Signing Up for a Video Dictionary for Deaf People," by Josh Fischman, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 27, 2008 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3033&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

As many as two million people in the United States use American Sign Language, but not every user knows what every one of the thousands of signs mean. And there is no dictionary in which to look them up—sign dictionaries are organized by the written definition of the sign, not by the physical movement.

Now a team of researchers at Boston University is working on an interactive video project that would allow someone to trace an unfamiliar sign in front of a Web camera and have a computer program interpret and explain its meaning, according to the Associated Press.

The researchers, working with a three-year, $900,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, are trying to capture 3,000 ASL signs on video. Their goal is to develop a “backwards” dictionary that will allow people to look up any unfamiliar gesture.

If a deaf person signs to a someone who doesn’t understand the sign, that person could sit down in front of a computer, repeat the sign into a Web cam, and the program would identify possible translations by recognizing the sign’s visual properties.

I picked up this nice article from Reuters.
Every pupil's dream: the exam with answers on back

LONDON (Reuters) - It sounds like every student's dream -- turning over an exam paper and finding the answers on the back.

But that was what happened to 12,000 lucky British teenagers when they sat their GCSE music exam last week.

The OCR (Oxford, Cambridge and RSA) examination board admitted on Thursday that, because of a "printing error," papers sent to schools had answers to questions on the back page.

"All exam papers have a copyright statement dealing with source material on the back page," an OCR spokeswoman said. "This one in particular had more detail than is usual in a music paper."

The exam board said only 5 percent of the overall marks on the paper were possibly affected and students would not have to do a re-sit as most pupils seemed to have been unaware of their good fortune.

"It is unlikely that any of the 12,000 students sitting the examination would have recognized the value of the information ... and subsequently used it," said the spokeswoman, adding there had been just 20 queries from teachers.

"OCR is confident that the procedures put in place will ensure that all candidates get the grades that their hard work deserves."

(Reporting by Michael Holden)

Morality: Always Hard work pays. Good Luck.Dr.HH

What is agassing about the attitude you may face when dealing with others is what I call the attaitude of Plz help me !
Ok, helping others is a great virtue that not anyboday can do. Howver, help seekers should not go beyong the limits. Help is worth for people who really deserve it.
Imagine somebody who spends the whole day hanging around, having fun. At the end of the day, he discovers (I intend it) that he is not achieving his goals. The easy way and the short cut is to ask for help, if not for the favours of somebody else.
Doesn't this remind a story ! The story of an insect WHO spent the whole summer working hard as a matter of shelter against the dark days ! and another insect WHICH spent the whole summer playing his musical instrument ! You know the end as decribed by Jean de La Fontaine centuries ago !
Ooops .
have to go.

The Grasshopper and the Ant

 The Grasshopper having sung
All the summer long,
Found herself lacking food
When the North Wind began its song.
Not a single little piece
Of fly or grub did she have to eat.

 She went complaining of hunger
To the Ant's home, her neighbour,
Begging there for a loan
Of some grain to keep herself alive
Til the next season did arrive,
"I shall pay you," she said
"Before next August, on my word as an animal.
I'll pay both interest and pricipal."

 The Ant was not so inclined:
this not being one of her faults.
"What did you do all summer?
Said she to the grasshopper.

 "Night and day I sang,
I hope that does not displease you."

 "You sang? I will not look askance.
But now my neighbour it's time to dance."

==========================================

 La Cigale et la Fourmi

 La Cigale, ayant chanté
Tout l'été,
Se trouva fort dépourvue
Quand la bise fut venue :
Pas un seul petit morceau
De mouche ou de vermisseau.
Elle alla crier famine
Chez la Fourmi sa voisine,
La priant de lui prêter
Quelque grain pour subsister
Jusqu'à la saison nouvelle.
"Je vous paierai, lui dit-elle,
Avant l'Oût, foi d'animal,
Intérêt et principal. "
La Fourmi n'est pas prêteuse :
C'est là son moindre défaut.
Que faisiez-vous au temps chaud ?
Dit-elle à cette emprunteuse.
- Nuit et jour à tout venant
Je chantais, ne vous déplaise.
- Vous chantiez ? j'en suis fort aise.
Eh bien! dansez maintenant.

