text:
\section{Introduction}

A key challenge for 21st-century schools is the need to serve diverse students with varied abilities and motivations for learning \cite{durlak2011impact}. Active learning, a form of learning where students take initiative in the learning process, has been shown to help students develop their full potential by providing developmentally appropriate and individually tailored learning opportunities \cite{hohmann1995educating}. One way that children can take more initiative in their own learning is by asking question.

Besides providing information, question-asking offers many other benefits.  On lecture comprehension tests, university students who generated their own questions got better scores than students who used questions from someone else \cite{king_autonomy_1994}.  Likewise, Davey and McBride \cite{Davey1986}  found that sixth grade students who were asked to create two good questions for each passage of the text performed better on comprehension tests than students who were asked to merely read.  The act of composing a question seems to focus students' attention on the most important/relevant information in the content \cite{brown_instructing_1984}.

Different types of questions offer different benefits.  For example, Gallagher and Ascher's hierarchical taxonomy \cite{gallagher1963preliminary} classified questions as low vs high level.  Low-level questions are surface-level, memory-based questions that ask students to name, define or identify (e.g. ``Who is the main character?''), or convergent-thinking questions that ask students to relate ideas by comparing, contrasting or explaining (e.g. ``Why was the character doing this at the beginning of the story?'').  High-level questions are deeper questions that involve divergent-thinking; they require responses that offer a new perspective on a given topic, asking students to predict, infer, hypothesize, reconstruct information or questions that incorporate new knowledge (e.g., ``What could happen if the main character did this instead of that?") and make subjective or moral judgements (e.g. ``What is your opinion about this?'').

Research has shown that there is an intimate relationship between epistemic curiosity and divergent-thinking question-asking.  Curiosity arises when one becomes aware of a knowledge gap; this awareness can lead one to ask questions in order to obtain the missing information \cite{ram_theory_1991}.   Children who are curious by trait have been shown to have better question-asking abilities \cite{jirout_childrens_2011}.
The premise of our work is that question-asking is a skill beneficial to learning and the development of curiosity, that can be both taught and practiced.

In this work, we introduce a pedagogical agent designed to encourage students to ask divergent-thinking questions about pieces of text.  We conducted an experiment with 95 fifth grade students at an elementary school in France, who interacted with an agent that encouraged either convergent-thinking or divergent-thinking questions.  Results show that our experimental manipulation influenced the type and quantity of questions asked by children.  Furthermore, children found this question-asking learning exercise to be enjoyable and motivating.  Our work contributes both an educational platform for promoting question-asking skills, and insights into effective  technology-mediated interventions on question-asking.

\section{Related Work}

\subsection{Question Generation in Classroom}

Contrary to the popular belief that young children are avid questioners, research has shown that questions in classroom are not very frequent and are often low-level questions that do not necessitate deep reasoning \cite{graesser1994question,humphries2015beyond}.

Low frequency of question asking can be attributed to three curiosity-based explanations. First, children may not be interested in asking questions; they are not motivated/curious because they can't identify their own knowledge gaps \cite{graesser1994question}. Second, social influences, from peers or teachers, can alter children's perception of curiosity, which in turn, fosters or inhibits their question asking behavior \cite{engel2011children}.  Post and Walma van der Molen \cite{post_development_2019}, for example, found that the fear of classmates' negative judgement has a detrimental effect on curiosity, causing children to have a negative opinion about asking question in a classroom (e.g. people who ask question are stupid).  Even the arrangement of the classroom, such as the positions of the tables, can have an impact on question generation; for instance, when children are assigned to sit in a semi-circle, they are more inclined to ask questions \cite{marx_effects_1999}. Most importantly, children may not know {\it how} to ask questions \cite{humphries2015beyond,graesser1994question}. During a think-aloud session, Humphries and Ness \cite{humphries2015beyond} measured the quantity and quality of questions generated by 5th grade students. The children had to read a piece of text and ask as many questions as they could while reading. They noticed children mainly ask questions using question starters, such as ``who'', ``what'', ``when'', ``where'', and that 93\% of their questions were low-level ones (memory-based or convergent-thinking questions). They concluded that children did not have the tools to help them construct higher-level thinking questions, such as ``What's the difference between ... ?'', ``What is your belief about ...?'', ``How do you know ...?'', etc \cite{humphries2015beyond,king_effects_1989,raphael_increasing_1985}.

In their review, Rosenshine, Meister and Chapman \cite{rosenshine_teaching_1996} compiled intervention studies that attempt to improve students' understanding of textual information by asking them to generate questions.  They grouped the studies according to the procedural prompts used to help children generate questions; these prompts include, for example, signal words for starting questions (e.g., who, what, where, when, why, how), requests for specific types of questions, or examples of questions. Overall, providing  signal words was the most effective way to improve the generation of questions from students. Teaching students to generate more questions was also found to enhance their comprehension. Ness \cite{ness_simple_2017} demonstrated to elementary school children how she generates simple and high-level questions from songs, and asked them to do the same on other songs. She noticed that, over time, the quality and quantity of the questions that the children ask improved.  These results suggest that it is possible to improve the question-asking skills of children by giving them tools they can reuse in classroom or daily life.

\subsection{Taxonomy of Questions}

Prior work has proposed many different frameworks for classifying questions.  Methods used in machine learning domains~\cite{collins2005discriminative,heilman2010good}, such as automatic question generation systems, see questions as different syntactic transformations (e.g subject-auxiliary inversion) of declarative sentences.   Questions are sorted by their length, meaning or complexity. These classification schemes are complex, and the groupings can be subjective and highly dependent on the interpretation of the annotator.

Other classification schemes, collectively known as QAR, consider the relationship between a question and its answer.  Raphael and Pearson \cite{raphael_increasing_1985} suggests that questions can be classified into three categories, depending on whether the answer is i) explicitly stated in a single sentence (i.e., ``right there''); ii) implicitly found only by integrating two or more sentences (i.e., ``think and search''), and iii) not in the text, forcing the readers to use their own knowledge (i.e., ``on my own'').  Their classification scheme is mostly designed to assess children's questions.  Graesser \cite{graesser1994question} investigated how to classify questions within the context of college-level mathematical tutoring sessions.  Questions are classified based on the length of the expected answers---short-answer questions (e.g. Verification, Quantification) require only a word or a phrase, while long-answer questions (e.g. Comparison, Interpretation) requires deeper reasoning and more elaborated answers.  In Gallagher and Ascher's framework \cite{gallagher1963preliminary}, convergent-thinking and divergent-thinking questions are equivalent to text-explicit and text-implicit questions of Raphael and Pearson \cite{raphael_increasing_1985}, respectively.

\begin{figure*}[t!]
\centering
\subfigure[Choosing Proposition]{
\fbox{\includegraphics[width=0.475\linewidth]{figures/choose_proposition.png}}
\label{fig:choose}
}
\subfigure[Generating Question]{
\fbox{\includegraphics[width=0.475\linewidth]{figures/generate_question.png}}
\label{fig:question}
}
\caption{Interface for choosing proposition (left) and generating question (right)}
\label{fig:interventions}
\end{figure*}

\subsection{Epistemic curiosity and Question-Asking}

Graesser et al. \cite{graesser1992mechanisms,graesser2008question} outlines four psychological needs that motivate the generation of a question: the need to monitor common ground to assess what other people know, the need to socially coordinate actions (e.g., ask for a request or an advice), the need to control conversation and attention, and important to our study---the need to correct a knowledge deficit in order to obtain a piece of missing information---a psychological need related to epistemic curiosity.

Epistemic curiosity is a form of intrinsic motivation for acquiring knowledge, that can be both a state (i.e., a stable feeling or moment of interest or deprivation) and a trait (i.e., a general propensity to seek curiosity states) \cite{litman_nature_2005,litman_measurement_2004}. One mechanism for eliciting curiosity is through a {\it knowledge gap}.  When information is missing, or contradicts what one knows, a knowledge goal will arise, often leading to the generation of questions. The person is then made aware of the information needs, and motivated to formulate a question to obtain the missing knowledge \cite{ram_theory_1991}.

Research has revealed a strong connection between curiosity and question asking abilities.  In Jirout and Klahr \cite{jirout_childrens_2011}, children were given a set of options to explore, where the options can be of different levels of uncertainty.  Children who prefer to resolve greater amounts of uncertainty are defined as being more curious, and those who prefer lower levels of uncertainty are defined as being less curious.  Their study found a positive relationship between children's curiosity and their range of question asking abilities, i.e., children who are more curious ask more questions, are better at using questions to solve simple problems, and are more skilled in discriminating between helpful and unhelpful questions.  In our work, we also investigate the role that curiosity trait might play in question asking.

\vspace{-0.15cm}
\subsection{Educational Applications for Enhancing Curiosity}

Some prior work has shown that although teachers asked most (i.e., 95\%) of the questions in the classroom \cite{graesser1994question,graesser1992mechanisms}, they are not always good role models---only 4\% of their questions are high-level questions \cite{dillon1988remedial}.  One possibility is to train teachers to ask questions effectively \cite{thompson1997training}.  Alternatively, one can develop educational applications and pedagogical/peer agents to elicit and reinforce students' curiosity \cite{Ceha2019,saerbeck_expressive_2010,clement2018,gordon2015can}, as curiosity and question asking are strongly linked.  Ceha et al. \cite{Ceha2019} introduced a game-playing robot that elicits emotional and behavioural curiosity from students by expressing its own curiosity about the topic.  In Kidlearn \cite{clement2018,roy15} or Kidbreath \cite{delmas2018conception}, algorithms based on the learning progress theory of curiosity were used to adapt the learning task to each child's abilities, and sequence the teaching to optimize for learning gains.  Results show that students learned faster and had higher intrinsic motivation scores, when their sequence of lessons was scheduled by curiosity-driven algorithms than traditional linear learning algorithms \cite{delmas2018conception}.  Together, these prior work suggest that designing educational technology to use curiosity to drive learning is a fruitful avenue to explore.  In our work, we take a practical approach to fostering curiosity by designing a pedagogical agent to facilitate the practice of question asking.  To our knowledge, there exists no application for this exact purpose.
\subsection{The Use of Conversational Agents in Education}

There exist a number of powerful text- and voice- based conversational agents in education, for handling administrative and management tasks to foster productivity~\cite{goel2016jill}, providing emotional support and positive reinforcement, providing social presence~\cite{chou2003redefining, griol2013architecture}, scaffolding the practice of specific skills (e.g., language learning~\cite{fryer2006bots, shawar2007fostering}) and meta-cognitive strategies (e.g., reflect on learning process~\cite{grigoriadou2003dialogue}), supporting higher-level thinking skills (e.g., by encouraging explanations~\cite{Aleven1999}), and assessing students' learning (e.g., QuizBot~\cite{ruan19}).

