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While there has been substantial research on coverage and SLAM algorithms, to our knowledge no previous research has considered using each of these algorithms with a service robot. As a result, the performance of these robots is less than adequate for most consumers, especially when the robots only rely on SLAM algorithms for their coverage services in an unknown environment. To address this problem, we propose a new coverage algorithm, AmaxCoverage, an area-maximizing coverage algorithm that efficiently integrates the SLAM solution. Our experimental results show that the AmaxCoverage algorithm outperforms previous representative coverage algorithms in unknown environments and therefore will increase consumers΄ confidence toward service robots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we analyse the security of the SHA-3 candidate ARIRANG. We show that bitwise complementation of whole registers turns out to be very useful for constructing high-probability differential characteristics in the function. We use this approach to find near-collisions with Hamming weight 32 for the full compression function as well as collisions for the compression function of ARIRANG reduced to 26 rounds, both with complexity close to 20 and memory requirements of only a few words. We use near collisions for the compression function to construct pseudo-collisions for the complete hash functions ARIRANG-224 and ARIRANG-384 with complexity 223 and close to 20, respectively. We implemented the attacks and provide examples of appropriate pairs of H,M values. We also provide possible configurations which may give collisions for step-reduced and full ARIRANG. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ghiyâth al-Dȋn Jamshȋd Kâshânȋ (al-Kâshȋ) is the prominent mathematician and astronomer of ninth/fifteenth century of Islamic civilization who founded the scientific methodology in practical and theoretical knowledge of mathematics in architecture. He played a significant role in the interaction and concurrence among mathematicians and architects, by addressing the relation between architecture and mathematics in two areas of knowledge, theoretical and practical, the latter itself including theoretical practice and practical practice. this paper addresses the question of how Kâshânȋ΄s research has led to the foundation of the first theoretical basis for the application of mathematics in architecture in the form of easily practicable solutions for drawing, and measuring different types of ceilings, arches, vaults, domes, and ornaments, as well as estimating required materials. Further, we will discuss how his knowledge in mathematics and astronomy were utilized in management, design and construction of Samarkand observatory and its astronomical instruments. By exploring how the mathematical knowledge of a Persian scientist was utilized in architecture and craftsmanship, we will shed some light on the hidden layers of Kâshânȋ΄s architectural life, who until now has been considered only a mathematician and astronomer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This chapter examines Vygotsky's method of double stimulation as a basis for formative interventions in the workplace. I argue that double stimulation is radically different from such intervention approaches as the design experiments currently discussed in educational research. Double stimulation is, above all, aimed at eliciting new, expansive forms of agency in subjects. In other words, double stimulation is focused on making subjects masters of their own lives. First, I will present Vygotsky's double stimulation as a theoretical and methodological idea. I will then examine recent notions of “design experiments” and point out some serious limitations in these experiments. Second, I will introduce the Change Laboratory method developed in the Center for Activity Theory and Developmental Work Research and used for ten years in formative interventions in workplaces. Third, I will discuss this method as an application and expansion of double stimulation. Fourth, I will demonstrate the practical implementation of Change Laboratory with an example from a project carried out in Finnish post offices. Fifth, I will conclude the chapter with a discussion of some methodological and theoretical implications of the Change Laboratory method for further development of Vygotskian research, especially as it is applied in the context of the workplace and organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Was the issue of the development and education of children with special needs chosen by Vygotsky, or was it a chance encounter forced by circumstances? We may never be able to find a definitive answer to this question. Vygotsky left no diary, and the testimony of his colleagues does not shed much light on this issue. What is known with certainty is that young Vygotsky's original interests lay in the field of literature and humanities and apparently remained so following his graduation from Moscow University in 1917. The unmerciful reality of everyday life in his hometown of Gomel during the civil war (1918-1922), however, forced everyone - including Vygotsky - to seek any occupation that would make mere survival possible. For Vygotsky, a