"Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan,
The growing instability and resurgence of Islamic extremism in Afghanistan and Pakistan pose a great threat to U.S. interests and global security. In his new book, "Descent into Chaos", Ahmed Rashid examines the rising insurgency, booming opium trade, and weak governance in Afghanistan, concluding that U.S. strategy in the region has been a complete failure. Ahmed Rashid is a Pakistani journalist based i
"Challenges for the New Administration in Iraq and Afghanistan"
A talk by Juan Cole.
Juan Cole will discuss the future of U.S. foreign policy in Iraq and Afghanistan beyond the November presidential elections. Juan Cole is Richard P. Mitchell Distinguished University Professor of History at the University of Michigan. He has written extensively about Egypt, Iran, Iraq, and South Asia. He studies and writes about contemporary Isl
Alash Ensemble Concert
A performance by the Alash Ensemble at International House.
Tuvan throat-singing and traditional Tuvan instruments and music.
Sponsored by the Center for East European and Russian/Eurasian Studies.
Nikesh Arora Discusses Google's Investment Decisions and the Shifting of Ad Spending Online
Chrystia Freeland Interviews Nikesh Arora
Jeremy Siegel: We Can Look for More Gains in the Stock Market
All eyes and ears were on the two-day meeting of the Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee (FOMC) that ended on March 21. While most observers did not expect interest rates to change, the markets were keen to know what language the Fed would use about inflation in its statement on economic and monetary policy. The U.S. economy has seen mixed signals lately, and concerns about recession have been replaced by worries about "stagflation" -- or stagnation combined with inflation. Is stagflation re
Finding That Sweet Spot: A New Way to Drive Innovation
Larry Huston was vice president of knowledge and innovation for many years at Procter & Gamble. During that time, he was the architect of its Connect + Develop program, the creator of P&G's Brand Bootcamp operation, and innovation leader for the company's global fabric and homecare business, among other initiatives. He is now managing partner of 4INNO, and recently joined Wharton's Mack Center for Technological Innovation as a senior fellow. Knowledge@Wharton asked Huston to talk about innovatio
Craigslist's Craig Newmark: '100% of What We Do Is Based on Community'
Jon Spector, a former Wharton vice dean and now CEO of the Conference Board, spoke with participants at the Community 2.0 conference in Las Vegas earlier this year to explore how companies are trying to harness communities to reshape their businesses. In this podcast, Spector speaks with Craig Newmark, founder and customer service rep of Craigslist.com. Spector is a co-author, with Barry Libert, of the forthcoming Wharton School Publishing book, "We Are Smarter Than Me: How to Unleash the Power
Take Two Advil and ... What Ills Can the Pfizer-Wyeth Merger Cure?
When the giant pharmaceutical company Pfizer announced on January 26 that it was acquiring Wyeth for $68 billion, analysts started questioning what benefits the deal would bring and for whom. Pfizer executives suggest the acquisition makes strategic sense by expanding the company into a range of new areas, and by helping make up for an expected loss of more than $12 billion in annual revenues once its Lipitor patent expires in 2011. But Wyeth also brings some liabilities -- notably, continuing l
Postcards from the Vineyard: Exploring the World of Wine Tourism
In the book, In Search of Bacchus: Wanderings in the Wonderful World of Wine Tourism, author George M. Taber took on the task (someone had to do it) of visiting a dozen of the most breathtakingly beautiful wine regions around the globe. What he came back with is a travel guide for oenophiles that also serves as a primer on how and why winemakers are increasingly turning themselves into destination sites. In addition, Taber's tour opens a window on the growing segmentation of the travel industry
Lecture 27 - 11/24/2010
Lecture 27
Political Parties Era (1796-1824)
A political party is a group of people who work to influence policy agendas and hold government power by seeking to elect candidates to public office. The Federalist Party and the Democratic-Republican Party were the first political parties in the United States, lasting from approximately 1796 to 1824
A Model for Strengthening the Software Engineering Research
Capacity
Like all other New Member States (NMS) Bulgaria is
experiencing a dramatic change in all areas of its society. These
changes reflect very seriously on the research capacity of the
country and, in particular to Sofia University (SU). The Faculty of
Mathematics and Informatics (FMI) has experienced some serious
problems closely related to the general socio-economic and the
research environment in Bulgaria. This paper describes a model
for strengthening the research capacity of FMI, especially the
Enabling Mobile Collaborative Learning through Multichannel Interactions
The work presented here shows an architecture to integrate multiple communication channels for a simple communication tool: a weblog. The motivation for this work is to enable learners to access learning services regardless of their situation. Indeed, in some cases the access to these services is quite hard because people are on the move or don't easily have access to an Internet connection. This article presents the different elements that fit into the architecture which lay the path for a rich
Designing Instructional Examples to Reduce Intrinsic Cognitive Load: Molar versus Modular Presentati
It is usually assumed that successful problem solving in knowledge-rich domains depends on the availability of abstract problem-type schemas whose acquisition can be supported by presenting students with worked examples. Conventionally designed worked examples often focus on information that is related to the main components of problem-type schemas, namely on information related to problem-category membership, structural task features, and category-specific solution procedures. However, studying
An Experimental Study on Peer Selection in a P2P Network over PlanetLab
Peer selection is an important aspect in many P2P applications
requiring efficient assignment and execution of
jobs to peer nodes and search and file transfer, among others.
Due to increasing interest of using P2P systems for distributed
computing, peer selection is taking relevance and
several models have been proposed in the P2P literature.
Yet, there are very few experimental studies for peer selection
in P2P networks deployed in real large scale networks.
In this work we present an experimen
The evolution of research on collaborative learning
For many years, theories of collaborative learning tended to focus on how individuals function in a group. More recently, the focus has shifted so that the group itself has become the unit of analysis. In terms of empirical research, the initial goal was to establish whether and under what circumstances collaborative learning was more effective than learning alone. Researchers controlled several independent variables (size of the group, composition of the group, nature of the task, communication
The Semantic Aspects of e-Learning: Using the Knowledge Life Cycle to Manage Semantics for Grid and
The aim of bringing semantics to learning content and services is to enable large scale collaboration of e-learning activities over the Grid infrastructure.
As machines and software applications will be ubiquitously involved in enabling and facilitating this collaboration, it requires a common understanding of the domain, in particular at the conceptual level, so that both computers and human participants of the e-learning activities understand and are able to communicate among themselves thoug
Case Study of Virtual Organization Learning and Knowledge Testing Environments
The proposed web-based knowledge assessment is based on flexible educational model and allows to implement adaptive control of learning process as well as to implement knowledge testing environment according to the requirements of student's knowledge level, their personal abilities and his subject learning history.
The learner knowledge model can be constructed as a sub graph of the global knowledge domain graph. The paper presents the architecture of student self-evaluation and on-line assessm
ELeGI: The European Learning Grid Infrastructure
The purpose of this paper is to describe the ELeGI Project1. ELeGI has the ambitious goal of developing software technologies for effective human learning and promoting and supporting a learning paradigm shift.
A new paradigm focused on knowledge construction using experimental based and collaborative learning approaches in a contextualised, personalised and ubiquitous way will replace the current information transfer paradigm focused on content and on the key authoritative figure of the teache
User Interfaces for a Virtual Learning Environment: Two Study Cases
A recent powerful idea in the design of Web-based learning environments is the usage of virtual places. The employment of interface metaphors is one of the approaches enabling inexperienced users to feel comfortable in such virtual environments. We have designed a Virtual Environment for Distance Education and Training (VEDET), which provides basic virtual spaces, resources, and services. In this paper we discuss the user interface of two Web-based distance learning courses Business on the Inter
