Ecrire « SMS » ne nuit pas à l’orthographe La « novlangue SMS » va-t-elle envahir les bancs de l’école ? Va-t-on trouver, dans les copies des élèves, des « tu fé koi ? » (tu fais quoi ?) ou des « g croier que tu devè venir » (je croyais que tu devais venir) ? L’écriture SMS ne fait pas seulement hurler les défenseurs de la langue française. Elle inquiète aussi de nombreux parents et enseignants, qui y voient une menace sur le niveau d’orthographe des adolescents. Pour la première fois en France, une étude, publiée mardi 18 mars par le Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), a de quoi les rassurer. Nouvelle occasion de pratiquer l’écrit Les chercheurs ont scruté à la loupe les « textismes » – ces variantes dans un mot par rapport à l’orthographe traditionnelle (comme « koi » au lieu de « quoi »). En fait, c’est l’inverse qui se produit : c’est l’orthographe traditionnelle qui influe sur la pratique des SMS. Il n’y aurait donc aucune raison de se méfier des SMS. Aurélie Collas Signaler ce contenu comme inapproprié
Les adolescents, connectés même la nuit LE MONDE SCIENCE ET TECHNO | • Mis à jour le | Par Pascale Santi Deux heures du matin, le smartphone de Julie, 13 ans, en classe de 4e, se met à vibrer. Elle se réveille. « Tu dors ? » C'est un texto de son amie Fanny. Elles en échangeront une dizaine. Parmi les adolescents, 15 % se réveillent naturellement et 17 % programment une alerte.
Mental Illness Risk Higher for Children of Older Fathers, Study Finds Children born to middle-aged men are more likely than their older siblings to develop any of a range of mental difficulties, including bipolar disorder, autism and schizophrenia, according to the most comprehensive study to date of paternal age and offspring mental health. In recent years, scientists have debated based on mixed evidence whether a father’s age is linked to his child’s vulnerability to individual disorders like autism and schizophrenia. Some studies have found strong associations, while others have found weak associations or none at all. The new report, which looked at many mental disorders in Sweden, should inflame the debate, if not settle it, experts said. “This is the best paper I’ve seen on this topic, and it suggests several lines of inquiry into mental illness,” said Dr. Dr. The strengths of the new report are size and rigor. The researchers controlled for every factor they could think of, including parents’ education and income. Dr.
Your Ancestors, Your Fate Inequality of income and wealth has risen in America since the 1970s, yet a large-scale research study recently found that social mobility hadn’t changed much during that time. How can that be? The study, by researchers at Harvard and Berkeley, tells only part of the story. When you look across centuries, and at social status broadly measured — not just income and wealth, but also occupation, education and longevity — social mobility is much slower than many of us believe, or want to believe. Javier Jaén To a striking extent, your overall life chances can be predicted not just from your parents’ status but also from your great-great-great-grandparents’. We came to these conclusions after examining reams of data on surnames, a surprisingly strong indicator of social status, in eight countries — Chile, China, England, India, Japan, South Korea, Sweden and the United States — going back centuries. Does this imply that individuals have no control over their life outcomes? Take Chaucer.
Les usagers sont la clef de l’amélioration des technologies L'ethnographie est une méthode des sciences sociales consistant en l'étude descriptive et analytique, sur le terrain, des moeurs, coutumes et pratiques de populations déterminées. Longtemps cantonnés aux populations primitives, les sociologues, anthropologues et ethnologues ont depuis les années 70 élargies l'usage de ces méthodes à bien d'autres terrains, et notamment à l'étude de nos pratiques quotidiennes, afin de mieux comprendre "les expériences humaines en contexte". Parmi les repères de la conception ethnographique appliquée à la technologie, citons au moins le travail pionnier de Lucy Suchman au Xerox Parc dès les années 90, ou celui de Genevieve Bell qui poursuit ce travail chez Intel et qui a signé, avec Tony Salvador et Ken Anderson, en 1999, l'un des articles fondateur de l'ethnographie appliquée aux questions technologiques. Pourquoi consommons-nous de l'énergie ? Dans ses résultats, Dan Lockton met bien sûr l'accent sur la conception des systèmes utilisés. Hubert Guillaud
» La mesure des sables bitumineux (attachez vos tuques)|Sciences dessus dessous Il y a de ces choses que, logiquement, on ne devrait pas avoir de difficulté à admettre, qu’on devrait accepter sur le champ parce qu’on en a la démonstration sous les yeux, parce que c’est l’aboutissement d’un raisonnement aussi simple et aussi inéluctable que 2 + 2 = 4. Et pourtant, le résultat est parfois si incroyable que votre cerveau refuse de le laisser entrer. Ça m’est arrivé récemment alors que, pour ma chronique Science au quotidien, je travaillais à documenter la question d’un lecteur qui voulait savoir s’il serait «utopique» de penser que les surplus d’Hydro-Québec pourraient être envoyés en Alberta afin de réduire l’empreinte écologique de l’industrie des sables bitumineux. À vue de nez, je me disais que les surplus d’Hydro, même si on prend les estimés les plus gonflés, ne devraient pas suffire à faire une grosse différence dans le bilan carbone des sables bitumineux. Alors voici : - L’énergie s’exprime généralement en joules (J).