The educational benefits of conversational agents have been widely demonstrated.  Jill Watson~\cite{goel2016jill}, a virtual teaching assistant for the Georgia Tech course on Knowledge-Based Artificial Intelligence, demonstrates that conversational agents can help improve the efficiency of the administrative side of education, such as answering FAQs and posting announcements. AutoTutor \cite{Graesser2001} is a virtual avatar that helps students actively construct knowledge through conversations, and it has been shown to have a significant positive effects on student grades~\cite{Graesser2005}. In the learning of algebraic expressions, Heffernan and Koedinger~\cite{Heffernan2002,Heffernan2003} demonstrate that students who engaged in a dialog with Ms. Linquist, a virtual tutor, learned more.  QuizBot~\cite{ruan19} helps students learn factual knowledge and vocabulary.  Results show that students were able to recognize and recall over 20\% more correct answers compared to learning with flashcards.  In addition, students voluntarily spent significantly more time learning with Quizbot over flashcards. Finally, recent work has shown how voice-based conversational agents can be used to help young children read and learn~\cite{xu19}.

Despite their demonstrated potential to impact education, conversational agents are limited by their ability to process natural language and recognize social and emotional cues, making them practical only for well-defined, narrow tasks~\cite{leonhardt2007using}. None of the prior work on conversational agents in education focused on question generation as a learning activity.

\section{Research Questions and Hypotheses}

Our main research question is how to design a virtual agent to help children improve their question-asking skills, in particular, their ability to generate divergent-thinking questions \cite{humphries2015beyond}.  The agent is embedded in a web application called the Curiosity Notebook \cite{law20}, a research infrastructure for studying teachable and pedagogical agents. On this platform, students can choose articles to read and are asked to generate questions related to the text.  Our study involves manipulating the agent and the interfaces to encourage students to generate different types of questions. Specifically, we hypothesize that such an agent can:

\begin{itemize}[noitemsep]
    \item help children construct more questions and questions that are of a high level of complexity (i.e., divergent-thinking questions) through the use of propositions and question starter prompts [H1].
    \item facilitate a question generation exercise that is enjoyable and motivating to do [H2].
    \item influence children's perception of the value of curiosity [H3].
\end{itemize}

To answer these research questions, we conducted an experiment with 95 elementary school children interacting with either an agent that promotes convergent thinking (i.e., the generation of memory-based or convergent-thinking questions) or one that promotes divergent thinking (i.e., the generation of curiosity-based, divergent-thinking questions).

The convergent-thinking vs divergent-thinking question dichotomy comes from the well-known Question-Answer Relationship (QAR) classification, which stresses the relationship between a question, generated from a text reading, and its answer \cite{gallagher1963preliminary,raphael_increasing_1985,Wilen1991}. QAR describes two levels of questions: convergent-thinking questions for which the answers are in the text (e.g., low-level, factoid questions) and divergent-thinking questions for which the answers are not in the text, but that are text-elicited (e.g., ``What could happen if the main character went home instead of to the park?''). Table \ref{tab:baseline_dialogue} and \ref{tab:intervention_dialogue} shows how convergent-thinking and divergent-thinking questions can be defined by whether their corresponding answers can be found in the text.  For example, in Table \ref{tab:baseline_dialogue}, one of the convergent propositions is ``In Oslo", a phrase that is explicitly mentioned in the text as the location where the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony takes place.  On the other hand, one of the divergent propositions is ``6 different Nobel prizes", which is {\it not} found in the text.  The corresponding question---e.g., ``How many different kinds of Nobel prizes are there?"---is considered a divergent-thinking question because the answer is not found in the text.

Below, we outline our study design, including participant recruitment and experimental procedure, materials, data collection instruments and data cleaning process.

\section{Study Design}

\subsection{Experimental Procedure}

The experiment is within-subject and involves a ABA design (Figure \ref{fig:timeline}), consisted of a pre-intervention baseline (A), intervention (B) and post-intervention baseline (A) sessions, where each session was held on a different day within the same week.  The length and number of sessions were limited to 3 days due to constraints imposed by the school schedule and ethics guidelines concerning studies with children.

\begin{figure}[htbp!]
  \includegraphics[width=\columnwidth]{figures/Timeline.png}
  \caption{Study Timeline}
  \label{fig:timeline}
\end{figure}

\begin{table*}[t!]
    \centering
    \caption{Example showing the choices of propositions and student-agent dialogue in the Baseline condition}
    \small{
    \begin{tabular}{ p{5cm} p{2cm} p{4.5cm} p{4.5cm} }
    \hline
    ~ & ~ & ~ & ~\\
    \multicolumn{4}{p{17cm}}{{\bf Article}: The Nobel prizes reward people who advance the state of our knowledge and greatly benefit humankind. There are several kinds of Nobel prizes. In 2018, the Nobel prize for Physics was awarded to two researchers for inventing the world's most powerful laser beam. The Nobel Peace prize has been awarded to a doctor in the Congo, Denis Mukwege, and to an activist from Iraqi, Nadia Murad, for their fight against violence against women. The prize is handed out, along with money, during a special ceremony. This ceremony is held every year in Oslo, the capital of Norway.}\\\\
    {\bf Agent Speech} & ~ & {\bf Convergent Proposition} &  {\bf Divergent Proposition}\\
    Here are the responses to two questions.  Choose one of the propositions and try to find the question that it corresponds to.  Take your time to formulate! & ~ & Each year & 6 different Nobel prizes\\\\
    Two new propositions, choose one of them. I wonder what questions were asked ... & ~ & In Oslo & Some other examples are Literature, Chemistry and Medicine\\\\
    Last propositions for this text! Take your time to formulate your question! & ~ & Denis Mukwege & This laser can be used to heal the eyes\\\\
    \hline
    \end{tabular}}
    \label{tab:baseline_dialogue}
\end{table*}

\begin{table*}[t!]
    \centering
    \caption{Example showing the choices of propositions and student-agent dialogue in the Convergent and Divergent condition}
    \small{
    \begin{tabular}{ p{5cm} p{3.67cm} p{3.67cm} p{3.67cm}}
    \hline
     ~ & ~ & ~ & ~\\
    \multicolumn{4}{p{16cm}}{{\bf Article}: 6 volunteer scientists entered a very large white dome ... only to come out 358 days later! The goal was to live in the same conditions as astronauts who will be going to Mars, the red planet: dehydrated dishes, artificial lighting, the impossibility of going outside into the open air ... The goal is to be able to travel to the red planet in the future. The US Space Agency (NASA) conducted this test to see if it is possible to remain in good health and to work when being confined in a rocketship for such a long time.  Going to Mars is an expedition that would last at least two years!}\\\\
    \rowcolor{Gray}
    \multicolumn{4}{l}{\bf Convergent Condition}\\
    {\bf Agent Speech} & {\bf Convergent Proposition 1} & {\bf Convergent Proposition 2} & {\bf Divergent Proposition}\\
    One of the questions might start with ``Why...'', so that may help you choose one of the propositions ... & Being able to live on Mars & 358 days & Sports, Reading, Exercises\\\\
    One of the questions might start with ``What is ...'', so that may help you choose one of the propositions ... & The NASA & A 2 year trip  & Using powerful spaceships\\\\
    One of the questions might start with ``How many ...'', so that may help you choose one of the propositions ... & 6 scientists & Objective is to go to Mars & First trip will take place in 2030\\\\
    \rowcolor{Gray}
    \multicolumn{4}{l}{\bf Divergent Condition}\\
    {\bf Agent Speech} & {\bf Divergent Proposition 1} & {\bf Divergent Proposition 2} & {\bf Convergent Proposition}\\
    One of the questions might start with ``How...'' so that may help you choose one of the propositions ... & Sports, Reading, Exercices & There is no return trip & Being able to live on Mars\\\\
    One of the questions might start with ``How...'' so that may help you choose one of the propositions ... & Using powerful spaceships & We think we can live there & The NASA\\\\
    One of the questions might start with ``In which year...'', so that may help you choose one of the propositions ... & First trip will take place in 2030 & Nobody went to Mars yet & 6 scientists\\\\
    \hline
    \end{tabular}}
    \label{tab:intervention_dialogue}
\end{table*}

In each session, children were asked to generate questions for a set of short articles, one by one.  The system began by presenting children with a set of topics, and asked them to choose one topic (e.g., Olympics) from the list.  Upon choosing a topic, a short article related to the topic was displayed.  Children were asked to read the article, and indicate (by clicking on a button) when they are done reading.  After reading, children were presented with a set of propositions (Figure \ref{fig:choose}); the number of propositions depends on the session phase (baseline vs intervention), as will be described later.  A proposition is an answer to a question that can either be found in the text (convergent proposition), or cannot be found in the text but that is related to the content (divergent proposition).  Children were asked to choose one of the propositions to generate a question from (Figure \ref{fig:question}).  In other words, students had only the answers and they had to guess what questions would lead to such answers. For each article, children repeated this process of generating questions based on a choice of proposition three times; after that, there was a 4th {\it free question} round where children could generate any questions they wanted about the text, without being given any propositions.  When the 4 questioning rounds were finished for that article, children proceeded to choose another topic, read another piece of text, and generate questions.

Children were not restricted in terms of time; they completed the experiment at their own pace.  Children interacted with the application on a tablet; they were summoned one by one to a quiet room to participate in the experiment, so that they are not distracted by the rest of the class.

In the {\bf baseline} (i.e., A) sessions, students were asked to process 3 articles. For each article, the agent presents 2 propositions to the children based on which to generate a question; one of the propositions represents an answer to a convergent-thinking question, and the other to a divergent-thinking question. Table \ref{tab:baseline_dialogue} provides an example of a baseline round, including the article, the choices of propositions, and what the agent said when asking children to choose a proposition. As the example shows, the agent was passive---it did not help or influence children to choose one or the other proposition.  When presenting the propositions, the agent simply said, ``Here are the responses to two questions.  Choose one of the propositions and try to find the question that it corresponds to.  Take your time to formulate.''