Do You Have a Bad Mentor?

By David D. Perlmutter

Last month I wrote about the nuances of being a good protégé, and how critical it is for anyone on the tenure track to have an astute and trustworthy guide. Now I want to explore the reasons why a good adviser is hard to find.

In every assistant professor there seems to lurk a Karate Kid seeking a Mr. Miyagi who will train his acolyte to be a skilled warrior in the art of research, teaching, and service and impart pithy life lessons along the way.

Such singular folks exist, and you may find one. But it's far more likely that you will find several mentors who, while not well-versed in all aspects of academic life, will offer good advice in one or another area.

Fair enough. You may end up going to one adviser for tips on how to teach a large lecture class and approaching another for advice on writing up the results of an experiment. But here's the danger: Your various mentors are probably not limiting the scope of their advice to their actual areas of expertise. Put as kindly as possible, many a full professor presumes that attaining that status makes one sagacious in all aspects of promotion and tenure.

Unfortunately, "successful" people, institutions, and companies are not always experts in the reasons for their success.

I recall a perceptive study, "Management Lessons From Mars," conducted by Alan D. MacCormack, an associate professor of business administration at Harvard University, and published in the May 2004 issue of the Harvard Business Review. He found that NASA did not conduct post-mortems of successful missions and thus did not learn much from them because, as he put it:

"the space agency "fell prey to 'superstitious learning' -- the assumption that there is more to be gleaned from failed missions than from successful ones. In the challenging climate of space exploration, however, the difference between what makes one mission succeed and another fail can be subtle. There is no reason to believe that success indicates a flawless process while failure is the result of egregious bad practice."

Likewise, it is unclear how much any of us recognize why we have succeeded in any task.

Part of the reason may simply be perspective: Someone who got tenure 30 years ago may not appreciate what it takes to get tenure today. The young tenure tracker may not know, or catch on quickly enough, that the same mentor who is a wizard of statistical methodology is offering awful advice about handling disruptions in the classroom. Or perhaps the issue is transference: A scholar may excel at conceptualizing new theory, for example, but may not be good at teaching others to do likewise.

A know-it-little gray eminence can cause damage even before your career begins. Some years -- and a few universities ago -- I interviewed a doctoral student at a conference for a position in my program. I was surprised that the candidate focused on salary, insisting that he deserved the "top rate." I mildly informed him that I had no power to negotiate or even discuss compensation beyond restating the range published in our job ad.

I asked him whether it would not perhaps be better to be offered a job before engaging in hardball-salary negotiations. He shook off my suggestion; his adviser had told him (and I paraphrase) "to push hard on salary and they'll think you are worth hiring." I don't recall if I gasped audibly. We did not ask the fellow to an on-campus interview.

Worse is when actual malice is the motivation for bad advice. A friend once told me that several older professors in his area befriended him -- or so he thought -- when he first started a new job. They gave him lots of tips about promotion and tenure, all of which proved disastrous. He now believes they were trying to sink his career because he was a threat to their teaching and research turf.

I cite such cases not to instill paranoia but rather to show that good advice is valuable indeed, and you have to be wary as you shop around for it. In the words of Ronald Reagan, one should "trust but verify." Consult more than one person before you take any actions that could affect the future of your career. Dig up various writings on the subject, either here in The Chronicle (and in its online Forums) or in the growing body of research on the academic profession.

One sign that your mentors are actually qualified: They recognize and readily disclose their own strengths and limitations. "Professor Adams" helps you design a syllabus for your new course in a subject area that she has taught in for years. You appreciate the assistance, noting how she pointed out problems and issues that you would never have thought of. You follow up and ask her advice on grading term papers and she says, "You know, I've always struggled with that. You might ask Professor Jefferson. He is a master of the essay question." You have just found at least one honest mentor.

Complicating your search for good mentors is the prestige factor. Having a well-known scholar as your adviser can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, a star adviser can open doors for you to postgraduate employment or to publishers interested in your manuscript.

