Mosque seizure which occurred in late 1979 amidst the revival; both of these events encouraged the rise of the phenomenon of “Petro-Islam” in Saudi Arabia during the mid-to-late 1970s in an effort by the Saudi monarchy to counterbalance the consolidation of the Iranian Revolution, exporting neo-Wahhabi ideologies to many mosques worldwide. As such, it has been argued that with both of the Islamic superpowers in the Middle East (Iran and Saudi Arabia) espousing Islamist ideologies by the end of the 1970s, and the isolation of the traditionally secularist Egypt during the period from being the most influential Arab country as a result of the Camp David Accords- resulting in Saudi Arabia’s newfound dominance over Arab countries - the Islamic revival became especially potent amongst Muslims worldwide. With Lebanon, traditionally a source of secular Arab culture, fractured between Muslim and Christian, exposing the failures of its secular confessionalist political system, there was a general idea amongst many Muslims by the late 1970s that secularism had failed in the Middle East to deliver the demands of the masses. In Egypt, the revival was also motivated by the migration of many Egyptians during the 1980s to the Gulf countries in search of work; when they returned, returning especially in the aftermath of the Gulf War in Kuwait, they brought the neo-Wahhabist ideologies and more conservative customs of the Gulf back with them. Religiously, the revival was motivated by a desire to "restore Islam to ascendancy in a world that has turned away from God". This revival has been accompanied by growth of various reformist-political movements inspired by Islam (also called Islamist), and by "re-Islamisation" of society from above and below, with manifestations ranging from sharia-based legal reforms to greater piety and growing adoption of Islamic culture (such as increased attendance at Hajj) among the Muslim public. An especially obvious sign of the re-Islamisation of many Muslims was the rise of the hijab in the public space, when in previous decades it had largely been abandoned in some Middle Eastern countries, as well as the adoption of the previously-unknown niqab by women outside of Gulf countries. Among immigrants in non-Muslim countries, it includes a feeling of a "growing universalistic Islamic identity" or transnational Islam, brought on by easier communications, media and travel. The revival has also been accompanied by an increased influence of fundamentalist preachers and terrorist attacks carried out by some radical Islamist groups on a global scale. The revival, which erupted during at the end of the 1970s and continued throughout the 1980s, has gradually fizzled out in many countries, including Saudi Arabia and Sudan, and has come to be abandoned by many younger and disillusioned people in more Islamist societies such as Iran , Tunisia and Turkey - placing more younger people in these countries increasingly at odds with their government, with whom they associate the Islamic revival with the political authoritarianism of these countries with. However it has remained fairly strong in other countries, particularly Syria , Iraq, Afghanistan and in Sahel, as a result of the Arab Spring. Preachers and scholars who have been described as revivalists (Mujaddids) or mujaddideen, by differing sects and groups, in the history of Islam include Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Ibn Taymiyyah, Shah Waliullah Dehlawi, Ahmad Sirhindi, Ashraf Ali Thanwi, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, and Muhammad Ahmad. In the 20th century, figures such as Sayyid Rashid Rida, Hassan al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb, Abul A'la Maududi, Malcolm X, and Ruhollah Khomeini, have been described as such, and academics often use the terms "Islamist" and "Islamic revivalist" interchangeably. Contemporary revivalist currents include Jihadism, which seeks to intellectually and militarily counter socially regressive post colonial rhetoric and influences; neo-Sufism, which cultivates Muslim spirituality; and classical fundamentalism, which stresses obedience to Sharia (Islamic law) and ritual observance.
  • 2.1K
  • 07 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Election Threshold
The electoral threshold is the minimum share of the primary vote which a candidate or political party requires to achieve before they become entitled to any representation in a legislature. This limit can operate in various ways. For example, in party-list proportional representation systems, an election threshold requires that a party must receive a specified minimum percentage of votes (e.g., 5%), either nationally or in a particular electoral district, to obtain any seats in the legislature. In multi-member constituencies using preferential voting, besides the electoral threshold, to be awarded a seat, a candidate is also required to achieve a quota, either on the primary vote or after distribution of preferences, which depends on the number of members to be return from a constituency. The effect of an electoral threshold is to deny representation to small parties or to force them into coalitions, with the presumption of rendering the election system more stable by keeping out fringe parties. However, critics argue out that in the absence of a ranked ballot system, supporters of minor parties are effectively disenfranchised and denied the right of representation by someone of their choosing. Two boundaries can be defined: a threshold of representation is the minimum vote share that might yield a party a seat (under the most favorable circumstances for the party), while the threshold of exclusion is the maximum vote share that could be insufficient to yield a seat (under the least favorable circumstances). Lijphart suggested calculating the informal threshold as the mean of these.
  • 2.1K
  • 11 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Blank and Null Voting Paradox
The Blank and Null Voting Paradox or the Blank and Null Support is a generalized suboptimal support of invalid votes and deliberate abstentions misrepresenting the results in a plurality runoff (two-round) election by choosing a pseudo-Condorcet loser candidate. Nepomuceno and Costa (2019) provided some evidence of this suboptimal support in the 2014 Brazilian national elections by constructing a pairwise comparison with 3,010 voting intension interviews conducted in 204 Brazilian cities. The authors suggested that the 2016 historical impeachment of the Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff can be associated with this weak legitimate representation. This should not be confused with Fishburn and Brams (1983) no-show paradox, which states that the removal of a ballot, or the absence of a voter, might change the outcome of an election to a more preferable choice for that voter than if he or she decided to vote sincerely according to his/her preferences. In the Blank and Null Support, some results end up a worse outcome for the voter, and this outcome hardly could have been made by a strategic decision.
  • 2.1K
  • 02 May 2021
Topic Review
Determinants of NRLAIS in Ethiopia
Ethiopia has embarked on one of the largest digitalization programs for rural land registration in Africa. The program is called the national rural land administration information system (NRLAIS). NRLAIS utilizes a modular technology stack with web-based approach and Land Administration Domain Model (LADM) for rural land registration. NRLAIS considered the functional and legal requirements at four government organizational structures (federal, regional, zonal, and woreda).
  • 2.1K
  • 23 Dec 2021
Topic Review
Volunteering
Volunteering is generally considered an altruistic activity where an individual or group provides services for no financial or social gain "to benefit another person, group or organization". Volunteering is also renowned for skill development and is often intended to promote goodness or to improve human quality of life. Volunteering may have positive benefits for the volunteer as well as for the person or community served. It is also intended to make contacts for possible employment. Many volunteers are specifically trained in the areas they work, such as medicine, education, or emergency rescue. Others serve on an as-needed basis, such as in response to a natural disaster.
  • 2.1K
  • 29 Nov 2022
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