There were two baseline sessions, conducted before (baseline 1) and after (baseline 2) the intervention session. The two baseline manipulations were exactly the same, with only the articles being different. In each baseline session, children asked 12 questions in total, 3 based on propositions and 1 free question for each of the 3 articles.

In the {\bf Intervention} (i.e., B) session, students were asked to process 6 articles.  Similar to the baseline, for each article, they did 3 rounds of proposition-guided questioning plus a free question; but this time, they were given 3 propositions to choose from in each questioning round instead of two.  Students were divided into two intervention condition groups.  In the {\texttt Convergent} condition, two of the propositions were answers that would lead to convergent-thinking questions, while the third proposition was one that would lead to a divergent-thinking question.   Likewise, in the {\texttt Divergent} condition, two of the three propositions were directed towards divergent-thinking questions, with the third directing towards a convergent-thinking question.  An additional feature of the intervention session is that the agent will attempt to {\it prompt} the children to choose a particular proposition by giving them a {\it question starter}.  For example, while the children are choosing a proposition, the agent would say ``One of the questions might start with {\it When...}.  It might help you choose one of the propositions...''. In the Divergent condition, the agent would attempt to encourage divergent thinking by giving a question starter that would lead to a divergent-thinking question, and likewise for the Convergent condition.

Table \ref{tab:intervention_dialogue} provides an example of an intervention round and highlights these differences between the Convergent and Divergent conditions. Only the choices of propositions and question starter prompts were different; the article was the same.  With this manipulation, our goal is to influence children to generate a certain type of questions (convergent-thinking or divergent-thinking), and investigate whether there is any immediate or longer term influence on their question generation behaviour post-intervention (i.e., in baseline 2).  In total, each child asked 24 questions---18 questions guided by propositions and prompts, and 6 free questions---during the intervention session.

Over the entire experiment, each child generated 36 questions guided by propositions---9 questions in each baseline session, and 18 questions in the intervention session.

\subsection{Design Rationale}
In developing the pedagogical agent, one of the design choices we made is to provide propositions and question starter prompts to make the process of question generation easier for children. The rationale behind this decision is two fold.  First, Humphries and Ness \cite{humphries2015beyond} found that children, without external aids, have great difficulty generating divergent-thinking questions, and proposed a set of verbal tools that help students construct questions for which the answers are not directly in the text. Inspired by this work, we provide simple vs complex question starters as verbal tools to help children generate questions. Second, Graesser and Person \cite{graesser1994question} argues that children fail to generate divergent-thinking questions because they are unable to identify their own knowledge gap. Suggesting answers to children helps to reveal their knowledge gap, while simultaneously serving as a form of gamification---since the divergent propositions are not in the text, the novelty of the propositions and the challenge of finding the right questions serve as design elements for keeping children curious and engaged.

\subsection{Materials}

The 12 articles used in the experiment were selected from a variety of children literature, including a magazine (i.e., Images doc), book/encyclopedia (i.e., La grande imagerie) and website (i.e., 1 jour 1 actu), related to subjects in science and history that are likely to interest children.  They were edited in such a way that children can quickly read and understand them---the edited articles all have 6 sentences and a mean of 18 $\pm$ 7 words per sentence. For each article, the authors generated the propositions based on the two levels of questions (convergent-thinking and divergent-thinking) specified in Gallagher and Ascher's classification scheme~\cite{gallagher1963preliminary}, which is known to be particularly useful for categorizing children's questions \cite{humphries2015beyond}.  To facilitate the replication of this experiment, our dataset, which includes articles, propositions and prompts, is available at  \url{https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/JKD52Y}.

\subsection{Participants}

We recruited 95 5th grade students belonging to 4 classes from an elementary school, aged between 10 and 12 years old.  After baseline 1, participants were randomly assigned to 2 intervention condition groups (Convergent or Divergent). As shown in Table \ref{tab:demographics} and confirmed via t- or $\chi^{2}$ tests, the two groups did not differ in term of demographics (age, gender) as well as other profile measures.

\begin{table}[h!]
    \centering
    \caption{Mean demographics and profile measure for the Convergent vs Divergent condition}
    \small{
    \begin{tabular}{p{2.5cm} p{1.2cm} p{1.2cm} p{1.5cm}}
    \hline
         ~ & Convergent  & Divergent  & t/$\chi^2$\\
         ~ & (n=38) & (n=34) & p values\\
         \hline
          age & 10.8  & 10.9  & t = -1.50\\
          (years) & ($\pm$0.27) & ($\pm$0.46) &  p=.139\\
          \hline
          gender  & 21M &  21M & $\chi^2$ = 0.0764  \\
          (M/F) & 21F & 19F & p=.782\\
           \hline

          reading ability  & 167 & 160  & t = 0.83 \\
          (\# read word/min) &  ($\pm$37.27) & ($\pm$37.59) & p= 410\\
           \hline
          verbal understanding & 18,88  & 18,50  & t = -0.018\\
           (max=42) & ($\pm$6,14) & ($\pm$5,01) & p=.986\\
           \hline
          curiosity trait  & 28,84  & 29,06  & t =-0.223 \\
          (max=40) & ($\pm$3,78) & ($\pm$4,46) & p=.824\\
           \hline
          device use freq. & 3.13  & 3.18  & t = -0.294\\
           (1 to 4 score) & ($\pm$0.71) & ($\pm$0.63) & p= .770\\
         \hline
    \end{tabular}}
    \label{tab:demographics}
\end{table}

We removed the data of 2 children, who had learning disabilities and were participating in the experiment with the help of a school assistant.  We removed students who were not present during all three sessions, students whose verbal outputs are not deemed usable (e.g., they entered mostly gibberish), and students whose majority of generated questions were incomplete, unrelated to the chosen proposition or not well-formulated. In total, we removed 23 children's data; this leaves 72 participants for our final analysis, composed of 33 boys and 39 girls.  The data cleaning procedure is further discussed below.

\subsection{Data Collection Instruments}

\subsubsection{Session Data}
From the Curiosity Notebook, we collected the proposition that children chose and the question that they generated in each questioning round.  From this data, we produced a count of how many convergent-thinking versus divergent-thinking questions were generated. We refer to this count as the question-asking score (max score=18 in the intervention session; max score=9 in each baseline session).

\subsubsection{Profile}
This includes information about the child's age, gender,
verbal understanding (WISC-IV subscale \cite{wechsler03}), reading abilities (E.L.F.E test \cite{lequette2008elfe}), and curiosity trait \cite{litman_measurement_2004}.  This information was collected at the beginning of the first session, and the curiosity trait questionnaire was given to the parents to complete before the experiment.

\subsubsection{Intrinsic Motivation and Type of Motivation}
The {\it Intrinsic Motivation Scale} (IMS, max score = 40)  measures children's motivation in using the application \cite{cordova1996intrinsic}.   This was administered before and after the intervention, i.e., during the pre- and post-intervention baseline sessions.  The {\it Type of Motivation} (TM) questionnaire \cite{vallerand1992academic}, which is a superset of the IMS, was used to assess the type of motivation elicited by the intervention. It is divided in 3 subscales, which include Amotivation (AM, max score = 3), Extrinsic Motivation (EM, max score = 9) and Intrinsic Motivation (IM, max score = 9).  The TM questionnaire was administered at the end of the post-intervention baseline session.  Together, these scales allow us to evaluate the type and level of motivation behind the children interacting with the agent.

\subsubsection{Fluency of Question Asking}
The {\it Fluency of Question Asking} test measures the number of questions that children can freely generate about a piece of text without any external aids.  In this test, children were told to read a short piece of text (specifically, about ants), and to ask as many questions as they can within 1 minute.   In order to assess whether our intervention has any effects on children's fluency of question asking, this test was administered both at the beginning of the first session, as well as at the end of the last session.

\subsubsection{Perception of the Value of Curiosity}
The Children's Images of and Attitudes Towards Curiosity (CIAC) questionnaire measures elementary school children's perception of and attitude towards curiosity \cite{post_development_2019}. The 24-item questionnaire consists of two components.  The first component consists of a 2-item {\it Image of Curiosity} scale, which measures how much students relate social matters to curiosity, and a 5-item {\it Epistemic Image of Curiosity} scale, which measures how much children associate epistemic questions to curiosity.  The second component consists of the {\it Attitude towards Epistemic Curiosity} scale covering: Personal inclination (PR, 4 items) which measures how children perceive the benefit of question asking in class and their degree of enjoyment doing it; Social Relevance (SR, 3 items), which assesses the extent to which children see curiosity having any social relevance; Negative Opinion (NO, 3 items), which evaluates whether children perceive the act of question-asking in a negative way; Fear of Classmates Negative Judgement (FCNJ, 3 items), which evaluates children's level of fear of being judged by other people in the classroom when asking questions; and finally, Self-Efficiency (SE, 4 items), which measures how children perceive their own skills in asking questions at school. To test whether our interventions have any effects on children's perception of the value of curiosity, these surveys were administered both at the beginning of the first session, as well as at the end of the last session.

All questionnaires have been converted to 4-point Likert scales to ensure a homogeneous analysis of data, except for the TM questionnaire which contains yes/no questions only \cite{vallerand1992academic}. This is based on prior research \cite{kulas2009middle} showing that a Likert scale with an even number of items typically forces children to make a decision between positive and negative answers, whereas with an uneven number of items, children are more likely to choose the middle item as the answer.