teacher's job, first at school and then at the Teacher Training College, was such an opportunity. It is apparently under these rather extreme circumstances that Vygotsky encountered the problem of children with special needs for the first time. As the head of the psychological laboratory at the Gomel Teacher Training College, Vygotsky was responsible both for teaching students the techniques of psychological evaluation and actually supervising these evaluations in schools (Van der Veer & Valsiner, 1991; Vygodskaya & Lifanova, 1996, 1999). This link to the issue of special needs was further strengthened after Vygotsky's move to Moscow in 1924. As with his previous experiences in Gomel, we cannot be sure whether it was Vygotsky's growing interest in special-needs children or the social circumstances that led to his affiliation with the Section of Abnormal Children in the Peoples Education Commissariat of Education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

These two scholars were more than a little acquainted: Vygotsky was Shpet's student at the Shanyavsky People's University, and he attended Shpet's seminar for two years. At the beginning of the 1920s, Vygotsky started to work at the psychological institute where, as Aleksei N. Leont'ev has noted, Shpet was the most famous professor. At the end of the 1920s, Shpet and Vygotsky both taught at the Pedology Department of the Second Moscow University. Despite all these connections, there is only one reference to Shpet in Vygotsky's works (in The Psychology of Art), and even this is only in passing. And Shpet's books Phenomenon and Meaning (1914), Aesthetic Fragments (1922), and The Inner Form of Word (1927), in which he discussed thinking and language, thought and word, meaning and sense, and external and inner forms of a word were all published significantly earlier than Vygotsky's Thinking and Speech (1934). Today, it is hard to guess why Vygotsky and his whole scientific school (Aleksandr R. Luria, A. N. Leont'ev, Aleksandr V. Zaporozhets, and others) ignored Shpet's works. It could have been fear or caution born out of Shpet's style of behavior and writing. This style was characterized by freedom and dignity and the independence of his thought from Marxist-Leninist ideology,which at the time was growing stronger and stronger. The Bolsheviks felt this independence, dismissed Shpet several times from his academic positions, and, in the end, arrested and shot him in 1937. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) has drawn attention from psychologists and educators and has oriented their research, diagnosis, and educational work toward new grounds. We hold that, rather than a term to be added to conventional psychology and pedagogy, the ZPD provides us with an instrument whose use will inevitably lead to a reappraisal and renewal of theory. We suggest that this concept also operated as a Zone of Proximal Development in its own right for Vygotsky's theoretical thought. He focused his endeavors on the areas of conflict where his contemporaries ran into difficulties by exploring three theoretical frontiers: “1. The evolutionary and historical frontier (change and evolution of the child and individual, of the species, of cultures). 2. The identity frontier (the view of the functional system as shared, of functions as socially distributed). 3. The ecological frontier between the internal and external, the mental and the material, the organism and the medium.” A large part of the literature on Vygotsky and the research carried out on the basis of his ideas have developed his proposals with regard to the first two frontiers. Although the third frontier has received scant attention, it is in our opinion essential to a full understanding of Vygotsky's thought, especially the concept of ZPD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this chapter, I will discuss the pedagogic implications of some aspects of Vygotsky's writing. I will draw heavily on his own words and seek to develop two major strands in the range of possible interpretations of his work. The central tension that I wish to explore is between those accounts that emphasize the analysis of the content of instruction as against those which are more concerned with forms of pedagogic interaction and participation. Arguably, many of the differences in emphasis and priority that have arisen reflect differences in what are, ultimately, political preferences. Vygotsky was well aware of the extent to which pedagogic practice is subject to social, cultural, and political influence. “ Pedagogics is never and was never politically indifferent, since, willingly or unwillingly, through its own work on the psyche, it has always adopted a particular social pattern, political line, in accordance with the dominant social class that has guided its interests.” (Vygotsky, 1997b, p. 348) / Vygotsky was suggesting a process of social formation in the formation of educational ideas. He distances himself from the naturalistic or common sense pedagogic positions that pervade so much political debate, particularly when the term back to basics is invoked. For him pedagogies arise and are shaped in particular social circumstances. Ironically, the text Pedagogical Psychology from which the above quote is drawn, was considered to be so politically unacceptable to the rulers of the Soviet state that one had to have a special pass from the KGB that would admit one to the restricted reading room in the Lenin Library where the book could be read (Davydov, 1993). