title: Thai Students’ Understanding about Celestial Motion within Their Social and Cultural Context

authors: Anatasook, Sakanan

abstract: This study investigated forty-one Thai 9th grade students’ understanding about the motion of the sun, moon, and stars within their social and cultural context. Students' understanding was explored using a survey tool titled “Students’ Understanding about Celestial Motion within Their Social and Cultural Context Questionnaire (SCMSCQ).” This questionnaire gave students the opportunity to express their ideas about celestial motion within their social and cultural context. The study reveals some interesting features of student understanding, and particularly their difficulty in perceiving the relationship between the study of celestial motion and their social and cultural context. Many students used descriptions from their everyday observations of the daily motion of the sun, moon, and stars, rather than scientific explanations, to answer questions about the relationship between social and cultural context and celestial motion. This study has implications for the development of teaching the sociocultural approach in Thailand.

text: Thai Students’ Understanding about Celestial Motion within Their Social and Cultural Context This study investigated forty-one Thai 9th grade students’ understanding about the motion of the sun, moon, and stars within their social and cultural context. Students' understanding was explored using a survey tool titled “Students’ Understanding about Celestial Motion within Their Social and Cultural Context Questionnaire (SCMSCQ).” This questionnaire gave students the opportunity to express their ideas about celestial motion within their social and cultural context. The study reveals some interesting features of student understanding, and particularly their difficulty in perceiving the relationship between the study of celestial motion and their social and cultural context. Many students used descriptions from their everyday observations of the daily motion of the sun, moon, and stars, rather than scientific explanations, to answer questions about the relationship between social and cultural context and celestial motion. This study has implications for the development of teaching the sociocultural approach in Thailand.

year: 2015

title: All I remember is forgetting

authors: Hobson, Guy Marcus

subjects: Art

abstract: All I Remember is Forgetting is a novel about the complex weaving of memory, relationships and works of art. We observe these through the eyes of Roger Phillips, whom we first encounter washed up and living in his car after the failure of a third serious relationship. Unsuccessfully married twice, Roger has not navigated matrimony as well as he might. Instead he has escaped into a world of painting, photography and sculpture.
    The main driving force behind the narrative is a wooden box containing Roger’s collection of 600 art postcards. These are pictures collected from galleries and museums around the world. Thirty years in the collecting, it took Roger’s second wife, Margot, only fifteen minutes to pitch them all into a landfill north of Auckland. Also missing were his most treasured books. Gone were all the stories from the myths of the Greeks and Romans on which he fed his imagination. So much so, in fact, that he is convinced that Eris, goddess of strife and discord, has been on a mission to ruin his life. While every book held special meaning, it was to each postcard that Roger attached his most personal recollections – the gallery, the surrounding city, the occasion and the person he was with. Each a complex narrative. All the memories of his life were tied to those small pieces of card; suddenly they were lost for ever. Art had always been Roger’s escape, his safe haven, but also his erotica, wrapping him in the beauty and hidden narratives in the lives of artists and their models. The imperfect fragments of Roger’s life show us that love is not best understood through art. Roger fails to see the philosophy of kintsugi, the Japanese art of golden repair. Breakage and mending are part of the history of your life, to be celebrated not disguised.

This is a many-layered exercise in ekphrasis, where dramatic verbal descriptions of works of art are layered with descriptions of Roger’s married life. In some cases both become so entwined that they form an entirely new layer of art. The novel weaves the highs and lows of Roger’s journey; both the pain and the humour. Through the lens of great art and its creators we find mirrors, reflections and the distortion between life and art. We travel from Sheffield and London to Paris and New York, before coming firmly to rest in New Zealand.
   
Do not believe everything that Roger tells you, but remember the words of Oscar Wilde: it is only through art that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.

text: All I remember is forgetting All I Remember is Forgetting is a novel about the complex weaving of memory, relationships and works of art. We observe these through the eyes of Roger Phillips, whom we first encounter washed up and living in his car after the failure of a third serious relationship. Unsuccessfully married twice, Roger has not navigated matrimony as well as he might. Instead he has escaped into a world of painting, photography and sculpture.
    The main driving force behind the narrative is a wooden box containing Roger’s collection of 600 art postcards. These are pictures collected from galleries and museums around the world. Thirty years in the collecting, it took Roger’s second wife, Margot, only fifteen minutes to pitch them all into a landfill north of Auckland. Also missing were his most treasured books. Gone were all the stories from the myths of the Greeks and Romans on which he fed his imagination. So much so, in fact, that he is convinced that Eris, goddess of strife and discord, has been on a mission to ruin his life. While every book held special meaning, it was to each postcard that Roger attached his most personal recollections – the gallery, the surrounding city, the occasion and the person he was with. Each a complex narrative. All the memories of his life were tied to those small pieces of card; suddenly they were lost for ever. Art had always been Roger’s escape, his safe haven, but also his erotica, wrapping him in the beauty and hidden narratives in the lives of artists and their models. The imperfect fragments of Roger’s life show us that love is not best understood through art. Roger fails to see the philosophy of kintsugi, the Japanese art of golden repair. Breakage and mending are part of the history of your life, to be celebrated not disguised.

This is a many-layered exercise in ekphrasis, where dramatic verbal descriptions of works of art are layered with descriptions of Roger’s married life. In some cases both become so entwined that they form an entirely new layer of art. The novel weaves the highs and lows of Roger’s journey; both the pain and the humour. Through the lens of great art and its creators we find mirrors, reflections and the distortion between life and art. We travel from Sheffield and London to Paris and New York, before coming firmly to rest in New Zealand.
   
Do not believe everything that Roger tells you, but remember the words of Oscar Wilde: it is only through art that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.

year: 2021

title: A wiggle-match date for Polynesian settlement of New Zealand

authors: Hogg, Alan G.

subjects: East Polynesia

abstract: Dating initial colonisation and environmental impacts by Polynesians in New Zealand is controversial. A key horizon is provided by the Kaharoa Tephra, deposited from an eruption of Mt Tarawera, because just underneath this layer are the first signs of forest clearance which imply human settlement. The authors used a log of celery pine from within Kaharoa deposits to derive a new precise date for the eruption via "wiggle-matching" – matching the radiocarbon dates of a sequence of samples from the log with the Southern Hemisphere calibration curve. The date obtained was 1314 ± 12 AD (2σ error), and the first environmental impacts and human occupation are argued to have occurred in the previous 50 years, i.e. in the late 13th – early 14th centuries AD. This date is contemporary with earliest settlement dates determined from archaeological sites in the New Zealand archipelago.

text: A wiggle-match date for Polynesian settlement of New Zealand Dating initial colonisation and environmental impacts by Polynesians in New Zealand is controversial. A key horizon is provided by the Kaharoa Tephra, deposited from an eruption of Mt Tarawera, because just underneath this layer are the first signs of forest clearance which imply human settlement. The authors used a log of celery pine from within Kaharoa deposits to derive a new precise date for the eruption via "wiggle-matching" – matching the radiocarbon dates of a sequence of samples from the log with the Southern Hemisphere calibration curve. The date obtained was 1314 ± 12 AD (2σ error), and the first environmental impacts and human occupation are argued to have occurred in the previous 50 years, i.e. in the late 13th – early 14th centuries AD. This date is contemporary with earliest settlement dates determined from archaeological sites in the New Zealand archipelago.

year: 2002