\subsection{Data Cleaning}

Since the question asking scores are based on questions generated from propositions, we processed the data to ensure that children entered well-formulated questions.

\begin{table}[h!]
    \centering
    \caption{Percentage of well-formulated questions for each session}
    \small{
    \begin{tabular}{p{1.2cm} p{1.8cm} p{1.8cm} p{1.8cm}}
    \hline
         ~ & Baseline 1 & Intervention & Baseline 2\\
         \hline
          Convergent & 90.74 ($\pm$12.48) & 89.74 ($\pm$12.56) & 90.46 ($\pm$11.23)\\
          \hline
         Divergent & 93.07 ($\pm$15.59) & 89.89 ($\pm$15.43) & 93.5 ($\pm$11.21)\\
         \hline
    \end{tabular}}
    \label{tab:wellformulated}
\end{table}

Our analyses are based on counting divergent-thinking and convergent-thinking questions. In each round, if children chose a convergent/divergent proposition, the question they generate is considered a convergent-thinking/divergent-thinking question, unless it is deemed incorrect. A question is considered correct if the chosen proposition is the correct answer to that question.
As an example, for the proposition {\it 200 million years ago}, an acceptable question would be ``When were dinosaurs alive?''  We also accepted questions like ``Dinosaurs were alive, when?'' or ``Dinosaurs lived, when?'', but not ``Were dinosaurs alive 200 millions years ago?'' to which the appropriate answer is yes or no.

Two raters coded 10\% of the questions, and considered 79\% and 86\% of the questions asked to be correct (i.e., the answer to the question matches the proposition) respectively.  The inter-rater reliability is 82.5\% overall, 82\% for convergent-thinking questions and 83\% for divergent-thinking questions.    Table \ref{tab:wellformulated} shows the number of well-formulated questions that we retained for analysis, by session and by intervention condition.

\section{Results}

\subsection{Question-asking performance during intervention}

There was a significant difference in the number of divergent-thinking questions asked during the intervention session between the two conditions (t(670) = -13.6 , p < 0.001, $\eta^2$= -3.22), as shown in Figure \ref{fig:condition_results}. The Divergent condition elicited a higher percentage (61\%) and average number of divergent-thinking questions (m = 11.10; SD = 3.74) compared to the Convergent condition (6\%; m = 6.85; SD = 2.08). We also observed that children more frequently chose to ask questions that were prompted by the pedagogical agent; 73\% of questions asked in the Divergent condition and 70\% of the questions asked in the Convergent condition were generated using question starters provided by the agent.

\begin{figure}[h!]
  \includegraphics[width=\columnwidth]{figures/conditions_results_bw.png}
  \caption{Number of convergent-thinking vs divergent-thinking questions asked in the intervention session by intervention condition}
  \label{fig:condition_results}
\end{figure}

In addition, the results suggest that divergent-thinking questions are much more difficult to generate than convergent-thinking questions.  Even with prompting, children in the Divergent condition still opted to ask convergent-thinking questions almost 40\% of the time; conversely, the incentive provided by the agent in the Convergent condition resulted in 94\% convergent-thinking questions.

\subsection{Mediating effect of curiosity trait}

In analyzing the mediating effects of curiosity trait, we conducted an ANCOVA with curiosity trait as co-variate.  Results show a slight trend of curiosity trait score mediating the type of questions asked (F(1,69) = 3.13, p = 0.08, $\eta^2$ = 0.011).

\begin{figure}[h!]
  \includegraphics[width=\columnwidth]{figures/Correlation.png}
  \caption{Correlation between the number of convergent-thinking (left) or divergent-thinking (right) questions asked and the curiosity trait of students in the Divergent condition}
  \label{fig:curiosity_trait}
\end{figure}

For this reason, we performed a correlation analysis between curiosity trait and each type of question, in both conditions. There is no significant correlation in the Convergent condition. However, as Figure \ref{fig:curiosity_trait} shows, in the Divergent condition, the number of divergent-thinking questions is positively correlated to curiosity trait (r = 0.358, p = 0.038) and the number of convergent-thinking questions is negatively correlated to curiosity trait (r = -0.390, p = 0.023). It means that the more curious a student is (by trait), the more divergent-thinking questions and the fewer convergent-thinking questions they will ask.

\subsection{Intervention Effect: Pre-Post Measures}

Lastly, we were interested in the influence of the intervention on question asking behaviour (i.e., in terms of the number of divergent-thinking questions asked and fluency of question asking), motivation and perception of the value of curiosity, as measured by pre- and post- measures.

\subsubsection{Performance of Question Asking}

Mixed ANOVA revealed a significant difference in the number of divergent-thinking questions asked bewteen the pre-intervention and post-intervention baselines (F(1,70) = 13.76, p < 0.01, $\eta^2$ = 0.074).

\begin{figure}[h!]
  \includegraphics[width=\columnwidth]{figures/baseline_results_bw.png}
  \caption{Number of divergent-thinking questions asked during Baseline 1 vs Baseline 2 by intervention condition}
  \label{fig:typeofquestionprepost}
\end{figure}

As Figure 5 shows, students asked more divergent-thinking questions in post-intervention baseline (m = 3.14; SD = 1.57) than in the pre-intervention baseline (m = 2.25 ; SD = 1.62). However, the two-way effect (intervention condition $\times$ baseline) did not reach significance (p > 0.60). Taken together, these results indicate that all children have improved their capability to ask divergent-thinking questions irrespective of which intervention condition (Convergent vs. Divergent) they were assigned to. With 18 trials of question asking training, both interventions yielded the same benefit in terms of encouraging children to ask more divergent-thinking questions.

\subsubsection{Motivational Measures}

In terms of intrinsic motivation (IM), there was no significant difference between the two baseline sessions (p = 0.535) or between the intervention groups (p = 0.228). The scores are relatively high (m = 28.7, out of 40) and remain stables throughout the experiment.

\begin{figure}[t!]
  \includegraphics[width=\columnwidth]{figures/motivation_score_bw.png}
  \caption{Motivation score of students by type of motivation (intrinsic vs extrinsic) and intervention condition}
  \label{fig:convergent}
\end{figure}

In terms of the type of motivation, statistical analyses revealed a difference between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation scores (F(1,70) = 12.62, p < 0.001, $\eta^2$ = 0.046). Students seem to be more intrinsically motivated (m = 5.72 $\pm$ 6) than extrinsically motivated (m = 4.88 $\pm$ 5), irrespective of intervention condition (F(1,70) = 0.0265, p = 0.871).  There is no interaction between intervention condition and type of motivation (F(1,70) = 0.109, p = 0.773).

\subsubsection{Fluency of Question Asking}

Children asked more questions in post-intervention baseline (m = 9.0 $\pm$ 2.7) than in pre-intervention baseline (m= 6.8 $\pm$ 2.5); this result is significant according to Mixed ANOVA analysis (F(1,70)= 47.12, p < 0.001, $\eta^2$ = 0.147). There were no significant differences in the number of questions asked between the two intervention groups (F(1,70) = 1.13, p = 0.290) and no interaction between the intervention condition and baselines (F(1,70) = 1.23, p = 0.271).

\begin{figure}[h!]
  \includegraphics[width=\columnwidth]{figures/fluency_of_asking_bw.png}
  \caption{Number of questions asked during the pre vs post-intervention fluency of question asking test, by intervention condition}
  \label{fig:convergent}
\end{figure}

\subsubsection{Curiosity Perception}

In terms of the image of curiosity, mixed ANOVA shows that there are no significant differences between the baselines  (F(1,70) = 0.067, p = 0.931) or between intervention conditions (F(1,70) = 0.061, p = 0.804), and there is no two-way interaction (F(1,70) = 0.027, p = 0.870). Students had nearly the same perception or image of curiosity at the end of the experiment as the beginning.

\begin{table}[h!]
    \centering
    \caption{Pre and post mean image of curiosity score by intervention}
    \small{
    \begin{tabular}{c c c}
    \hline
         ~ & Pre (/4) & Post (/4)\\
         \hline
          Convergent Condition & 2.15 ($\pm$ 0.57) & 2.25 ($\pm$ 0.48)\\
          Divergent Condition & 2.69 ($\pm$ 0.56) & 2.63 ($\pm$ 0.57)\\
         \hline
    \end{tabular}}
    \label{tab:imageOfCuriosityScore}
\end{table}

In terms of attitude toward epistemic curiosity, Mixed ANOVA revealed no significant differences between the baselines  (F(1,70) = 1.98, p = 0.164) or between intervention conditions (F(1,70) = 0.132, p = 0.718), and there is no two-way interaction (F(1,70) = 0.003, p = 0.956). Students had nearly the same attitude toward epistemic curiosity at the end of the experiment as the beginning.

\begin{table}[h!]
    \centering
    \caption{Pre and post mean attitude toward epistemic curiosity score by intervention condition}
    \small{
    \begin{tabular}{c c c}
    \hline
         ~ & Pre (/4) & Post (/4)\\
         \hline
          Convergent Condition & 2.30 ($\pm$ 0.48) & 2.27 ($\pm$ 0.51)\\
          Divergent Condition & 2.34 ($\pm$ 0.46) & 2.29 ($\pm$ 0.52)\\
         \hline
    \end{tabular}}
    \label{tab:meanAttitude}
\end{table}

\section{Discussion}

This work explores how pedagogical agents can be used to improve the ability of children to ask more questions and questions of higher levels of complexity. Specifically, we proposed and evaluated an intervention that can steer children to ask more questions of a particular type.  Our main results show that both interventions led to higher fluency of question asking and a significant increase in the number of divergent-thinking questions asked, when comparing the post-intervention to the pre-intervention results.  This is counter to our initial assumption, that the Divergent condition will result in a bigger improvement of question-asking skills than the Convergent condition.  One simple explanation is that the repeated practice of asking questions (which is common to both interventions) led children to be more comfortable with generating questions, as well as questions that require curiosity and a greater amount of information seeking. This confirms existing theories \cite{engel2011children} which established a strong connection between children's mastery of question generation mechanics and their curiosity-related behaviors. The results also resonate with curiosity studies which show the positive cyclical effects of question asking~\cite{Browne2007,Chin2008,graesser1994question}---the more question you ask, the more curious you become, leading to even more questions.  Our work went one step further by demonstrating that pushing children to ask more questions can lead them to ask more complex ones.

Other more nuanced conclusions can be drawn from the study. First, the findings provide some evidence that our intervention was effective: the agent was able to successfully influence children to ask either more convergent-thinking or divergent-thinking questions through the use of propositions and question starter prompts. In the Divergent condition, our agent led children to generate 61\% divergent-thinking questions, which is noteworthy in light of the previous findings of Humphries and Ness \cite{humphries2015beyond} reporting that children would ask 93\% convergent-thinking questions when no incentives were given. As observed, 73\% of divergent-thinking questions asked in the Divergent condition were those prompted by question-starters.  Without question starters prompting divergent-thinking questions (as is the case in the Convergent condition), only 6\% of the questions that children asked were divergent-thinking. Thus, it is possible {\it and} extremely beneficial to foster question asking skills with the help of a pedagogical agent, who provides hints and models higher-level question asking behaviour \cite{humphries2015beyond}.