But among the downsides to soliciting a famous adviser is that many other junior scholars probably have the same intention. How much actual attention will you get if you are the 12th graduate student the star scholar has taken on, or one of a large number of tenure-seeking colleagues?

Then comes the problem of being known as a protégé: Do you feel comfortable being introduced as "Professor Gupta's student," even well into middle age and post-tenure? Will you establish your own voice -- a key consideration for promotion and tenure? Sometimes it's harder for young trees to grow in the shadows of mighty redwoods.

Which brings us to the issue of publications.

Different fields have different attitudes about the number of authors on papers or even their rank order. In my own field, solo authorship is always better than co-authorship and, in the case of multiple authorship, being first author is honored above being fourth. However, in the sciences, co-authorship is expected since so much research is done by teams.

How you are listed as author of your publications is a big issue, depending on the field, when you go up for tenure. Good mentors will be, to some extent, generous: They will acknowledge that advising you on a paper is not the same as writing it and will not insist on affixing their name to everything you do under their guidance.

A final consideration for choosing a mentor is political. Any general theory of promotion and tenure should state, as a rule, that assistant professors must avoid faculty squabbles. Few to no benefits accrue from spending time in a fight among the tenured class.

But sometimes when you select an adviser, you are also picking a fight, even without intention. Take this scenario: A young scholar interviews for a tenure-track job and, having done his homework, tells the hiring committee that he looks forward to working with Professor Hatfield. Well, he is hired, and from day one he does not understand why Professor McCoy treats him coolly. It turns out that Hatfield and McCoy have been feuding for years, and now the young assistant professor is marked as a partisan.

Good senior advisers will appreciate that junior faculty members should stay out of the way when the elephants snort and rumble. Even if they are embroiled in a fight, the best advisers won't drag you into it and will go out of their way to shelter you from it.

So the perfect mentor is uncommon. But academe is overflowing with many honorable and wise men and women who give up their time and energy to help up-and-coming colleagues. Sorting out the good mentors from the hapless or malicious is a matter of some nuance as well as necessity. Not getting any advice about succeeding as a professor is unfortunate; getting bad advice can be worse.

I do not understand what is going on with humain behaviour. May be the reason is that we are dealing with humain behaviour ???
I was surprised when some people just ask you- As easy as that- to think for them or just to do the job instead of them...Why ? because "the system is like that". Beacause "we grew up doing like that"...
Is that a reason for abadoning integrity and hardworking to leave space to some mediocrity and .... Lazy beahviour.
Pretty sure you did get what I'm saying. If you read this post till the end , you are immune against the lithargy virus !
Descarte was not mistaken when he sais: I think so I exist. Pass the message to those who understand it..Or better understand you !
See you.

The biggest headache you may face is when your students are having an exam. The problem is the guys or the ladies who are sitting for the exam do not know how to handle an exam and how to manage exam time.
For exmaple, if they have an exam of 60 minutes with 3 exercies : n1 is the most difficult, n 2 is medium difficult and n3 is the easiest. All of them (or 99.99% of them) will jsut start answering exercies n.1..... Ok all of them are good ? Obvioulsy 'cause I'm teaching them :)))
However this does not exclude that many of the smart young people in your audience will miss the exam. Why ? Just 'cause they stucked in n.1 and lost 50 minutes in trying to solve it !!!!!!!!!!! OOOOPS.

The remaining 10 min will be devoted to looking around finding for some EXTERNAL help or trying to understand , analyse and solving the reaming parts !!!! amazing.
What should we do ? before teaching our students contents teach them how to solve an exam, how to manage time (a concept never heard about previously even in high school) ...If they are willing to learn obvioulsy !

See the follwoing doc. technology may really change the learning experience. In QU we are aiming at achieveing similar objectives. We are not far !
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kidsonline/
H.

Interet is a powerful means of communication that we are using everyday. But have you ever thought about the hoistory of the net ?
To get a full overview , the National Science Foudation has the follwoing document ! Enjoy.
H.
http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/nsf-net/?govDel=USNSF_51