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two of Vygotsky's (1997) central theoretical points are that cultural- historically developed tools mediate the child's relation to the world and that the competence to handle such tools is acquired in social settings through guidance from others. His theory of concept formation for preschoolers, schoolchildren, and adolescents explains how the practice of institutional activities influences children's concept formation (Vygotsky, 1987, 1998a). Small children participate in the everyday activities at home; schoolchildren meet the academic world in school, which he points out as a necessity for schoolchildren's development of scientific concepts; and adolescents get acquainted with the activities in work life, a necessity for their development of dialectical concepts. Vygotsky describes how very young children appropriate concepts of tools and objects through interaction with their caregivers and, as an example, he exemplifies this with how a child learns to use a spoon in interaction with his caregivers (Kravtsov & Berezlizhkaya, 1999). In his theory, Vygotsky characterizes small children's and preschool children's concepts as everyday concepts developed spontaneously in collaboration with others through everyday activities. He contrasts these concepts to schoolchildren's concepts, which he characterizes as scientifically developed through systematic school instruction. Although Vygotsky describes the concept learning of preschool children as inscribed in the social practice of everyday activities, what he primarily draws on when describing preschool children's concept formation is an experiment with the double-stimulation method (Vygotsky, 1987 p. 130ff). In this experiment, children's task is to sort blocks that vary in form, size, and color, gradually finding the sorting principle because a meaningless label is attached to the bottom of each block that is turned over each time the child has chosen one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vygotsky's ideas about culture are of special interest because he attributed such an essential role to culture in human psychological processes. However, any attempt to provide an adequate account of his ideas about culture and human nature faces formidable obstacles. To begin with, the term “culture” is virtually absent from the indexes of his published works. When we delve deeper into his texts, we find culture appearing in three distinctive forms. First, culture defined as artistic products and the processes of creation, appears in such works as The Psychology of Art, as part of Vygotsky's long-standing interest in literary and cultural criticism. This early involvement of culture in Vygotsky's writings (which engaged him in debates with Russian formalists) appears later in his extensive use of literary examples to illustrate the operation of important psychological functions. Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and several Russian poets provide important material for his arguments in Thinking and Speech. Second, when we turn to Vygotsky's better-known works on the development of higher psychological functions, culture appears in two related forms. We find it appearing in terms such as “cultural-historical” and “cultural development,” which apply to the way in which the mediation of action through culture is a defining property of human psychological functioning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are many reasons why it is difficult for readers to analyze and to understand Vygotsky's terminology. He developed his psychology in a direct and indirect dialogue with many other authors. In doing so, he absorbed and processed all the ideas and terms that he believed could be useful. These ideas ranged from the philosophy of Spinoza and Marx to the American behaviorism of Watson and the linguistics of Sapir. However, when one meets a seemingly familiar term borrowed from some predecessor in Vygotsky's writings, one should keep in mind that he was likely to have modified the term's meaning. Another motivation for a logico-semantic analysis of Vygotsky's writings is the quantity, variety, and nature of his scientific heritage. A 1960 bibliography of Vygotsky's works includes 274 titles (Vygotsky, 1960). Excluding nonscientific articles and notes devoted for the most part to the events of literary and theatrical life (1916-1923), there remain around 190 works in psychology, written from 1924 until Vygotsky's death (June 11, 1934): a period of only ten years. Many items from this decade were written very quickly, in almost telegraphic style. Some works remain unfinished. It is certainly possible that some of the works that were published posthumously were not yet intended for publication (unfortunately, the editors of contemporary editions do not always warn the reader about the state and nature of the original texts). Therefore, when reading Vygotsky's works one needs to remember his own words (from a letter to A. N. Leontiev dated July 31, 1930), “our writings are imperfect but there is great truth in them. This is my symbol of faith. . . . ” (Vygotsky, 1960, p. 169). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Identity is a key concept in many different fields including psychology, anthropology, sociology, linguistics, and cultural studies. At the intersection of these fields, sociocultural research - a recent name for the interdisciplinary approach inspired by the cultural historical work of L. S. Vygotsky and others - is developing its own integrated perspective on identity. In his brief life, Vygotsky wrote down only rudimentary ideas about personality or self. Still, those he did offer, when combined with his general notions of semiotic mediation and higher-order psychological functions, formulate an important nascent understanding of identity formation and its significance for processes of social and cultural change. This chapter examines developments in relevant research and theory that have appeared, for the most part, since William Penuel and James Wertsch's key 1995 article. By adopting an expanded definition of identity, we include a wide range of research, from case studies of individual identity development to analyses of the centrality of identities in mediating response to state projects and to social movements. Concepts of identity are often (although not in Penuel and Wertsch) promiscuously mingled, producing a good bit of confusion and ambiguity. Because we concentrate on the approach to identity associated with George Herbert Mead, rather than following Penuel and Wertsch's focus on Erik Erikson's better-known concept, our first task is to clarify the differences between these two major conceptualizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vygotsky's most popular book in the English-speaking world, Thought and Language, was first published in English in 1962. (It was originally published in Russian in 1934.) When retitled Thinking and Speech in 1987, it captured a more active notion of these interrelated processes. They are seen as activities rather than entities and the book explores the developmentally changing relationship between intellectual and verbal processes. Vygotsky viewed speaking and thinking as dynamically related and approached their connection as “The complex movement from the first vague emergence of the thought to its completion in a verbal formulation. . . . Thought is not expressed but completed in the word. . . . Any thought has movement. It unfolds. . . . This flow of thought is realized as an internal movement through several planes. As a transition from thought to word and from word to thought.” (Vygotsky, 1987, pp. 249-250) Thinking and Speech presents important distinctions between communicative language and language used for conceptual representation. By addressing such broad themes, Vygotsky's work was grounded in philosophical, psychological, and linguistic traditions that have influenced Western students of language. Within these disciplines, the relationship between thinking and speech was forged, and it is still of great concern to contemporary thinkers. Part of what is so interesting about revisiting this relationship is that it emerges repeatedly across disciplines and informs every aspect of the human sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is a fundamental tenet of Vygotskian theory that in order to understand the inner mental processes of human beings, we must look at human beings in their sociocultural context. We should not look for the explanation of human behavior in the depths of the brain or the soul but in the external living conditions of persons and, most of all, in the external conditions of their societal life - in their social-historical forms of existence (Luria, 1979, p. 23). By accepting this tenet and generalizing it to the understanding of the creative work of investigators, we might say that in order to more fully understand the work of a specific thinker, we should step outside of that thinker's mind and take a look at the broader socioeconomic and sociocultural background in which he or she worked. The researcher's private abilities and preferences undoubtedly play a role in the creation of major theories, but the shaping of character, inclinations, and abilities of the researcher takes place in a specific sociocultural context, and every scientist is dependent on the ideas and tools available in his or her time. There is no true understanding of an investigator's theories, then, without an assessment of the broad context in which the theories were created (cf. Van der Veer, 1997). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