Second, results show that the curiosity trait of children was positively correlated with the number of divergent-thinking questions asked in the Divergent condition.  In other words, children who are generally curious benefited more from the Divergent intervention.
This connection between curiosity trait and ability to ask divergent-thinking questions is consistent with prior work \cite{loewenstein_psychology_1994,jirout_childrens_2011}, which suggests that curious children tend to focus on implicit information in text, seek new knowledge more often, and are better at discriminating between helpful and unhelpful questions than less curious children. Therefore, the Divergent intervention---of having an agent encourage divergent-thinking questions---is particularly fruitful for the highly curious children, whereas the Convergent intervention is beneficial for all the children.

As a final argument in favor of the use of educational agents to facilitate question asking training, across both interventions, the intrinsic motivation score remained high and superior to extrinsic motivation. This shows that children generally find the question-asking learning activity to be enjoyable and motivating.

\subsection{Limitations}
On the flip side, our results also showed that the intervention effects were short-lived---there is a drastic decrease of divergent-thinking questions performance for the Divergent group, from 61\% in the intervention session to 36\% in the post-intervention baseline.  One possible reason is the sudden removal of support by the agent when transitioning from the intervention session to the post-intervention baseline session, which made the task of question asking more difficult.  This discrepancy in children's performance between agent-supported and self-supported question asking mirrors a well-known learning phenomenon---the maintenance of under-developed skills requires support from the environment, whereas well-developed skills that can be self-sustained regardless of the circumstances \cite{sauzeon2012developmental}. In other words, the 18 trials of question asking training may simply be inadequate to consolidate the learning of divergent-thinking question asking behaviors.

The intervention duration can also explain why no positive change was observed in children's perception of and attitude towards curiosity. This is not surprising in light of the nature (i.e., digital interaction) and duration (i.e., 3 days) of the performed intervention. Indeed, it is well documented in social attitude literature that reliable and sustainable attitudinal changes often require longer interventions and/or with more realistic social interaction with teacher or between children [10]. Moreover, as reported by Post and Walma van der Molen \cite{post_development_2019}, negative age-related attitudinal changes toward epistemic curiosity is common during the transitional period between Grade 5 and Grade 6. Researchers have found that children's perception about the learning value and use of epistemic curiosity may decline as they progress through primary school.

\subsection{Long Term Benefits}
Overall, the present results suggest that an agent can be used to enhance question-asking skills in children, irrespective of whether the Convergent or Divergent intervention was used.
Previous research found the generation of divergent-thinking questions~\cite{claxton07} to be an effective exercise for fostering higher-level thinking skills in young students---motivating them to voice inquisitive ideas, make creative connections between knowledge domains, and seek alternative solutions to problems~\cite{engel15,heywood12,osborne2014}---and for enhancing their reading comprehension skills \cite{ness_simple_2017}. The convergent/divergent question distinction was designed to assess children's questions \cite{humphries2015beyond}, and therefore can be also used to educate teachers on how to recognize questioning behaviour in the classroom and how to use effectively use questioning themselves as a pedagogical strategy~\cite{leven81}.  Therefore, as a classroom tool, our pedagogical agent has the potential to benefit children and teachers alike.

\section{Conclusion}

In this work, we developed a pedagogical agent that encourages children to ask divergent-thinking questions, a more complex form of questions that is associated with curiosity. We conducted a study with 95 fifth grade students, who interacted with an agent that encourages either convergent-thinking or divergent-thinking questions. Results showed that both interventions increased the number of divergent-thinking questions and the fluency of question asking, while they did not significantly alter children's perception of curiosity despite their high intrinsic motivation scores.  In addition, children's curiosity trait has a mediating effect on question asking under the agent that promoted divergent-thinking, suggesting that question-asking interventions must be personalized to each student based on their tendency to be curious.

Despite encouraging results, we observed that the question asking exercise was still too difficult for some children. In future work, we could develop a more guided approach or an adaptive strategy where we prompt for questions of different levels of complexity, in order to avoid a cognitive load \cite{sweller_cognitive_1994}. We hypothesize that different types of text (e.g interesting vs boring, familiar vs unfamiliar, text containing complete vs partial information) may influence children's epistemic curiosity and the way they generate questions \cite{duffy1989models}; as such, future work can explore new types of materials and how they mediate the effects of agent-facilitated question asking. Currently, questions were coded manually after the experiment and not processed automatically during the interaction with the agent. In future work, one can automate processing by parsing question starters (e.g., what, when, how) from children's questions, or by creating a topic model to describe the questions and the main text to ensure some correspondence between the two. Finally, we can investigate short and long term interventions on question asking and assess their effects on learning outcomes.

\section{Acknowledgments}

This work was funded by HFSP Grant RGP0018/2016, Idex/University of Bordeaux and NSERC Discovery Grant RGPIN-2015-0454.  We would also like to thank Cecile Mazon (Ph.D. Cognitive Science) for her help in the data cleaning and coding, Didier Roy (Researcher in Education Science) for his support in the recruitment of students, and all the participants in this studies, including students, parents and teachers.

\balance{}

\bibliographystyle{SIGCHI-Reference-Format}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaArXiv


The contrast between Virgin Whatever and SpaceX is certainly interesting. Musk has to go out fundraising, too, but SpaceX has a track record of getting things done, and his next-step projects are highly visible. Why would anyone give Branson more money?
Blue Origin is a different comparison, and nominally in the suborbital tourist business. And Bezos doesn't have to do any fundraising; he just sells another billion dollars of Amazon stock. On the other hand, New Shepard is, what, about a year behind promises of humans in flight? And doesn't seem to be in any hurry. It must be nice to be so well-insulated from paying customers.
I remember his failed balloon flights.
Why would anyone give Branson more money?
All this from Wikipedia BTW — I've no personal knowledge of either guy and have no money invested with either. But my guess is some people invest in Branson's companies based on their knowledge of specific industries, and some people invest because of their confidence in the man himself, or more likely in their interpretatation of his image. I'll note that both Branson and Musk seem a bit … flamboyant. As for which is the better businessman …. time will tell. Strictly as a matter of accounting, I'm inclined to think it's Branson, but he's not the innovator that Musk is, and he's pushing 70 — I rather doubt the Virgin group is going to hold together after he dies or retires.
If regular people got high enough they just might see the edge. That definitely wouldn't be good for the establishment.


Frame Ideas, Vogue Frames was posted February 20, 2019 at 2:36 pm by intercambioenlaces.info . More over Vogue Frames has viewed by 88 visitor.
Frame Ideas, Vogue Glasses Frames was posted January 22, 2019 at 10:01 pm by intercambioenlaces.info . More over Vogue Glasses Frames has viewed by 203 visitor.
Frame Ideas, Vogue Eyeglass Frames was posted November 29, 2018 at 10:04 am by intercambioenlaces.info . More over Vogue Eyeglass Frames has viewed by 274 visitor.


text:
Multicultural Student Affairs
Dr. Martin Luther King Commemoration
Each year the Wooster campus community takes time to engage in meaningful exploration and dialogue about issues that connect with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s work and vision on matters relating to civil rights and social justice, activism, responsibility, and engagement.
2021 Speaker: Mamoudou N'Diaye '14
2020 Speaker: Kimberly Brazwell
2019 Speaker: Darnell Moore
2018 Speaker: Natalie Warne
2021 Keynote Speaker
Mamoudou N'Diaye '14 is a Mauritanian-American comedian, tv/film writer, filmmaker, activist/creative consultant for issues of racial justice, climate justice, and mental health, DJ, and a former 7th grade teacher.
N'Diaye has been a correspondent for digital media companies Mic and Seeker, a creative comedy consultant for social justice nonprofits Color of Change, Hip Hop Caucus, The Center for Cultural Power, and The Center for Media and Social Impact, and a winner of 2019's Yes And Laughter Lab for his pilot, Franklin, about the black kid from the Peanuts comic strip. He has written and appeared in the Comedy Central Original They Follow, written for Refinery29's After After Party, and currently works as a writer on Amazon's upcoming Exploding Kittens and the second season of Netflix's Space Force.
N'Diaye is currently developing By Us, For Us (aka BUFU), a late-night sketch/talk show centering Black voices, for Color for Change, Flyovers, a half-hour dramedy about being Black and African in the rural Midwest, And DC's Number Two Detective Agency, an animated half-hour comedy set in the DC Universe.
N'Diaye holds a degree in cognitive behavioral neuroscience from the College of Wooster and is a 2020 Sundance Fellow for his pilot Griot, an animated anthology centering stories in the African diaspora.
MLK is going virtual for 2021!
In the interest of the safety and health of our campus community, we will gather virtually to recognize Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
This year's theme is The Fierce Urgency of Now: Education as Transformation.
When Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, he described a "fierce urgency of now." Education as transformation is a challenge to take what one learns beyond a classroom or a Justice Dialogue and turn that same knowledge toward action and social justice.
Multicultural Student Organizations
MLK Commemoration
MLK Day Schedule
Justice Dialogues
Allen Scholars Community

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
«Sailing» es una canción del dúo británico The Sutherland Brothers Band, escrito por Gavin Sutherland para el disco Lifeboat de 1972. Sin embargo en 1975 se hizo más conocida por la versión hecha por el cantante Rod Stewart para su disco Atlantic Crossing, del cual se extrajo como el primer sencillo de éste.

Para promocionarlo se grabó un video musical en el Puerto de Nueva York en el mismo año, y que como dato fue uno de los primeros videos emitidos por MTV, puesto al aire el 1 de agosto de 1981.

Recepción comercial

Alcanzó la primera posición en la lista británica UK Singles Chart, convirtiéndose en su tercer sencillo en obtener dicha posición en su propio país, y a su vez en el mismo año fue certificado con disco de oro por vender más de 400 000 copias. Hasta el año 2012 el sencillo había vendido más de un millón de copias en el Reino Unido.

