Critical Understanding (critical + understanding)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Heat transfer during microwave combination heating: Computational modeling and MRI experiments

AICHE JOURNAL, Issue 9 2010
Vineet Rakesh
Abstract Combination of heating modes such as microwaves, convection, and radiant heating can be used to realistically achieve the quality and safety needed for cooking processes and, at the same time, make the processes faster. Physics-based computational modeling used in conjunction with MRI experimentation can be used to obtain critical understanding of combination heating. The objectives were to: (1) formulate a fully coupled electromagnetics - heat transfer model, (2) use magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) experiments to determine the 3D spatial and temporal variation of temperatures and validate the numerical model, (3) use the insight gained from the model and experiments to understand the combination heating process and to optimize it. The different factors that affect heating patterns during combination heating such as the type of heating modes used, placement of sample, and microwave cycling were considered. Objective functions were defined and minimized for design and optimization. The use of such techniques can lead to greater control and automation of combination heating process benefitting the food process and product developers immensely. © 2010 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 2010 [source]


Global Englishes, Rip Slyme, and performativity

JOURNAL OF SOCIOLINGUISTICS, Issue 4 2003
Alastair Pennycook
In this article I suggest that while recent sociolinguistic work focusing on crossing, styling the Other or language boundaries is raising significant questions concerning how we relate language, identity and popular culture, these insights have largely passed by the sociolinguistics of world Englishes. This latter work is still caught between arguments about homogeneity and heterogeneity, between arguments based on liberal accommodationism, linguistic imperialism or linguistic hybridity that do not allow for sufficiently complex understandings of what is currently happening with global Englishes. Focusing particularly on rap music, I suggest that we need, at the very least, a critical understanding of globalization, a focus on popular cultural flows, and a way of taking up performance and performativity in relationship to identity and culture. [source]


The Construction of Black High-Achiever Identities in a Predominantly White High School

ANTHROPOLOGY & EDUCATION QUARTERLY, Issue 3 2009
Dorinda J. Carter Andrews
In this article, I examine how black students construct their racial and achievement self-concepts in a predominantly white high school to enact a black achiever identity. By listening to these students talk about the importance of race and achievement to their lives, I came to understand how racialized the task of achieving was for them even though they often deracialized the characteristics of an achiever. I suggest that these students do not maintain school success by simply having a strong racial self-concept or a strong achievement self-concept; rather, they discuss achieving in the context of being black or African American. For these students, being a black or African American achiever in a predominantly white high school means embodying racial group pride as well as having a critical understanding of how race and racism operate to potentially constrain one's success. It also means viewing achievement as a human, raceless trait that can be acquired by anyone. In their descriptions of themselves as black achievers, these students resist hegemonic notions that academic success is white property and cannot be attained by them.,[self-concept, high achievers, black student achievement, achievement self-concept] [source]


On Open Space: Explorations Towards a Vocabulary of a More Open Politics

ANTIPODE, Issue 4 2010
Jai Sen
Abstract:, Drawing on my work in and on architecture, urban planning, and socio-political movement including the World Social Forum (WSF), I attempt to critically engage with the increasingly widely used concept of open space as a mode of social and political organising. Arguing that open space, horizontality, autonomous action, and networking are now emerging as general tendencies in the organisation of social relations, and that the WSF is a major historical experiment in this idea, I try to open up the concept to a more critical understanding in relation to the times we live in. In particular, I argue that the practice of open space in the WSF makes manifest three key movement principles: self-organisation, autonomy, and emergence. By exploring its characteristics and contradictions, I also argue that open space cannot be provided and only exists if people make it open, and that in this sense it is related to, but different from, the commons. [source]


The Shape of Capitalism to Come

ANTIPODE, Issue 2010
Paul Cammack
Abstract:, The starting point for this paper is the observation that a reshaping of global capitalism is underway, centred on the rise of dynamic centres of accumulation in Asia. It is argued that a critical understanding of this process (supported without reservation by such organizations as the IMF, the OECD and the World Bank) requires a questioning of the imagined link between "capitalism" and the "West", and a recognition that the international organizations are committed to a universal project aimed at empowering capital and promoting competitiveness on a global scale. A case study is provided of the recently adopted plan for the creation of an ASEAN Economic Community as a "single market and productive space" by 2015. The regional context in which it is placed is contrasted with that of the European Union, and the need for further study of varieties of capitalism in emerging economies is noted. [source]


Informal Mentors and Role Models in the Lives of Urban Mexican-Origin Adolescents

ANTHROPOLOGY & EDUCATION QUARTERLY, Issue 3 2003
Professor Ricardo D. Stanton-Salazar
This article draws on a larger study investigating the social networks and help-seeking practices of Mexican-origin youth in San Diego, California. The authors present the subset of findings concerning adult, nonfamily informal mentors and role models. Using survey data, interviews, and a critical ethnographic perspective grounded in sociological theory, the article examines participating adolescents' critical understandings of these significant figures their lives, the rare and fortuitous nature of these relationships, and their empowering influence in the lives of urban, low-income, immigrant Latino youth. Linkages to social capital and developmental theories are offered. [source]