“Vygotsky is an original. It is a disservice to him to either find his significance solely in developing Soviet conceptions of man or to render him by gloss translation into language of functionalism or to see only his kinship to George Herbert Mead, to whom he has an interesting resemblance.” (Bruner, 1962, p. vi) / Bruner's description of Vygotsky in his introduction to Thought and Language sets out the challenge to be faced when examining his work alongside that of Mead and of James, Peirce, and Dewey. Vygotsky's unique genius is beyond dispute and Bruner was right to warn against a seductive assimilation of his ideas into the prevailing schema of Western social science. Neither, I would suggest, that Vygotsky's work be tested according to the pragmatic principle of its use to a particular field of study. Therefore, in this chapter there will be some resistance to assimilation by association and to judgments of utility. I will focus on Vygotsky and Mead, separately, as distinct contributors to enduring schools of thought that have much in common but which have developed quite differently. The comparison will, ultimately, lend support to the premise so central to the reflexive form of social science that both espoused: that ideas and, therefore, minds are socially formed and shape the ways in which we act in and on the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The British periodical press developed slowly and faltered under early official controls, but flourished when political conflict created opportunities for journalists and publishers. Political journalism rose and fell depending upon events, governmental policies, and publishers' courage; nonpolitical informative or ‘practical’ periodicals, on the other hand, gradually became a large and stable component of the press. From negligible beginnings, by 1695 hundreds of periodicals, with tens of thousands of issues and covering a wide range of subjects, had been published in Britain (see figure 25.1). No periodicals – defined loosely as numbered and/or dated series of pamphlets or sheets with uniform title and format – were published before 1620. (A possible exception was the weekly London bill of mortality, compiled by the parish clerks and printed as early as 1603–4, but it may have been published only in times of plague.) Several factors deterred the early appearance of periodicals. Most simply, someone had to conceive of them, and the idea was not obvious. For early publishers, prayer books, sermons, treatises and ballads were known texts for a known market; periodical publications, in contrast, require planning without knowing the text in advance. The concept, therefore, involved a leap of faith, as well as the financial risks of establishing networks of sources and distribution and an ongoing printing operation – an expensive undertaking for an untested market. The major barrier, however, seems to have been the hazardous implications of the subject for which the periodical was ideally suited – the news. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the notable eighteenth-century expositions of Newton's achievements were Henry Pemberton's A View of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy (1728), Willem Jacob 's Gravesande's Mathematical Elements of Natural Philosophy confirm'd by experiments: or, an introduction to Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy (6th edn, 1747), and Colin Maclaurin's posthumous An Account of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophical Discoveries (1748). To the modern eye, there is something puzzling about these titles. We note the terms “philosophy,” “natural philosophy,” and “philosophical,” and we wonder what they mean in this setting. Take Maclaurin's Account, the best of the genre, and written by one of the leading Newtonians of the day. Newton made great scientific discoveries, and we can learn what most of them are from reading An Account, but what philosophical discoveries did he make? Maclaurin describes Newton's work in mechanics, rational and celestial, and in physics, theoretical and experimental (though not optics). But Newton the philosopher? To answer these questions requires a preliminary disentanglement of the disciplinary classifications that clustered around the business of “philosophy” in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humanism, as a scholarly movement, emanated from Italy in the fourteenth century; it soon spread throughout Europe, from Paris and Oxford in the west to Cracow in the east, and reached the height of its influence in the sixteenth century. Though at first it had been a literary movement, centred upon poetics and rhetoric, the increasing exploration of the whole of ancient learning led to the promotion of knowledge and understanding in practical fields too. This applies not just to the arts, but in particular to the technical and practical sciences, which have received far too little attention as parts of this process. The body of knowledge in the fields of jurisprudence, medicine, astronomy, cosmography, geography, mining, mechanics, architecture and agriculture was built up systematically from the standard works of Greek, Byzantine and Latin scholarship; finally men drew upon the experience of antiquity in the fields of warfare and the structure of the state. The relevant texts were repeatedly published in new and improved editions, furnished with commentaries, and translated into modern languages. This was due not to literary and aesthetic interest, but to practical considerations which had to do with contemporary needs and the wish to apply immediately the knowledge supplied by the texts. With regard to medicine we may cite a single set of figures for the sixteenth century: between 1490 and 1597/8 six hundred and sixty editions of Galen were published (eighteen of them complete), chiefly in Paris, Lyons, Venice and Basle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]