Por otro lado se convirtió en su segundo tema más exitoso después de «Maggie May» de 1971, logrando el primer puesto en Irlanda, Noruega, Países Bajos y Bélgica. Sin embargo en los Estados Unidos solo obtuvo el puesto 58 en los Billboard Hot 100.

Versiones e importantes interpretaciones

En 1976 fue utilizado como tema principal para el documental Sailor de la cadena de televisión BBC, que permitió que volviera a aparecer en los UK Singles Chart en la posición 3. En 1987 se volvió a lanzar como sencillo con fines benéficos, para ayudar a los familiares de los 193 pasajeros que murieron en el desastre del transbordador MS Herald of Free Enterprise, cerca del puerto belga de Zeebrugge. Tres años después se utilizó como canción de protesta contra la repatriación de los "refugiados del mar vietnamitas" a Hong Kong, cuya interpretación la realizaron varios artistas liderados por Steve Hackett. El 1 de julio de 2007 Stewart la interpretó en el Concierto por Diana, dedicado a Diana de Gales fallecida diez años antes.

Por otro lado la versión de Stewart ha sido interpretada en vivo por Guns N' Roses el 29 de julio de 2006 en Wembley Arena, Londres, Inglaterra para su gira Chinese Democracy Tour 2006. También ha sido interpretada por otros artistas, como por la Orquesta Sinfónica de Londres quienes realizaron una versión orquestal para su disco Classic Rock de 1977. El músico Robin Trower la grabó para su disco Long Misty Days de 1976, con la voz de su bajista James Dewar. Además la melodía ha sido utilizada para el himno futbolero «No one likes us, we don't care».

Referencias

Sencillos de Rod Stewart
Sencillos de 1975
Sencillos de Warner Bros. Records
Sencillos número uno en Reino Unido
Sencillos número uno en Noruega
Sencillos número uno en Países Bajos
Sencillos número uno en Bélgica
Sencillos número uno en Irlanda
Canciones de 1972
Canciones en inglés
Sencillos certificados de oro por la British Phonographic Industry

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
The Bizarro World Of The NC Values Coalition
The NC Values Coalition sent out a fundraising email yesterday that is jaw-droppingly insane.
Let me walk you through it. Here goes:
This week we are reminded that our fight for traditional marriage did not end on May 8th.
EqualityNC has released a very disturbing video targeting our own Tami Fitzgerald and pro-marriage legislators under their "Payback Challenge" campaign. [emphasis theirs]
Let's stop for a second before we get to the crazy part.
Just so we're all clear, Equality NC's "Payback Challenge" is, in their own words, a fundraising drive "dedicated to making strategic investments in key legislative and state races in North Carolina's primary and general elections." Disturbing stuff, right?
The "Payback Challenge" video's goal is pretty simple. First, it is intended to remind LGBT North Carolinians and equality-supporting allies that Amendment One was very much "personal," and very much "payback," despite the insistence from Tami Fitzgerald and Vote For Marriage NC that it wasn't. Secondly, the video is to urge LGBT North Carolinians and pro-equality allies to donate to Equality NC who are working to help elect pro-equality candidates in the 2012 election. Horrible, right?
Here's the video, before we move on with NCVC's facepalm-inducing logic.
Pretty effective, right? Sometimes, organizations like the NCVC do all the work for you. All you need is to hold a mirror up to them, and you have yourself all the ammunition you need (no pun intended, seriously).
Okay, back to the hilarious NCVC email:
The video - which can be found here - overlays gunshots and video of a man shooting at an anti-amendment sign with video of NC Values Coalition Executive Director Tami Fitzgerald praising the passage of the marriage amendment on election night.
The video is a thinly-veiled threat against supporters of traditional marriage and can have no other purpose than to incite hatred. [emphasis theirs]
Their purpose is clear and it is distasteful in light of the shooting incident that occurred just a few weeks ago when a volunteer at a Washington DC homosexual rights group walked into the lobby of the Family Research Council and started shooting. This video is innapropriate, and EqualityNC has crossed the line. [emphasis, again, theirs]
We do not expect EqualityNC to agree with us. But we do expect them to communicate responsibly and civilly. We condemn this video and hope that Americans from all walks of life will join us.
Friends, we at the NC Values Coalition will consistently and constantly defend traditional marriage. In spite of their threats.
Please stand with us against their attacks and join us in condemning this disturbing video.
Jessica Wood
Communications Director, NC Values Coalition
Okay, so let me make sure I understand. The video, which shows an ALLY OF NC VALUES COALITION SHOOTING A RIFLE AT A PRO-EQUALITY SIGN, is a VIOLENT THREAT AGAINST PEOPLE WHO ARE ANTI-GAY. Huh?
(Also, "In spite of their threats" is not a sentence, but let's not quibble over grammar.)
Also, these are very likely the same folks who thought it was silly and overreaching that people got upset when Sarah Palin released a map with crosshairs targeting legislators who voted for Obama's health care bill.
So, back to the email. "Equality NC's purpose is quite clear"? Um, you mean, that they're showing people how hateful and violent your fellow anti-LGBT, "pro-marriage" supporters were in the weeks leading up to the Amendment One vote?
And while nobody on the pro-equality side is condoning the lone act of violence against hate group The Family Research Council, there is nothing -- nothing -- in the video that even remotely suggests that compassionate pro-equality North Carolinians go out, purchase an arsenal, and shoot anti-gay activists and hate group members.
This is what you do, people, when you have nothing but your own religious bigotry. You make stuff up. You project your own hatred, and the hatred of those who share your beliefs, onto your opponents -- opponents who want nothing more than to allow all of their fellow North Carolinians to be treated equally and to not be discriminated against because of their natural traits.
Tags: amendment 1, equality nc, gay marriage, lgbt, nc values coalition, north carolina, politics, religious bigotry, same-sex marriage, tami fitzgerald, vote for marriage nc
▼ Sep 2 - Sep 9 (8)
Richard Dawkins Speaks to CNN About Scientific Lit...
Oh, for Xenu's Sake: Scientologists 'Helping' Viet...
Pat Robertson: Democrats Are The 'Party Of Gays, G...
Chuck Norris' Anti-Obama Video Warns of '1,000 Yea...
'Incredibly Ironic': Equality NC Responds To NC Va...
Study: Supernatural Reasoning Increases With Age
'The Fighter' Boxer Pulls Support From Scott Brown...


text:
where you lead Nov. 17, 2016
Gilmore Girls Is Great, But Lorelai and Rory Might Be Terrible
By Margaret Lyons
This post originally ran on September 25, 2014. We are re-running it in advance of the new season of Gilmore Girls.
Gilmore Girls is a treasure, and watching and rewatching (and rewatching and rewatching) has brought me countless hours of joy. I am a diehard, a true believer. And as such, I have to admit this hard truth: Lorelai and Rory are, at least sometimes, terrible people. But who is worse? Lorelai? Or Rory?
Obviously, GG is a show about, you know, Lorelai and Rory, so the series holds them in special-snowflake regard, as do all the characters; everyone in Stars Hollow thinks Rory is a tiny, blue-eyed She-Christ, even though she's just a studious person and not actually a valorous one. Lorelai believes her I'm-so-kooky routine delights her neighbors, even though they themselves are marching to their own drummers perhaps more than she is. In a town with a Miss Patty, Lorelai still sees herself as a local object of interest. Both Gilmores have an exaggerated sense of their own wonderfulness, though I suppose, in their defense, those around them seem to play along. Except for Mitchum Huntzberger, who is admittedly a tremendous douche, but he's also the only person ever to tell Rory anything other than how wonderful she is. We're supposed to hate him for this, and certainly Lorelai and Richard and Emily and Logan do, even though there's no evidence to suggest that Rory has any investigative drive whatsoever. Conscientious? Sure. But homegirl does not have a nose for news — at least not one that we've ever seen.
Rory's worst attribute, other than her slouchy posture, is her lack of impulse control. She misses Lorelai's college graduation because she had to go into the city to see Jess. She steals a yacht. She sleeps with Dean. She kisses Jess. Rory's strongest motivator is want — if she wants to do it, she does. Her wants always win. Conveniently for her, her wants often align with social norms for WASP success, but on the occasions that they don't, she still follows them. She wants to drop out of college? Boom. If she wants to avoid a problem or a conversation, she does — why confront the consequences of your actions when you can just go to Europe and pretend you're not a mistress? Why hang out with Marty, as elaborately promised, when Logan wants to hang out with his garbage friends?
Lorelai's downfall is her intense, overwhelming self-absorption. She thinks it's pretty darn adorable to pester people about giving her coffee! She's chronically rude to people in the service industry (even though she works in hospitality and should know the agony of rude customers), and she is always in the market for special treatment. The store is closed, but won't you open it for me? There's no food allowed at the meeting, but can't you bend that rule for me? You deliver mail in your own farkakte way, but can you do it differently for me? Me, me, me, me, me. On the night before Sookie's wedding, Lorelai marvels that she herself was there for the whole courtship! Because really, what's being celebrated here is of course Lorelai's presence and not something about anyone else. She is not a good friend to Sookie, even though she thinks she is; she kinda, sorta takes advantage of Sookie's pleaser tendencies and frequently ignores, minimizes, or dismisses Sookie's ideas and problems.
Lorelai's self-absorption erodes any opportunity for self-awareness. She likes to refer to her "emotional baggage," but she assiduously avoids doing anything about it. She says she has these rules about not letting her love life interfere with Rory's life in any way, but then she dates Rory's teacher, occasionally rekindles things with Rory's biological father, and dates and breaks up with the most consistent father figure in Rory's life — and, in each instance, claims she's not putting Rory in the middle of anything. I'm not suggesting that Richard and Emily are the easiest parents to have, but Lorelai doesn't seem to want to make meaningful changes in their relationship: hanging up on Emily, calling Emily Hitler and Stalin, and not telling her about getting engaged, either time? That's not how forgiving, forward-moving relationships work. Lorelai knows how to push Emily and Richard's buttons, and she never hesitates to do so. It's one thing to stand one's ground, but it's another to show up itching for a fight.
So both Lorelai and Rory are … flawed. They're black holes of neediness — take, take, take, take, take — and likely to ignore the needs, wants, and feelings of other people. At least Rory still has time to grow out of it, though. Lorelai's locked into her stunted, oblivious ways, so she's officially worse.
All of this said, I still love them both so much.
Who's Worse: Lorelai or Rory?