Donating, and Making Sure the Money Is Put to Work Photo Each year, we file a report card on our financial lives. It tells us what we earned, a bit about what we saved, some details on what we own and often includes a tally of our generosity. True, most people don’t read their tax returns this way, but it’s helpful to think of them as a conversation starter and a guide to what we can do better next year. This is particularly true when it comes to giving. All roads on this quest led to an organization called GiveWell, where a couple of former hedge fund analysts lead a small team of researchers who have spent years developing a short list of recommended charities. It seemed like a sure thing, but it didn’t turn out to be so easy. So did its patience amount to victory because of its lack of waste? GiveWell was born of the founders’ befuddlement over the lack of data in the nonprofit world showing what organizations achieved for every dollar they spent. Within a few years, Mr. He has two main concerns about his projects. Mr.
Obstacles to “giving as consumption” | The GiveWell Blog GiveWell’s traditional work (the work behind our current top charities) and our work on GiveWell Labs reflect two very different visions of giving. The first, giving as consumption, sees giving as analogous to making a purchase. For every $X one spends, one gets some desirable outcome (such as a life saved), and the goal is to find giving opportunities that can deliver these outcomes approximately linearly and with good value-for-money.The second, giving as investment, sees giving as analogous to investing in a company. Risk is known to be high, and outcomes hard to foresee in detail (particularly for earlier-stage investments). These don’t represent strict categories – any giving opportunity can be described in the language of either – but they reflect different ways of thinking about giving, and tend toward different ways of evaluating (and describing) the pros and cons of different giving opportunities. In brief: Obstacle 1: a relatively small number of programs are evidence-backed
Nobel winner declares boycott of top science journals | Science Leading academic journals are distorting the scientific process and represent a "tyranny" that must be broken, according to a Nobel prize winner who has declared a boycott on the publications. Randy Schekman, a US biologist who won the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine this year and receives his prize in Stockholm on Tuesday, said his lab would no longer send research papers to the top-tier journals, Nature, Cell and Science. Schekman said pressure to publish in "luxury" journals encouraged researchers to cut corners and pursue trendy fields of science instead of doing more important work. The problem was exacerbated, he said, by editors who were not active scientists but professionals who favoured studies that were likely to make a splash. The prestige of appearing in the major journals has led the Chinese Academy of Sciences to pay successful authors the equivalent of $30,000 (£18,000). Some researchers made half of their income through such "bribes", Schekman said in an interview.
Male and female brains wired differently, scans reveal | Science Scientists have drawn on nearly 1,000 brain scans to confirm what many had surely concluded long ago: that stark differences exist in the wiring of male and female brains. Maps of neural circuitry showed that on average women's brains were highly connected across the left and right hemispheres, in contrast to men's brains, where the connections were typically stronger between the front and back regions. Ragini Verma, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, said the greatest surprise was how much the findings supported old stereotypes, with men's brains apparently wired more for perception and co-ordinated actions, and women's for social skills and memory, making them better equipped for multitasking. "If you look at functional studies, the left of the brain is more for logical thinking, the right of the brain is for more intuitive thinking. So if there's a task that involves doing both of those things, it would seem that women are hardwired to do those better," Verma said.
Donors Give More When They Have a Sense of Belonging Economic View By ROBERT J. SHILLER With the rise of behavioral economics, my profession is no longer so fixated on the theory that people are relentlessly selfish, striving only to maximize their own pleasure. We know, for example, that work is not just eight daily hours of suffering that people endure to make money for their own benefit. I work at the nonprofit Yale University, and the higher purpose of education is a major reward for me. Philanthropic causes could do more to gain from this natural tendency. In a recent paper, Catherine C. Photo The researchers found that while there was little difference in the probability that the individuals in the two groups would make a donation, the people in the experimental group gave much larger amounts. This experiment shows how we might benefit from expansion of the so-called benefit corporation, introduced in Maryland in 2010 and now legal in about half the states. Clearly, it’s time to try these new paths to giving.
A Field Experiment on Directed Giving at a Public University NBER Working Paper No. 20180Issued in May 2014NBER Program(s): PE The use of directed giving - allowing donors to target their gifts to specific organizations or functions - is pervasive in fundraising, yet little is known about its effectiveness. We conduct a field experiment at a public university in which prospective donors are presented with either an opportunity to donate to the unrestricted Annual Fund, or an opportunity of donating to the Annual Fund and directing some or all of their donation towards the academic college from which they graduated. While there is no effect on the probability of giving, donations are significantly larger when there is the option of directing. However, the value of the option does not come directly from use, as very few donors choose to direct their gift. You may purchase this paper on-line in .pdf format from SSRN.com ($5) for electronic delivery. Acknowledgments Machine-readable bibliographic record - MARC, RIS, BibTeX