text:
Hubble switched to backup computer, science operations resume
Cullen Desforges
Hubble was deployed in April 1990 by the crew of the STS-31 space shuttle Discovery mission. Credit: NASA
NASA announced the Hubble Space Telescope has been switched to the backup payload computer successfully, meaning the 31-year-old telescope will be able to continue its journey in operational mode.
Hubble's recent troubles started on June 13, 2021, when NASA discovered an unusual problem with the telescope; its primary payload computer had failed. The payload computer serves as the primary translator between the telescope and the commands given from the ground to the spacecraft and vice versa.
The next day, teams attempted to reboot the computer to no avail, forcing the spacecraft to go into "safe mode," meaning only critical systems keeping Hubble in orbit are allowed to run; survival mode.
Hubble Space Telescope in Earth orbit. Credit: NASA
Given its incredible importance to the safe operation of Hubble, the telescope features a redundant backup payload computer. The original computer and backup computer were replaced in 2009. However it was still built using the same technology as the legacy devices. The new backup computer hadn't been used since its installation.
Teams initially believed the problem was isolated to one of the four memory modules that exist within the two payload computers. A backup memory module was turned on to no avail, meaning that there might have been a problem with the computer itself.
Given that both the primary and backup memory module systems had failed, there appeared to be a more centralized issue being experienced by the telescope. Scientists on the ground finished a review of risk factors that would come with switching to the backup computer, which occurred later in the week and proved to be a successful fix.
According to NASA, the process to switch to the backup payload computer started July 15 and was confirmed to be successful the next day. The agency then said scientific activities will now be able to continue.
"Hubble is an icon, giving us incredible insight into the cosmos over the past three decades," said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson in an agency news release on July 17. "I'm proud of the Hubble team, from current members to Hubble alumni who stepped in to lend their support and expertise. Thanks to their dedication and thoughtful work, Hubble will continue to build on its 31-year legacy, broadening our horizons with its view of the universe."
The Hubble Space Telescope is no stranger to anomalies since it's launch in 1990. Mere weeks after its debut, the telescope was sending down blurred images to Earth, thus creating a need for an emergency service mission to fix a skewed mirror.
Including its first servicing mission in 1993, Hubble has serviced and upgraded five times, the last of which was flown by space shuttle Atlantis for mission STS-125 in 2009.
Video courtesy of NASA Goddard
Tagged: Astronomy Hubble Hubble Space Telescope Lead Stories NASA STS-125 STS-31
Having a life-long interest in crewed space flight, Desforges' passion materialized on a family vacation in 1999 when he was able see the launch of Space Shuttle Discovery on STS-96. Since then, Desforges has been an enthusiast of space exploration efforts. He lived in Orlando, Florida for a year, during which time he had the opportunity to witness the flights of the historic CRS-4 and EFT-1 missions in person at Cape Canaveral. He earned his Private Pilot Certificate in 2017, holds a degree in Aviation Management, and currently works as an Operations Analyst in the aviation industry in Georgia.


text:
Represents an image object through the `[api:Image]` class, inheriting all base functionality from the `[api:File]` class with extra functionality including resizing.

## Usage

### Managing images through form fields

Images can be uploaded like any other file, through `[api:FileField]`.
More advanced usage is possible through `[api:UploadField]`,
which provides thumbnails, a detail view of the image properties,
and management of relationships to other DataObject instances.
Allows upload of images through limiting file extensions with `setAllowedExtensions()`.

### Inserting images into the WYSIWYG editor

See [Topics: Rich Text Editing](/topics/rich-text-editing).

### Resizing Images in PHP

The following are methods defined on the GD class which you can call on Image Objects. Note to get the following to work
you need to have GD2 support in your PHP installation and because these generate files you must have write access to
your tmp folder.

	:::php
	// manipulation functions
	$image->resize(width,height); // Basic resize, just skews the image
	$image->resizeRatio(width,height) // Resizes an image with max width and height
	$image->paddedResize(width,height) // Adds padding after resizing to width or height.
	$image->croppedImage(width,height) // Crops the image from the centre, to given values.
	$image->resizeByHeight(height) // Maximum height the image resizes to, keeps proportion
	$image->resizeByWidth(width) // Maximum width the image resizes to, keeps proportion
	$image->greyscale(r,g,b) // alters image channels ===

	// values
	$image->getHeight() // Returns the height of the image.
	$image->getWidth() // Returns the width of the image
	$image->getOrienation() // Returns a class constant: ORIENTATION_SQUARE or ORIENTATION_PORTRAIT or ORIENTATION_LANDSCAPE

You can also create your own functions by extending the image class, for example

	:::php
	class MyImage extends Image {
		public function generateRotateClockwise(GD $gd)	{
			return $gd->rotate(90);
		}

		public function generateRotateCounterClockwise(GD $gd)	{
			return $gd->rotate(270);
		}

		public function clearResampledImages()	{
			$files = glob(Director::baseFolder().'/'.$this->Parent()->Filename."_resampled/*-$this->Name");
		 	foreach($files as $file) {unlink($file);}
		}

		public function Landscape()	{
			return $this->getWidth() > $this->getHeight();
		}

		public function Portrait() {
			return $this->getWidth() < $this->getHeight();
		}

		public function generatePaddedImageByWidth(GD $gd,$width=600,$color="fff"){
			return $gd->paddedResize($width, round($gd->getHeight()/($gd->getWidth()/$width),0),$color);
		}

		public function Exif(){
			//http://www.v-nessa.net/2010/08/02/using-php-to-extract-image-exif-data
			$image = $this->AbsoluteURL;
			$d=new ArrayList();
			$exif = exif_read_data($image, 0, true);
			foreach ($exif as $key => $section) {
				$a=new ArrayList();
				foreach ($section as $name => $val)
					$a->push(new ArrayData(array("Title"=>$name,"Content"=>$val)));
				$d->push(new ArrayData(array("Title"=>strtolower($key),"Content"=>$a)));
			}
			return $d;
		}
	}

### Resizing in Templates

You can call certain resize functions directly from the template, to use the inbuilt GD functions as the template parser
supports these, for example SetWidth() or SetHeight().

For output of an image tag with the image automatically resized to 80px width, you can use:

	:::php
	$Image.SetWidth(80) // returns a image 80px wide, ratio kept the same
	$Image.SetHeight(80) // returns a image 80px tall, ratio kept the same
	$Image.SetSize(80,80) // returns a 80x80px padded image
	$Image.SetRatioSize(80,80) // Returns an image scaled proportional, with its greatest diameter scaled to 80px
	$Image.CroppedImage(80,80) // Returns an 80x80 image cropped from the center.
	$Image.PaddedImage(80, 80, FFFFFF) // Returns an 80x80 image. Unused space is padded white. No crop. No stretching
	$Image.Width // returns width of image
	$Image.Height // returns height of image
	$Image.Orientation // returns Orientation
	$Image.Filename // returns filename
	$Image.URL // returns filename

### Form Upload

For usage on a website form, see `[api:FileField]`.
If you want to upload images within the CMS, see `[api:UploadField]`.

### Image Quality

To adjust the quality of the generated images when they are resized add the following to your mysite/config/config.yml file:

	:::yml
	GDBackend:
		default_quality: 90

The default value is 75.

### Clearing Thumbnail Cache

Images are (like all other Files) synchronized with the SilverStripe database.
This syncing happens whenever you load the "Files & Images" interface,
and whenever you upload or modify an Image through SilverStripe.

If you encounter problems with images not appearing, or have mysteriously disappeared, you can try manually flushing the
image cache.

	http://localhost/dev/tasks/FlushGeneratedImagesTask

## API Documentation
`[api:Image]`

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Why Twitter thinks Wordle is the first big trend of 2022
Wordle has been trending all over Twitter, with the green, yellow and brown square emoji being part of several tweets over the past few weeks. And the social media platform has confirmed that the game is the first major viral trend of 2022. The word guessing game has sparked buzz about stories as well as people sharing their achievements on social media, tutorials and strategies. its origin,
Twitter has revealed that since its October 2021 release, 'Verdal' has been mentioned a total of 840,000 times across the platform. November saw a spike in the use of the yellow and green box emoji, with 773,000 tweets used to refer to blocks within the game.
The numbers also show that Indian Twitter has found Wordle as its new obsession in 2022. In India, 96 percent of wordlay conversations on Twitter took place in January 2022. Among Indians, passion has steadily increased with a daily average of 48 per cent. Wordle discussions increase within the country.
Wordle 200 3/6
— ARMAAN MALIK (@ArmaanMalik22) 5 January 2022
Wordle originally began as a love story, when a Brooklyn-based software engineer named Josh Wardle created a word guessing game for himself and his partner. After months of playing it, the game was made available to the public in November, after which it saw a huge jump in users, accumulating over 300,000 players.
The online puzzle game is completely free to play and requires players to strategically guess a five-letter word. The game updates itself with a new word every day.
Each word is only for 24 hours. All over the world each player receives the same word, which adds a social element. You can read about some tips on how to improve the game here.
Users get 6 attempts to correct the word, at which point they win the puzzle and can share their achievement online. The yellow tile indicates that the guessed letter is correct, but the location is incorrect. The green tile indicates a correct guess. A grayed-out tile means that the letter is not part of the word.
When users share their results with others, Wordlay simply shows the number of guesses that took the time, and that path, which includes the green, yellow, and gray tiles. As Twitter has highlighted, sharing your 'wordl' result of the day has become a favorite activity for many Indians, the morning equivalent of a Sudoku or quiz, one might say.
how to play wordle
how to win wordley
where to play wordle
word puzzle game
word rule
Wordle India
wordle twitter trend
wordle website
wordley twitter
Julia Fox apologizes to former 'bum' as her romance with Kanye West heats up
Three major miners jump on the electric train trend
WordPress theme with video background to promote ideas – Video Inc.
Suspect uses Apple AirTag to chase victim in Montgomery County, police say
Investing your savings in 2022: Five trends that keep growing and bring income despite the pandemic
China will sell vaccine to Nepal with 'condition' of not disclosing everything including price
Djokovic keeps going at the U.S. Open as the number one Batty is expelled
Improved skin care: what, why and how to use face rollers


text:
How the FBI's online wiretapping plan could get your computer hacked
By Timothy B. Lee
The FBI is pushing for expanded power to eavesdrop on private Internet communications. The law enforcement agency wants to force online service providers to build wiretapping capabilities into their products. But a group of prominent computer security experts argues that mandating "back doors" in online communications products is likely to compromise the security of Americans' computers and could even pose a threat to national security.
FBI Headquarters. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)
The fundamental problem is that eavesdropping facilities are a double-edged sword. They make it easier for the U.S. government to spy on the bad guys. But they also make it easier for the bad guys to hack our computers and spy on us. And, the researchers say, the Internet's decentralized architecture makes it particularly hard to build effective and secure wiretapping capabilities online.
Since the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), telephone companies have been legally obligated to build wiretapping capabilities into their telecommunications equipment. But CALEA didn't apply to Internet-based communications technologies. The result, the FBI says, is that its surveillance capabilities are "going dark," as criminal suspects increasingly shift to digital communications platforms that don't offer real-time interception capabilities.
In response, the government is reportedly seeking to impose CALEA-type requirements on Internet services. But rather than mandating the implementation of specific surveillance standards, as the original CALEA did, the government's proposal would fine online service providers who failed to comply with a wiretapping request from the government — leaving it to each individual firm to decide the best way to comply.
Crucially, according to reporting by The Washington Post, the FBI proposal would apply even to "Internet phone calls conducted between two computer users without going through a central company server." In a paper published Friday by the Center for Democracy and Technology, more than a dozen prominent computer security experts warn that such a requirement would be a disaster for the security of online communications.
If information isn't flowing through a central server, then the only way to intercept it is to add surveillance software to the user's PC. But popular software is constantly being probed by hackers seeking vulnerabilities they can exploit. The more complex a system, the more likely programmers are to make mistakes that could provide hackers with an opening. And surveillance features are particularly dangerous, the researchers argue.
"The cleverest and most dangerous cyber-attackers are those who are able to not only compromise a system but also to evade detection," they write. "That is also precisely the objective of a government surveillance solution."
Even worse, a huge number of companies could be forced to comply with the government's proposed regulations. Ed Felten, a computer scientist at Princeton and one of the paper's authors (and, full disclosure, my graduate adviser) points out that a growing number of companies are adding peer-to-peer communications capabilities to their products. For example, many multi-player video games include built-in facilities for players to communicate with each other in real time.
A wiretapping mandate could greatly increase the complexity of these products, raising development costs and increasing the likelihood of security vulnerabilities. Chris Soghoian, a computer security researcher and the principal technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union, notes that even the largest technology companies struggle to keep their products secure. "Google has hundreds of engineers doing nothing but security," he says. Yet Google is still routinely discovering new security problems in its most popular products.
Perhaps the most serious concern the researchers point to is the danger a wiretapping mandate could pose to national security. Many government agencies use the same communications software as do private firms. Which means that wiretapping mandates could make the software the government itself uses less secure.
"When vulnerabilities in the equipment such as back doors and malicious code can be exploited by another country it becomes a priority and a national security concern," said Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) at an October hearing. Rogers was referring to Huawei and ZTE, two Chinese telecommunications companies Rogers suspected of helping the Chinese government to spy on Americans. But Soghoian argues the same point applies to backdoors mandated by the U.S. government. They will make American communications technologies more vulnerable to online attacks. And no one has more resources to devote to looking for security vulnerabilities than foreign governments.
This is more than a hypothetical concern. In 2005, the Greek government discovered that an unknown party was intercepting the phone conversations of Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis and dozens of other senior officials in the Greek government. They had been under surveillance for almost a year.
The attack was made possible because the Greeks were using off-the-shelf telecommunications equipment. Thanks to CALEA and similar laws in other countries, the gear came with built-in wiretapping capabilities. The wiretapping feature was only supposed to be activated with the approval of Greek authorities. But someone, likely a foreign government, figured out how to activate the wiretapping feature without the Greeks noticing.
According to the authors of the CDT paper, an Internet version of CALEA would be much worse. Right now, only large, sophisticated telecommunications firms are subject to CALEA requirements, and they have carefully-designed procedures to ensure that wiretapping capabilities are not abused. An Internet version of CALEA could apply to many more firms, including many small software firms that can't afford to hire dedicated personnel to design, administer, and audit their surveillance capabilities. So it's likely that some of those firms will make mistakes that will leave many users' computers vulnerable to attack.
Worst of all, the researchers say, the proposed mandate is unlikely to even be effective. People who want to evade surveillance will inevitably find ways to modify the software on their computers to deactivate the eavesdropping feature, just as many people today "jailbreak" their smartphones to activate forbidden features. Indeed, some popular communications software is open source, making it trivial to build a version of the software with the wiretapping feature removed. So an Internet wiretapping mandate will do little to help the government spy on the bad guys, while reducing security for everyone else.
According to Matt Blaze, a computer science professor at the University of Pennsylvania and another paper co-author, the current debate over online wiretapping echos the debate over cryptography in the 1990s. During the Clinton administration, the federal government sought to limit the use of cryptography out of fear that it would undermine the government's surveillance capabilities. They promoted a "key escrow" regime in which Americans who used encryption would be required to provide the encryption keys to the government for use in subsequent investigations.
By the mid-1990s, research by Blaze and others had demonstrated that the government's key escrow scheme was impractical. Meanwhile, the spread of full-strength cryptographic software proved unstoppable. So by the end of the decade, the Clinton administration — wisely, in Blaze's view — gave up and stopped trying to limit the use of cryptography. They concluded that it was more important for law-abiding Americans to have secure communications capabilities than to continue to wage a hopeless war against cryptography.
Blaze believes that policymakers today should draw the same lesson. "It's hard enough to build a system that tries to solve the relatively simple problem of people who want to communicate securely," he says. Adding a requirement that the government be able to intercept the communication makes the process "much more complex and therefore much harder to do securely."


HouseMart Ben Franklin Crafts was invited to the Winter Wonderland event at the Aliamanu Military Reserve by the Community Recreation Division of U.S Army Garrison Hawaii. Hosts from The Joy of Crafting and Crankin' out Crafts, Joy Shimabukuro and Jenny Floro made snowmen and reindeer with the keiki. Hundreds of families filled the recreation center for all-day entertainment, snow zone with REAL snow, games and lots of crafts. Over 1,500+ families attended this wonderful event.


text:
Q: Is it safe to assume that all AVX platforms support all levels of SSE? I am working on a piece of code that needs SIMD vectorization, and I need to make a set of macros to decide which vector types and intrinsics to use (i.e. MYLIB_HAS_SSE, MYLIB_HAS_AVX, etc.).
On GCC and CLang this is fairly straightforward, I just need to check for the corresponding pre-defined macros such as __SSE__ or __SSE4_1__. MSVC on the other hand does not define any such macros other than __AVX__ and __AVX2__ to my knowledge, and support for SSE and SSE2 must be checked via the _M_IX86_FP macro. _M_IX86_FP however, does not seem to give any information beyond SSE2, so if I want to check for SSE3 and beyond I am out of luck. As such, I need to "emulate" the missing macros in some other way.
Is it safe to assume that if MSVC has the __AVX__ macro defined (i.e. the target supports AVX), then the target CPU also supports all levels of SSE up to SSE4.2? Is there any other way to check for SSE support on x86 targets (other than runtime cpuid)?
Also if anyone knows, is there some convenient table of x86 architectures and their corresponding feature levels?

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


An incredible number of people own and use a mobile phone, in 2019 the number of mobile phone users is forecast to reach 4.68 billion. It has has become an important part of daily life, and improves business and travel opportunities, whilst providing the best possible level of communication across the globe.
However, the high numbers of users are also subject to changing trends for a number of reasons including improved features, fashion and accessories. This means that upgrades are a regular occurrence, with each device being used for an estimated 12 to 18 months. This means that there is a lot of mobile phone waste.
Many users are not aware of the potential damage to the environment that incorrect disposal of mobile phones can cause. Incorrect disposal means throwing any mobile phone away, which is the typical fate assigned to an unwanted device. However, components within it can have a terrible impact on the environment and so need special disposal. All mobile phones contain persistent metals which do not degrade in the environment. They also contain bioaccumulative metals which become toxic over period of time.
For instance, cadmium which is present in a mobile phone is significant enough to cause damage in small doses. It is the seventh most harmful known chemical, and is capable of causing cancer. Mobile phones also contain lead which causes liver damage in adults and neurological development problems in children when entered into the bloodstream. Other hazardous substances such as nickel and mercury provide further concern.
If not disposed of properly, the metals from the mobile phone can leak into the environment through corrosion and cause a series of problems in the environment. If thrown away, it will go to a landfill where it will remain. As many elements do not decompose, the level of harmful toxins increases and so does the potential damage. Lithium can burn with water exposure, and so can potentially begin underground fires when present in large quantities. Any of the hazardous or poisonous substances could contaminate local water supplies or the nearby soil. If either of these is affected than the toxins enter the food chain with terrible results.
In effect, incorrect disposal of the mobile phone can create a form of poisoning. The immediate effects include health problems such as genetic or reproductive defects and detrimental effects upon the nervous system and delayed general development. The long term effect is global pollution. When waste that can not be broken down properly such as that in a mobile phone is decomposing it creates methane gas. Methane gas is more damaging than CO2 and so has major impact on global warming. Not many people realize that all this can be caused by disposing it in an incorrect manner.
The best way to combat mobile phone damage to the environment is to recycle it by returning it to a shop. This includes the accessories also. Some shops will ensure the product is sent to developing countries for reuse. Others will reclaim the metal parts to prevent them going into a landfill. Some mobile phone companies even make a charity donation for every recycled device to encourage the practice. The other possibility is that they will ensure the product is sent for proper disposal. This includes disposal of hazardous materials.
Whichever option is used, the positive side effect is that less hazardous waste goes into the environment. Now that you know the facts, make sure that you dispose of your mobile phone properly and remain environmentally sound with this one simple gesture.
Posted in General and tagged Disposal of Mobile Phones, Your Mobile Phone And The Environment.